[UA] School sketches (long)

[Ville Halonen]

Been reading the archives, starting from April 2000, and I have to say there's some good stuff in there.

In May 2k (that rhymes) there were questions about foreign (read: non-US) magickal schools (I love the archaic form of the word, and apparently parentheses also).

I don't know whether anyone's interested in Finnish culture, but being a critic of the modern life-style, I couldn't help but bring forth a school of magick that would perfectly fit here, and in the mean time reveal something truly frightening – at least to me – about our culture.

The Finns worship Nokia.

Or the media at least. One columnist mutated the old term "finlandisation" (the word used for a country  or somesuch obeying the orders of a more powerful country, in Finland's case, the Soviet Union Back Then) into "nokialisation", and quite promptly, if you ask me: everybody's joking how our President -- who's a woman, BTW – looks like a Moomin or is ugly as hell and wondering what the hell was she carrying in the HUGE purse of hers on her trip to Sweden blah blah blah, and then someone makes a joke about the shoulder-width of Jorma Ollila (Nokia CEO) and my, what a ruckus! "Mr. Ollila brings great wealth to Finland, raises our value as people, creates respect etc., so Thou Shalt Not Make Fun of Mr. Ollila! Apologize, mortal!"

Finland was never under Soviet control, and thus never a socialist totalitarian state, but now, it seems, it's becoming a Nokian totalitarian state.

So I thought of Nokiamancy or somesuch, but it was just a thought and a (insert the quality-implying word of your choice here) joke, and used it more as a frightening image, as if any one of you cared about this country, for which I don't give a damn.

I almost said shit, but I didn't, as it seems kind of awkward to me to use foreign curse words. It's as if I'm trying to be something I'm not, trying to show my cool to all you native English speakers. And that brings me nicely to the cultural differences.

Anyone ever thought of making a school out of that? I mean, there are lots of differences between the countries and continents, the metric system, the Nokia-thing, the Münchausen/Warbucks-thing, the what-do-they-put-on-french-fries-in-Holland-instead-of-ketchup-thing in case of the States and the Old world.

Or maybe it might be more useful to use differences between two or more sides in general: Male-female, black-white, Europe-US, West-East etc.?

I have a lot of thoughts, and I'm not refining them further at all…how typical of me.

Then the essential school: don't we all want to have sex – I mean, to fly? I was thinking about Aviatomancy (surely not the proper word), although it may have been more relevant about a hundred years ago when flying wasn't as common as it is now. Then there's the question of flying and jumping and truly flying: could the taboo of the school be the prohibition of artificial/motorised aviation? Whenever the adept gets on a plane or a helicopter, he loses all his charges? Gliders, ski-jumping and jumping off high cliffs might be the key to charges? 

Or jumping off an aeroplane, denying the artificial flight and getting off at 30 000 ft.? Whee.

I will stop this useless ranting soon, hang on there.

All kinds of restrictions control our lives, whether to maintain social order, to make other people richer than their neighbors or to keep us on the leash – depending on the situation and your point of view. Someone's limitation is someone's advantage: consider trademarks and copyrights and everything attributed to individual ownership. Surely there are people who could make use of this by the ways of magick, and maybe two kinds: those who enforce the restrictions and those who attempt to tear them apart on every instance. Those who obey laws and perhaps stick to certain trademarks and preferably oppose business mergings; those who have fun at grocery stores by switching Coke to Pepsi, the former concentrating his power to keep people in line, the latter breaking the chains constricting her and other people's lives.

(and as I was reading through the May2k archives, someone suggested Trademarkomancy. Synchronicity strikes again.)

I'm not talking Anarchomancy here, at least the way social anarchists see it, as a way to Tear Down Tha System. I'm talking individual freedom, the power to do whatever one wants, not giving a dung about artificial limitations.

Symbolomancy might also be pretty cool. Imagine someone giving you a finger and you getting a severe noseblood – what a blast. Or teleportation through @-signs drawn on floors, protection from harm with peace signs. The difficult part is, where to draw the line: the alphabets and numbers and cards are some sort of symbols, although rarely representing something other than spelling instructions. This school could be tricky, as there's a whole bunch of stuff you could do with it…kind of like iconomancy. Somewhat post-modern symbols only could make a nice limitation – so no pentagrams or crosses, but smiley faces, peace signs, v for victory, middle finger, a-ok could grant a bonus or a flip-flop etc.

I was finishing this already when Surrealomancy knocked on my door, but I thought, hey, magick is ALREADY quite surreal, so…? But maybe…just maybe…

You sure could get some pretty wicked effects with it, hm? 

- Halski
Turning The Next Passer-By's Nose Into A Faucet And His Eyes Two Big Lanterns And Teeth Into Bits Of Sugar

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