[UA] (OT) Quotes

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- James O'Rance <jorance at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The Theosophists may have had a magickal school with
> effects that allowed 
> them to safely talk about their powers in public. By
> adding in layers of 
> ridiculous metaphor and unbelievable stories (and
> spending some charges), 
> anybody who would be unfriendly to the Theosophists
> would consider them to 
> be talking a lot of old rot, while those who might
> want to support them 
> would see through the lies to the real mystic truth.
> 
> Alternatively, the Theosophists may simply have been
> extraordinarily 
> clueless.

I kind of like to mix both aspects together when I
stick them in my games.  HPB was clueless, but a lot
more savvy about everything else than many of her
followers.  I like to play her as a Anna "Anastasia"
Anderson/Mary Wilcocks(Or was Caraboo really Mary
Baker? I forget.) type who accidentally attracted some
Avatars and supportive adepts.  Maybe some of the
adepts realized that the wild claims of theosophy were
good smokescreens (himalayan monks tunneling under all
the major cities of the world?  Ken Hite's probably
alteady pointed out a Fu Manchu connection, there.)

However, since people like Moina Bergson were
performing magical rites on stage as theatre during
HPB's lifetime (at the Theatre Bodinere, according to
my Cassel's DoW) and levitation, ectoplasmic
manifestation and seances were popular social past
times, I don't think the Tiger of public knowledge was
asleep during the Gaslight period.  I think he was
cuddling up with the Elephant of Scientific Optimism
and the crazed Emu of Opportunistic Spiritualism.

Coincidence note:  Moina Bergson, a witch and wife of
golden dawn founder Samuel "I fought Crowley with an
invisible psychic vampire" Mathers, is a conspiracy
hub all by herself.  Her brother was Henri Bergson,
who won the nobel prize in the 1920s for Creative
Evolution and another book I haven't read.  Henri was
a philsopher who challanged the mechanistic
(Lovecraftian) view of biology and consciousness. 
Maybe he and his sister were fighting Lovecraft and
the Fu Machu-controlled Theosophists with Egyptian
(Crowleyan?) magic rituals like the Rites of Isis. 
Maybe that conflict spilled over into a modern UA
setting, going underground after the Tiger ate Jumbo
and the Emu whole.  Wouldn't it be great if the
players found this whole trail of papers tracing the
battle back to the Turn of the Century?  Maybe the
demon of Alfred Jarry could pop in to possess a
character, do some serious drugs with William S.
Burroughs and stop the Sleepers from being manipulated
into unleashing the world's biggest Unspeakable
Servant (made from the caracass of an
unsuccessfully-cloned prehistoric monster)on a tiny
island in the South Pacific.

Someone stop me before I use the word "Cyclopean."

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua