[UA] [UA]Goddess dicotomy

[Epoch]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Kali Magdalene wrote:

> Epoch wrote:
> > 
> > Well, Deirdre is /obviously/ right that, in canonical UA, "old
> > style" celtic pagans (there aren't any, are there?  I mean, I thought that
> > we don't even know much about their religion) would be powerless or
> > near-powerless.  That's kinda the point.  All of those old-style mystical
> > traditions lost a lot of power in the Industrial Revolution, still more in
> > the turn from modernism to post-modernism, and were dealt their final blow
> > with the Ascension of the Naked Goddess.
> 
> I don't mean "Celtic Pagans." However, I do mean "old style
> goddess-worshippers" and some do exist (the Thuggee cult apparently
> still exists in India, for example).

Gotcha.  And yes, certainly, they'd have no power.

> > Whether new-style Wiccans would have any more power than old-style ones is
> > a more thorny question.  I'm not sure that new-style Wiccanism /does/ fit
> > in with dipsomancy and pornomancy.  I mean, granted that it's new, which
> > gives it some help in the UA cosmology.  But it also seems, at least to
> > this not-very-conservant observer, to be trying to mimic a notion of
> > what's old.  I'm not sure that that gets us anywhere.
> 
> Well, most of Wicca is not involved directly or indirectly in the Occult
> Underground, but the people of power of pagan persuasion who *are*
> involved, are far more likely to be of the modern pagan variety (and
> note that "Wiccan" != "Crystal Waving New Ager" by necessity, but I
> suppose it's okay to cast aspersions on a religion because it's new and
> claims roots in older stuff).

I'd be careful about that statement.  You can draw conclusions that say
that old-style goddess worship doesn't cause power in UA.  That's not to
say that people who adhere to it are not involved in the Occult
Underground.  The New Inquisition doesn't bestow magical powers to those
who are members of it, but it certainly does involve them in the OU.

> > Fundamentally, when people used to propose new kinds of schools of magic
> > twice a week to this list, one seminal question was, "What's the
> > Paradox?"  So, what's the paradox of new-style Wiccanism?
> 
> Well, I think I'd start with the casual assurance many people hold that
> it's bunk.

That's external to the practitioners, though, and hence can't power an
adept's skewing of general rules.  "Paradox" may be the wrong word for
what lies at the heart of a school of magic in UA (Stacy Stroud ably
argued that that is the case, back in the early days of this list), but
there's some kind of internal conflict or sacrifice that goes on in each
school.

In many cases, it's an adept giving up control over one aspect of his life
in order to gain control over a related aspect.

So an Entropomancer gives over part of his life to randomness in order to
cheat randomness at another time.

An Epideromancer does not allow the outside world touch his body, while
touching it heavily himself, in order to change his body as he wills and
affect the outside world or other people's body with it.

A dipsomancer voluntarily gives up mundane competency and coherence and,
indeed, health, so that in the time he's impaired, he has magical
competency, coherence, and power.

In each case, the Adept is obsessed with a contradiction, or opposing
ideals.  I don't think that you can take the "casual assurance many people
hold that neo-Wiccanism is bunk," and make that an internal conflict for a
practitioner of neo-Wiccanism.  After all, they've decided that it's not
bunk, yes?

You might be able to get something weird going on with someone who thought
it was bunk, but practiced it devotedly anyhow.

Of course, remember that being an Adept (or an Avatar) is not the only way
to have occult power in UA.  A particular group of neo-pagans could, for
example, have found some Rituals and worked them into their local
religious practices, creating magical effects without being a school of
magic.  Now, the magical effect wouldn't actually be related to their
philosophy, and an old-style goddess worshipper or a catholic priest who
followed the same steps would get the same effect.

Alternately, a neo-pagan group might be able to teach one of the
quasi-magical skills that the main book suggests, to those who follow its
teachings.  The quasi-magical skills are, to my knowledge, an uncharted
area of the cosmology -- it's never been defined what "powers" them, in
the way that personal obsession "powers" schools of magic or societal
obsession "powers" ascensions into the IC.

Mike

--
"I know it kind of compromises my moral principles, but the thing is, 
 they make my butt look cute!"  -- Mariya Hodge 


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