[UA] Old groups and power

[rowan at media.mit.edu]

> I think the reason why the old dudes no longer have power has
> to do with a different take on the 'what's the paradox' 
> question.  To me, all mystical mojo in UA is driven by a 
> price--if not, then everyone can do it, and that's not very 
> sporting, is it?  The old ways _do_ work, but the price is so 
> hellaciously high as to be ludicrous.  Every magickal act in 
> these systems would be govered by immutable laws of power and 
> repercussions, and most sane people aren't willing to go that 
> far for a taste of power, when the PTA's running elections 
> next week.

Bravo. I love this take on the PoMo/old-school question in UA. I would
frame it like this:

The laws of consensual reality are breaking down. This is a natural
byproduct of a nearly-full IC, especially when certain archetypes (e.g.
the WECHBY) have ascended and when the archetype turnover rate has sped
up (a result of recent human overpopulation, perhaps?). There are lot
more angles from which the Statosphere can be tilted these days, and the
IC changes membership more often than it did when cultural changes were
measured in centuries rather than decades. Accordingly, the old systems
of intricately-worked-out magic have become less reliable, harder to
find out about (most of the practicioners have been killed or have
failed to pass on their knowledge), and simply made obsolete by the
quicker, more powerful systems of intuitive magic that have become
possible through a direct, personal sense of the Statosphere. The new
magic is based on jury-rigged correspondences and systems of meaning
that exploit the gaping holes being gouged in the fabric of reality by
the restless, young Clergy members. 

Getting back on my Kult tie-in hobbyhorse: the "reality breaking down"
thing is a theme in Kult as well, and it also affect how magic works.
Magic in Kult is always a process of breaking through the reality of our
world into one of the other worlds: Metropolis, Inferno, Limbo, or Gaia.
The practicioner has to go through laborious rituals to banish the
symbols of reality in this world and evoke the reality of another world
to create magical effects. For the past few hundred years in Kult,
reality has slowly been breaking down, and parts of the other worlds
have been bleeding through to our world, Elysium, with increasing
regularity. Inner cities have begun to blend into the endless maze of
Metropolis, battlefields and torture chambers have opened into Inferno,
rave halls and artists's studios have become dream-pockets in Limbo.
With these weakened barriers, magic has become less relevant in that
strange effects can sometimes be accomplished without the use of any
rituals at all. These effects are often uncontrollable -- a frightened
person might conjure a nightmare into this world or a distraught lover
might walk between worlds to join his love in Inferno, for instance --
but it would make sense that some people would learn to navigate the
breaches in our reality to gain some control over these effects using
only their intuition and a deeply ingrained set of meaningful rules.
These would be UA-style adepts.

Matt Norwood


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