[UA] Re: UA Digest, Vol 5, Issue 172

[Russell Rayburn]

On 5/15/07, Mike Lake <mdlake at well.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps a reminder that UA uses not just the term "symbolic tension,"
> but "paradox" is in order.  I'd recommend any would-be -mancy designers
> to embrace the word, but too few people understand what a paradox is.
> Paradox isn't just odd behavior; it's an internal contradiction, and,
> like contradictions in mathematics, the contradictions in magic turn
> back upon the source.  Maybe "Catch-22" still has enough teeth to
> capture the sense I'm trying to convey.
>
> Paradox is the marrow of many canon schools.  Plutomancers control money
> by adopting a lifestyle where they can't actually *use* money.
> Dipsomancers control the world by losing control of themselves.
> Epideromancers control the body by destroying it--and a body destroyed
> is beyond further control.  (Incidentally, this theme could be exploited
> by a Glutomancy school: Glutomancy is about acquisition, and that which
> you acquire is consumed in the process.)  Personamancers gain iconic
> power at the expense of their own selves... including, ultimately, the
> desire for and will to accomplish whatever they sacrificed themselves to
> achieve, because the mask doesn't share that obsession.  In a more
> general, vague, and symbolic sense, -mancers become slaves to the very
> thing they seek to control.
>

This has to be one of the best write-ups I've seen of the idea of
paradox in magic.  Very well done.

-- 
It takes a village to raise a child,
but just a van and a few puppies to catch one.

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