Paradigms

Paradigms (Beliefs, Practices and Tools) AKA: "Focus" in M20

Some of these write-ups are extensively long in the book. We've provided excerpts from the text to give you an idea of what the paradigm is about. We highly suggest you look up the reference and read it in its entirety.

A World of Gods and Monsters

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In this view, Creation is fundamentally irrational, dangerous, and filled with powerful forces, most of which are hostile. Nothing makes sense for very long, and apparent safety can give way at any moment and plunge us into chaos. Magick, science, and faith are tools we use, like fire and steel, to keep the threats at bay; those tools give us a leg up on our ancestors, but in the end we’re all utterly fucked. Under this view, magick is a cosmic weapon, and using it makes you a monster too. Those gods and monsters hold the keys to magick, and if they like you (or if you kick their ass), they might share those powers with you… so long as your sanity holds out. The dark side of existential philosophy, this model insists that everything is meaningless. Paradoxically, it’s both a very primitive viewpoint and a completely modern one. In the World of Darkness, it’s literally true – there really are vampires and evil spirits all over the place. Human beings are prey for beings that are essentially gods, and mages frequently become those godly monsters themselves. Although it often comes across as the mordant creed of Hollow Ones and other orphans, this model finds its way into the supposedly refined beliefs of many Tradition, Technocracy, and Disparate mages… and, of course, into the delusions of Marauders and the malicious truths of the Nephandi, for whom its reality becomes one of their greatest philosophical weapons. After all, when the werewolf’s at your door, the world seems pretty fucking irrational – and very obviously monstrous.

A Mechanistic Cosmos

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A Mechanistic Cosmos

Creation is essentially a machine. By understanding it, we can elevate ourselves to a superior state. All things possess an intrinsic sense of order, and chaos is an illusion that conceals a deeper form of symmetry. Although it’s most obviously identified with the Technocracy, this paradigm goes back at least as far as Classical Greece. The “divine watchmaker” concept from Enlightenment Deism, certain forms of Gnosticism, and the postmodern concept of reality hacking all stem from this image of a systematic and comprehensible cosmos. To the mechanistic viewpoint, enlightenment includes a clear-eyed view of the cosmic machine. Through it might be perceived through lenses of godhead, those divinities are still part of the system. Magick, therefore, is an Enlightened Science through which a person tweaks the gears. Metaphysical practices are simply toolkits for the people who know how to tinker with reality.

Aliens Make Us What We are

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'Aliens Make Us What We Are Ref: M20 BOS, p 188-189

According to this paradigm, Awakened Enlightenment is our perception of alien-inspired consciousness, and “magick” is an understanding of principles and technologies that unEnlightened humans cannot grasp. The Avatar /Genius, then, is either an alien in telepathic contact with the mage, or else is a reflection of the mage’s own alien self. To some folks who adhere to this belief, we are aliens too… descendants, perhaps, of some greater race (which may or may not have had our best interests at heart) or their servitors. The legends we think we know are actually stories about alien visitations, garbled by millennia of folklore and flawed, egotistical translations. The reputed Pure Ones were extraterrestrial voyagers or exiles, and they passed their knowledge down to us in a form we now consider to be magick. Those “magical treasures” uncovered amidst ruins and forgotten archives are technological devices and texts. Maybe Jesus or Lucifer were aliens. Or aliens parted the Red Sea for Moses, dictated the Quran, Analects, and Ramayana, or raised the pyramids with technologies humanity still cannot grasp. Those ideas may be blasphemy to most folks, but alien-intelligence experts consider them to be just the tip of an extraterrestrial (or maybe extradimensional) iceberg. From Atlantis to Area 51 and beyond, aliens guide us, direct us, perhaps feed on us, and may well destroy us. (All that “lizard-people” stuff seems pretty reasonable once you’ve had a glimpse behind the scenes at the World of Darkness, doesn’t it…?) As a paradigm, then, Aliens Make Us What We Are lays most, if not all, of the Awakened world and its mysteries into the oddly comforting embrace of advanced intelligences, with “ascension” as it were, being the final reconciliation between a human “mage” and the true masters of the human realm. Associated Practices: Chaos magick (which has plenty of weird ties to Lovecraft and UFOs), craftwork (replicating alien manufacture, of course!), crazy wisdom, cybernetics, faith (in godlike aliens and /or alien gods), god-bonding (likewise), hypertech, invigoration, maleficia (especially of the “secrets from the Void” variety), martial arts (alien fighting techniques), mediumship (channeling alien entities), psionics, reality hacking, weird science, and postmodern variations on yoga

All Power Comes From God(s)

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All Power Comes From God(s) Ref: M20 BOS, p 188-189

“Awakening” is a lie. In reality, a mage’s power comes from God or His Adversary. A mage is merely the human conduit for Divine or infernal essence. All mages are thus pieces in a game of cosmic forces – favored pieces, to be sure, but still vessels of their patron’s will. A mage, then, must remain reverent of her maker, grateful for her powers, and open to the call of That Whom She Serves. By extension, though, a mage who does not serve the proper godhead probably serves a rival god… or worse, the rebel Adversary who opposes God and therefore becomes anathema to all good servants of the Lord. The obvious paradigm for deeply religious mages, this belief-system rejects the idea that magick comes from the mage herself. Under this assumption, Awakening, the Avatar, Seekings, the Spheres, and even the Willpower Trait all become manifestations of the mage’s divine patron. It’s the power of God, Goddess, or the Gods that flows through the mage; that human vessel can strengthen or weaken her devotion and belief, but the ebb and flow of power are beyond her. ... Obviously, a player who selects this paradigm must have a comprehensive concept of the mage’s godhead and its associated demands. Roleplaying that set of beliefs provides an essential part of this paradigm; it’s vital to all of them, really, but most especially to a belief-system that asserts a deity’s favor as the source of a mage’s power. If the mage stumbles from her Path, then she’ll be called to task by her god(s), if only because her own mind insists that it must be so. And because many gods can be rather bloodthirsty (even the supposedly “good ones”), a true believer in this paradigm has another name to folks who might not share her faith: fanatic, with all the potential excess that word implies. Associated Practices: Dominion, faith, god-bonding (obviously), gutter magick (those in the gutter are often those with the most faith in their divinity), High Ritual Magick (which often demands obedience to God as part of the ritual requirements), maleficia (soaboutthose bloody-minded gods…), martial arts (“I kick ass for the Lord!”), medicine-work (often tied to faith in the Creator), Voudoun (in which most power flows from your connection to the Loa), witchcraft (the Old Gods)

All the World’s a Stage

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A peculiar take on Gnosticism, the world-stage paradigm assumes that magick comes either from a favored place in the production, a realization that this is all a big show, or both. A mage might see himself as a dude who got a glance at the stage directions… or who slept with the casting director… or who’s especially good at upstaging everyone else while improvising like mad. Associated Practices: The Art of Desire, bardism, crazy wisdom (once you’ve seen the truth, you’re crazy), dominion, gutter magick (this puts the senselessness of life into perspective), hypertech, invigoration (“act well your part – there all the honor lies!”), mediumship (in connection with the real audience), psionics, reality hacking (“because I’ve got the script, motherfuckers!”), weird science