Paradigms
Some of these write-ups are extensively long in the book, they are marked with a *. 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.
The original set of write-ups in M20 Ann didn't list 'Associated Practices', as they did with those published in the BoS. You get to choose your own, as long as you can make it make sense.
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| 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. M20 Ann, pg 568 |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| 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. M20 Ann, pg 568 |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| 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 |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| 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) |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| 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 |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Ancient Wisdom is the Key* Ref: M20 BOS, p 188-189 | The ancients understood more about reality than we
ever will. Guided by profound insights –possibly also by alien
helpmates, divine helpmates, or divine helpmates who were
actually aliens – the primordial civilizations (Mu, Meru, Atlantis,
Hyperborea, or whatever names those ancient peoples used to
define themselves) employed advanced arts and /or technologies
that have since been lost to all but a handful of modern folk.
The mages who’ve uncovered those secrets, though, can use
them to advance their understanding of reality and unlock the
doors to vast understanding. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Bring Back the Golden Age | Once upon a time, goes this paradigm, everything was perfect. God or the Gods reigned in glory, and people held a valued, though submissive, place in this Earthly paradise. And then something broke it. Maybe that catastrophe involved disobedient human beings, rebellious gods or angels, an invasion of savage horse nomads, or some other upheaval that signaled an end to the Golden Age and the beginning of an era of misery. It’s an archetypal story that echoes from monotheistic scriptures to neopagan lore. We had a good thing once, it goes, and we lost it – so it’s up to us to win it back! Magick or Enlightenment, in this system, comes from your connection to that Golden Age, its ideals, its ancient wisdom, and the power it once had and will have again. This belief finds its way into the Tradition stories about life before Technocratic rule… and also into the ideals of New Avalon, which are held by certain Technocrats. It provides the foundation for the Akashic Arts, which recall a lost sense of human perfection. In a warped sort of way, it even shapes a Nephandic point of view, wherein Primal Chaos was usurped by Light and so everything must be returned to the Dark before the proper order is restored. M20 Ann, pg 568 |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Consciousness is the Only True Reality Ref: M20 BoS, pg 190-191 |
“Reality” is the construct of our perceptual experiences.
Rather than an objective existence that appears more or less
as we perceive it whether or not we’re there to observe it (the
old “if a tree falls in the forest” argument), the universe is actually
an interplay of energies whose perceived forms come from the
interplay of consciousness, perception, and interpretation. In
plain English, we exist within a hallucination whose form is
dictated by what we think it is, because “thought” is the only
true measure of what is and is not “real.” |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Creation is Innately Divine and Alive | The world, perhaps even the universe, is a living entity. That entity is either part of Divinity or else is Divinity itself. Gods and monsters exist, as do pain, horror, and death; that’s cool, though, because in the end good things come from all the suffering. Death sustains life, life gives way to death, and the whole thing is a cycle that perpetrates itself in an ultimately beneficial way. Magick flows from an understanding of that cycle and your place in it as an agent of change. Everything, perhaps, has the potential of magick, but most beings never realize it. Best recognized as a common perspective among Verbena, Dreamspeakers, Euthanatoi, Ecstatics, and other grimly affirmative mages, this model stresses pragmatic acceptance mixed with wild joy. Certain takes on Kabbalism gravitate in this direction too, with Creation as the infinite embodiment of ineffable God. Minus the god part, this paradigm has a scientific analog in the Gaia hypothesis, which insists that Earth is a living, vaguely sentient biomass. Certain Progenitors embrace this idea, especially in the 21st century, when that biomass appears to be fighting its human infection. Unlike the Gods and Monsters paradigm, this belief system essentially says that there is a point to the madness if you look at the Big Picture and accept that what we perceive as pain and horror are merely ripples across a larger spectrum of life. M20 Ann, pg 569 |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Divine Order and Earthly Chaos | According to the most prevalent belief system on earth these
days, the material world is an imperfect reflection or creation of
sublime Celestial Order. This paradigm covers the world’s three
dominant religious creeds (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) as
well as many strains of Confucianism, Hinduism, and other
philosophies. Some believers see a cosmic Adversary opposing the
Divine Order’s God or Gods, and others consider our miserable
slab of mortal muck to be a corruption of godly Will or abstract
Platonic ideals. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Embrace the Threshold M20 BoS, pg 191-192 |
We’re on the cusp of transformation. That Which Is is
giving way to That Which Will Be, and folks who can’t make the
transition will be left behind. Power, then, belongs to those who
embrace the threshold and ride the changes into a fast-coming
dawn. The old will fall to the new, and all we think we know
will become the lost fragments of a dying world. Generally, this
paradigm fits into another broad model of belief – typically
one based on gods, technology, or a “reality revision” enacted
through changing consciousness or rediscovered wonders. And because so many mages idealize a form of global Ascension,
this threshold could be seen as impending Ascension on a
grand scale. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Everything is Chaos – You Only Think it Makes Sense | The core of existential philosophy, this paradigm insists
that Creation is indifferent and possibly meaningless until and
unless we choose to impose meaning on our small part of it.
Magick comes from wrangling whatever cosmic mysteries or
principles you believe in and realizing that your belief is the
thing that gives them power. Ultimately, then, magick comes
from within. The Universe is an Etch-a-Sketch, and mages learn
how to twiddle the knobs. At its extreme, this view maintains
that nothing means anything… and that, perhaps, everything
exists only in a mage’s head. Who’s to say this view is wrong?
After all, the Universe might simply be a game played out in
some mad god’s mind… |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Everything is Data | It’s all code. That’s the theory, anyway. What we call reality
is actually a simulation, a Matrix, a holographic projection that
can be manipulated by anyone who knows the Reality Code.
Variations on this idea include the concept of a God code that
allows the Enlightened Elite to find cheats; a code interwoven
into holy texts like the Bible, Qur’an, or Torah, or in divinatory
systems like the I Ching or Tarot; a computerized take on the
Mechanistic Cosmos paradigm; or the theory that everything
is composed of waves and frequencies that can be adjusted
with music or other methods. Regardless of the nature of that
information, the paradigm remains the same: everything is
data, and smart folks can work with that data. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Everything is an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake | A dour yet prevalent view among mages is that Creation as
we know it is a big fucking lie. It was created as a prison, a joke,
or a project by malignant entities (Matrix-style Gnosticism); it’s
a cosmic accident that only seems significant (a common view
among Marauders, Virtual Adepts, and many Technocrats);
or it’s an illusion obscuring a deeper Cosmic Truth that’s
essentially benevolent or, at worst, indifferent (an idea often
affiliated with strains of Buddhism, Hinduism, weird science,
and existential philosophy). |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Holographic Reality Ref: M20 BoS, pg 192 |
“Matter” is energy, shaped by our perceptions into the
illusion of solidity. What we perceive as reality is in fact a holographic illusion of a greater Reality that exists at the edge of
human awareness. Every element of this illusion is preserved in
every other one, resulting in an infinite replication from which
nothing is truly lost or destroyed. Although we catch glimpses
of the truth in fleeting phenomena (déjà vu, precognition, telepathic contact, synchronicity, and other related “impossibilities”),
human existence as we know it demands limitations on what we
can perceive. Awakening, however, removes the need for such
binding and arbitrary limits. Ascension, then, involves opening
one’s self to the infinite truth and realizing that everything we
“know” is ultimately without substance, for All is One. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| It’s All Good – Have Faith | This New-Age Gnostic conceit insists that Creation is
ultimately benevolent. We suffer because we believe we’ll suffer;
if and when we adjust our attitude, the world spills out its
blessings upon us. Magick comes from refusing to be bound
by common expectations. Energy is essentially a positive force,
and a positive attitude can literally do wonders with it. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Might is Right | The Law of the Jungle rules a dog-eat-dog world. As we’re
hurled through an indifferent cosmos, nothing matters beyond
an individual’s ability to impose his Will. The truly superior man
or woman excels because that person will accept nothing less
than excellence. Anyone who cannot meet exacting standards
is essentially agreeing to be fodder for the elite. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| One-Way Trip to Oblivion (Banned Paradigm for PCs) | A distressingly common belief attached to many of the
other paradigms is that everything is doomed. Someday,
probably soon, the whole house of cards will collapse, God
will call us to account, and the heat-death of the universe
will wipe away everything we ever valued, accomplished, or
believed. For religious people, this End Times scenario means
the extinction of this world and the beginning of a new one…
preferably one where they’re in charge. Among agnostics and
atheists, nothing fucking matters because it’s all dying anyhow.
All that’s important is getting what you can, while you can, and
enjoying the show before the lights go off for good. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Tech Holds All Answers | Technology is not a modern secular invention; really, it’s
the other way around. The sciences we know of in the modern
world are descendants of alchemy, sacred geometry, and other
forms of refined knowledge with repeatable results. Most
elements of modern science were once thought to be keys to
God’s Creation, given to selected men (and occasionally to
women) to enact God’s plans on Earth. Atheistic rationalism,
therefore, comes out of inquiries made possible by knowledge
once thought to come from the gods. |
| Name | Summary |
|---|---|
| Transcend Your Limits Ref: M20 BoS, pg 192-193 |
We are, according to this paradigm, beings of unfathomable power and potential. They more we believe we can do,
the more we are capable of doing. Humanity’s blessing is its
ability to change the circumstances of our existence, and our
curse is to remain blind to that ability… or worse yet, to fear
it and allow ourselves to be shackled by that fear. Perhaps the
most coherent expression of the Ecstatic creed, this paradigm
asserts that the greatest – perhaps the only – boundaries on
our potential are the limitations we place upon ourselves or
have placed on us by others. Magick, then, is the realization of
greater potential, the willingness (and Will-ingness) to expand
our selves, and the results of doing so. |
