Mage: The Dirty Version – The Metaphysic of Magic

From A Practical Reader on Occult Philosophy and Insurgency (aka “The Little Purple Book”)

Although it’s loaded with inaccurate connotations, the Consensus is still a useful shorthand term to describe the elements of existence that are most vital to the Ascension War. It isn’t as simple as majority rule, though the instincts of millions exert undeniable power over the nature of things. To survive, you must combine of intellectual rigor, ideological commitment and a tolerance for enigmas. Knowledge is the foundation, and this work begins by exploring the roots of ecumenical occult philosophy to strengthen it.

The Tellurian and Necessity

The Traditions and Hegemony both call the sum total of existence the Tellurian. Theoretically, the Tellurian contains all possible universes, though what constitutes a “possible universe” is subject to debate. As the ground of all being, the Tellurian contains those elements of reality that must exist for sentient beings to construct narratives, and for the most part, these are the only “raw” components of reality that sentients can perceive. These include the exoteric manifestations of physical laws. Gravity has always existed as a force that causes things to fall, for example, though its rationale and less common manifestations may arise out of narrative threads. Technocrats call this necessary base the Anthropic Principle – it only works this way because we could not exist in a universe that didn’t – while mystics refer to manifestations of the mind, ideal Forms, or the influence of deities.

The primacy of consciousness and individual agency should be noted here, as it must exist as an aspect of the raw Tellurian. Sentient minds (that is, those of beings perceiving the world, not just interpreting it through sapient thought) are not directly subject to the Consensus and prefigure the Tapestry, though they can be manipulated through social pressures and direct magical working. This has been experimentally verified through the ages, particularly when Kyriarchs have attempted to turn specific peoples into “subhumans.” The Tapestry can’t satisfy their wishes, and the intended victims remain as intelligent, strong and self-willed as ever.

The Tapestry and Consensus

Acting within such cosmological preconditions, sentient beings shape the Tellurian’s manifold possibilities into the Tapestry: the defined or semi-defined content of the universe. Every thread in the Tapestry is a narrative created to explain the teller-seer’s life and everything he, she or it encounters. Nonsapient animals weave threads based on their immediate perceptions and instincts. Sapient beings such as humans are capable of consciously telling stories about themselves and the world around them, giving them the potential to impose changes beyond the routines of biological and ecological niches. Together, they add specificity, complexity and restrictions to existence.

The Tapestry’s threads aren’t completely defined; elements that are less meaningful aren’t as fixed in the narrative continuum. This is why a sorcerer can weave a coincidence out of a conveniently placed object. The object was nowhere in particular until it had to be in a particular place. The less narrative importance a facet of reality possesses, the less defined it is. A map sets the territory in place – prior to being defined, it only has a tendency toward a location or specific nature. Technocrats say that reality in this type of flux has an eigenstate, and this term is widely use beyond their labs.

What creates an eigenstate out of unbiased potential, or makes it difficult for most people to impose any narrative they desire? Nonsapient sentients create powerful eigenstate biases based on their own experiences, forming ecologies with spiritual as well as physical significance. Human mages must contend with the resultant natural principles. That’s why theories of spontaneous generation have never been true – at least in this Cycle of existence. Nature knows the truth. Before a human begins to tell his or her own tale, she must take into account the reality of the natural world.

(Then again, some believe that everything permitted within an eigenstate does in fact happen, and that there are many worlds based on every way in which a narrative thread might “collapse” one into itself. Due to the subjective problems involved in exploring these possibilities, it’s difficult to determine whether evidence showing this is true is discovered or manufactured, or whether the two possibilities are even contrasts.)

Sleepers face another limitation. They instinctively weave narrative threads that only minimally conflict with others, particularly those that are a part of their direct historical situation. Sleeper threads are intersubjective, based on interpreting what has come before and what surrounds them in light of their own experiences. In a way, the human sense of history an culture is a trap, tangling people in its tendencies – a property The Hegemony exploits. Common trends throughout these related threads create the Consensus mages shape and defy, but this is not to say that Sleepers always agree with it. They resist in private worlds of the imagination and might see “impossible” events, but they lack some vital combination of will, instinct and intellectual patterning to disrupt the efforts of their ancestors and contemporaries.

Awakening and Spiritual Reality

Enthusiastic mages characterize Awakening as a state that liberates them from the instinct to weave intersubjective stories into the world, but the truth is that they’re never wholly free and barring Ascension, can’t be. To truly believe the world is arbitrary would drive them insane – and when it occurs, that’s exactly what happens.

Mages draw on alternative explanations of the world, minority histories and sincere fictions that not only make sense of Creation as it is, but encode the possibility of radical change within them. This new paradigm establishes primacy over his or her ordinary intersubjective state. Many draw upon an established mythic Tradition, but a strong minority construct their own paradigms out of various elements, devising an syncretic base upon which to explore their inspirations within consistent praxes. No sorcerer is wholly orthodox, however; like Sleepers, they establish unique relationships with the narrative threads they value. Simply interpreting a paradigm as a static model restricts the sorcerer to rotes and conservative routines. To progress, a mage must reach beyond his or her established mythology.

Obviously, Awakening depends on consciousness, because a Sleeper on the threshold must choose to plunge his or her life into an alternative thread. Don’t assume, however, that only sapient beings can weave meaning into the Tapestry beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience. Ecological patterns are far older, stronger and more pervasive than human desires. They generate spiritual beings and realms of existence. These belong to a substrate of meaning running through the Tapestry and while often studied, remain one of the least understood manifestations of reality.

Paradoxes and Blurred Boundaries

The more a mage reaches beyond historical narratives and their most plausible extensions, the more he or she comes into conflict with the established Tapestry. When a magical narrative resists assimilation the Tapestry is said to “fray,” causing a Paradox. Reality responds in unpredictable ways until the Tapestry reweaves itself to swallow the contradiction by fiat, turning miracles into accidents post hoc, even to the point of altering Sleeper perceptions. The likelihood and power of a Paradox depends on the nature of convergent narrative threads and their relative strength, along with the eigenstate’s bias in the situation to be affected by a magical working.

A region long associated with the mage’s paradigm inhabited by Sleepers who belong to a compatible cult might blunt a Paradox or render it a non-issue. In a populated area long beholden to Hegemonic interests, (that is to say, most of the world) magically interfering with a notable object can provoke a severe fray. In this scenario, the mage generates a conflict with current “running” threads (the active self-stories of witnesses) and the entrenched history of the object and region.

In a more hostile scenario such as a busy city street, a sorcerer might still avoid a Paradox if he or she manipulates the eigenstate in a plausible fashion – it’s easy to define the location of an unexceptional tree in the forest, for instance. Unfortunately, the mage can’t employ self-deception or misinformation to manipulate the presence of undefined elements. For example a mage can’t “coincidentally” conjure something he or she knows isn’t there by reaching into a pocket, even if it’s a common object, and can’t get around it by asking an accomplice to randomly stuff his or her pockets – they both know what’s inside them. The precise limits of this are not always consistent, however. An important object might devolve to a less defined state after a narrative thread stops focusing on it, for example (but this isn’t guaranteed, as important events leave a more lasting influence). Ultimately, these are matters of meaning and sentiment, not immutable laws.

Can magic manipulate the raw Tellurian? Mages doubt it, and most scholarship states that the unmovable nature of the Tellurian is a tautological property, necessary to define the “unmoved” as something distinct from the Tapestry of narrative and myth. On the other hand, there is no strict division between the two and myths credit mages for making permanent, large scale changes to the nature of things. Generally speaking, the more fundamental a change and the more it violates broadly held principles, the more likely it is to impose a Paradox.

Tags: Mage: The Ascension, world of darkness