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Here’s an excerpt from the Second Edition
of Authentic Thaumaturgy, my book on magic and
religion for players of fantasy games such as Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons®, G.U.R.P.S.®, and Magic: The Gathering®,
etc. “A.T.” is published by Steve
Jackson Games and is available from them, from Amazon.com,
or from your local game store.
Making Magic “Realer”
The average player of fantasy games is swamped
and sometimes bewildered by different games, supplements, magazines,
and other publications, many of which claim to be The Best Way
to Play™. Some may feel that the last thing they need is
another writer telling them how to play their own games, and
may wonder why they should take my word over anyone else’s.
The first answer I can give to this is that I am a professional
in the magic field. I have spent many years doing research, writing
books (the best known of which is my first, Real Magic,
still in print from Samuel Weiser Publications) and articles,
giving lectures and running classes in minority belief systems,
including magic, Witchcraft, Druidism, psychism, Voodoo, etc.
I was originally asked by a game publisher
(Chaosium) to write this book on how players of fantasy games
could improve the realism of their magical characters. Several
well known GMs in the San Francisco Bay Area went over the manuscript
before its first edition, including Clint Bigglestone, Dave Hargraves,
Carole Rode, and of course, Chaosium founder Greg Stafford. The
tables and formulas were originally constructed with the help
of professional mathematician, game player, and friend Larry
Press.
Additional editing and updating was suggested
by the staff of Steve Jackson Games before this current edition
was printed (though I am solely responsible for any shortcomings
the book may now have) and my sincere thanks go out to all of
them. Despite the many improvements that have been made in game
magic systems since Authentic Thaumaturgy or “AT”
was first published, the folks at Steve Jackson Games concur
that there is still a need for accurate books about “Magic
in Theory and Practice” (so-to-speak), written for gamers,
especially the players of the older games and designers of new
ones.
Because many players are still using a simplistic
approach to magic, they are missing a great deal of what their
characters would consider the real fun of spell casting, which
is in the use of tiny amounts of psychic energy to produce large
and complex results.
The whole artistic and intellectual
joy of magic is in the subtlety of it all, and in the occasional
need for instantaneous rational and/or intuitive judgements about
life and death situations. All this is missing, and so is the
simulation accuracy, when a magical wand becomes just another
sort of laser pistol.
 The
whole purpose of the book you hold in your hand is to get people
thinking about subtlety and creativity in game magic. By understanding
the nature of psychic powers and magical techniques as they appear
to operate in this universe, as well as the psychological rules
by which magicians operate, the true relationships between “magic”
and “religion,” the limitations of magicians and of
spirits, proper technical terms for different kinds of magic
users, etc., you will be ready to play any of the currently popular
fantasy games with far more realism than before. This will be
true whether you wind up “believing” in magic or not,
and whether you decide to adopt any of my suggestions or not,
because after reading AT you will know how the
overwhelming majority of real magicians here on planet Earth
think and behave. After all, if players and referees can learn
how to fight with real swords and shields, in order to play their
warrior characters more realistically, there is no sane reason
why players of magic-using characters shouldn’t learn how
it is that real magicians do Real Magic.
“Will it Ruin My Games?”
Because I’m an occultist and not a game
designer, it’s possible that some of my suggestions may
be difficult to work into your favorite game in a playable fashion
without drastic changes. So I want to emphasize that I do not
have the One True Right and Only Way. Perhaps one of the reasons
that Steve Jackson Games decided to publish this new edition
of AT is that, like GURPS (the Generic Universal
Role-Playing System), it’s designed to be as compatible
as possible with many different games, by suggesting ways in
which people can, if they wish, modify the magic systems they
are now using. Readers should feel free to take all, part or
none of my suggestions, depending upon how they think the ideas
would fit with their game universes. Since the ideas are based
firmly on authentic occult theory and practice, however, every
suggestion followed will add yet another touch of magical realism
to your games.
Using the AT system, realistic
magic-using characters will wind up being more powerful in some
areas of game activity than before, but also weaker in others.
This should keep the balance of the games intact.
Some Fair Warnings
Details about certain earthy aspects of magical
theory and practice have been deliberately omitted from this
work. Adults should have no trouble extrapolating appropriate
spells and rituals for your characters to perform.
There are now hundreds of fantasy games on
the market — so it’s been impossible to keep up with
all the changes in fantasy gaming. If you agree with my suggestions
and comments, then see if they can be applied to your favorite
game, whether I mention it or not.
This book is not a full introduction
to magic and readers should not attempt to do real world
magic based only upon these pages and the rules of whatever game
you regularly play.
You should especially avoid attempting to
perform summonings or worship rituals of any sort unless you
are absolutely sure that the entities you are attempting to contact
(a) are friendly, and (b) are forgiving of amateurs! Contrary
to opinions in some quarters, genuinely nasty spirits are rare,
but ones with weird senses of humor are fairly common!
Preparation for such ceremonies should include
a great deal of research (about such rituals in general and your
chosen entities in particular) and a consultation with your rabbi,
pastor, guru, minister, swami, priest, or priestess. Speaking
of which…
Dungeons & Demons?
That section title, of course, will scare
the “devil” out of a lot of right-wing parents and
busybodies who’ve been pumped up by a swarm of books, pamphlets,
and sermons claiming that fantasy games are a tool of the Forces
of Evil™. Little Johnny or Suzy plays Dungeons &
Dragons, GURPS Mage, or Magic: The Gathering
for a few weeks, gets a few non-fundamentalist ideas about the
nature of magic and religion, and in a couple of weeks the kid
naturally starts invoking real demons, going to orgies at the
referee’s house, and sacrificing babies to Satan! Of course,
the purveyors of this nonsense are the same folks who claim that
the entire entertainment industry, the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the
United Nations, and the leaders of major (competing) churches,
are all secretly led by an International Conspiracy of Hippie
Commie Prevert Devil-Worshippers who just happen to also be billionaire
international bankers with Jewish-sounding names.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that
the fascists, jerks and psychopaths who actually populate the
subculture of modern Satanism are
a tiny bunch of losers who can’t organize their way out
of a wet paper bag, let alone run a world government. Instead,
let’s look at the people preaching so vigorously against
fantasy games:
These are the same hardcore members of the
Religious Reich who also oppose
the teaching in public schools of evolution, cosmology, astronomy,
geology, sexual hygeine and AIDS awareness. They try to suppress
rock and roll, MTV, meditation, yoga, martial arts, homes for
battered wives and public anti-child abuse campaigns. They actively
advocate discrimination against Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Neopagans,
Santerians, Native American religionists, and members of every
other non-monotheistic religion on the planet (and several competing
faiths that are monotheist). In short, they oppose every concept
that might disagree with their narrow-minded religious, economic,
sexual and political agendas.
Obviously, a hobby that teaches young people
how “reality” is a socially constructed concept, that
many people have had different religious and magical ideas over
the millenia, that one faith’s demons are another faith’s
deities, and that anyone can easily invent their own religion
(complete with “infallible” scriptures), is going to
be a direct threat to wealthy and powerful men who would rather
not let such “dangerous” knowledge spread. At this
point, trying to scare the kids off with demonic boogeymen is
the pathetic best they can do.
In fact, the first edition of AT
received a “review” of sorts from Bob Larson, a third-rate
radio evangelist, in his 1989 magnum opiate, Satanism:
The Seduction of America’s Youth:
“Isaac Bonewits, a well-known practicing
Witch, considers Dungeons & Dragons such a
good instructional mechanism to Paganism that he has written
a book showing players how to move from D&D
into real sorcery. His special manual on demons describes the
appearance and power of evil entities with accompanying sketches.”
Obviously, his knowledge of AT
was second or third hand, since one of the points I repeatedly
made then was that the original version of D&D
was a bad source of information about the occult and that
a study of real occultism (or, dare I say it, Real Magic?)
could only improve the absurd magic rules then in widespread
use. He deliberately reversed the whole point of this book, which
is to move from “real sorcery” to better gaming. His
description of AT as a “special manual on
demons” can only have been based on the deliberately silly
cartoons that filled the first edition (the “accompanying
sketches”) rather than any in-depth theological analysis.
But then, theological depth is not what we should expect from
hysteria mongers and professional witchhunters.
So I’ll have to assume that newly printed
copies of this edition of AT, along with boxes
of AD&D, decks of MTG, and books
of GURPS and Storyteller rules, will
continue to be denounced and burned on fundamentalist church
steps. The preachers’ kids and their friends will, of course,
continue to read and play fantasy games whenever their parents
aren’t looking. Perhaps when enough young people have learned
the tolerance, flexibility and creativity that becoming good
game players requires, the Greyfaces who’ve built their
empires of anger, hatred and fear, will finally fall — and
the real Illuminati will be able to rejoice!
Fnord.
~ Isaac Bonewits
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