From - Fri Oct 18 15:03:08 1996 Path: news.kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!portc01.blue.aol.com!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: dshomshak@aol.com (DShomshak) Newsgroups: alt.games.whitewolf Subject: Theurgy for Sons of Ether Date: 17 Oct 1996 02:49:54 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 104 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <544kui$7im@newsbf02.news.aol.com> References: <32616519.4E39@white-wolf.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader This humble offering is inspired by Anders Sandberg's excellent article on Theurgy in MAGE. You really should take a look at it; you can find it on his Mage Page. For the impatient, I'll summarize: Theurgy (Greek, "god-working") is magic and ritual done for religious goals such as salvation, visions of the divine and general self-development. It is done not to cause a change in the world, but a change in the participant. Theurgy is very important to real-life magical traditions, but is pretty much ignored in Mage: the Ascension. In his essay, Anders Sandberg proposed what the theurgic ceremonies of various Traditions might be like: church services for Celestial Choristers, wild parties for Ecstasy Cultists, banishing rituals for Hermetics, and so on. Anders mentioned, though, that he hadn't thought of any theurgic practices for the Sons of Ether and asked if anyone had any suggestions. Here's my suggestion. TECHNOMANTIC THEURGY The Sons of Ether claim they do not have any theurgic practices: after all, they are Scientists, not navel-gazing mystics! They are wrong, however, The Sons of Ether do have a theurgy, but they call it “Lab Research” and “Scientific Method.” For mysticks, theurgy trains them in the use of their paradigm of magick. A Celestial Chorister reinforces his connection to the One; a Hermetic trains herself to use complex occult symbolism; an Akashic Brother strives for greater harmony of mind and body. Through various rituals, mysticks gain confidence that their paradigm of reality is valid and refine their command of its methods. The “rituals” of technomancers take the form of experiments. Engineers don’t just pull new devices out of a hat. They have to understand how a device will work and how it should be built. Most experiments are not devoted to producing a single, specific invention; rather, their purpose is to determine general principles which can be applied to many devices. Through such experiments, a scientist gains confidence in her ability to reliably control natural phenomena. To use a real-life example, lasers were not invented by someone deciding, “Today I will build a death ray.” Instead, lasers came from scientists investigating how electrons absorb and emit light when they jump between energy levels. After decades of such research, a scientist put together the first laser, already certain that it would work -- and it did. So it is with technomancers -- even Sons of Ether. The Etherite cannot just build magickal devices from scratch: first he must convince himself that the device can be built and will work in a particular way. Most of his lab time, therefore, will be spent on experiments designed to confirm his pet theories. Suppose an Etherite wants to develop a machine to bring things to life (i.e. he’s learning the Life Sphere). He believes that life is more than just chemistry: there is a Life Force carried by “L-rays.” He starts by building a device to register the presence of “L-rays.” After some tinkering, he succeeds. An orthodox scientist would say the L-Meter is a nonsense-machine, but for the Son of Ether it works: the needle swings when his theory says it should. He also finds that all living things radiate characteristic patterns of L-rays. With this knowledge, he builds an improved L-Meter which can locate, identify and analyze living creatures with great accuracy: he has one dot of Life magick, thanks to the "rituals" (experiments) which convinced him that his theory was correct. After months of experiments with the L-Meter, the Etherite's theory is more precise. He has charted the spectrum of L-rays, knows how to block, focus and tune them, and so on. For his next step, he builds a bulky, complicated apparatus to generate and beam concentrated L-rays. His goal is the spontaneous generation of life in the lab. He places a bowl of simple organic compounds into the machine, beams L-rays at them for several hours, and then examines the glop under a microscope. Sure enough: bacteria! Of course, an orthodox scientist would say that the bacteria are the result of outside contamination, but the Etherite is convinced. As his experiments proceed, he also observes that L-rays produce mutagenic effects upon plants and simple organisms, which can be precisely controlled: he has Life 2. The Etherite spends a lot of time on experiments such as changing the color of a flower. First the Etherite calculates what frequency, intensity and polarization of L-rays will cause a certain change. The equipment is carefully prepared and checked. The flower is irradiated, and its color changes. What’s the point of this Life 2 feat? Just to show that it is possible. It is pure theurgy. Such experiments reinforce the Son of Ether’s belief in L-rays, and in Creative Science as a whole. On the one hand, each successful experiment confirms that the Universe runs according to Scientific laws which he can discover. On the other hand, they also confirm that those laws are _not_ the ones espoused by the Technocracy. As the Son of Ether develops his technomagick, creating and applying new theories through his experiments, he gradually accepts that he can have whatever Laws of Science he wants. His Arete rises, his Life Sphere rating advances, and eventually he can start stealing cadavers and screaming “Give my creation LIIIIIFE!” It should be noted that Iteration X, the Void Engineers and the Progenitors use the same methods in developing their own technomagick. They simply agree beforehand which theories will be tested, refined and ultimately cemented into static reality. Even the most familiar, unchallengeable theories still demand techno-theurgic training to use properly, though. That is why students in science classes repeat the classic experiments which revealed the basic laws of their field...and why at first, they don’t get the right results! Physics students are likely to get wildly varying results the first time they try measuring some property such as gravitational acceleration. Novice chemists find they get much more -- or much less -- precipitate than they should from an experiment. (I remember this from my own science classes .) Such deviations are attributed to the student’s clumsiness. Sure enough, as the student gains experience their lab technique improves and they get the results the textbook predicts...and if they don’t, they flunk out. They cannot perform the magic rituals; they have failed their initiation.