he_who_hunts

Interesting, my perceptions on the definition of "esotericism" as scholars understand it were misguided.

Esotericism is not really "the occult." Esoteric currents consist of traditions and modes of thought containing "rhetoric of a hidden truth, which can be unveiled in a specific way and established contrary to other interpretations of the universe and history" (as quoted from Kocku von Stuckrad's Western Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge).

Antoine Faivre is a little bit more precise, if not as flexible. Faivre provides a rubric through which a scholar can judge whether a tradition is esoteric or not. Faivre's paradigm consists of 6 elements.

1) Correspondences. This is essentially the principle that all esotericism contains links between all the levels of reality. Basically everything is a mirror of something else, as von Stuckrad puts it. Famously quoted is the adage, "As above, so below."

2) Living Nature. The world is alive and there is power in Nature. An example is homeopaths using stones, plants, etc. to bring health to the body.

3) Imagination and Mediations. Symbols, unlike most established religions, are integral in expressing and deciphering key concepts to unveiling the hidden truth. I think a decent example would be the seals of the various demons in Solomon's Lesser Key that are utilized in goetic rituals (if I'm not mistaken).

4) The Experience of Transmutation. This term is admittedly borrowed from alchemical terminology. A portion of Nature or the experimenter undergoes an experience that is more than simply a change, but transcendance to another plane via the understanding of the hidden truth.

Two lesser elements follow:

5) The Praxis of Concordance. Basically, the esoteric tradition in question integrates other concepts from other philosophies/beliefs in order to attain a sense of supremacy. The Catholic Church performed something similar (though not quite) in altering pagan holidays to fit the precepts of their organization.

6) Transmission. A master teaches the pupil and the pupil's understanding is expressed in a ritual of initiation. Even college fraternities/sororities practice this.

Pretty cool stuff.

So, RPG.net.

What a bunch of fucking morons.

God forbid you fucking post your opinion on something, lest you unleash close-minded snark and rage.

Apparently WFRP 3e is a hot button these days. Simply mentioning that is feels to much like a board game from what I've seen resulted in more condescending negativity than I could handle.

Is this the kind of behavior that really colors the bulk of gamers out there? I have no idea.

Anyways, to other matters!

My texts are starting to arrive for my classes. Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, The Rosicrucians, The Way of Hermes, and Modern Esoteric Spirituality have already landed on my doorstep along with my Student ID.

I'm up for a raise and a title at my job, which doesn't hurt at all, and my b-day is fast approaching, which is no big deal... but the presents. Oh, yes, the presents.

This year I've asked for nothing but money. I'm going to use it to go on what will likely be my last RPG spree for two years as I embark on my studies. Colin Chapman's Atomic Highway and Crafty Games' Fantasy Craft are the core rules I'm eyeing, and supplements for Brutal Games' Corporation, Magnum Opus Press' Dragon Warriors, and Wicked World's Noctum are also on the list.

Thanks to greyorm for checking up on me, it's been too long and I've missed checking up you all. I've been alternately too busy and lazy as hell to properly post here.

I noticed that I missed a few birthdays, so happy b-day to cappadocius , and impeccablesimon. I'm sorry I couldn't say that in a more timely fashion!

I'll try to post more regularly from now on!

Complete and utter frustration paired with a total lack of patience.

I have been accepted to the University of Exeter to study for a Master of Arts in the field of Western Esotericism.

Classes begin in October.

FUCKING YES!!!!!!

Holy shit. My wife and I just got done watching some Eddie Izzard DVDs and, for the hell of it, I ran a search on the question I asked him (which was actually "On a scale of 1-10, how awesome do you think you are?"... semantics).

Well, someone posted the answer he gave me on the internet. Check it out:

 http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=18578527476&oid=10407441779

I'm too sick to go bowling with my wife, friends, and family. Also, I work tomorrow.

This blows.

The List is ready!!!

1. Two Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) RPG books and the Game Master Screen from my wife and friends. A game set in the 30's where you fight Nazis that are searching for Atlantean artifacts within the hollow earth. Oh, there are dinosaurs too. And lizard-men. And pirates.

2. The Thousand Thrones, a campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay from Nicole. A big, fuckoff adventure with medieval conspiracies, a boy claiming to be a reborn god, political maneuvering, and vampires. Sweet. Now my collection of Warhammer Fantasy books is complete!

3. Dragon Warriors and the Dragon Warriors Bestiary from my non-sister-in-law. A classic 1986 fantasy roleplaying game reprinted for posterity and the forces of awesome. This is for the nostalgia part of my brain.

4. A Cigar Humidor. My dad's awesome. Now I don't have to smoke cigars the very minute I buy them.

5. Shit-ton of candy from everyone. Even people on the street. Jesus Christ. I've been eating crap for WEEKS.

6. Skull adorned t-shirt, thick leather gloves, and two scarfs from Mom #2.

7. A Carbon Monoxide Detector. Gee thanks, Mom. She made up for it later by giving me a kabillion boxes of "premium" hot chocolate.

8. Hellboy II from my brother. It came with a BPRD belt buckle. Note to self: get belt to wear belt buckle to work.

9. Hellsing Ultimate volumes II and IV from Nicole. More nazi occultism, this time with vampires! w00t!

10. A book of zombie haiku from our friend who is now a neighbor/beer buddy. How cool is that?!

11. A pooping reindeer keychain, also from neighbeer buddy. Poop is funny, but I'm still not putting it on my key ring.

And that is the List. w00t!

My wife got me both of the Hollow Earth Expedition books and the GM Screen!

w00t!!!

Do you re-roll cocked dice? Sometimes
Do you re-roll floor dice?  Sometimes
Do you roll where everyone can see it? Yes, unless I'm the GM
Do you feel betrayed by your dice when they roll poorly?  Only when it's my lucky white d20 or my lucky clear d8.
Do you have a favorite type of die? What is it?  The d20 has a place in my heart, only because the first game I played was D&D.
Do you have different dice for different functions?  Yes. I have certain dice for situations beneficial to the players as well as detrimental situations.
Do you have different dice for different games?  Yes. I have 25d12 just for use with Dread, 36d6 leftover from my brief stint with Shadowrun, and two sets of Ubiquity dice..
Do you have more of a single type of die than the others? What is it? I think I have the most in d6s due to the 36d6 cube.
Do you have FUDGE dice? No.
Do you have scatter dice? No.
Do you let other people touch your dice? No.
Do you have dice superstitions? What are they?  Yes. Don't fucking touch my dice, and if you do, sure as fuck don't roll them.
Do you buy more dice even though you don't need them?  No.
What's your favorite die? My white d20. It either rolls 1s or 20s fairly consistently. It's pretty amazing and has gotten me out of some tough situations. In one D&D game, when it was paired with my clear d8 (which always rolls 8s) it accounted for my cleric outshining the fighter in combat.
If you were to put custom symbols on a die what would they be? Probably the heraldic symbol of the Knights Templar.
Do you have dice made of anything particularly different than normal? What?  I have one set made of stainless steel given to me as a gift by my wife for Christmas/our anniversary.
What do you keep your dice in?  I have four dice bags. A small black one for Dread, a small black one with blue insides for Ubiquity/Desolation, a grey one for my 36d6 (which I hope to use with the Sick Six System), a small black leatherette one for my stainless steel set, and a brown suede one for my all purpose dice (consisting of 10 sets of dice).
Do you have more than one dice container?  Apparently so.
Do you keep dice in your pocket? Your glovebox? Your workplace? No, but sometimes I'll put a set in my leather satchel for no reason at all. I've never had a spontaneous game occur, but not because I haven't been prepared.
If you have a partner that games, do you have separate dice? My wife has four sets of her own dice.
Do you have any of the first dice you bought or received?  No. They were the best gift I ever received as a child from a friend and I threw them away to placate my parents in the ridiculous drama that occurred when they discovered I played RPGs. I still kick myself whenever I think about it and wish I'd made a stand, as it made my entire adolescence horrible.
Do you play certain games just because they have you roll lots of dice? No. I think that's a bit ridiculous and cumbersome.
Do you love your dice? How much? I love them when they do well. I tolerate them when they don't. In that sense, they're not unlike pets.

Hmm... Been a while.

What great new things have transpired in my life?

Not shit. I have a job at a sandwich making chain, which I strangely find slightly shameful. I had hoped for a better job, but my new apartment needs a paycheck to pay the rent, so there I am. I'm not terribly attached to the place and fully intend to move on in the case of a better paying job presenting itself.

I like the work itself, but there is that taint of corporate shit that sucks any joy away, and a boss who becomes unreasonable and illogical and poorly instructs. He also has a nasty habit of using sarcasm to berate us, which for me is the mark of either an ego, or someone plagued with an inferiority complex. Or both.

On to games!

I'm currently taken by the freely available for download Wayfarers, a game that has proven to be the masterpiece I have been waiting for in classic fantasy roleplaying. It scratches a childhood itch for me that no other game can.

My most idyllic memories are of a childhood spent gaming with AD&D2e. Rolling the 20-sider and praying for 20s and damning 1s is a thing of habit. When D&D 3e came out, I found my game that I loved trounced and replaced with some tactical board game. 4e further cemented that.

Now, I had fun playing these newer versions of my favorite game, but some of the imaginative magic evaporated. When I went back to 2e, I found a game that I did not remember. As kids, we houseruled the living SHIT out of it. It's a good thing we did too, because, boy-o, do those rules suck.

Wayfarers, created by Ye Olde Gaming Companye, has captured and distilled the way we played AD&D2e as children. It is simple, fast, and brutal. Proficiencies (just like the old days) are like they used to be, but instead of a class-based system, there's a point-based character generation without classes.

Gone are the narrow choices of Bard, Cleric, FIghter, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, and Wizard/Mage. Now a player can create effectively any character they wish to match the concept they have in mind. Normally I flinch away from such methods of character creation due to the cumbersome bevy of options to choose from, but Wayfarers keeps it simple, yet robust.

Combat is simpllified to just the way we used to do it. There are some brilliant rules regarding charging and how that's handled that I've fallen in love with.

Magic has been revamped into four unique styles to fit the flavor of the game. They are wonderful and deserve deep perusal. Item creation is included in the spell reportoire, and is elegant, yet, again, simple.

It feels like I've finally found the game I've been searching for to be my standard of deviation.

Oh, I recommend you all check it out now, as it's about to stop being freely available as of December.

To bed with me. I gotta get up at 5:15...

Yeah, I work from 6 to 2.

I'm still a kid!

YOU CAN'T MAKE ME GROW UP!!!

All right you peoples.

If you haven't heard of Wayfarers, the nifty awesome FREE roleplaying game from Ye Olde Gaming Companye, you're missing a fantastic new system that synthesizes classic red-box D&D play into a new and interesting system, yet still with a remarkable old school feel.

The game's targeted at we long-time D&D players from back before the days of third edition.

This work is 420 pages of impressive system-craft, incredible art, and an amazing sample campaign setting that is a combination of seven homebrewed settings combined into something remarkably professional.

Check it out.

The PDF's free after all!

EDIT: Link's fixed!

Oh, the DMV. One of those wonderful government places where all social strata are lumped together like snot, hair, and dingleberries stuck mingling in a tight spot in the shower drain.

I got my Driver's license renewed, which is a bit sad for me. My hair was the longest it had ever been in my life the day the photo was taken, going down to the middle of my back.

Now I'm short-haired Smirky McGibbins.

On the plus side, I finally reached critical mass four years ago when Kerry lost to Bush and have finally become a Democrat.

So...

Are tingly balls a symptom of a newly converted Democrat?

Woo!

Just finished unpacking my stuff in our new apartment!

I'm home!!!

So I'm not going to Maine, and I'm happy about it.

My work at my lifeless, shitty job ended and we were prepared to make our move when my wife stated she had a bad feeling about moving now.

At first I was a bit frustrated. I had been scared crapless by the thought of moving to such a different place with no certainty of finding a place to work, much less live. So after finally getting my OCD ridden mind prepared for the change, it was a bit abrupt to suddenly hear that my wife (the one who craves change in all its forms) to state her change of heart.

Upon thinking about it, I realized it made sense. We have saved a ridiculous sum of money in our time here, half of my entire tuition necessary for my Master's is covered. Also, I received a heartening e-mail from my professor when he stated that the electronic reserve for the University of Exeter is robust enough to support a student's essays with distinction. Also, I like my nephew. He's grown on me quite a lot and I'd like to be here for him, my brother, and my brother's wife.

I'm taking a month to find a job I'll actually enjoy and to let my mind de-stress a bit. I want to find a job that allows me to feel fulfilled and provides more of a dynamic environment than a moldy, windowless basement full of unhappy people.

Also, within days of making this decision, we found a fantastic apartment that's a steal. Things have just neatly fallen into place.

That always seems to happen when my wife suggests something.

Odd, that.

More later, many things are afoot.

Your result for The Supervillain Archetype Test...

The Megalomaniac

Take The Supervillain Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy

So, he_who_hunts, your LiveJournal reveals...

You are... 9% unique (blame, for example, your interest in wkrp) and 0% herdlike. When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.

Your overall weirdness is: 59

(The average level of weirdness is: 27.
You are weirder than 94% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

WKRP? Cincinnati?

What the French, Toast?

I think they misread WFRP...

Seriously, the bad part about being a huge fan of less popular games is the incredibly dead forums when GenCon swings around.

Am I the only one not there?