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The small town of Salem, Massachusetts has a rich history. It was one of the first places in North America to be settled by the English way back in the 16th century. Along with Plymouth and Boston, it was part of the Hudson Bay Trading Company and settlers had to carve out their lives in the midst of an American wilderness previously untouched by European hands. Salem also was the location of one of the most famous witch hunts in the New World, with several young women accusing the wives of rich landowners of practicing witchcraft (as supposedly taught by a Haitian servant.) The Salem witch trials resulted in several executions of both men and women, and became a cautionary tale of mass hysteria and religious extremism for centuries to come.
Nowadays, the town banks on its "occult" background, growing exponentially with tourists around Halloween, and anyone with even a passing interest in Wicca or witchcraft seems to gravitate there. Given all that history, Salem seems a really screwed-up place to set a massively multiplayer game focused on crafting and building.
But that's exactly what makes "Salem" one of the most interesting concepts that I've heard for an MMO in a really, really long time.
It's hard to encapsulate exactly what makes this game from two Swedish college students so compelling in a pithy statement, because it's an amalgam of so many different and fascinating ideas. Here's a quick rundown of some of the ideas in the game:
* When you die in "Salem", you stay dead.
* It takes a long time to make stuff, which is shortened by your tools and how many friends you have helping you.
* Instead of HP or Energy, your status is determined by how much of the four "humors" or bodily fluids you possess: Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile
* Killing another player, or committing any other crime such as vandalism or stealing, produces a "scent," which can be tracked by a player with the ranging skill
* If someone wants revenge and tracks you, they can summon you even while you're offline and kill you. (See line item #1)
* You level by eating and drinking.
* In places of civilization, the area is full of light. As you move into the wilderness, it gets darker and more mystical enemies will show up.
* Building certain structures like churches will increase civilization, i.e. make the area brighter.
* Practicing witchcraft (placing curses, etc.) will produce its own "scent" which can only be detected by those with the correct skill.
Interested yet?
Bjorn Johannessen and Frederik Tolf currently run a game called "Haven and Hearth" that is kind of like the first draft of a lot of what "Salem" intends to be. But where "H&H" feels homemade with its simple 2D graphics, "Salem" has the full support of Paradox Interactive behind it and a full 3D interface. It's meant to run on one server where everything is persistent for all players, but they may add more servers after launch. "Salem" will be free to play, and I'm interested to find out how it is monetized without jeopardizing the balance. Unfortunately, the publisher isn't ready to share that information just yet.
Full Article
Suggested ebooks:
John Musick - The Witch Of Salem
Friedrich Adler - The Witchcraft Trial In Moscow
Marian Green - A Witch Alone
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This is a good post from The Philosopher's Magazine - I'm not sure I agree with Hacker that cognitive neuroscience is a load of nonsense. However, I am convinced (after reading this article - which is almost but not quite an interview) that I need to read Hacker's book on the topic, "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" (2003).
Hack is mostly opposed to scientism as near as I can tell - and I am with him on that regard. There is much about human experience that cannot be explained with brains and neuroscience.
HACKER'S CHALLENGE
WRITTEN BY: JAMES GARVEY APPEARS IN: ISSUE 51
Posted by: TPM. October 25, 2010
PETER HACKER TELLS JAMES GARVEY THAT NEUROSCIENTISTS ARE TALKING NONSENSE
Peter HackerSo long as people read Wittgenstein, people will read Peter Hacker. It's hard to imagine how his work on the monumental "Analytical Commentary" on Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" could possibly be superseded. He spent nearly twenty years on that project (ten of them in cooperation with his friend and colleague Gordon Baker), following in Wittgenstein's footsteps, and producing a large number of important articles and books on topics in the philosophy of mind and language along the way. Nearer the end than the beginning of a distinguished career as an Oxford don, at a time of life when most academics would be happy to leave the lectern behind and collapse somewhere with a nice glass of wine, Hacker is in the middle of another huge project, this time on human nature. He also seems keen to pick a fight with almost anyone doing the philosophy of mind.
This has much to do with his view of philosophy as a contribution to human understanding, not knowledge. One might think that philosophy has the same general aim as science - securing knowledge of ourselves and the world we live in - even if its subject matter is more abstract and its methods more armchair. What is philosophy if not an attempt to secure new knowledge about the mind or events or beauty or right conduct or what have you? According to Hacker, philosophy is not a cognitive discipline. It's something else entirely.
"Philosophy does not contribute to our knowledge of the world we live in after the manner of any of the natural sciences. You can ask any scientist to show you the achievements of science over the past millennium, and they have much to show: libraries full of well-established facts and well-confirmed theories. If you ask a philosopher to produce a handbook of well-established and unchallengeable philosophical truths, there's "nothing" to show. I think that is because philosophy is not a quest for knowledge about the world, but rather a quest for understanding the conceptual scheme in terms of which we conceive of the knowledge we achieve about the world. One of the rewards of doing philosophy is a clearer understanding of the way we think about ourselves and about the world we live in, not fresh facts about reality."
His account of the nature of philosophy is Wittgensteinian through and through. It's a conception of philosophy which regards philosophical problems as confusions in language rather than deep mysteries encountered in the world. The job of the philosopher is to make these conceptual errors clear to us and in so doing help us out of our muddles. Philosophical questions aren't solved; they're dissolved. There is knowledge here, in a sense, but it's not the sort of knowledge most philosophers think they are pursuing.
"By doing philosophy you come to realise things about the structure of our conceptual scheme that you would never have realised otherwise. Realization is indeed a dawning of knowledge. But the knowledge here is not knowledge of the world we live in. It is knowledge of the structure of our conceptual scheme. It very often looks like "metaphysical knowledge" of reality - as it were knowledge of the scaffolding of the world. But it's no such thing. The world doesn't have scaffolding. Rather, in doing philosophy, we come to realise the character of the grammatical and linguistic scaffolding from which we describe the world, not the scaffolding of the world."
Because he thinks of philosophy is a quest for understanding, on Hacker's view it can't be transmitted from generation to generation as knowledge can. Each generation has to earn insight, has to face its own obstacles and work out an understanding for itself. This strikes a chord. I wonder about the present generation and what Hacker thinks might get in the way of our understanding.
"The main barrier is the scientism that pervades our mentality and our culture. We are prone to think that if there's a serious problem, science will find the answer. If science cannot find the answer, then it cannot be a serious problem at all. That seems to me altogether wrong. It goes hand in hand with the thought that philosophy is in the same business as science, as either a handmaiden or as the vanguard of science. This prevailing scientism is manifest in the infatuation of the mass media with cognitive neuroscience. The associated misconceptions have started to filter down into the ordinary discourse of educated people. You just have to listen to the BBC to hear people nattering on about their brains and what their brains do or don't do, what their brains make them do and tell them to do. I think this is pretty pernicious - anything but trivial."
In the last decade Hacker has turned his attention from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind, dealing with what he sees as a whole raft of conceptual confusions in cognitive neuroscience. "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience", which he co-authored with the neurophysiologist M. R. Bennett, works through a number of tangles in detail. As we talk about some of them, I begin to see that there is a straight line from his Wittgensteinian thoughts about the nature of philosophy to his work on the mind.
Read the whole article.
Tags: Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, James Garvey, Peter Hacker, The Philosopher's Magazine, neuroscience, Philosophy, brain, mind, consciousness, Wittgenstein, knowledge, language, understanding, scientism
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Aleister Crowley - Liber 008 Liber Samekh Theurgia Goetia Summa
Aleister Crowley - Liber 101 Ordo Templi Orientis An Open Letter
Aleister Crowley - Liber 800 Liber Samekh Theurgia Goetia Summae Congressus Cum Daemone
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If you search around the internet or peruse books that discuss witchcraft, magick, and how to be a wizard, you may well end up confronting conflicting lists of definitions and labels. Some people like to get very technical and list differences between words like witch, priestess, sorcerer, wizard, mage, druid, and the like. They denote varying specialties, spell types, and even philosophies among these definitions.
We feel that a good deal of this is not quite necessary. We've already noted we generally use "wizard", "witch", or the general "practitioner" on this site.
If you feel curious, you are of course always free to do your own research. As noted earlier, the Net is filled with information and resources to help you on the path.
If we here at "how to be a wizard" can compile a helpful list of role types that is general enough but still denotes commonly-held distinctions, we may do so in a later post. For now, let's simply agree that black magick in general has a negative, hurtful intent, and that is certainly not what this site is about. Beyond that, let's talk about magick itself.
Once again, the beauty and challenge of these paths is that there is no governing body. It is a living tradition adapted by the needs of individuals in their specific circumstances. As established, magick certainly has its root in being connected to, and revering Nature. Beyond that, there are two general ways to view magick by those who walk the path.
As we discuss much on" how to be a wizard", the first viewpoint defines magick as a way to resonate with, or be in sympathy with, universal laws and energies. In turn, the practitioner is both more influenced by the Life force (gaining wisdom) and also more able "to influence" the effects of the Life Force (manifesting changes and outcomes in the seen world). It's kind of a chicken and egg thing.
The second viewpoint more directly deals with spirits. Instead of a one-on-one relationship with Life/Nature/The Universe, the magick practitioner communes with spirits, and the spirits act as the agents of change. They can be thought of as intermediaries between you and the Source, and bidders of your intent.
Think of the first, one-on-one way setup, as a romantic relationship. It's all about you and It!
Think of the second approach as being part of a team, but some members of that team have higher clearance than you (i.e. direct access to the President).
Now that we've outlined the two fundamental approaches to magick, the writers of the "how to be a wizard" site actually have this to say: we do not see the two approaches as mutually exclusive (and we're not alone in this).
In the broadest perspective, you are one with Life. In the experiences of the seen, material, or mundane world (all words for the same thing) there exists an abundance of different expressions of the fundamental Life Force. This is the richness of Life, the varying people, plants, animals.
When communing with energies that occupy modes of existence that are different from our material plane (which we can call spirits), then you are simply interfacing with another aspect of Life. This relationship with Life in all of its forms is a fundamental part of how to be a wizard.
All in all, communion with a spirit, an aspect of your own consciousness, an animal, or plants and herbs by ways of you making a healing concoction, are all the same. It's you as Life playing with those "other" things as Life.
Playing with your cat or dog and communicating with a spirit, are thus, in essence, very similar. The plants and animals and people and non-material entities we may encounter all serve to direct our focus in certain ways, providing their own unique experience and energetic signature.
The same holds true when we focus our attention on the broader ideas of God and Goddess-these are our words and images to denote that we're communing with the greater collection of energies: the Source and Life Force itself.
While we don't want to split hairs, one more word on the subject: the path of learning how to be a wizard is about connecting to and being your highest self, and that includes direct access to Source. There are many ways up the mountain, but we support an approach that affirms that you always have direct access to Source, to the Goddess/God.
No one and no thing must be your go-between.
Meditation to facilitate access to mystic states provides a great boon to those who seek to learn how to be a witch and how to be a wizard. Subliminal Mp3s is a site with tools devoted to this pursuit.
This concludes this "basic definitions" article on "how to be a wizard."
The next article begins to explain common tools used in the magickal practices.
We look forward to sharing more soon. Good journeys!
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Aleister Crowley - Magick
Aleister Crowley - Magick Without Tears
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