Maebius Musings

Hey you RPG-playing friends of mine,

I funded a kickstarter program, which I thought actually looked cool.

I’m curious what you think of it, in a meta-game sort of way.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/500894669/serpents-tongue-a-new-magick-experience

NOTE: this is not an add to get you to also join in. 

Basically, take your average TradingCard Game, like Magic:TheGathering, where you play the role of a magi and must defeat your opponents.

The spells are “spoken” by decoding a little sigil/glyph on the card that corresponds to a key with “letters”.  Kinda like the secret decoder rings we used to have.    Simple level 1 spells are 3 syllables it seems.  (FUS RO DA!) and if you don’t say it right, you mis-cast the spell. (the pronouncing is on hte bakc of hte cards so others at the table can verify it’s correctness or not.

Instead of a deck, you put your cards in a little soft-cover “SpellBook” (that looks like it’s essentually a single card-holder sleeve on each page) to add to the feel of casting spells from your grimoire.

I really REALLY like the meta-idea of learning the spells “rote memory” the more you cast them, and get better at decoding the Glyphs on the fly as you familiarize yourself with the key over time.

What you think?  

Sprogling’s been playing Magic and made up his own “spell game” with his lego guys, so it’s ramping up to TableTop time in the next year or so.

I also kinda like the idea of this concept as a springboard for “learning about Magick”, as in the Hermetic sort as part of a more general study of different churchy type things.  His pen-pal in Brazil is wiccan so we’ve been discussing the differences between our more Unitarian/Methodist visitings, and the sort of ‘pagan stuff’ he finds at Fairy Festivals.

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I suppose I’ll join the masses and create one of those Facebook thingies, instead of being the semi-Luddite IT tech that I am.

So… if you want to see that face behind the blog, in booked-form (or whatever you want to describe it as, since there’s really no bookishness to that site, nor will I call the random people who email me “friends” by default)…   Go here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000920997704

Enjoy!

(PS:  I may get around to answering friend requests once I get used to the site a bit more.  it’s kinda confusing and strange at first, so forgive any ignored messages you may try to send me)

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Interesting article from LiveScience hints at a “brain location” for spirituality.

Technically, it is more related to a personality trait called self-transcendence. Self-transcendence “reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one’s self as an integral part of the universe as a whole.“

http://www.livescience.com/health/spirituality-brain-link-100211.html

My thoughts on this study are a bit divided. On one hand, it’s always kinda interesting to me how Science keeps tapping away at the walls of our unknown in search of the hollow passages and studs behind them.

On the other hand, while the physiology is described here as a deficit, could it not be that lessened Ego is actually better, and those unspiritual types are less adapted? (like having webbed feet, which are cool, but not most efficient at perambulating around town?)

I still think there’s not enough details here to really base a potential-filled claim like “Brain Bits that cause Spirituality” so I’ll simply choose to ignore and gloss past that particular facet of the headline. The study itself holds some nugget of muse-worthiness at least.

Food for thought, but I’m not sure of there’s empty calories here, or whole grains.

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No words needed here.
This was an amazingly beautiful and heart-tugging PSA about seat belts.

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Congrats to the kid, for earning his Bobcat badge in Cub Scouts!

He was so proud he rushed home to show mom the cool new patch he gets to sew on his uniform, and a plastic paw-print to start hanging beads from for extra elective award-thingies.

I’ll direct you Here for details on what the badge means.

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Hmm, another Blog-meme. (aside: these aren’t really meme’s are they? simply topic du jours for bloggers. I’m pondering suddenly the fact that a true Meme would act much differently than the tag-and-response spread of these sorts of things. Now back to your regularly unscheduled post…)

Nettle tagged me for this:
What religions do you find most interesting apart from your own? Would you pick one of the major world religions? Say Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism or Judaism? Or would you pick something more obscure, like Wicca or Taosim or Rastafarianism or Gnosticism? Would you pick irreligion, say Atheism or Agnosticism? Or if you’re not Christian, would you say Christianity?

To participate, state your own religion (or irreligion) as your first preference, state the other religions that interest you most as your second and third preferences, then pass onto five others. If you’re feeling brave, say why they interest you.

My answers to follow.

I figured I’d post a cliff-hanger to help keep readers coming back since I also have been horridly net-dark lately. This has been a good thing. Stuff got Done(tm).

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Because everyone and their brother keeps asking what Maebius is interested in this holiday season,  I offer you the following list.  I’ll just post it here to avoid email spams back and forth. 
I’ll leave it to you all to coordinate any purchases and avoid dual-gifting.  MwaHaHaHa

Nothing – seriously people, there’s not a whole lot of stuff I really NEED right now.   And we are trying to reduce the amount of stuff we have cluttering up the house already.    But if you insist on something beyond a holiday card (which is more than enough), here are some suggestions….

Card game “Set”
http://www.setgame.com/set/index.html

SPORE – PC game   (not the expansion, not the Heroes combat game, just plain old SPORE)
http://www.spore.com/
http://eastore.ea.com/store/ea/en_US/DisplayProductDetailsPage/ThemeID.1252400&productID=91619200?intcmp=eaint47

And Another Thing – (Book 6 in the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Another_Thing…_%28novel%29
http://www.6of3.com/

Dinner and a movie.   Preferably something awesome like Sushi.   or Tai.

Nothing.

Febreeze Flameless Luminary (green tea citrus, or any scent really as I plan to re-cycle the shades using essential oils or card-stock that Doug and I paint on for customized awesomeness)
http://www.febreze.com/en_US/producttype/febreze_home_collection_luminary.do
http://www.drugstore.com/products/prod.asp?pid=220795&catid=63435&aid=337953&aparam=febreze_home_collection_&CAWELAID=360460440

Nothing.

Gift card for Kohls, or other clothing store, since I’m going to need new jeans by spring time. 
Gift cert for heirloom seeds – choose your favorite company.
This way, my family will enjoy your gift all summer long and for potentially years to come!

Nothing.

Did I mention nothing yet?   *grin*

Happy Holidays!!

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WordPress blew up on me this weekend.
Restoring site from backups… test post to see if it’s working again.
Please forgive any strange theme layouts or other wierdness for the day.

At least I don’t have to manually delete the approx 30 spam comments I got on Sunday (which may have been the cause of the crash?) cause the backup is from Friday.

I’ll consider BloPoWriMo on hold as I don’t feel like re-typing the last three posts.

Saturday – does JMG’s meditation symbol look like a white circle on a black background because of a stylized lunar effect, or just because it works? Is that question even valid, and working or non-working exist beyond causality of full-moon-ness.

Sunday – Beautiful weather, lots of outside time getting not much done beyond destress and playing. Thus, a lot got done, without direct physical manifestation.

Monday – School rant, how to support your kid against the Institution and where parental limits collide with staff authority.

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The title refers to my mental image on “Church” and the biblical story of Jericho, minus the whole “sacking hte town” part that came after the trumpets sounded…

(short post, but wanted to get words to e-paper before I forgot).

For the past three weeks, I’ve been going to the local Unitarian Universalist Church here in town, and it’s a nice little place. Not quite the same grand Catachismic liturgy from my youth, but still holds that sense of community that I was craving, and a spiritually grounded peer-group to learn from for my son.

In my own mind, Church still apparently held an exclusionary connotation with my more polytheistic beliefs, but the UUC is, by definition, much more open and tolerant of alternative spirituality. I took this as a given, and figured it would help provide a rough foundation of “Divinity” to expose the kid to, which we could then add onto with our own practices and festival camping.

Imagine my surprise then, when this week’s sermon was on (unsurprisingly) Halloween, and the announcement was made that Thursday evening would be the church’s Samhain ritual.

I kinda had a few moments of disconnect, where the logic of “Tolerant and welcoming spirituality” embraced by this church smacked me in the face with the realization that it was evident in Deeds and not just Words on their website.

Forgive me, any readers who are smiling with a knowing “D’uh” here, but I apparently never expected to hear a Church Pastor take a few moments in the midst of talking about God and Sacred Awe during this winter eve and tell the assemblage that “Witch night was on Thursday, feel free to attend.”

There’s a sordid swirl of emotions that swept through me the rest of that short service, but it made me profoundly happy that we started going here. It may not be quite the Epic Pomp & Circumstance that I grew up with, but it’s so much bigger than I first thought it was.

Those first few sermons seemed a bit shallow and vague, but I am now realizing that it’s due to the extremely varied congregation that goes there. Over that day’s “coffee chatter” after the service (while the kids played tag outside), I met a wonderul woman from Pakistan who prays that Allah forgives her countrymen for bombing us all so we are driven to bomb them back, three pagan-types (1 Wiccan, 1 Fae-kin, and 1 undisclosed), and a few gnostic-ish Christians.

What an awesome group! I need to re-define “Church” in my head now. It’s always been open to interpretation, but it surprised me how deep-rooted my pre-conceptions of the institution still were/are.

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Imagine this setting:

A young boy is playing a video game, involving the usual slaughter of fantastic creatures and gaining more and more power.  The character portrayed assembles a collection of allies to help fight, including a tall dark-skinned desert-warrior with a staff, and a strange moon-creature with a machine gun.

In this game, the characters carry a supply of water, which slowly is reduced over the course of play, and can be refilled by stepping into clear puddles, or purchasing in-game bottles of water.

Consider the fact that when they first join the party, the Desert dweller has a moderate ‘water supply’ limit, and can hold a few quarts of water before any special items increase that maximum.   The moon creature can only hold a small bottle.  This means the moon creature must use some special items to increase this water-limit, or risk taking more damage (due to thirst) or carrying a lot of inventory bottles to refresh the small amount he holds.

The kid smiles as this last character joins the group, and excitedly turns to his parents to confide in a conspiratorial stage-whisper that “the Desert guy obviously had more water since in the desert you need to carry water a lot and there’s not much room in the moon suit, right? Right? Cool, huh!”

Multiple choice test for all you readers.  No right answers, but I’d like you to honestly consider and discuss WHY you may choose a particular result.  (and yes, it’s biased, but that is intentional)

What are your thoughts on the above situation?

A)  Why is a kid playing so many video games? Running around killing imaginary things is not good lessons to learn.  Go outside and play!

B) Why is a kid playing so many video games?  Yes, they are fun, but you could be doing crafts and other family oriented activities.

C) That’s nice, but now turn off that game, and lets hit the Library to research Desert peoples, and the scientific feasibility of actually living on the barren moon.

D) You know, the kid’s pretty bright, to have made such a connection at something like a simple Video Game.  Do you sit and play with him, or just let him do his own thing until he asks for help?

E) Nice observation! Lets talk about deserts and moons (see # C) tomorrow after school.

…

…

Your grade, according to the local community educational institution, is apparently the letter of the choice you made.    Need a re-test?   :/

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