The Unthinkable: Magic in the Far East

Good point!

For those interested in jinn, this is an excellent book:

amazon.com/Legends-Fire-Spir ... 644&sr=8-1

If only I'd found it before I handed the manuscript in it might have saved me a fair bit of work/research. There's some great ideas and concepts in it and some discussion on the parallels between local variations / conceptions of jinn in various Islamic cultures and comparison to similar Western spirits which is along the lines of what you were discussing about Chinese spirits etc.

Cheers,

Lachie

Moving from trying to interpret asian cosmologies in the Hermetic model, I've spent a few hours googling for medieval Asian magical practices. Here is what I've found that might be useful in a game:

China
A major aim of Daoist ceremonial magic was weather control, especially rain making, by means of entreating or controlling spirits. The magic square was an important tool for this and also for divination.
Daoist alchemists focussed on medicine and elixirs of longevity and immortality. There were various types of immortality that often involved transcending the mortal body.
A perennial deadly accusation among imperial concubines was the use of dolls for sympathetic witchcraft. The practice came from shamanic traditions in the mountains of central china.

Korea
Shamans would change into beasts and monsters to duel.

Buddhist and Hindu practices often made use of the mandala (complex geometric patterns in a circle) as aid to meditation and the circle acted as a ward against malign influences.

chinahistoryforum.com/index. ... itchcraft/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemy

By any chance, during your research, nothing from mongol magic practice? :smiley:

WOW. ASounds like the chinese myth makers read HMRE before writing their stuff down!!! :mrgreen:

Xavi

After reading Timothy Ferguson's thoughts on the matter, I always felt that the far-east would have to be developed as a separate setting - preferrably compatible with Ars Magica on some mechanical level, but ultimately built around a different set of assumptions.

That being said, I'm not entirely sure what the problem is with having deities represented by suitably powerful demons, faeries or magical spirits where appropriate. Sure the Divine Realm is powerful, but I'm not sure it's that much more powerful than the others...

At first I was going to disagree, and suggest that even if the domains are equal excluding all eastern religions from the Dominion would feel like a marginalization. At the very least it would reduce the domains available to three, but I think it would also give the impression that Western religion was more correct than the Eastern ones - they are following the one true divine after all.

However after thinking about it I believe you could preserve the four domain system providing it was properly renamed. So in western thought they are Dominion, Infernal, Magic, and Faerie but from a Hindu perspective they are (respectively) Brahma, Nirvana, Deva, and Asura. (These may be poorly chosen, Eastern religions is not a strong area for me.) The dominion analogue doesn't necessarily need to be at the top of it all, maybe in Buddhism the magic analogue is more highly valued, but these religions would still recognize all four domains and more importantly these societies would have access to all of them.

I think this would work, but I agree with the first half of your post that Asia would work better as a separate but compatible setting. In this situation I think the domains would be treated like vis between different magic traditions: where the Hermetic Magi sees Muto vis the Gruagachan sees Shape vis.

My statement was purely in response to the Dominion > Other Realms argument presented by Timothy Ferguson. I've no objection to an Eastern Religion being depicted as Divine where it is thematically appropriate. I just don't see any reason to try and forcibly integrate a deity who works best as a magical or faerie being into the Divine Realm based solely on out-of-game considerations. I understand and respect Mr. Ferguson's the desire to avoid offending people, but at the same time I don't think that affiliating a given religion with another realm is necessarily derogatory in and of itself...

To be clear, the argument is, if the Divine is the "top" realm in the West, and Buddhism is the "divine of the east," does that mean Buddhism is tops over other Eastern traditions?

I see two rule-mechanic ways to heavily imply that Buddhism is not tops, but sorta stopped thinking about it since the thread died. They work in opposite directions:

A. There are no Empyreal auras and no creatures of Divine Might, at all. This actually fits Chan Buddhism a tiny bit. The monasteries have a dominion aura, but Buddha's tree has no special aura beyond the presence of the monks there. All beings of Might in the Buddhist "pantheon" are on loan from the other realms. Each one made the individual decision to pursue enlightenment, and they are no more nor less "divine" than anything else in the world. I might make an exception (the term for them escapes me, I thought it was bodhisattva, but wiki disagrees with me) for those Buddhists who are on the brink of nirvana but choose to stay in this world in order to help others along the path, if only because my imagination runs out when I have to come up with an excuse for assigning them some other form of might.

B. Empyreal auras are everywhere! (but only Buddhism has a Dominion) Holy sites from any tradition can develop an Empyreal aura. The problem is picking appropriate sites, because of the unsettling effect Empyreal auras have on the other realms (although given that I'm already positing cross-realm beings serving the Buddha...)

Of course, you can also combine. Any tradition except Buddhism can generate an Empyreal aura, Buddhism just gets its Dominion. Poor Magi, trying to make sense of it all. And all they wanted was some shahtoosh.

After doing one of those, a really well written sidebar should keep us covered.

Actually, I think it's best to abandon Eurocentricism and have the world function in their paradigms of reality (like Mythic Asia has their own paradigm, Mythic America has their own paradigm, etc).