From: David Weihe (weihe@eagle.danet.com)
Date: Mon 29 Jun 1998 - 20:22:48 EEST
> From: Nils Weinander <nilsw@ibm.net>
> I have used a somewhat taostic model for eastern magic/mysticism:
> transcend the boundaries of the Many through inner and outer
> balance and integration. I have recently learned that this is wrong.
> Mysticism is about non-being and has no practical use.
This last sentence is too absolutist to be accurate. If this were
absolutely true, Mystics would have been eliminated and/or replaced by
Darwinian processes. More likely, some beginners' exercises or
meditation aids can be bent to mundane uses, like the exercises to gain
control over one's body (to help banish its distracting effects) that
Indian Buddhists introduced to help their Chinese converts became the
foundation of various schools of martial arts.
At a more powerful level, one could gain such closeness to the Void one
could, "purely as a side effect" become immune to detection, perhaps even
to the extent of imitating RQ2's Invisibility spell. Or, one could be
able to grant another a mystic vision of the Void, acting as a short
term Mind Blast.
At extreme, I could even imagine a sort of reverse Illusion, gaining
the ability to do short-term anihilation of real objects by one's
conviction of their non-existance (rather like the effect in the Larry
Niven story, Nonesuch, for example).
All of these would be deplored as perverting their "true mystical calling"
of course, much as Aikido shuns scored sparring bouts, but would still be
impressive enough to persuade outsiders not to kill Mystics just to test
the sharpness of their swords.
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End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #675
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