u/SorchaSublime

I was initially inspired to pursue architecture by my favourite painter, Zdzisław Beksiński who I knew to have trained as an architect.

I also find the career compelling as it seems like a strong balance between a practical and respectable source of income which still engages creatively, but the first thought was clocking how much I felt that I could see his architectural training in his work. I desired the tactile creative skills which come with the vocation essentially.

Are there any other artists who's work has a distinctly architectural flair who you appreciate? I personally have a taste for the surreal and otherworldly in that respect but I'm curious how the tastes of people in the field permutate. I'd love to expand my appreciation of artists who in some way or another produce visionary work grounded in an understanding of architectural form

No, not just taking an actor from Eastenders, I mean literally a character. The show doesn't do enough with the fact that they sort of share a canon.

If you only watch Eastenders, you should only see what everyone else does. ie one of the characters disappears from the story for a year or so while on mysterious "travels".

Meanwhile from the Doctor Who side, you mostly see them hiding around corners on the set of unrelated Eastenders episodes while the companion character is preparing to be whisked away

Like, straight up just hijack a random Eastenders character for a season or so. Once they leave the TARDIS they just, go back to being a character on Eastenders with the ongoing joke that they never give details on their travels and seem to have a lot of strange looking things in their house.

This is kind of just stream of consiousness defining some thoughts I've been having recently about a possible approach to CoC finally together in one place. Doesn't focus much on specific factions of the setting as much as the conditions within which they would exist.

Mechanical elements:

Borrow from the CoC Golden Dawn book to give players a basic toolkit for magic which doesn't de-fang magic or render mythos magic defunct. Expand in the following ways: Protection spells effectiveness can be increased through research and the geometrical configuration used and preparing for Astral Travel can include creating finite buffers for sanity damage.

Replace "Cthulhu Mythos" with a catch-all "Unnatural([...])" skill with a few viable configurations. ie: "Unnatural (Mythos)" as the 1:1 equivalent of the standard Cthulhu Mythos skill, "Unnatural (Aklo)" as specifically pertaining to the primordial lingua eldritche, "Unnatural(Cthulhu/Tsaagothua/Shub-Niggurath)" for entity specific cult lore ect. These all impact sanity as is standard for Cthulhu Mythos. Also, Occult is now Occult([...]), with specific Occult sciences like Alchemy and Astrology.

Borrow from Enlightened Magic/Liber Ka for 3 distinct core magical(/Thaumaturgical) magic skills divided into 3 circles: 1st Circle Thaumaturgy is used for magic which most resembles minor psychic powers, with subtle effects or which otherwise doesn't require a ritual. 2nd Circle Thaumaturgy is used for magic which does require Ritual of some sort, some rituals having a pre-requisite for some specialisation of the Occult([...]) skill, thus enabling more major/overt effects. 3rd Circle Thaumaturgy is High Magick, the synthesis of both the previous circles and requiring the invocation of Higher Powers. This most likely translates to spells with extreme effects (like typical Mythos spells) having a pre-requisite for some variation of the Unnatural([...]) skill. Cthulhu specific High magic calls for an invocation of Unnatural(Cthulhu) for example. Attempting magic from higher circles using a lower circle skill can be done, and will go poorly.

Use the Focus skill from the Dark Mirror supplement to give players the ability to play beyond insanity, presuming they can manage their PCs descent into *High Functioning Insanity*. Even with Sanity Buffers, Golden Dawn style Astral Travel is very risky to the mind, however is a form of sanity damage which doesn't affect Focus. Similarly, Focus is often unaffected by trivialities like ritualistic mass murder. Focus can only be used to replace Sanity for the purposes of withstanding SAN damage if it is higher than the Sanity score itself.

Unnatural technology/Weird Science! is presumed to operate on the same metaphysical basis as Thaumaturgy or specifically Thaumaturgical Talismans, just with an added element of automation, and thus is conceptually redundant, as is the distinction between Psychic Powers and 1st Circle Thaumaturgy.

World:

An emphasis is placed on the connection between all forms of divinity humans conceptualise and some element of the Mythos. The "God's of Earth"/the archetypal divinities you see in polytheistic pantheons or the abrahamic Angels are "Denizens of the Elder Citadel", ie Astral Servitors created by the Elder Things aeons ago to manage the course of their terrestrial colony on what would eventually become Earth. By contrast, every single idea of a monotheistic divinity can be metaphysically traced back to Azathoth in some form. Most aesthetic markers attached to these entities by human religions are wholly fanciful, and there are considerably more of their ilk than anyone could account for. Other entities known to participate in this game of divinities include Cthulhu (and his kin), the Mi-Go and Nyarlathotep, who is responsible partly for the usurping of the Denizens by monotheistic faiths, his attention having been attracted by the first humans to successfully contact Azathoth (Zoroaster, and later Abraham)

The "Night World" of Impossible Landscapes is being traced back to what I think is its conceptual basis, ie the "Mauve Zone" of Kenneth Grant. It is no longer solely associated with Hastur, however as an embodiment of Entropy it is a predominant power. The logic of the Hastur Mythos essay is being applied to all Mythos entities, which is variably intuitive. For example, Yog-Sothoth easily embodies Syntropy as a contrast to Hastur. On the other hand, while I find it a very compelling thought experiment, I still haven't settled on what Cthulhu being Hasturs "half brother" would imply about the nature of Cthulhu if Hastur is *literally* the force of entropy itself. Is Cthulhu the Coulomb Force? Idk, but the lack of certainty does not make me want to abandon the thought.

Various extra-dimensional locales could be reoccurring focuses of exploration. Highly basic/generic "Backrooms" style areas are kind of part-and-parcel with the implications of Night World manifestations. The aforementioned "Elder Citadel" I envision as being an essentially infinite Escherian complex which exists tangent to most of Earth, filled with highly alien prototypical precursors to gothic architecture, strange mechanisms and impossible spaces, inhabited both by Shoggoth invaders, surviving Elder Things and the Archetypical *Denizens*, who act as a highly fractured network of command nodes, all ultimately serving the purpose of defining the parameters of all life and existence within the terrestrial sphere ("Earth"). The Angles of Time I think are near perfectly visualised by the movie Interstellar (the Bulk-space) so that's an influence I'd intend to draw on very directly. I would also like to do something with "The Inner City at the Poles" associated with the Dho-Hna Formula.

As far as the average human goes, all of this rests beneath the shores of the ocean which surrounds our little island of ignorance. This would be wholly Keeper facing information.

Hi! To put it bluntly I'm a masochist lmao

In all seriousness, I wanna run a heavily homebrew mage campaign in the SCP universe ("Mage: The Anomaly") which is honestly a better fit than you might think if you look at the thaumaturgy side of the setting, like the International Centre for the Study of Unified Thaumatology, the Wanderers Library ect ect.

The linear/dynamic magic distinction carries over (type blues and greens), so many of the Ascension factions work really well as abstract archetypes (the GOC is essentially the Technocracy but better imo, and the Foundation are a rung upwards on the infinite conspiracy ladder) and tonally they just seem like a really great fit. Also, while it doesn't work the same way, they both broadly have the concept of "consensus reality" (although in SCP it's a purely political concept) and while Paradox specifically doesnt fit the metaphysics Backlash from Dark Ages Mage does.​

I'll need to make a few adjustments to the core of magic (heavy focus on minor spheres with the major spheres being enigmatic and hard to reach, also Awakened mages should still have access to Linear Magic, also also Avatars are optional) but that will come later, cause what I really want to do is start from the ground up with regards to knowledge of the supernatural.

Basically what I'm looking for is for the campaign to essentially begin as some variation of Hunter, ie: player characters as relatively ordinary people, with a focus on Sorcery options as an access to magic. Awakening is definitely on the table but is smth I want to be inaccessible for a long time. Give them time to enjoy the powers they can get from their Sorcerous paths AND *enough* time to get sick of the limitations.

This is especially cause due to the nature of GOC politics awakening (ie becoming a "type green" reality bender as opposed to a mere thaumaturge) is essentially illegal, and thus would represent a major paradigm shift in terms of how the players relate to the establishment institutions of the setting. If they're students at ICSUT, they'd get immediately ousted when caught. Most legal paranormal communities would be forced to shun them or be at risk of heavy reprisals, ect ect.

So, is there an ideal way to go about this? Like, a reasonably generic Storyteller system character sheet which can be customised on the fly to accommodate the shifting natures of the various PC's? Or would it be a case of needing to draft my own?

Looking to run a very high-magic campaign in Gaslight London, however noticed that the link I used to use for this is now dead. Would greatly appreciate fellow passionate interlocutors to discuss this with.

Zionism by every definition necessarily involves condoning the existence of a state which explicitly exists for the benefit of one particular *ethno*-religion, therefore Zionism as a political force by necessity is ethnocratic, arguing in favour of the maintenance of an explicit ethno-state.

This is racist, unequivocally and inescapably. There is no logically grounded room for quibbling on this.

On a second common objection im seeing to the Zionism is Racism motion, yes this is more of an ideological statement than a policy platform. That isn't a problem. The Green party *should* have coherent ideological statements on issue like this. Do you think the party escapes having an ideology by being vague?

Everybody has an ideology it came free with the fact that you are an entity within political systems capable of thought.

In recent years I've gotten really into various branches of occult philosophy. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, visionary experiences of Crowley, Kenneth Grant ect, the Chaos Magick of Peter J Carroll, and going back to more classical sources, Agrippas 3 Books of Occult Philosophy and the Greco-Egyptian "Greek Magical Papyri". As an appreciatior of interesting mythologies, its all very intriguing, and provides what is still my favourite lens on Abrahamic metaphysical concepts through pantheistic takes on neo-platonism.

Given that the Riordanverse is already pretty Pantheistic, and already touches on the idea of Magicians in the Egypt series, I've been wondering how he would approach these ideas. Varying interpretations on K/C/Qabbala, ritual magic which can work with any god-form. Piercing the veil (cough cough, the Mist) of the Mysteries. Correlations between the Orphic Dionysus and Christ. Nuit as a form of Nyx, Gnostic concepts like Aeons and the Pleroma and ambiguous takes on the "Absolute Principle" (the lens through which hellenistic philosophers processed the concept of the Jewish monotheistic Godhead). Angels as functional analogue for older polytheistic entities, the Ascension of Enoch to the rank of Metatron, scribe of God. The Virtues of Things and Natural Magic, the value of ritual, pop-cultural approaches in Chaos Magick, Ect ect ect ect ect ect...

Not to mention it would provide a vehicle for examining more traditional forms of monotheism through a pantheistic lens. It's like the old Rosicrucian Creed, all the mystics are like blind men feeling around the body of an elephant, and trying to describe it.

Would anyone else be eager to see this? It would be subject to the same tonal limitations as the rest of the Riordanverse, of course, and to be done justice would require him to perform at his best. But done well I think it would be really sick. Plus the Riordanverse is already pretty pantheistic, and supports concepts like Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-great") being in equal measure Hermes, Mercury and Thoth.

Hi!

I'm aware that this is a question which is like, explicitly not about occultism aside from the tangential, but at the same time I figure this group would give me the best/most useful resource for what I'm asking.

Magic squares are big important for operative magic, so it would be good to have a grasp of their mundane nature as a recreational mathematics/puzzle thing to compliment any understanding I may accumulate of their occult nature. As above so below, I need familiarity with both to really grasp anything (at least, I think so).

Anyone got any good recommendations? Games, books, websites whatever, as long as it's about magic squares in a form which correlates with their magical applications.

You will be hard pressed to find *sane* people with an ounce of compassion for Nigel Farage, who would mourn his death, so even if it was a credible threat, truly who cares.

It wasn't, in any meaningful way. It was a comical t-shirt. So even less reason to care.

The fact that we're treating this as a serious issue worthy of our consideration because the media have essentially told us to is bloody daft. I don't even think Zack should have retracted the repost, he could easily have stood behind it being of no meaningful significance.

But instead we all have to pile into the clown car about it. I refuse to. This does not matter at all. In any way. It doesn't merit any kind of response by anyone, nor does it merit further discourse from anyone.

I want to preface that obviously, Westminster agreeing to this would be exceptional so this is very much an abstract suggestion, but it seems like there's a perpetual tension between yes/no interests created by the current model of referendum and that isnt going to go away unless an entirely different methodology is adopted.

So here's my idea:

Declare that independence will be subject to public ballot. Declare that the matter will not be resolved unless either side wins by supermajority (ocer 2/3rds of the population, or 66.666...%), so the referendum will be repeated until either yes OR no can conclusively be declared the will of the people. One way or another, the referendum will not end until we as a nation actually make our minds up about it.

"But referendums are expensive" yes, that's what the next part of my idea is intended to resolve. Bear with me.

Instead of holding separate referendums, you incorporate the referendum into the standard Holyrood election cycle. On voting day, voters would now have three papers to fill out. Two for MPSs (constituency and regional list) and one for independence, yes or no.

That way a referendum could be held literally every election cycle at practically no additional cost, and this could be sustained until one side actually becomes a supermajority. One way or another, we would eventually *finally* secure some closure on this matter.

And I wanna stress the equal treatment baked into this idea, the point is not repeating the process until independence supporters get the result they want. If the No vote ever secured more than 2/3rds of the electorate, then the matter would be settled in favour of remaining within the union. The referendum would end, and end for good.

The point is to just actually settle the matter so it can stop being the dominant issue in our politics. Also, ideally to help make sure the results are as conclusive as possible voting should be made mandatory, which is also just generally a good idea.

Thoughts?

I very firmly believe that any unadorned blank space on anything, anywhere is a deep offence to the creative human spirit, because I'm a maximalist at my core. Nature abhors a vacuum, and blank spaces are decorative vacuums. I've recently finished a college course preparing me to go to the Mackintosh School of Architecture, and throughout that course I very consistently got into... disagreements with some of my lecturers who had any appreciation or even tolerance for plain white cube architecture. *shudders*.

I was quite glad to find out about neo-andean architecture near the end of my last course cause it is literally the only distinctly modern architectural movement I can even remotely tolerate. Much to the better, I *love* neo-andean architecture. Before I was able to cite that, my objections to poor ornamentation in architecture far too closely resembled neo-classicists for my taste. It was genuinely really inspiring to finally find something contemporary which I could appreciate, even if the odds of my ever getting to visit Bolivia to see if in person are incredibly slim.

Anyway, I've been led to understand that the overriding ethos in architectural education is still """"modern"""" minimalist thought, and while I'm not someone who shies away from an argument I don't want to make poor impressions with my lecturers. To what degree is my inability to tolerate failure to decorate gonna be an interpersonal problem going forwards?

TL;DR: How many times will I be able to publicly wish I could skin Le Corbusier alive before it ruins my reputation?

I am NOT asking for hookups, the odds of my trusting smth messaged to me by a random online are very low unless I have reason to believe that it's legit. But man, sucks how comparatively obscure this shit is.

My weed guy will occasionally have shrooms or LSD on hand, and if not I can at least get shrooms by using a grow-kit or smth. DMT? HA.

The closest I've come to finding DMT in the wild is hearing stories about my uncle making it in his kitchen. And yea, ik making it myself is reasonably doable, but it's an intimidating process when you've never done it before.

I see people talking about being able to get pens and stuff, and I do really hope an opportunity falls into my lap one of these days but for as long as that hasn't happened it's kinda disheartening lol.

Oh well, my time will come someday.​ I can vent about this being frustrating but it won't actually bring me any closer to that. Bleh.

Related somewhat to the post I made a wee bit ago asking for Necronomicon inspiration.

I've been running a homebrew campaign recently, and it's going well. I made a post about the concept ages ago but TL;DR: cthulhu themed off-brand disney cruise, The Shining by way of Squid Game by way of Eyes Wide Shut, on a cursed creepypasta-ass themed cruise ship crossing the pacific. However, I seemingly can't prevent my minds eye from turning to the *next* campaign I wanna run, and as my current players are enjoying themselves with the current campaign ("Sunken Dreams") I will probably have a solid player roster for when I get round to it.

Similarly, I have a few media touchstones this time too. In this case Deathnote by way of Steins;Gate by way of Coraline by way of The Spiderwick Chronicles. A campaign entirely centered on the players discovering the Necronomicon, reading and utilising it for magical purposes, first because of curiosity and then because the narrative forces them to in order to solve potent problems. Set in an obscure (yet prestigious in its own way) university nestled in a fictional region of the Scottish Highlands with a history dating back to King James 1st/6th.

Not that literally nothing will happen aside from reading the Necronomicon and its immediate consequences, but the main lens for information on anything which is happening will be the Necronomicon and other peripheral works. I'd also like to use some of the magic rules from The Golden Dawn expansion as a basis for Enochian magic in general, as I imagine his Necronomicon would be the original material interpreted through that lens. Play around with the history of his own discovery of the original Al Azif (by way of Edward Kelley) and composing his own copy (and later wildly regretting that).

A decent amount of the gameplay would just be letting the players access the contents of the Necronomicon as a sandbox, albeit one which is difficult to navigate due to the complexity of the book. Experimenting with various mythos spells, as well as standard hermetic protection magic and astral travel. Id ideally read through all 9 of Kenneth Grants Lovecraftian occult books to get some inspiration for what all of this would entail and how things like the Enochian calls might relate to the Mythos. Another focus would be the environment of the Scottish Highlands, which I'm fairly familiar with cause my grandparents lived there when I was growing up. Players would easily find themselves fairly isolated, especially if I imposed the limitation of no PC's knowing how to drive at the beginning of the campaign.

I could also see there being a hidden role element. I've always wanted to use the Dark Mirror ruleset, and it might be interesting to have a sort of narrative hide and seek element where PC's slowly go mad and start aiding the antagonistic interests surrounding The Book. Undecided on that though, might be a bit unwieldy.

Early thoughts though. I'm still mulling this over. Sunken Dreams could take another 8 sessions or so (max), meaning I have more than enough time to think of ideas.

Moreso than just like, a statbox for the book as a boilerplate Mythos Tome. I kind of want to build a campaign around a group of initially skeptical characters who come across the Necronomicon, and over time genuinely read through the whole thing.

I'm not looking for like, a rendition of the necronomicon, I'm still aiming for theatre of the mind. Like a book about reading a book, as opposed to the book itself. If theres a really comprehensive story about the process of reading the Necronomicon, or otherwise a really solid resource I'd appreciate being pointed in that direction.

First of all, I hope this is specific enough to not be redundant next to the all about the moon masterpost or anything particularly recent, but it was truly my first thought when I woke up today.

Might be smth which I could astrologically quantify if I knew more about astrology, but today feels so immediately different than yesterday and the days previous felt. My body let me wake up when I wanted to instead of like 4 hours later (despite not really doing anything to change my schedule to make that happen) and the idea of actually making productive use of my day seems way more accessible for it. Also, while it was weird (and not particularly spiritual) I had my first dream in absolutely ages last night.

Idk, is there any basis for this moon im particularly bringing a​bout a much more positive energy than we've had recently? I'm aware there are many factors I'm not fully cognizant of so I can't be sure. I feel the vibes tho. I'm UK based if that's at all relevant, although we all get the same moon at the end of the day.

Might be smth which I could astrologically quantify if I knew more about astrology, but today feels so immediately different than yesterday and the days previous felt. My body let me wake up when I wanted to instead of like 4 hours later (despite not really doing anything to change my schedule to make that happen) and the idea of actually making productive use of my day seems way more accessible for it. Also, while it was weird (and not particularly spiritual) I had my first dream in absolutely ages last night.

Idk, is there any basis for this moon particularly bringing about a much more positive energy than we've had recently? I'm aware there are many factors I'm not fully cognizant of so I can't be sure. I feel the vibes tho.

First off, no I'm not entirely credulous, but I'm able to take some suspension of disbelief into experiences like this in order to (bare minimum) have a good time. The only case where I'd feel scammed by a fortune teller is if *they* weren't themselves personally credulous about their methods, so as long as they aren't self consciously conning me, I'm fine.

I've seen quite a few fortune telling stalls at my various trips to the barras, and I've always kind of wanted to give one a go. But like, it's not as if they have Google reviews or a yelp score. Has anyone here patronised any of them and had particularly good/bad experiences? And if you wouldn't recommend any of them (and the reason isn't that you wouldn't recommend any fortune teller ever) is there anywhere you'd recommend going instead?

This is something which crosses my mind often, which is that being quite fond of the idea of The Black Citadels being literally just, the shadows of the Citadels, in the same manner as the Death Angels. It just really works for me, that isn't really the point of this post but it was the beginning of this train of thought.

Because an object can cast two shadows.

Conjecturally, is it beyond the realm of possibility that the Citadels of the Archons *also* have shadows in Limbo? Perhaps populated by "Dream Angels"? White Citadels, perhaps, to contrast against Inferno? (and to subtly invoke the gates of horn and ivory)

How do you imagine this would alter the balance of power? As I suppose the institutional layer above the once-mortal Dream Princes, the Dream Angels would represent idealised/mythologised echoes of the Principles of the Archons.

Or perhaps instead of echoing the Citadels, the Limbo shadows are focused on the connective tissue between the Citadels (the paths of Qaballah, correlated with the cards of the Tarot)? Or both, to an extent, however with the Dream Citadels mostly representing the relationship between the Paths which it connects to, as opposed to the Citadel itself.

The Dream-Citadels and their respective Paths could even act as a viable "safe"(-ish, generously) route into the center of the Vortex, with the Dream-Shadow of Keter sitting in the eye of the storm.

I have some ideas for what the Dream-shadows of the Citadels/Dream Angels could be like, but that may have to be its own post, as I would also need to give a significant amount of thought to the Paths and how they'd relate to the Tarot/Tarokka deck (I may imply that Tarokka is more representative of the counterparts to the Dream Paths in Metropolis, while the traditional tarot is more representative of Limbo)

idk, thoughts? My desire to iterate on the cosmology of Kult isnt a critique or an implication that it is lacking, btw. This is just the way I like thinking about settings.

Oh, another interesting train of thought: If the Citadels in Metropolis cast shadows, what exactly is casting those shadows?

I'm endlessly curious about the origin of ideas like this, one of the most compelling things about Lovecraft are the ideas he originated and other, older ideas he brought under one roof.

Aklo is something he inherited from prior works, and supposedly the trail for that begins with Arthur Machens The White People. But the off-hand way they're mentioned in that story feels more like a reference to a pre-existing concept which Machen appreciates. It reminds me of the way in which Lovecraft referenced The King in Yellow.

I guess my question is, if we *are* sure that Machen wholly invented Aklo, what were his inspirations? How did he conceptualise that? And if we aren't sure of that, then from where else might they have been derived?

My interest is mostly just because of how much I enjoy Aklo conceptually. A pseudo-sentient language, inherently corrupting, an undercurrent to all post-babel language which more closely aligns with the fundamental symbolic elements of the cosmos. It's like the perfect Lovecraftian take on the Lingua Adam when done right.

I'd just like to have as firm a grasp on the fundamental basis of the idea as possible.