> There are Golden Age (or in Eastern terminology, Cycle of >Creation) stories about Vith's encounters with the first sorcerer, >priest and shaman, who are all his children. As far as the
>Easterners are concerned, the three other methods of magic have been
>known virtually as long as the universe has existed - but known to
>be ultimately inferior to mysticism for more or less as long. We
>have no reason to doubt them.
Creation Cycle is roughly equivalent to Green Age, to be nit-picky. The wayward sons get angry when their magic is inferior to Vith's mysticism and create a monster from their anger and fear, which becomes the dragon Dogsalu and starts the first war, ending this cycle. They are later forgiven and submits to Vith's world order, thus proving that magic of the three types is acceptable as long as it is performed in the correct way. This separates the gods from the antigods who don't obey the world order and use magic incorrectly.
...
>While it is often claimed that this is the case, there is ample
>evidence that many practitioners of mysticism are interested in the
>magic it has as a byproduct, including some of those that are
>revered by mystics - eg the heroes of the Austerity War. It may well
>be that they shouldn't be so interested, but that is a subtly
>different question.
Absolutely, the magic accrued on the way is ultimately detrimental to reaching Liberation, but who are we to question the master's teaching?
In the Austerity War, Darja Danad was a pure mystic. Conditions were so awful that his mystic defense kicked in all the time, looking an awful lot like magic. Those who came after him were less pure, and the general situation improved somewhat, so they used magic to emulate what the master had done as side effects of said mystic defense.
/Nils W
Powered by hypermail