Gamers in Government: A Salute

Papers salutes Julie MacDonald, the Deputy Assistant Director of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, on whom we find this report from the Department of the Interior’s Inspector General via TPMMuckraker.

MacDonald, like many people in positions of authority, was burdened with constant reports written by people with discernment and ability. She is to be applauded for her efficiency in handling her workload. Instead of using the tired old “throw them on the stairs and see where they land” or “let the dog walk on them” techniques, MacDonald developed a network of people, including her child and individuals from mysterious domains like “texacochevron.com,” who would give their honest opinions on internal agency documents.

Plus, when it came to a document on endangered fish, she had one other important source:

MacDonald confirmed that she also sent the Delta Smelt document to an on-line game friend hrough his father’s e-mail account. MacDonald said she is acquainted with the on-line friend through internet role-playing games… MacDonald opined that she sent FWS documents to the on-line game friend and her child to have another set of eyes give an unfiltered opinion of them, negative comments included.

The present administration is to be commended for putting gamers into positions of power and influence, whether as valued employees or outside consultants. Some of you might feel that such positions should be awarded on the basis of competence or expertise. Yeah, right. Let’s get some gamers in there.

Questions remain. Did the gamer provide valuable input on the Delta smelt? Do Taurens make better administrators. Most importantly, does Karl Rove play dice?

Gaming Update

It’s been a while since the last gaming update.  Our Middle Earth campaign is winding to a close.  Bulli Took has lost and found the ring again, and his brave companions (minus the bloodthirsty schizophrenic tainted megalomaniacal Gondorian who tried to steal it) have made their way to the Withered Heath in search of the dragon.  Ghosts of all descriptions haunt him, and even as the dragon stands before him, some loose ends – the evil Elf Lord who wants the Ring for himself, the aforementioned Gondorian, and the question of just what the hell this ring really is if Frodo’s got the real one – remain.

Sadly, I didn’t find this web comic before we started playing.  Maybe that’s for the best.

Our World of Darkness game has been on hiatus for a little while.  Last I checked, everyone had split up, and James the Colonel was dragging the journalist (also named James) off to rescue another character from spies pretending to be clergymen, or something of the sort.  Poor Other James – his only combat move is to fall on the ground and hope nobody notices him.  Let’s hope he lives.

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin, Part 24: Those Who Have Gone Before – Crowley

Last time, we looked at MacGregor Mathers’ troubles and tribulations with getting the Sacred Magic of Abramelin published. The next major figure to undertake the operation was Mathers’ pupil and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn – Aleister Crowley.

I won’t be going into Crowley’s thinking about the Holy Guardian Angel, save to say that it serves as a centerpiece of his philosophy and a major goal of his magical organization, the A.’. A.’. I won’t go into this too far, because this is a blog entry instead of a research project, so there’s likely a great deal of material I’ve missed here.

To keep matters simple, we might ask how his operation went. It’s difficult to give a full assessment of the situation, as Crowley by his own admission didn’t keep very good records of the experience. In fact, the account given in his Confessions discusses his boating and fishing trips, as well as boomerang-throwing and a failed experiment at manned flight.

Crowley undertook the operation in 1899, having attained a suitable status in the Golden Dawn. Seeking about the countryside for a house, he eventually uncovered Boleskine House, on the shores of Loch Ness (yes, that Loch Ness). Once there, he set about preparing for the operation. He undertook a dire and lengthy oath, part of which might be reproduced below:

Furthermore, I most solemnly promise and swear: to acquire this Holy Science in the manner prescribed in the Book of Abra-Melin, without omitting the least imaginable thing of its contents; not to gloss or comment in any way on that which may be or may not be, not to use this Sacred Science to offend the Great God, not to work ill unto my neighbour…

So, how’d he do at that working of Abra-Melin as closely as possible to the book? Let’s turn the page and see.

In bed, I invoked the Fire angels and spirits on the tablet, with names, etc., and the 6th Key. I then (as Harpocrates) entered my crystal. An angel, meeting me, told me, among other things, that they (of the tablets) were at war with the angels of the 30 Aethyrs, to prevent the squaring of the circle. I went with him unto the abodes of fire…

Crowley was apparently not big on that prohibition against other types of magic.

Soon, the fruits of Crowley’s success (or failure – sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which) became apparent. As he sketched the squares in the final book, he saw dark figures on the terrace. A companion who was to accompany him through the ritual departed without a word one night. His lodgekeeper tried to slay his family in a drunken rage. Nonetheless, he continued on in the operation…

…that is, until other matters caught his attention. More on that next time.

Cthulhu, Mongoose, and Different Stories

A recent thread on RPG.net covers the recent transition of the RPG rights to Moorcock’s Elric series from Chaosium to Mongoose, the owners of Runequest.  Whether the rights were relinquished or sold is up to debate.  Overall, the reaction seems mixed, given the large number of people who are frustrated with Chaosium and the large number who are frustrated with Mongoose.

I did run across the following statement from a long-time Chaosium fan:

Chaosium owes less money to their writers than many people think. And I know of at least one vocal ex-Chaosium writer who claims Chaosium owes him money when they in fact do not.

I will charitably assume that this person is Chaosium’s accountant, because I’m not sure how he’d know this as a certainty otherwise.   He could have gained it by talking with Chaosium, but they might not be the most reliable sources.  For example, I sent a friend to  their booth at a recent con to ask when the Encyclopedia would be reprinted.   The rep said they didn’t know, but they hoped it would be soon.  Both are technically true, but neither recognizes that Chaosium doesn’t have the rights.

As another example, Chaosium has never mentioned that, at one point in 2003, their business license was suspended, according to the CA Department of Commerce’s database (currently down, so no link).  They were back in good standing the last time I checked. I’m pointing it out to show that some matters behind the scenes might not be discussed openly.

I will likewise assume that this person is referring to a “vocal ex-Chaosium writer” other than me – though the number of such people is fairly low – simply because he has never contacted me to ask about it, though he knows exactly where to find me.  In case anyone thinks it might be referring to me, though, I’d best be explicit:

According to my accounting, Chaosium owes me approximately $700 in simple interest (at the rate of 1.5% a month) on their late payments as specified in the contract for the revised edition.  I have never seen this item on any of the accountings they have sent me.  I have repeatedly informed them that they still owe me money, and they have never responded to the matter.

For the record, I’m not making an effort to get this – I’d rather not throw good money after bad – and most of my problems with Chaosium are based in their lack of communication rather than money.  Personally, I still really like Call of Cthulhu and their other games, including the discontinued Stormbringer.  Still, I wanted to set the record straight.

Update

Papers has fallen uncommonly silent for the past few days, largely because of some lengthy hours in the past week.  Much of that was actually spent doing interesting and fun things, but after a while that’ll wear you out.   Apologies if I haven’t responded to your comments.

In the meantime, I’ve kept plenty busy with reading.  My treadmill-walking book at the moment is D. P. Walker’s  Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, one of those classics in the history of Western magic to which I hadn’t gotten before.  I’ve also been dipping into The Shadow of the Unattained, the correspondence between George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith.  I was disappointed to find that Sterling passed away just as Smith’s career as a fiction writer was just getting started, but I’ll see how it goes.

Nonetheless, I have not forgotten Abramelin and other matters.  I’ll post more later.

More on Google

An ex-Google employee wrote me about yesterday’s post.  Some excerpts:

Lest anyone think Dan is over-reacting, imagine the National Archives being privatized and bought by Murdoch’s News Corp (the parent company of the Fox Network). Or the Smithsonian under the control of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Google was started and until relatively recently largely staffed by San Francisco area computer science hippies who are almost militant in their political correctness. I’m surprised that this sort of thing hasn’t happened more often. Or maybe it has; since the Deja News purchase, Google has had the ability to rewrite or simply delete parts of the internet’s history.

Removing the ability to post to white power newsgroups via Google Groups would have been reasonable. Refusing to archive new posts to those groups would have raised eyebrows, but wouldn’t have been unexpected; Google Groups doesn’t archive pirated binaries, for instance. Removing the archives from public view is simply censorship…

“Don’t be evil” was a nice idea; post-IPO, it’s simply another corporate business slogan…

PS – Google never, EVER, throws away user information that flows across their networks. Think about that next time you delete potentially embarrassing gmail, or once Google chat or VoIP services roll out, or if you hop on that free Google wireless network expanding beyond San Francisco.

Google Archiving – Threat or Menace?

A few weeks ago, I was performing some background work on a person (no, I won’t say on whom).  Along with the usual Web searches and examination of various databases, I found a reference to some posts this person had made years ago on Usenet.

For those who don’t know, Usenet was the predecessor of today’s profusion of Web message boards and blogs.  You needed a clunky reader to get into it, but at that point, just about everybody interested in Lovecraft on the Net was right there.  It was a great place to bounce ideas off people, to get feedback, and to network.  I doubt the Encyclopedia or The Necronomicon Files would have been written if not for Usenet.

These days, Usenet can be read through Google Groups.  Google bought a Usenet archive from Deja News and provided a streamlined service for reading and posting on the groups, as well as a powerful search engine that can show Usenet posts back to 1981.  I’ve used it, and I can appreciate its benefits.

I remembered that this person had posted at least once to a prominent white power group with heavy traffic.  I ran a search for the person’s ID and the group name.  Nothing. Curious, I ran a search for the name of the group itself.  Nothing, save for some posts that covered multiple groups.

Baffled, I contacted Google customer support to find out what had happened.  As it turned out, the group had been removed for terms of service violations.

Let me be absolutely clear here.  I despise white power ideology.   I think that Google, as a service that hosts Google groups, is perfectly within its rights to keep people from propogating vicious attacks on people (hate group postings are often downright toxic) using their facilities.  They can remove posters or groups for violating terms and services to their heart’s content.  What I don’t understand is removing all archives for that group – which existed long before Google purchased the Deja News archives back in 2001 – without any notification to searchers that the group ever existed.

I’m sure some readers will say, “Who cares?  A bunch of Nazis got their privileges revoked.”  I can certainly understand that sentiment, but I’d have to disagree.  Usenet posts can often provide a window into the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of both groups and individuals.   That could be important to many people – historians, journalists, law enforcement, or even people checking out potential dates.  If a candidate for public office had spent their time posting to this group, I’d want to know about it, and I’m sure many other people would as well.

Aggravating the issue is the perception of Google Groups as the consummate Usenet archive.  As with the Google Books project, everyone seems to assume that Google’s doing all the archival work, so there’s no need for any other similar project to continue.  As a result, you can’t find a good long-term Usenet archive anywhere else.  I’ve certainly tried.  (A source close to Google says that they’ve kept an archive of the group internally, but they can’t give out posts.)  Thus, Google’s quiet decision means that nobody else has taken efforts to document the information that was cut.

On a broader scale, this illustrates the dangers of trusting any corporate entity to safeguard information.  The true goals of any corporation are to make a profit and, to a lesser extent, to minimize controversy.  Sure, Google has worked hard to make all this information available – but what decisions are being made of which we know nothing?  Will Google Groups or Books be available ten or twenty years from now with the same free access they give today?  These are issues we need to consider seriously.

Svarteboka Update

I spent some time poking around through my files, trying to find some material in English – or in any non-Scandinavian language – with little luck.  I’ve got all sorts of books and articles to reference, but almost all of them are in languages I can’t even identify by sight.  If you’re interested in the topic and can read those languages, you’ve got a fascinating book to write.

I did take another look at Stokker’s fascinating piece on the books from Scandinavian Studies.  She makes it clear that a dynamic tradition of books of magic existed here, often associated with Catholic priests and Lutheran ministers alike in folklore.  (In the late Middle Ages, such works were often associated with the clerical underworld composed of the large number of university graduates competing for a small number of positions.)  Copies would periodically show up in the local churches – the only way can owner could avoid damnation, it was said, was to write one’s name in blood in it and leave it in a place of worship.

Printed copies of these works were late in coming, but they seem to have been a popular item at the local fairs.  These books followed Norwegian immigrants to the New World, and for a short period at least one publisher in Chicago issued copies of the Oldtidens Sortebog and other grimoires.  Though no great market seems to have been found, beliefs in the power of these books were still strong in the early 20th century.

Also, I managed to track down Jochen’s review of Flowers’ Galdrabok translation.  I’ll excerpt some parts:

…the reviewer cannot help but notice numerous erroneous discrepancies betwen Flowers’ and Lindqvist’s version on almost every page of the twenty that comprise the galdrabok’s text.  They are most evident in the often incomprehensible Latin quotations… Less obvious but more serious are the omissions of Icelandic words and expressions… Most damaging, however, are the many slips in translation.  In some cases Flowers is less precise than the text… At other times, the translator is closer to the Swedish than the Icelandic… Worst are the cases where Flowers clearly is in the wrong; thus the livestock is not “getting stolen,” but suffers from “lipothymia” (61); the playing cards are not the ones referred to “below” but are placed “face down” (68); dried albumin is added to the warm milk and not applied to the victim’s skin.

It’s a fairly harsh review all around, and I don’t want to be in the position of endorsing one side or another.  Nonetheless, that’s the sole academic review I’ve found of the book, so I’m letting you know what’s in it.

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin, Part 23: Those Who Have Gone Before, Mathers

I’m back once more, with another possible worker of the Abramelin system – MacGregor Mathers, the translator of the French edition into the popular English one! Really, we don’t know whether Mathers worked the system or not, but I figure I can get a post out of him anyway.

Mathers learned of the manuscript at the Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal from two sources – the first an old occultist colleague of his (possibly the famous fringe mason Kenneth Mackenzie), and the other being Jules Bois in 1896. Bois, oddly enough, was an associate of the famous Decadent author J.-K. Huysmans and the author of such works as Le satanisme et la magie. I’ve yet to hear of any mention of Abramelin in his works, so I suspect he passed on the news of the manuscript to Mathers when he realized he couldn’t get anything suitably sensationalistic out of it.

Mathers doesn’t speak much of his experience with the translation, but Crowley, who once knew him, added the following notes in his Confessions:

These petty squabbles apart, a big thing had happened. Mathers had discovered the manuscript of Abra-Melin in the library of the Arsenal in Paris and begun to translate it. He found himself harassed and opposed on all sides. In those days there was practically no public way of getting about Paris at all. Mathers lived at Auteuil, a long way from the Arsenal, and met with so many bicycle accidents that he was driven to go on foot… Other misfortunes of every kind overwhelmed Mathers. He was an expert Magician and had become accustomed to use the Greater Key of Solomon with excellent effect. He did not realize that Abra-Melin was an altogether bigger proposition. It was like a man, accustomed to handle gunpowder, suddenly supplied with dynamite without being aware of the difference. He worried through and got Abra-Melin published; but he perished in the process. He became the prey of the malignant forces of the book, lost his integrity and was cast out of the Order of which he had been the visible head.

Of course, Crowley was writing this at a time when he was no longer quite so fond of Mathers.

We get more insight from the account given by Howe in his Magicians of the Golden Dawn. To finish his translation, Mathers entered into agreements with George Redway the publisher, with whom he argued about the money promised and the fact that Redway had the audacity to edit his prose, and F. L. Gardner, his financier, with whom he quarreled on principle.

The project was beset with mysterious events and accidents. On April 6, 1897, Mathers managed to lose the entire manuscript of the translation on a train, from which it was never recovered. (Bonus points for whomever can name the HPL story that suffered the same fate.) As proof of what a royal pain Mathers must have been to work with, he refrained from telling Gardner about this for a month. Part of the frontispiece was supposedly altered by no human hand before being sent to Gardner for approval. Indeed, Gardner himself rapidly fell under the influence of the manuscript, causing him to disregard the wise counsel of Mathers with regard to the Order – or that’s what Mather told Gardner, anyway. The book was delayed due to strikes at the printer, but eventually appeared in 1898.

To conclude, I should make one minor correction to DuQuette’s otherwise excellent introduction to Dehn and Guth’s work:

The systematic, almost scientific, approach of the Abramelin method appealed instantly to the late-19th-century esotericists. The few volumes of the first edition of the Mathers translation were immediately snatched up by members of the Golden Dawn and other interested parties…

As Howe describes, however, the first edition of Abramelin was a colossal flop. A year after publication, only an eighth of the initial thousand-copy print run had been sold. Three years later, the publisher was begging Gardner to take away the remaining books and be done with it.

Next time, we’ll deal with Aleister Crowley – or at least, we’ll try…

Svarteboka: The Scandinavian Grimoires

Another evening snowed in at the Undisclosed Workplace.  All my Mathers material is at home, so no help there.  Still, we’ve got Matters of Import to discuss, so let’s get started.

My discussion with Christian regarding the svarteboka (roughly “black books”) in the comments might require some background.  Like practically every other region of Western Europe, Scandinavia also has its grimoire tradition which has sat quiet and mostly unnoticed in the English-speaking world.  I haven’t been able to track down much. 

That doesn’t mean there’s nothing, though.  For instance, you’ve got The Black Books of Elverum by Mary Rustad, which translates two such charm-books.  Stephen Flowers also released his translation of the Galdrabok, though I’ve seen its accuracy criticized in at least one review.  In her article “Narratives of Magic and Healing: Oldtidens Sortebog in Norway and the New Land,” Kathleen Stokker discusses the traditions behind these books, and how some copies made their way to America with the Norwegian immigrants.  Still, I know there’s much more stuff in the Scandinavian languages that I just can’t get to, and that I think would be of interest to scholars, professional and amateur, who mainly see their grimoires filtered through Mathers.

I’m especially interested in the traditions surrounding Cyprian… but that’s another post altogether.  Keep warm, everyone.