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Man, Myth and Magic
- hnfong 3y agoNo idea how this link ended up in HN, but (to put it somewhat strangely) it was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
- 5- 3y ago> how this link ended up in HN the submitter writes https://resobscura.substack.com/ https://resobscura.substack.com/ which is also occasionally featured on hn and is generally well received.
- dang 3y agoAnd is generally awesome. Ben's one of the most interesting people I know of on HN.
- tinix 3y agoI'd say magick, occult, and discordian content fits right in... Hail Eris!
- labster 3y agoAll Hail Discordia! For some reason HN has been into the occult lately. Which is great for me, because I’m writing some fanfic for A Certain Scientific Railgun. I’ve been a bit unsatisfied with Crowley’s characterization therein and been and it’s useful to read other sources.
- ReactiveJelly 3y agoYou might appreciate how silly this thought is - I watched a few episodes of Railgun and what bugged me most was that her weapon doesn't seem to be a railgun at all.
- labster 3y agoIt is a silly thought, because it’s pretty small compared to other research errors in that show. “Roman Orthodox Church” gets me every time. It is apparently possible to put a space elevator in Tokyo — as long as the center of mass is over the equator.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoIt's the magic of HN!
- ReactiveJelly 3y agoAw jeez, my mom had these books. She wouldn't let me read them as a kid. I'll elaborate a bit, I don't think I'll dox myself, since she kept to herself a lot. Unfortunately I don't have space for them, so her copies either got sold or trashed when she recently died of a very treatable illness that she elected to not treat or mention to anyone for several years. I did keep her Clan of the Cave Bear books (Children of the Earth?) because the cover art always enchanted me, and I judge books by their covers. I also kept a few of her romance novels. She never talked to me about sex beyond "wear a condom" type advice, and her and my dad completely hated each other for as long as I could remember. So it's funny to imagine her having a sex drive. She was pretty old when she had me, I guess usually you have to have some sex drive to get pregnant, and then it just faded after I came along. I like to think that people will read meaning into my bookshelf when I die, but seeing it from the other side - No. The math books will get chucked. Maybe someone will keep a couple volumes of manga as a novelty. The book with a secret compartment will be worth a couple bucks. The books are worth more to me as decorations than to anyone else as anything. It's all right, I guess. I don't know what to think. Mom's good parts deserved better than her bad parts. I guess there isn't much meaning to it all in the end. She died doing what she loved, playing with crystals and avoiding doctors.
- noelwelsh 3y agoMy recollection is that the Children of the Earth series is basically soft porn in anthropological wrappings.
- jhbadger 3y agoBasically yes. Back in the day they were one of the most popular books for "concerned parents" to try to get banned from school libraries because of the sex scenes. And the anthropology wasn't that accurate even for the time, although it was amusingly correct in its assertion that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens were amorous together, long before people like Svante Pääbo showed that with actual genetics.
- ReactiveJelly 3y agoI read the first chapter and then got bored and read the synopsis on Wikipedia. That kinda ruined the magic for me. Just like with video game skyboxes, it's more fun sometimes to look at the cover and imagine that the book is profound and would deeply resonate with one's soul. In Skyrim you can actually visit the mountains on the horizon, and they're just boring mountains. What a letdown!
- Jun8 3y ago“Cavendish had been the author of The Black Arts in 1967, a book which I still rate as one of the best general introductions to Western occultism.” OMG, they had this book in our high school library and for some unknown reason I checked out and read it, interesting experience for a 15 year old! It was comprehensive and had excerpts from grimoires from Middle Ages on how to summon sprits. It had a strange green-black cover (https://www.chegg.com/textbooks/the-black-arts-40th-edition-9780399500350-0399500359 https://www.chegg.com/textbooks/the-black-arts-40th-edition-...). Haven’t thought about it in nearly 40 years and I see it on HN! Chance? I think not.
- eru 3y agoWhen I hear of the Black Arts I think of the German 'Schwarze Kunst'. Despite what the literal translation might make you think, the German term does not refer to the occult. It relates to the art and craft of printing. 'Weiße Kunst', the white arts, apparently refers to paper making.
- hef19898 3y ago'Schwarze Kunst' can also be used as synonym for magic and all kinds occult stuff. Maybe because printing was something people didn't really understand back then.
- eru 3y agoOr it was just a pun?
- garba_dlm 3y agobut here I was thinking it had something to do with "blacksmiths are loud" hence we should vanish them to the outskirts of the city cuz they're annoying to be nearby which spiraled into "black(smiths) go away" lol
- jeroenvlek 3y agoWow, I only knew the house classic by the same title [1]. My daughter would love these books. [1] https://youtu.be/wT1luDOHpqk?si=vxowAdBXnYJPL7c1 https://youtu.be/wT1luDOHpqk?si=vxowAdBXnYJPL7c1
- jhbadger 3y agoThere was also a fairly obscure table-top RPG of the title which was set in ancient (Greek/Roman/Egyptian) times rather than the typical medieval settings of RPGs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Myth_%26_Magic_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Myth_%26_Magic_(role-play...
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoAny specific chapters people would recommend checking out? I love all of this occult stuff but have never really dived in too much to the topic. Magic systems in general fascinate me, and after going through pretty much all major fantasy series I've started getting interested in "real world" magic systems. There's so much fascinating deep lore that rarely gets explored. Most recently I learned about these angels called Uthra [0]. Another one that interests me is the movement with magic rocks. There's tons of websites that talk about how certain rocks have these magical powers, but I wonder where it all originated from. Maybe the information evolved over time and was spread through word of mouth. I think it's weird that some people seem so ready to completely dismiss any interest in these magic systems while also being huge fans of stuff like Harry Potter and other fantasy series. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uthra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uthra
- lioeters 3y ago> talk about how certain rocks have these magical powers, but I wonder where it all originated from From the Stone Age, of course! Pun intended, but seriously, these beliefs about magical powers of stones, plants, stars, angels - their roots go deep and far back into the history of humanity, perhaps to the very beginning.
- krapp 3y agoNot specifically what you're asking for but the Esoterica channel and Modern Hermeticist on YT may be of interest to you[0]. [0]https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel [1]https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernHermeticist/videos https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernHermeticist/videos >I think it's weird that some people seem so ready to completely dismiss any interest in these magic systems while also being huge fans of stuff like Harry Potter and other fantasy series. People dismiss interest in them as realistic and plausible models that actually work in real life (or they're an Abrahamist who believes any representation of the occult, even fictional, invites satanic influence.) People die because they would rather trust alchemy and crystal woo-woo nonsense to cure their cancer more so than chemotherapy. Folklore and fantasy is a different thing, though.
- rwnspace 3y ago
- VagabundoP 3y agoThis is gold for my RPG fantasy campaigns. Thanks to OP for posting. If anyone wants to see a good film adaptation of some of this stuff watch A Dark Song (2016). And to a lesser extent You Are Not My Mother (2021) - this one is more folklore based.
- languagehacker 3y agoPicked up the set at a garage sale when I was a kid. Super formative stuff.
- busterarm 3y agoI had the Mysteries of the Unknown books as a kid instead. What a hoot. I kinda wanna pick these up to pair with the set.
- klondike_klive 3y agoI spent an unusual amount of time poring over my parents books. Not really perusing them, just browsing, looking at the titles, the pictures etc. My dad had a lot of these kind of occult books - as a bored and lonely kid in the countryside I kept coming back to them as a kind of power fantasy, reading some of them until the more ghost-story-like ones kind of freaked me out (eg Carlos Castaneda). The whole time is a mishmash of creaky floorboards, the smell of dust, the RPG magazines I collected, and metal albums.
- garethsprice 3y agoThe late 60s was a wild time! My mum had the full set, recently repurchased them off eBay and have enjoyed reading them. Can see a lot of the counterculture mentality that drove early Silicon Valley and still sort of bubbles underneath in the writing from that time - eg. Talking to some younger devs about where the name “Slack” comes from.