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Gypsy Lantern
10:00 / 18.01.06
The thing is, I think we make rather more things up than we realise in our day to day lives. For instance, I "made up" the belief that my osteoarthritis made activities such as walking up stairs or standing up for too long in a bar or at a bus stop into extremely difficult, frightening things in my life for a period of years. My involvement with the range of practices that are discussed in the Temple have helped me change that belief and "make up" a world where I quite happily run 14 laps of the gym as part of my warm up for a heavy two hour martial arts class. "When you imagine things, they are not actually happening" is a two edged sword.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:02 / 18.01.06
My post above isn't quite right- my feelings on the issue are far less about personal decision than the crutches that we use to get through life and my experience of many people who engage in forms of worship as being upset, angry, insecure, generally haunted by something negative. Religion and magic I think are particularly unhealthy crutches because they involve the creation of alternative authorities, often by people who are engaged in an ideological battle with real and immediate sources of power over them. This clearly is a generalisation and not true of everyone but it strikes me again and again in people that I meet who dedicate themselves to the type of aspects the Temple forum covers.

I can't talk about this with any detail because it brings in personal anecdote and analysis that I don't think is particularly fair on the people I would be talking about.
 
 
illmatic
10:16 / 18.01.06
I don't think this discussion is beyond The Temple's remit. See Ganesh's "Magic as Maladaptive Coping Device" thread for one.

Happy to talk about my own experience here, I'd say engagment with spiritual practices has swung between the poles of enabler/inspiration and wish-fullfillment diverson, with an orientation towards the fomer as I grow older (I hope).

Re:being able to tell people what's real/your brain making things up: how do you feel about dreams?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:21 / 18.01.06
Now it's the Temple and not just the Magic, I'd be quite up for a discussion of Christian heresies- the Patrapassionists, and so on- and my personal conviction that the heretics had a stronger faith than the more orthodox believers (if there's one thing that gets me more pissed off than misplaced commas, it's people confusing "heresy" and "blasphemy"). I know what you're thinking- "why don't you start one"- and I think I may go away, do some reading, and do just that.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:34 / 18.01.06
I think dreams represent your worries in your sleep... well mine do anyway.

The thing is that Ganesh is a psych so everyone works on the automatic assumption that he knows what he's talking about. People don't do that with me and frankly I don't have the energy to fight a pitched battle to excuse myself for making assumptions or terming things in the wrong way. I've already done that in the last few months and frankly I felt utterly bullied afterwards.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:41 / 18.01.06
my experience of many people who engage in forms of worship as being upset, angry, insecure, generally haunted by something negative.

I think you have to accept that that is a rather sweeping generalisation though. My own practice has increasingly gained an emphasis on religious worship over the last six years, and I've found it a tremendously healthy addition to my life. I feel like I've come to understand myself more through it, to develop an appreciation of the forces of nature and how they relate to the human experience, and to recognise my own place within that. The religious aspects of what I do help me to explore the mysteries of life and of my own being. I find that a really positive and useful thing to have in my life.

Religion and magic I think are particularly unhealthy crutches because they involve the creation of alternative authorities, often by people who are engaged in an ideological battle with real and immediate sources of power over them.

I think it depends on how you look at it and how you personally deal with the experiences that this sort of work throws up. For instance, I have relationships with a lot of deities. I am a lot closer to some of them than I am to others. Developing and maintaining these relationships is, at one level, a means of negotiating your own personal relationship with the principle that the deity represents.

If you have difficult, challenging and problematic experiences with, say, a Goddess of Love, you could look at that as creating an unhealthy authority figure that brings extra difficulties into your life that you don't need. Alternatively, you could view the problematic aspects of that relationship as indicative of the issues, hang-ups and fears that you have about that deity's area of concern.

By negotiating your way through the problems you have with that deity, you are dramatising a process whereby you come to terms with those issues, and by making peace with that deity, overcoming the challenges and general spikiness of that interaction, and establishing a happy, healthy working relationship with the Goddess of Love - you change the way you relate to the sphere of influence said Goddess represents.

It's not necessarily an easy journey, but it's not meant to be. Trying to face the challenges of your own nature is never a stroll through the park. There's no such thing as a free lunch. But speaking for myself, by doing this sort of work with a variety of deities over the course of years I've become so much happier and more comfortable in so many diverse areas of my life that the value of the practice is pretty self-evident to me. It's very tangible to me. Whether or not "it's all in my imagination" is almost a moot point.
 
 
illmatic
10:46 / 18.01.06
Re: dreams. Mine are a powerful source of information for me, and give me information on feedback on worries, successes and every other part of my life, and more besides. My point was dreams aren't "real" either - as your toast is real - but this doesn't mean they can't be an incredible source of information.

I don't think any deference to Ganesh in that thread was due to his profession - rather, it was to due to his ability to put over his position and enquiries thoughtfully and respectfully, without becoming combative or convinced of his own righeousness, and being prepared to modify his ideas in light of new evidence. If you're not prepared to do the same, then, yeah, I think you should avoid starting a thread.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:00 / 18.01.06
Hang on, are you trying to tell me that Ganesh doesn't start with the benefit of the doubt? Yes, he deals with enquiries well and I think he's a reasonable and thoughtful person who deserves to be well liked but primarily Ganesh's posts on these subjects always begin with people accepting his position as positive and I think that's very much to do with the fact that he's a psych and is open about his knowledge of the profession. That makes it a hell of a lot easier for him.

I think you have to accept that that is a rather sweeping generalisation though

Well that's why I'm not going to start a thread... I think my primary post in this thread hints that I perceive this as my problem. Temple isn't a forum for people who fundamentally doubt these things and don't want to discuss it from a position that concedes to another belief. I understand that and I don't post there.
 
 
Quantum
11:01 / 18.01.06
I came to Barbelith for the Magick forum and stayed for the rest, but it's still where I go first and most. I think Seth's got a good point that what's said about the Temple applies to all the foa- I don't go in Comics much because of the Steve-Dave factor (I did try), I don't go into Fashion because I have very little interest in it, I don't go into Music for fear of being shouting down as a fool for not knowing the entire lyrics to Jay-Z's latest single off by heart, etc. These are all my perceptions of these fora rather than the way they actually are, but it keeps me away.

I'd like to see the Temple abstract changed, and I'd prefer a more rigorous standard of posting too. When people come to the Temple they get treated with kid gloves IMO.
The response to topics on Religion is often absurd (check out the Catholicism Wow! thread), religious debate tends to go in Headshop for some reason, because people ghetto-ise the Temple.

(Nina, I also don't believe in the afterlife, think it's in our minds etc. and I'd love to PM you about what you were posting if that's cool)
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:04 / 18.01.06
(pm me! PM ME! Appalling idea... you don't have to ask permission!)
 
 
Seth
11:05 / 18.01.06
Nina, if in the imaginary debate you’ve already staged in your head involves the Temple forum regulars *rightly defending* themselves in a *pitched battle* then I agree with you that you’re wise in not starting the thread, and can only thank my God that you have already decided that the imagined reality in your head is not the same as what actually happens. I think it’s a gesture of great humility on your part to imagine the ways in which you might broach such discussion, realise you aren’t capable of doing it without conceptualising this notion of attack and defence, and therefore deciding not to go there all together. Of course, if you imagine none of the people who frequent the Temple forum will be capable of understanding your ideas or are the type to quickly pick a fight that will only add to your reservations. However, I’m not sure how having already rehearsed this encounter in your imagination is evidence that the activities of imagination are not linked with the everyday world in some crucial and interesting manner.
 
 
Seth
11:09 / 18.01.06
Ah, crossposted with your last post. Seems like there's already an agreement there, then.
 
 
Katherine
11:11 / 18.01.06
When people come to the Temple they get treated with kid gloves IMO.

Strangely I don't see that at all, to me new people get almost shouted down sometimes. I don't think I have really seen too much kid glove treatment at all.

But then when I first popped my head into the temple it was suffering one of it's fairly regular trolling stages, which will put most old posters (on any site) onto 'short fuse' setting and as such is understandable.

I don't tend to post too much in the temple yet it is one of my favourite to read and I believe I'm getting alot out of it. Compared to other occult sites I read, the level of posting on magic, religion and other occult bits is very high.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:23 / 18.01.06
Seth, I find the way that you have termed your response condescending.

I’m not sure how having already rehearsed this encounter in your imagination is evidence that the activities of imagination are not linked with the everyday world in some crucial and interesting manner.

Imagining future possibilities and a hierachical authority are the same in what way?
 
 
Lurid Archive
11:25 / 18.01.06
I dont post in the Temple, though I do read it, largely because my own sceptical and atheistic worldview isnt really appropriate there. I *could* contribute since, like others, I am very interested in religion but the fact that I feel that airing my own views too loudly would be disruptive tends to act as a discouragement. (I admit this is probably largely my fault in that I can be quite rude about religion, say, but part of my worldview is that religion too often gets an easy ride. The rudeness is part of the point.) So when Quantum says,

religious debate tends to go in Headshop for some reason, because people ghetto-ise the Temple.

I'd say that I personally feel much happier contributing to a religious debate in the Headshop because I'd feel I could contribute freely. In the Temple, I'd be constantly worried about being too disrespectful and sabotaging the debate.
 
 
Sax
11:31 / 18.01.06
I'm another one who sometimes reads the Temple but never posts there. I feel you have to start with a set of basic givens about things - ie magic exists and works and people can summon up the spirit of Frankie Howerd with an offering of Midget Gems and Cresta - and I'm afraid I don't particularly feel comfortable with that. As it's been pointed out before, the Temple seems to be a safe space for sorcerors and, as such, my comments and observations in-forum would be unhelpful and probably unwelcome.

I do like Mordant's posts, mind.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:32 / 18.01.06
Getting back to Seth's posts earlier: A lot of the comments in this thread could reasonably apply to any of the forums if viewed from the outside. Couldn't the Comics forum be seen as a loony bin in which MODOK is given semi-serious consideration? Is there not a general shared language and near religious fervour in the Music forum that puts some people off? Do people who know nothing about science get scared off by the Laboratory, or more conversational posters get put off by what they see as a fairly exclusive level of theory-bitching in the Headshop?...

Do we have a *duty of service* to give account of ourselves in a manner that is different from the way in which the rest of the board would when approached in certain ways?

I kind of feel that yeah, actually we do. In the case of the Temple it's not just a matter of people feeling excluded by virtue of a different set of language, rules, mores and assumptions. We aren't dealing with things that can be analysed in the same way.

Sure, there's an enormous amount of debate goes on in the Head Shop on a variety of topics, but much of that debate is based around something that is universally understood if not always easy to quantify--usually that something is the human suffering created when the expression of the self is disrupted/thwarted by various forms of social and political injustice. In the case of Comics, we are again on reasonably familiar ground, to whit: the critical analysis of a piece of creative work. In the Lab, things are even more clear-cut because we're in the world of statisical analysis and peer review.

In the Temple... we're asking little bits of pasteboard to tell us the future. We're talking to Jesus. We're fucking around with the umpteenth variation on the theme of doodles and masturbation. We are making an awful lot of frankly really out-there claims, most of which defy scientific analysis let alone objective proof.

Maybe as individuals we don't owe anybody an explanation, maybe if the Temple was an isolated and self contained forum we wouldn't owe anybody an explanation, but as part of a community, as part of the board as a whole, we kind of have that duty.

We are in the business of the extraordinary, chaps and chapessess. We need to give an extraordinarily good account of ourselves.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
11:36 / 18.01.06
seems to be a safe space

I think this is key to the discussion going on here. Is the Temple a uniquely safe space? Does its safety operate with a wider reach than that of the rest of Barbelith. (which many of us want to regard as/have argued to try and maintain a space safe from bigotry, for example?)

Is it more sigificant/disrespectful/more of a deouncement if you disagree with my worldview in the Temple than in the Head Shop?
 
 
Sax
11:37 / 18.01.06
Wow, that was almost like I summoned up Mordant. Off to the Temple with me.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:40 / 18.01.06
NOW WHERE'S MY MIDGET GEMS AND CRESTA?
 
 
Sax
11:40 / 18.01.06
Is it more sigificant/disrespectful/more of a deouncement if you disagree with my worldview in the Temple than in the Head Shop?

Perhaps it shouldn't be, but that's certainly my perception. Perhaps its an ingrained abhorrence of taking issue with someone's creed, even if that creed does deify Frankie Howerd. On the other hand, I wouldn't think twice about popping into the Comics forum, posting: "Stop wanking over pictures of Bat-Girl, you big loser!" then laughing like a drain and going to check if anyone's posted to the Hinterland thread in Books.
 
 
Axolotl
11:44 / 18.01.06
Hmm good point GGM. The Temple interests me and I enjoy reading the threads, but I really feel I have little to contribute to most threads beyond a kind of blanket scepticism.
Possibly the religious associations of the Temple (by which I am not referring to the forum's name but its contents) mean I feel I have to be more respectful of others beliefs than I do with their political views/opinion on a specific writer/whatever.
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:04 / 18.01.06
In response to GGMs point, I'm with Sax here. The Temple feels differently tolerant and there is some consensus that one should be respectful of different viewpoints. This isn't total, of course, and there is plenty of space for disagreement. But even when that happens, it is often rather opaque to me. For instance, I have no idea why the idea of "psychic vampires" got such a hard ride in that thread a while back. But none of this amounts to an actual criticism of the Temple. Its just different.
 
 
rising and revolving
12:05 / 18.01.06
To backtrack a little, I think one of the things that makes the Temple stand out, content aside, is that it is a little ghetto-like. There are many Temple posters who don't engage with the rest of the board - more so, it seems, than any other forum.

Although there are a bunch who do engage fully, and some of the boards best posters are the core of the Temple, it still makes it stand out for me as a distinct space within the 'lith.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:13 / 18.01.06
There are many Temple posters who don't engage with the rest of the board - more so, it seems, than any other forum.

Why do you think this is?

(for general ref, I don't have any agenda with this question or the one above, it's just my contribution to examining/discussing the Temple and what seems to be emerging as its 'special status')
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:14 / 18.01.06
Is the Temple a uniquely safe space?

I think that sometimes it's safe for the wrong things,or rather that there's a certain tendency to let it get that way. For example I don't want to see the Temple become a safe space for the kind of unexamined prejudice and downright bigotry I see expressed in magic-flavoured communities elsewhere on the net. I don't ever want to see ludicrous gender stereotypes being touted as sacred and essential for magical practice. I don't want to see homophobia. I don't want to see racism. I don't want to see anti-semetism. And I really don't want to see people whining about censorship and PC gone maaaaad when these things are picked up on and challenged, or when the discourse looks like it could be edging into those areas. (I realise that there are those who think otherwise and I certainly don't want everything grinding to a halt and imploding because someone said 'Lady' instead of 'woman,' but I would respectfully suggest that we're a long way from that ever happening.)

I realise that I'm probably as bad at not challenging this sort of thing as everyone else though. Must Try Harder.
 
 
Sax
12:16 / 18.01.06
I think of Barbelith as a street. On it are several pubs, where one may go for varying degrees of intelligent discussion (the Conversation is a big Wetherspoons), and a church.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
12:25 / 18.01.06
Temple isn't a forum for people who fundamentally doubt these things and don't want to discuss it from a position that concedes to another belief. I understand that and I don't post there.

also

I'd say that I personally feel much happier contributing to a religious debate in the Headshop because I'd feel I could contribute freely. In the Temple, I'd be constantly worried about being too disrespectful and sabotaging the debate

Hmmm. There's a sense here that you are uncomfortable with the Temple because your sceptical perspective on certain things is likely to be opposed to that of regular posters whose fundamental, underlying beliefs are different. Is that not the point of any debate though? I would not expect you to concede to my underlying belief in a discussion, but if you were making statements that I found questionable, I would certainly challenge what you were saying with reference to my own experiences and expect you to engage with my argument in a reasonable and well thought out manner. This applies to posts of a sceptical bent in the same way that it applies to the "sigils for breakfast" crowd or any other instances of sloppy thinking around spirituality.

I think one of the strengths of the Temple is the level of analysis that often takes place. In the recent Money$hot thread, for instance, I thought the fact that open criticism regarding those experiences did take place, and was welcomed by several regular posters including Money$hot, was a very positive development. I would have liked to have seen more. The Temple is not a mutual back-slapping club. If you post anything, you must be prepared to subject your ideas and experiences to some level of critical analysis. Likewise, if you post from a position of scepticism, you must be prepared to engage in a dialogue with people who might not automatically acquiesce to your position. I don't think that's unreasonable or problematic. You are only being asked to subject your scepticism to the same level of analysis that an unflinching belief in the reality of green pixies would receive.

All that is asked is that you make a solid argument and engage with the alternative viewpoints that may be presented in critique of that argument. If you're not prepared to do that, then its not really a discussion or even a conversation. It's just a statement that: "I am right and you are wrong. I have made up my mind. I am not prepared to listen to why you have a different opinion and nothing you can say will make me entertain the notion that my perspective might be limited. Because I am right and you are wrong". Posts such as that are unlikely to go down too well with many people who post in the Temple forum, not because we are all delicate little flowers who don't welcome objective criticism, but for the same reason that people who turn up and claim to be grand high ipsisisisisumusus's with the secret of the universe up their sleeve - and aren't prepared to engage with that belief being strongly questioned - are also given short shrift.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
12:43 / 18.01.06
I try not to post in the Temple because I always regret it in the morning, basically. I suppose I'd self-identify as occult-curious, but too, um, 'preoccupied' to put the time in, for an even half-decent practical experiment, so (I always, always feel the next day,) it seems of limited value to just stumble on into a forum where practical experience is (rightly I think,) at a premium, when all you've done is go through a few books on the subject, and then leave them lying on the bedside table, gathering dust. Though I do read with interest.

By it's nature, it's always going to be fairly exclusive, purely because even here, on a board that IS, damnit, fundamentally and in fact devoted to the life and works of GEORge MORRissEy (11,23 - deny it if you must) only a relatively small, if significant, minority seems to subscribe to this stuff, never mind actually practice it.

If there was a butchery forum, for example, I'd imagine it's more seasoned contributors might feel that having to constantly try and explain themselves, whether to the amateur chef at home or the committed vegetarian (though the latter would have a perfectly valid point, it's true, as long as it wasn't raised too often,) might get a bit wearing after a while, especially in a thread devoted to say, choice cuts of offal. So, I suspect anyway, it is with regard to, respectively, the mere book-lahrner or rational materialist in the Temple.

It's an esoteric subject, after all - laying into say hip-hop, telly or football seems reasonable enough, given that these things are relatively unavoidable in modern society, whereas practitioners of the dark arts don't seem to be bothering anyone, relatively speaking. Accordingly, the Temple seems just fine as it is.
 
 
illmatic
12:52 / 18.01.06
am right and you are wrong. I have made up my mind. I am not prepared to listen to why you have a different opinion and nothing you can say will make me entertain the notion that my perspective might be limited. Because I am right and you are wrong". Posts such as that are unlikely to go down too well with many people who post in the Temple forum

And indeed, anywhere else on the board. I see no reason why the Temple should not have the same standards of argument, critque and analysis as elsewhere on Barbelith - and in the best threads, it does have. This is what I was trying to get at with my comments to Nina above, and I would say the same to Lurid or others: healthy criticism is entirely needed and warranted in the Temple. As I tried to express in my first post in this thread, we're a diverse bunch of indivudals who may not be as automatically accepting of matters magical as it might first appear.

Possibly the difference between The Temple and some other areas of the the board is that one is encouraged to take one's own experience as touchstone? Practise first, adn talk from that perspective. In my experience, this imbues a healthy skepticism both towards OTT claims about spiritual mastery but also, weirdly enough, skepticism iteself.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:55 / 18.01.06
Dirty ho points out that one fairly rarely finds people wondering if music or comic books exist, which is certainly true, but perhaps there is something within the Temple, irrespective of whether people are affecting the world through magic, changing their lives through faith in magic or whatever. Let's call it "the magical experience", for want of a better term, which we might compare to the experience of being deeply moved by a piece of music. In a way, a lot of the Temple is scholia to the magical experience - for example, the thread of Money $hot's in which either actual immanent deities have turned up or somebody has taken DMT and seen elves, or both. Therre is, however, certainly something there to talk about.

As for the forum... I tend to think of it as rather like the comic Books forum in some ways. It contains some of what I am reliably informed is the best discussion on the Internet on the subject. It attracts people who might not actually be terribly interested in many of the other things that people talk about on Barbelith. Also, and by no means least, it acts as a kind of dust filter, soaking up the contributions of some people who would otherwise perhaps spread into other fora. That's possibly a good thing and a bad thing.

I'm not sure about "ghetto", but I do think that it is in a way the opposite of the Policy - regular posters to the Policy usually have experience of posting in lots of other areas of Barbelith - it's a pretty meta forum. The temple, conversely, might be the only bit of Barbelith you have any interest in - certainly lots of applications to the board seem to be focused around the applicant's status as a chaote or pagan. This also means that sometimes the focus operates in ways that I think would be challenged more quickly and/or more effectively elsehwere. qv again Comic Books - as has been exhumed in Policy lately, if you are interested primarily in superheroes, you might find a discussion about whether it's OK to call gypsies stinky an unwelcome diversion from the important stuff. by the same token, we've had problems with objections from the Temple to the effect that it does not signify that this discussion of the Gematria keeps involving anti-Semitic slurs - the important thing is talking about the Gematria.

However, such is by no means unique to or consistent in the Temple, and fortunately the corrective mechanisms of the board to tend to kick in at some point...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:59 / 18.01.06
It's the "at some point" that bothers me. I think that Fetchgate is a good example: it took a while for the weapons array to warm up, and there was plenty of postmortem hand-wringing from those posters who seem to believe that the Z-List is the acme of all magical discourse.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:07 / 18.01.06
I don't particularly like the notion that the Temple is a safe space for anything. I've always tried my hardest to make it a fucking difficult, challenging place for any perspectives that I happen to find problematic or poorly considered. Hence the "psychic vampire" thread. It's not a safe space where people can say "I believe I'm a vampire" and not get subjected to thorough criticism and scepticism about the value of that belief and its implications. It is not a safe space where people can claim that masturbating over a little drawing is a fool proof, works every time, way of accomplishing anything you desire. It is not a safe space where people can claim an objective belief in deities without expecting to have to that belief picked apart and roasted over a hot flame - there are countless threads where diverging opinions around the nature of what we call 'deity' have been rigorously explored and its a subject that tends to rear its head every few months.

On the other hand, the Temple is essentially a place where people heavily involved in the various practices commonly and sometimes misleading grouped under the homogenous title of "magic" can discuss those activities, enjoy informed debate about the shared interest, and compare notes. You will find threads where, say, a belief that the I Ching can give meaningful advice appears to be taken as a given. Largely, this is because it is difficult to have a sophisticated conversation about the technical specifics of divination if you don't at some stage get beyond the debate over whether it is "real". In many cases, you are looking at a conversation between people who have both proven to their own personal satisfaction that a practice has inherent value - and want to talk about the complexity of the subject without constant reference to the hypothetical concerns of a sceptical observer who has no prior knowledge of the subject other than the thread. I can see how that sort of thread can appear intimidating or look like a "safe space", but more often than not its just a conversation between two or more people with specialist knowledge and similar experiences who want to discuss the finer points of a subject.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:20 / 18.01.06
Temple is like any other forum on Barbelith, with the possible exception of Conversation. If you want to get involved in a thread then you shouldn't expect to get your hand held if someone disagrees with your point of view. I don't feel that disbelief/cynicism with regards to magic should impede anyone from posting on there. However, you need to make sure that your posts are contributing something more than a "Scully Reflex".

There are plenty of patient, nice people on Temple who'll happily explain magic to those unfamiler with it. Just as there are those who'll be downright obscure and unhelpful with their answers. It's no different to the other forums. But I've never had anyone tell me I shouldn't be there simply because I don't believe in magic. You just have to make sure you bring your "A" game if you're going to start trying to match other people's beliefs with your own.

On a side-point, Temple's not the only one that suffers from relevant posts going on other forums. Lots of threads I'd argue are more Lab-worthy end up on Conversation or Head, hell there was a bird-flu thread on Switchboard. But Barbelith's a fairly liquid place at the best of times, you need to do a bit of data mining to find the good stuff.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:36 / 18.01.06
There are plenty of patient, nice people on Temple who'll happily explain magic to those unfamiler with it. Just as there are those who'll be downright obscure and unhelpful with their answers.

I believe firmly in clarity of communication regarding magic and have increasingly little patience with obfuscation. However, I will admit that it's not always easy to put yourself in the shoes of someone coming to all this completely fresh. I've had a similar problem in the past when I've tried to talk to someone about an electronics project, and have blithely forgotten that not everyone can e.g. read a circuit diagram.
 
  

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