Sunday, May 10, 2020

An Encoded Teaching from the Garden of Eden Story

I wrote this about a year ago, but never posted it anywhere public. Figured this blog is still the best place. Hope you all enjoy it.

I was talking with a friend about the Lilith / Samael story and Lilith's other myths, and I think I might have figured out an encoded teaching from a long time ago. I'm going to present it like a logical syllogism:

Premises:
  1. Samael may be the serpent in Pardes (Eden). This might be a Christian idea, so it doesn't really matter here but it adds something extra if you believe it.
  2. Samael ("Venom of God") / Lucifer ("Lightbringer") gets punished for trying to take over heaven.
  3. If we grant that Samael and Lucifer are the same person, it's reasonable to think there's something in common between the meanings of both his names.
  4. "Venom of God" is usually understood to mean he's an angel of death, but when combined with "Lightbringer", I think what this says is that the light of truth very frequently feels like poison to someone who isn't ready to hear it. This echoes Plato's Allegory of the Cave and also Solomon's words about the price of wisdom in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes).
  5. So "Lucifer" is really "Forbidden, potentially dangerous truths". That makes the Garden of Eden story something like an alchemical manuscript.
  6. Why would such an honest being try to usurp his father's place in heaven, especially when it's that same father who made him the most beautiful being in all creation? He'd do that if, and only if, he knew his father was not competent or moral enough to rule. Angels can't help but be what they are, and he is both an angel of poison and the most powerful single angel in creation. Therefore, he is a natural Godkiller or divine assassin.
  7. With Lucifer out of the picture, God had no other beings left who could really challenge him, at least not within the Abrahamic mythos. But Lilith still defied his commandment to be subservient to her husband, and so he cursed her too. Are you starting to see how God is not much more than a metaphor for an abusive father?
  8. Lilith primarily represents mirrors (associated with death because they're covered when sitting shiva), crib death / SIDS, feminism, and dark magic.
  9. So... The angel of forbidden, potentially dangerous truths gets punished for his unsuccessful rebellion, because he cares more about his fellow angels and the humans than he cares about obeying his abusive and deranged dad. This makes him just like Abraham, who smashed his father's idols and fled his house. Sit with that a second: Lucifer is the single biblical figure who is MOST like Abraham!
  10. So if Lilith got punished for being a feminist, that makes her most like... you guessed it, Sarah, who laughed at God when he said she'd have a baby in her old age.
  11. My theory here is that the rabbis encoded this story into the various places where we found it (Talmud, Mishnah, The Alphabet of Ben Sirah, probably other places) as a magic key to unlock critical thinking and nondual thinking in the reader. How do I know this? Because God creates Adam and Ishah (Eve) without the knowledge of good and evil, meaning they are literally unable to understand why disobeying God is supposedly evil. And then once they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the text says God was afraid they would "become like us" by eating from the Tree of Life. Is that what an an infinitely loving god does? Hell no.

Conclusion:

Therefore... The true heroes of the entire story are Lilith and Lucifer.

Please fact-check me and also check my logic here. I could easily be missing something. But at minimum, this was a lot of fun for me to explore as a thought experiment. I hope you enjoy it.

I really wanted to end this post with a mic drop, but can't do that after asking to be fact-checked :(

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Jason's Delicious Whole Wheat (Gingerbread?) Challah Recipe

Some years ago, a client named Leslie was kind enough to teach me how to bake challah using standard white flour. Her recipe is both simple and wonderful. She mentioned she had experimented a bit with whole wheat flour, but the resulting bread came out more like a brick.

Since then, I've found a recipe for a whole wheat challah that worked pretty well for me. I tried it because I was low-carbing, and well on my way to becoming diabetic. But I had to modify it a bit with some of the instructions from Leslie's recipe, to get it to turn out right. Everyone seems to love it, so I'm sharing the final version here.

I'm also going to include a few optional ingredients, in case you want to make my Thanksgivvukkah gingerbread challah version from a few years ago. Yummy, but almost more of a dessert cake than a loaf of bread. If you make this version, I strongly recommend getting freshly ground ginger and cinnamon, from a store with more than one variety to choose from.

Neither version seems to brown on top the way a white flour challah would, but I promise you that's normal and doesn't affect the taste 😊

Ingredients (Both Regular Whole Wheat and Gingerbread):

4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 packets active dry quick-rise yeast
1/2 cup brown sugar (or brown sugar-Stevia blend)
Sesame seeds
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten (optional)

1/2 cup honey (or honey-Stevia blend)
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup very warm water (hot, but not so hot you can't leave your finger in it)
3 eggs

Spices for Gingerbread Challah Only: 

3 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions:
Prep time: About 2 hours
Cook time: 30 minutes
Ready in about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, salt, spices (if any), and vital wheat gluten until well mixed.

2. Make a well in the middle of the bowl. I usually use a measuring cup. Gently pour the brown sugar around the edge of the bowl, so that it sits on top of the mixture but does not fall in the middle.

3. Pour the very warm water into the middle of the bowl, add both packets of yeast, and stir gently. Allow yeast to sit in the water for 10 minutes.

4. In another bowl, stir together the honey, olive oil, water, and two of the eggs. I like to use a whisk to make sure they are well mixed.

5. Once the yeast is done soaking in the water, pour the liquid mixture you just made into the large bowl. Stir and knead it until it forms a dough.

6. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. It may also help to dust your hands with a little flour from time to time, to prevent too much dough from sticking to them.

7. Form the dough into a round shape. Lightly oil a bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn the dough over a few times to oil the surface. Cover the bowl with a cloth, and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled, about 1 hour.

8. Punch down the dough, knead it a few times to remove some of the bubbles, and cut it into 2 equal-sized pieces. Set 1 piece of dough aside under a cloth or plastic wrap to prevent drying out while you shape or braid the first loaf as desired.

9. Working on a floured surface, roll the small dough pieces into ropes about the thickness of your thumb and about 12 inches long. Ropes should be fatter in the middle and thinner at the ends. Pinch 3 ropes together at the top and braid them this way. Continue braiding, alternating sides each time, until the loaf is braided, and pinch the ends together and fold them underneath for a neat look.

10. Repeat step 9 for the other loaf. Place the braided loaves on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat. I normally use two, because this bread burns very easily on the bottom. Some people prefer parchment paper.

11. Let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 minutes. Near the stove is fine, but not on top of it. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while waiting.

12. In a small bowl, beat the last egg well. Then use a brush (or in a pinch, a spoon) to paint the top of the loaves lightly. Then sprinkle them with sesame seeds.

13. Bake for 30 minutes at 350. Best enjoyed while still warm.

Friday, June 30, 2017

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

While I'm still using this blog for personal posts, any writing intended for the public will be on Disinfo from now on. Some older pieces from Boundary Crosser are likely to appear there in revised form, also. At this moment, one of those is already live.

Thanks for your support and feedback, everybody.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Lies the Spider Told Me, Part 3: A Fable

Once there was a woman who loved her daughter very much. But it had been a long time since they spoke regularly, and she had not heard from her daughter in several months. On this particular day, she was thinking about this and feeling very sad while making her breakfast.
Just then, she noticed a spider crawling up the wall. Because the woman was a wise old witch, as many mothers are, she knew this was no ordinary spider. It was none other than Anansi, trickster, teacher, and king of all stories.
"Please, can you help me?" she asked the spider. "I'm afraid my daughter doesn't love me anymore."
"I'm always glad to listen," Anansi said. His deep baritone voice boomed comically from the tiny spider body. "What's going on?"
"Well, I haven't heard from her for a long time," lamented the woman. "She hasn't called, or written, or come by to visit me. She must not have room in her life for her old mother anymore."
"And what happened when you called her, or wrote her a letter, or stopped by her house to say hello?" Anansi asked.
The woman shook her head. "I couldn't do that. I know she doesn't want to hear me. If she did, she'd have been in touch by now."
Anansi burst out laughing. "You humans are so silly sometimes," he said.
The woman's face grew red and hot with anger. "How dare you laugh at my pain when I came to you for advice?" she shouted.
"Your pain is real," said the spider. "Now let me show you the mistake that created it. It's true that your daughter might not care about you anymore, and if so, you have my sympathy. But set aside that explanation for a moment and think of another one."
The woman pondered, and soon tears were welling up in her eyes. "How could I be so insensitive? She must be sick, or injured, or in trouble. She could even be dead!"
Anansi laughed again. "Also true, but now set that story aside and think of another."
"Hmm..." said the woman. "She could just be busy with work or her friends. She always did make too many plans..."
"Good," said Anansi. "Why else?"
The woman thought, and then suddenly smiled. "She could be in love! That's so overwhelming. Why didn't I think of that before?"
"Because you were too attached to the first story you thought of. Even though you didn't like it," Anansi replied. "Now you see the lesson. A great storyteller once said, 'Our lives become the stories that we weave.' So you must always try to spin tales that empower, tales that comfort, tales that transform not just your friends or your family or your community, but most of all yourself.
"Now go tell your daughter this story, and give her a big hug for me."

Monday, December 26, 2016

Don't Be a Serf, Be a Badass Storm God

I'd like to take a little time here to talk about some of the ways in which my beliefs have evolved over the past couple of years. Like most chaos magicians, for a long time I was in an approach-avoidance dance with belief. I considered it a useful tool, and could turn it on in a surprisingly deep way. Unfortunately, I also discovered that when the trance got deep enough, I couldn't simply turn the switch back off. Fundamentalism is a heady drug, but at this point I feel comfortable saying that with the help of doctors, family and friends, I was able to swim my way back up, get my head above water, and find my way back to shore.

Belief, I now feel, is not so much the problem by itself. It's belief without question, in other words "putting your sword down", that can be the real danger. And I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that it is the notion of worship itself that's largely the problem here. I'm going to illustrate why, by discussing the idea that we each are created in God's image and have the spark of divinity within us. To me, it seems worship is when we take that spark, externalize it, and tell ourselves we can never truly aspire to be that awesome. Partnership, in contrast, would be when we recognize it's our own higher self, and do what we can to fan the internal spark into a mighty flame. Perhaps these two modes needn't be mutually exclusive, but I find them hard to balance. And if I were to pick one, partnership would be the obvious choice. If that's a revolutionary idea, consider that Hanukkah is the most revolutionary holiday we have; it is literally about trying to retake Israel from the Syrians through terrorism / guerrilla warfare.

During one of my more loopy periods in late 2014 or early 2015, I went to the local New Age / occult bookstore Journeys of Life to look for minerals and gemstones. I knew that I was feeling out of balance, not grounded or centered enough, but wasn't sure what to do about it. In the course of finding some stones that I hoped would help to even me out, I spoke to a lovely employee about what many of their stones could be used for. I remember her saying there were certain ones best for communication with gods or spirits vertically, and others that were better for communicating horizontally; she illustrated this point with her hands.

Vertical communication would be "worship" - the other being is in a superior place, and you are below as supplicant, asking for a favor. Alternatively, in a goetic situation, you may be the one at the top, negotiating your summoned spirit into a subservient position through threats or manipulation. One need only look as far as Genesis or Exodus to see that God does this to the Hebrews / Israelites in the bible again and again. But it's important to keep in mind that every book is a product of its times. When the Jews were wandering in the desert, never knowing where their next food or shelter might come from, the idea of a strong, all-knowing, protective, even territorial father god must have been very comforting indeed. Giving such a being offerings in exchange for protection from those who must have been far worse makes some sense. But in today's world, the phrase "protection money" conjures up far less appetizing images.

Nietzsche wasn't wrong about biblical morality being slave morality. If God is an all-powerful father, then humans occupy the role of protected, permanently infantilized children. At best, the situation is comparable to domesticated dogs or cats. But can't we do better than that? We aren't wandering in the desert anymore. Today we should all be aiming at self-actualization, not mere survival. Whatever abilities we delegate to God, we are choosing not to learn ourselves. And Galileo put it best: "I am not obliged to believe that the same Creator who endowed us with sense and reason intended us to forgo their use."

Since the rise of hasidism in Europe, and likely ever since the writing of the Zohar, Judaism has had a different metaphor for communication with the divine.  Shabbat comes, and the presence of the divine visits us as the Sabbath Bride, dwelling among us, communicating with us in a horizontal way I would call "partnership". (Yes, that's a double entendre for talking face to face and also intercourse, but it's not really a secret that these two forms of communication are different variations on the same theme. It's why the bible uses the verb "to know" the way it does.) God comes around to Netflix and chill with us because we're not just good listeners, but because we're also really hot in the sack and God wants to bang us so hard. Like, he's seriously been stalking us for millennia now. We are just that cool. Being "a kingdom of priests" means God wants to whisper sweet nothings in our ears 24/7, if we feel like listening and actually have the time.

So remember, this is a partnership with a being who wants to be with you. You are not a serf or a vassal, but a treasured life partner. When that little voice in your head tells you that God is a big disapproving father figure in the sky, remember this is the voice of the Christian culture in which you live. More importantly, remember not to sell short your God-given internal divinity. You can't "sin" against your higher self, except by ignoring that it's there in the first place. Apotheosis isn't stealing anything from heaven... it's reclaiming what is rightfully yours (and freely given). And while any lover appreciates gifts, if they're sincere and well-deserved it means a lot more than some lousy obligatory socks or fountain pen. Use your talents to change the world in the most effective way you know how; there is no greater gift.

The legacy of Judaism that I love the most is that of free thought. "Two Jews, three opinions," as the saying goes. We are the people whose patriarch Abraham is held up as an example for telling God he was full of shit about Sodom and Gomorrah... and that's to say nothing of smashing his father's idols, years before. His wife Sarah laughed in God's face for saying she could have a baby at her age. In one rabbinic story, a poor illiterate man recites the alphabet instead of praying, realizing God can put the letters together to form the prayers without his help. In another, God sends an angel of death to destroy the earth, and a rabbi earns praise from heaven by abolishing the decree and threatening to curse that angel. Even outright miracles that contradict the laws of physics should not be enough to shake our conviction in what is right, the Talmud tells us.  "Israel" = "The one who wrestles with God".

We are a proud, arrogant, stiff-necked people, and if there's anything that will make us "a light to the nations" in the oncoming Trump years, it's that very quality. I daresay it's what we were chosen for. We have big mouths and we're not afraid to use them. One only has to look as far as that perennial Hanukkah favorite The Hebrew Hammer to see that we are as stereotypically famous for our ability to kvetch (complain) as for our perceived musical aptitude. Certainly this has taken commedians like Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld far. The outsider status is critical to effective satire, as Canadian and British comedians have also taught Americans for a while now. And with regard to fascism, we would seem to be the canaries in the coal mine today.

While his scholarship is sometimes a bit fast and loose, Gershon Winkler claims one possible meaning for the word "Hebrew" is "boundary-crosser". I thought it was a perfect title for a blog in which I rarely seem to hit the same topic twice. But it also inspires me to tear down useless boundaries, as you can see from posts like "A Few Words on Lawful Privilege" and "Coming Out of the Golden Apple Closet" . Sometimes repairing those broken vessels means breaking other shit. The time for poetic terrorism is now, and as Jews we must be poised to take advantage of it.

Sing, canaries.  We are keepers of important music. Sing it loud and often. Sing as if your life depended on it, because perhaps it does. Sing it out for the ones that'll hate your guts. Sing a better world into being, not because the great skydaddy told you to, but because you actually do carry a part of the wisdom we all need right now.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Golden Age Draft: Evolution of a Vision

Since the Moon went out
dire wolves have been seen about the town.
Since the Moon went out
fiery pools are opening underground.
Since the Moon went out
the ocean lost its hold over the Deep.
Since the Moon went out
the Old Blood spell now fails to turn the feet.
Since the Moon went out
there's a God and a Hell that can't believe in themselves anymore.
Since the Moon went out
what had once seemed demons dream of all they once were before.
Since the Moon went out
the Lady of the Mountain has lost control of the Wild Hunt.
Since the Moon went out
pureblood Magdalenites can do almost anything they want.
Since the Moon went out
both the Djinn and the Fae have been poised to reconquer this world.
Since the Moon went out
the Lightbringer's banners are once again being unfurled.
Since the Moon went out
it seems fear itself
might just rip our small world apart,
for the Moon's gone out
and now none may doubt
what's been concealed inside each human heart.
-Simon Zealot

When I first started working on Golden Age a few years ago, I have to admit my ideas were a bit fanboyish and one-sided. The original concept for the game came out of my passions for mythology, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and Islamic Spain (also called al-Andalus). I wanted to show a historical period in which the convivencia of Muslims, Christians and Jews created a society in which literature, art, and science flourished in a way rarely seen in European history (let alone the Middle Ages). Cordoba was the ornament of the world, featuring technologies and even tropical fruits that were unknown in the rest of Europe, and a cosmopolitan society unlike any the continent had seen since Rome. Al-Andalus was a veritable paradise of religious and cultural toleration, before such terms had even been invented. I was going to educate the world (or a few gamers at least) about interfaith dialogue and religious toleration, through the historical tale of the wonderful land in which rabbis and imams studied each other's scriptures, advancing kabbalah and Sufism rapidly in a comparatively short amount of time.

The truth, as is usually the case, turned out to be far more nuanced than the myth above. That interpretation is the one currently in vogue with most historians, but it also happens to be primarily the narrative of the minority Muslim and Jewish aristocrat and merchant classes. The Spanish Christian ("mozarab") majority's day-to-day life was far different. Much as I enjoy the poetic justice of Christian Europeans as conquered rather than conquerors, living in a society where Muslim and brown are privileged over Christian and white, the fact remains that colonialism is an ugly and destructive business, regardless of how supposedly enlightened the conquerors are. Thanks to my new coauthors, Simon Zealot and Sara Mastros, I've come to realize that this game does not have any one villain, least of all the forces of the Unformed, who are simply performing their function: un-creating things whenever they can. There is only a single villain if we define it nebulously as "the forces of patriarchy, colonization, and slavery". That definitely feels like a win for everyone.

Al-Andalus was a society constantly at war with both the Spanish expatriates to the north, and between various small kingdoms within its own borders. Certain non-Muslim groups - Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sabians - were allowed to live in their own communities, under their own sets of laws, so long as they paid a steep tax (Arabic: jizya) and did not blaspheme against Allah. Maliki legal sources are clear on the dual purpose of the jizya: to humiliate the conquered people, reminding them of their place, and to provide a means by which the Muslim elite would not need to work (or work much) to earn money. In practice, Spanish Jews had higher social standing than their Catholic neighbors, because many helped the invaders in the hope of receiving better treatment under Muslim rule.

So if Spanish Muslim society divided its citizens into faith communities and determined their rights and privileges that way, we've already covered everybody, right? Well, no. Especially in rural areas, several types of paganism still existed, primarily involving deities from the Roman, Lusitanian, and Basque pantheons. Over time, some concealed their practices within a Catholic or Sabian exterior, while others simply went deeper into hiding. Regardless of its long-standing Iberian roots, paganism was a weed to be destroyed at any cost. Muslims, Jews, and Catholics could all agree on that, so being openly pagan in medieval Spain was a death sentence. Likewise with being openly LGBT, but that hang-up is exclusive to humans; the non-physical races have little interest in legislating each other's gender or sexuality. Women did have more rights and autonomy under the Spanish Caliphate than they had under the previous regime, though still less than in pre-Roman matriarchal societies (of which only the Circle of Gibraltar survives, below).

Now we come to the supernatural elements of the game. It was always my plan to have the metaphysics and gameplay reflect Golden Age's commitment to presenting cultures in an accurate and balanced way, with a special emphasis on the need for cooperation and dialogue with those who differ from oneself, in order to survive a harsh and unforgiving universe. As one example, I decided that the water elementals of both Spain and the Middle East had long ago been transformed into blood elementals because of near-constant warfare between tribes with close blood ties. The resulting blood elementals are considered both Elementals and Undead from a mechanical perspective; when brother kills brother, even the lakes and rivers eventually begin to weep that blood. A bit heavy handed, perhaps, but my heart was in the right place.

But I had some pretty big blind spots.

While the game is highly focused on magic, I had only thought of one magical school, the Solomonic College. Intended as the precursor of 11th- and 12-century Solomonic grimoires, this school caters mainly to male Jews and Muslims, and is also willing to admit Catholic men. While women are able to join, climbing the ranks would be difficult if not impossible for them. The College's magic, on a good day, is about striking bargains with djinn, angels, and demons... but Solomonic magicians are not above binding or outright enslaving an uncooperative spirit. So despite my lofty goals, the only magical school in this game was an agent of the patriarchal, monotheistic belief that God authorized the adherents of the Abrahamic faiths to be spiritual bullies in the tradition of King Solomon / Suleiman. Need some magic? No problem - just go to the Solomonics and buy yourself a ring or a lamp with a djinn imprisoned inside. Thanks to my coauthors, we now have the older and more egalitarian (as well as historical!) Sabian Academy, practicing a syncretic form of hermeticism, as well as the Circle of Gibraltar, heirs to ancient feminine mysteries of Moon and Earth that predate language itself. Everyone knows the best midwives come from Gibraltar, but only a few still remember how far their abilities extend beyond the anatomical and the herbal.

Another blind spot: I had originally conceived this game as a high fantasy RPG mixed with a historical RPG. But at the same time, I was trying to include as much real-world magical theory as possible, for the benefit of those who might like to learn some Western occultism while they play. With the help of my new coauthors, it quickly became clear that the game couldn't be fictionalized high fantasy if I wanted it to be based on sound occult principles. At best, I'd end up with a sloppy hodgepodge of made-up silliness and historical magical systems. So we have re-conceived the game as historical magical realism: the magic is as real-world correct, in terms of historical magical practices and beliefs, as we can make it. That isn't to say the core book is primarily a book of spell recipes, but you can generally expect that the procedures and components of the included spells will have sound correspondences, research, and occult theory behind them. We have removed anachronistic elements such as the Lurianic Tree of Life and the tarot, in favor of systems that were actually used at that time, such as the seven planetary intelligences and geomancy. Instead of eight or more arbitrary types of magic, we have reduced them to four essences that echo the four classical elements: Soul (Water), Energy (Fire), Substance (Earth), and Thought (Air).

For the sake of verisimilitude, we've also removed some types of humanoids (such as fish people) and replace them with species that could have reasonably have evolved from currently-known hominid species. Hence, we now have the Okeanids, with one tribe a bit like otters and others more like walruses, whales or dolphins. They evolved this way after being driven from the land by early homo sapiens:

The legends tell that, before even the Old People came to Europe, there were people in Iberia.  As the Old Ones moved in, they pushed the First People out of their caves, to the coast.  The Old Ones were smart; their tools were sharp and strong, and they had no need to wait for fire from the sky, they could make it on their own!  Soon, the Old Ones, with their big heads and sharp knives, pushed the First People to the brink of extinction.  And so the First People entreated with the Sea, who was their Mother, to show them a new way.  And she did.  The First People retreated first to the swamps and the islands, and then into the Sea itself.  The Mother who bore us took us back into her womb, and there we thrived.  The Great Teachers, Whale, and Orca, Dolphin and Porpoise, Walrus and Seal, and Little Otter taught us the ways of the Sea.  We made pact with them, eating their flesh and communing with their spirits.  The ice retreated, and most of the Great Ones with it.  Many of our people went with them.  Here on the coasts of Spain, only Little Otter, the Mother Ocean’s beloved son, remained with us.

As written now, events only diverge from real-world history circa 950 CE, sometime after the Fateful Eclipse. This brief solar eclipse was immediately followed by a lunar eclipse that lasted three full days and nights... and the moon wasn't just in shadow, it was completely gone, inexplicably, with no individual or group claiming responsibility. This, in turn, caused problems with the tides, people's moods and sanity, and the failure of an ancient spell called the Turning of the Feet, which hid the nonhuman species from the eyes of most humans. For three days, everyone could see these "monsters" everywhere, and there was widespread panic. When the moon reappeared, most people lost this ability and returned to their normal lives, but enough found themselves unable to explain it away that interest in the various magical schools skyrocketed as everyone tried to figure out who stole the moon, and why this replacement moon didn't feel or act quite right. Each of the major species has its own story of the creation of the world, each of which hints at a different likely culprit for what happened to the moon, and different tribes or religions within those species also have their own takes on what happened, how, and why.

The Solomonic College, far from being ancient and tied to Solomon himself as I originally thought, formed in response to this crisis because "obviously" the djinn or the demons must be to blame. The Sabians and Circle of Gibraltar had their own ideas, as did the various djinn and fae tribes, and this is how things have always been. So while some djinn may have converted to Islam, as the Qu'ran and various hadith specifically address them and set forth Allah's laws as it applies to the djinn, this is far from universal. Many djinn consider Islam to be a joint plot between the humans (Mohammed) and the angels (Gabriel) to relegate the djinn to permanent second-class status. Humans are given preferential treatment over djinn in the Qu'ran, and many would be resentful or suspicious of that. Likewise, the feud between the loyalist and rebel angels has more facets than one might expect... but I don't want to give away too much right now. Certain secrets should be for your GM only, but suffice it to say this game can be solely about angelic politics if that's how your group wants to play it. And not everyone currently in heaven is a loyalist.

I have to be honest and admit that many of these changes felt threatening for me at first. This was my game, my vision, and I didn't like the idea of anyone (even close friends) coming in and totally revamping it. But what Simon and Sara saw, on joining the project, were the ways in which my first draft was in conflict with my goals. In order for the game to feel organically progressive instead of clumsily didactic, the issues that result from colonization need to play out on every level, whether we're focusing on about Arabs and Spaniards; haves and have-nots; Muslims and Christians; colonizers and natives; Abrahamics and pagans; angels, djinn, and demons; humans, spirits, and Okeanids; or Solomonics and djinn (just as a few examples). We aim to present a 360-degree view of both al-Andalus and the supernatural realms such as heaven or Jinnistan. Whatever levels of reality your game inhabits, whether you're playing a rich human city official or a great warrior of one of the faerie courts, the effects of war and conquest will be all around you, for you to engage with or ignore as you choose. The social justice elements, much like the magical theory, are now woven into the fabric of every aspect of the game, so that you can learn about them as a natural consequence of gameplay rather than having them shoved in your face. I want to thank my collaborators, Sara Mastros and Simon Zealot, for making this not just a possibility but an ongoing reality.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Wisdom From the Airwaves: Yom Kippur Edition

I've known for a few years now that while I have always loved books, I seem to absorb important moral and philosophical lessons better from media. This Yom Kippur, just as I have several times in the past, I watched the Coen Brothers' incomparable film A Serious Man. I plan to watch Atonement later, if only for the title, but A Serious Man is the only film I can really say feels like a Yom Kippur movie to me. Even though the holiday doesn't appear in the movie, I see new levels of its take on personal responsibility, sin, and repentance every time I watch it. As I was loading it up in Plex, I noticed it was billed as a black comedy, but I think of it as a morality play blending Job-like suffering with an understanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

To explain why, I'll also need to talk a little about two specific episodes of the show Six Feet Under. Perfect Circles and All Alone . Actually, I don't need to talk about them all that much. All I need to say is that when taken together, Nate from Six Feet Under is undergoing the same exact trial as Lawrence Gopnik does in A Serious Man. Both men fail and are punished. Nate's trial is about overcoming his pattern of betraying the women he loves and seeking greener pastures after a certain amount of time, while Lawrence's concerns the ethical dilemma of accepting a bribe from a failing student. And in both cases, he tells us about the Uncertainty Principle in his own words, so that when we find out he is going to die, we realize he was the cat in the box all along.

The terrifying part of this usage of the Uncertainty Principle is when one realizes that God is the thing with the power not just to give you cancer, but to decide immediately that the already-tested growth is going to be cancerous, at the exact moment when you decide to accept the bribe and change the student's grade. It is not a coincidence that the phone rings immediately after Larry erases the F and writes a C- in its place. Just as it is not a coincidence that after years of vacillating about his career and cheating on one wife, Nate Fisher dies right after he makes the choice to cheat on his pregnant new wife. Either we we repent, or we may not be sealed in the Book of Life for the year to come. This is the narrative of both characters, with the added tension from the Uncertainty Principle being used to point out that we never know at what point God might judge us unworthy and yank our life away.

Much as I would like to launch into my usual rant about how God as a critical parent figure judging us from the sky infantilizes people and prevents them from truly taking responsibility for their lives, today I am religiously obligated to be more introspective than that, and I do consider this day potentially valuable. I can see how for a certain kind of mind, the idea of being accountable to a cosmic being feels more urgent than trying to become a better person just for oneself and one's friends or family. I understand it because I used to be that guy. But I also think the message of the holiday is encoded in the usually communal nature of our confession of sin: it is a time about reconnecting to your loved ones, making amends for whatever you've done that hurt them, and most importantly, for breaking destructive patterns that are harming yourself as well.

In that spirit, I wish everyone a helpful day of introspection about whatever it is you regret from the past, especially the past year. I know that I can be dismissive, pretentious, or honestly just mean at times. I take people for granted, and I'm awful at keeping in touch, even with the people I'd like to see more often. If I have done anything in the past year, deliberately or unintentionally, that caused you to feel hurt, unloved, unimportant, or like I wasn't really your friend, please accept my sincere apologies. Maybe I was preoccupied with something that seemed more important at the time, or maybe I was sincerely being an ass. Perhaps we could talk about it if you're so inclined.

A rabbi once compared today to a car wash: better to set aside some time for washing yourself off and cleaning up your messes, than to wait so long that the grime becomes caked on and it's nigh-impossible to make a dent in it. It's not even noon yet, and already I have a long list of issues and regrets to work on with my therapist. That is invaluable, and nontraditional as my observance of the holiday may be, it is still tradition that gave me access to the list. I have long struggled with the concept of "sin", as the older I got, the more I began to see it as beating oneself up with self-imposed guilt. Repentance is the important bit, and repentance is nothing more than the moment in which we decide whatever we did was a bad decision and we aren't going to do it again. That's all: just be more awesome this year than last year.

I wish you all an easy fast if you are fasting, a sweet New Year, and many useful insights on this Day of Introspection.