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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian,net.religion
Subject: On the Power of Arcane Symbols
Message-ID: <2002@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 27-Oct-85 23:54:32 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2002
Posted: Sun Oct 27 23:54:32 1985
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[Follow-ups to net.religion, please]

In the Christians-And-D&D discussion the question of the improper use of
religious symbols came up.  One person objected to the way much Christian
symbology is "abused" by D&D designers.  I see no reason not to extend the
discussion to other religious symbology seeing the same sort of usage.

The primary system I have played it used a number of occult techniques
within the game setting.  In particular, there were several uses of the
tarot, because a number of us were knowledgable in it.

My feeling, based on these experiences, is to treat every occultish thing as
if it were real.  In the first place, I know no way to exclude the
possibility that these things function as claimed on occaision (although I
doubt most of them).  It is reasonably well-established (I can't cite
references but they should be easily locatable) that these things have a lot
of psychological power, even such poor tools as the newspaper horoscopes.
At one time, a number of researchers substituted randomly selected
horoscopes for the normal ones in a newspaper for a period of some weeks.
Not suprisingly, the change went unnoticed; what was suprising was the
number of 'hits' the random texts produced.  I myself believe that most
oracles work in the same way.  So I treat these things with great respect;
whether or not they do invoke the supernatural, they do have power.

For the same reason, I am leery of munging religions together.  I am
somewhat of a student of Taoist thought, and a very little bit of Buddhism.
But mix-and-match religion makes my blood run cold.  The symbols of other
religions, whether they are 'true' or not, nevertheless are powerful, and
should be respected.

Charley Wingate