T H E   P R I M A L S  
      In time before time, in the mists of human memory, things were very different.  Spirits walked the earth in forms glorious and terrible, and we humans walked in harmony with the songs of nature and the cycles of the earth.  Among us were the few, the children of gods or demons, the wise women and men who knew the speech of the spirits and healed the flaws of the flesh.  Call them shaman, or Wyck, or fey, or priest or priestess...they were our intermediaries, the conduit between heaven and earth.  And their tradition has been preserved throughout all the millennia, handed down especially among the "primitive" cultures in the hidden and unwanted corners of the world; though somewhat faded, the ancient ways still sing in every human soul, and the primordial essences of those ancient ones still echo in the souls of their descendants.  Perhaps the ancient, primal ways can never truly disappear so long as there are humans left on the earth, perhaps the primal song will always hum within us, no matter how deeply or how quietly.  But perhaps, just perhaps, that song is in danger, and like a dying river will shrivel and die completely unless the ancient passion-springs are once again revived, unless spirituality returns to this barren world.  Perhaps, the shamans say, we are indeed living in the end-times.  But the ancient ones will not fade without leaving the world one last, terrible, dying song.  Tremble, little ones, tremble to hear the song of your Mother's soul...
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THE ECSTATICS
"...time is made of honey, slow and sweet
and only the fools know what it means..."
 
From the Mage Forums on white-wolf.com 

      ChAoS wrote: <CULT OF ECSTACY: They want to excape from the static mundanity of  everyday life. I understand that but have trouble linking the party life to it since college  parties occur so often and all involve drinking, etc they all seem mundane and the static way  of doing things.>
         That's the thing, though -- they don't want to ESCAPE from everyday life, they want to get in DEEPER. The philosophy of ecstasy teaches that there is nothing that is not divine, nothing that is "Mundane". So there's nothing to escape from, it's just a matter of getting a better set of eyes so you can see the whole thing better. What you refer to as the "mundanity of everyday life" is, to the ecstatics, a great big stale lie that lays like a blanket over most of this glorious, beautiful, wondrous reality. And here's where I make a quip about how much ecstatics like to get under the blankets.
         As for your trouble linking the ecstatic philosophy to the college-type party life... that's a misunderstanding that is unfortunately common, a stereotyping that has resulted in a bad rep for the ecstatics in the WoD and IRL. The thing is, most of those college-partier types wouldn't have much of a chance at becoming an ecstatic -- if for no other reason than that, for the most part, they have already given up on the joy of everyday life so much that they are willing to obliviate themselves to escape it. This is anathema to everything an ecstatic embraces; they hate the philosophies of oblivion about as much as the witches do.  And you're exactly right, all those parties manage to do is heap up the stale lie of mundanity into big piles, wherein little flickers of nihilism blossom, spread, then shrink and fade back into mundanity... but this time with residual vomit and a hangover. Whee.
         Anyway, I think that the main point of ecstaticism is hey, there really aren't any limits, there's no evil to worry about, and reality is a beautiful, wonderful, exciting place. You just hafta see it for what it is, instead of what people tell you it iw, or what they want it to be. Kindof like Taoism without the Buddhism. Trust the Way, all is well, breathe you are alive, enjoy it while you've got it. Don't be a square. =)
         Hey, I forgot to add that Pan (one of the faces of the Trickster from my "witches" post) was also called the Nameless One, indicating that because he had no name, he had no true form, and while this meant he had no limits it also meant he had no discipline or structure.  And "the Nameless Ones" is a shamanic term for the Marauders.  Those who have lost thier defining borders...
 

NOTABLE ECSTATIC SOCIETIES
        Ecstatics do have a few actual vaguely structured societies, despite their scattered and disorganized nature, being the least structured of all the Primal Mages.  Their societies are invariably loose and mostly unwilling to impose restrictions or traditions on their members; they are mostly large associations of mages bound by cultural ties or similar interests.  Remember, a "Society" must be larger than a single group or cabal of mages, so though there are dozens of ecstatic pagan covens and cliques of artists, to be a Society there must be at least two or three groups that have shared a common goal and common structures for a significant amount of time.  Also, though some of these societies may have the trappings of other Primal Mages, such as the pagan Dionysians and Astartians or the shamanic Brujeria -- or they may even have similarities to entirely different Stylists, such as the Aesculapians' ties to Hermeticism -- but the uniting factor that binds the ecstatics into one group is their passionate belief in breaking out, up, away from the old and the static.  Going beyond, transcending, expanding...limitation and restriction are the only sins, experience leading to bliss is the only goal.  That is the ecstatic way.

TYPICAL ECSTATIC GATHERINGS
        Ecstatic gatherings are anything but typical.  They range from simple gatherings of hippies in the woods, to wild orgies in luxuriously decadent rooms, from debauched bath-house meetings to a few friends getting together at a local bar for drinks.  

FAMOUS ECSTATIC GATHERING-PLACES

SPHERE PARADIGMS
        The magick of the ecstatic mage is primarily focused on the concept of transcendance and experience -- tapping a primal core of power that has not been restricted by society and upbringing, and also reaching beyond oneself and one's current identity to find a transcendant self and a transcendant identity that defies time and concrete comprehension.  This concept of time's relative unimportance gives ecstatics natural affinity for the Time Sphere.  What we are now may not be what we are reaching for, but what we will be may be far more, though not if we never reach for it...we live with the limits we accept, and by accepting none, we transcend our temporal prison and achieve transcendance.

BACKGROUNDS & ABILITIES
        Dream, Music,

MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS
        unamerican -- SEE THIS SITE
        The Time-Sphere page
        The Ecstatic Paradigm
        CoE Spheres
        Drugs in Mage
        Drug Culture Throughout History
        The Kama Sutra -- The Art of Love
        Persiankitty -- Paradigm-shattering pix or mind-numbing porn? You decide... but then, that's the point, ain't it?
        A History of the Cult
        An Acolyte's Opium-Dream
        "In My World of Dreams" -- a poem by Marcus Watersoul, Durango Ecstatic and a good friend
        Anders Sandberg's Cultist Theurgy
 

PERIPHERAL ECSTATIC GROUPS

Musicians

Artists

Movements

Subcultures
 
 
 

ECSTATIC FOCI
 
 

ECSTATIC REALMS

        BALADOR
 

ECSTATIC ROTES (?)
 
 
 
 
 

THE WYCK
 
From the Mage Forums on white-wolf.com 

      ChAoS wrote: <VERBENA: All I know is that they are blood and sex.  I cannot picture a paradigm that revolves around that.>
      Well, first I'll just say that YOU are "blood and sex". Everyone is. We are all beings of animal flesh and blood, and we are all crerated through sexuality, the sacred mingling of bodily fluids. And we all have those desires and biological feelings. We don't often like to think about it, especially in these societies that are still frozen and stiff from the numbing ideas of the puritans, who told everyone that blood was dirty and foul, and that sex was evil. The very things of life, the things of which which we are made! Self-hating revulsion. Sacrilege and betrayal of oneself, characteristic of the intentional, blind march toward oblivion that those sorts of minds have always tended toward. And that is exactly what the witches are against -- oblivion. Especially oblivion of the Self, which is the seat of all that is sacred. Blood is a reminder that we are, if nothing else, animals -- meat and instinct and passion and desire. And they are fools who seek to destroy desire, who seek to transcend meat. That is PART of us, part of what and who we all are, and we diminish ourselves in calling it evil or even valueless.
      But one cannot define a paradigm simply by telling what it is against, otherwise orthodox Satanism might be something less of a joke. So what are the witches about? The divinity of Self. You hear alot about the "God and Goddess" in those airy neo-pagan circles, but I feel that the root of the issue (from which the neos take their tripe) comes down to the idea of Archetypes. Within every human being, there are five basic Archetypes, corresponding to the two "gods" and three goddesses" of pagan myth -- The Hunter/Lawgiver, the Trickster/Wild One; the Maiden/Huntress, the Mother/Nurturer, and the Crone/Initiator. When recognized, honored, purified, sacrificed to, and finally merged with, these parts of the Self can bestow great understanding and mastery of one's own life and freedom. Not to mention joy (this is where witches relate to the ecstatics and their concept of Ananda). This leads to what the Sleepers call "magick", but to most witches this is but a natural side-effect of having merged with the deities who are the heart and soul of the world.
 

NOTABLE WYCK SOCIETIES
        Witches are known for their fierce independance, and rarely form societies.  Even the fabled "covens" are more of a misleading holdover from the activities of the Hermetic Houses Thig and Ex Miscellanea in the 1800s; it is the ceremonialists who seek structured groups and who work co-operative magicks.  The witches, like many primals, prefer to work in solitude -- usually gathering with other witches no more often than every full moon, or as infrequently as every year at October's full moon.  Though their somewhat forced interaction with the ceremonialists in Europe's Dark Ages has given many witches a more ritualistic bent than they had before, they are still very much rooted in the immediate and the practical, caring less for symbolism than for what is.  Unlike the ceremonialist "witches," the Primal Wyckae prefer the dark and savage Primal Umbra to the crystalline and cerebral Astral.  Unlike the Hermetic Witches, who still need years of scholastic study and a backpack full of mystick paraphernelia to work their magick, the Primal Wyckae can work most of their magicks while naked in the middle of the wilderness.
        Keep in mind as you peruse the societies of the Wyckae that they are a notoriously reclusive and non-organized group.

THE SHAPESHIFTERS -- Ultra-dynamic, often savage.  Cunning warriors and spies.  Almost ecstatic in seeking experiences.  Instinctual, fierce, wild.  The most notable of these witches are the loosely organized Wyckae known as the Lifeweavers.

THE FATES -- Dark, spiritual, judgemental.  Prophets, secret-keepers, and guides, in touch with higher powers (dark gods, the Norns, Hecate, Lilith).  Familiar with the World Tree and the Wyck Paths.  Get on well with some Chakravanti and shamans.  The best known of these witches are the Twisters of Fate, and the death-witches known as the Aided.

THE NEO-PAGANS -- Progressive, turning the old teachings to the modern world.  Teachers, healers, social reformists.  Still use fluids, herbs, etc. as foci, still work with Primal Umbra instead of Astral, still work with passions, shadows, "wrong" things and feelings.  Get on well with most ecstatics.  The best known are the mostly American and British group known as the Moon-Seekers, who work to support the resurgence of Mythic Threads through the New Age and modern occultism.  Compare with the Ceremonialists: Ritual Witches.

THE TRADITIONALISTS -- Mostly in Europe, some in New England.  They seek to preserve the histories and old ways against change, corruption, and loss.  They avoid forming large or spread-out groups -- stick with teaching and working with their families.  Most resent the Neo-Pagan types, and many of them hate the Order of Hermes.  They focus on the past, on ancestors, traditions, histories, and ancient tales.
 

A TYPICAL WYCK GATHERING
        My Samhuine with the Wyck:
        I was backpacking through Europe, just after dropping out of college; I had just left Prague a few weeks before, and was arriving in London when I saw him.  He was small, but looked strong, dressed all sombrely in black, like he was going to a funeral.  His hair was black as coal and his eyes were green, and those eyes...they passed over me once, hardly a glance but I felt it like a shockwave.  He was a wolf in city clothing, a savage who walked among men.  I think I loved him then.  I've always been stupid about that with strangers.
        We were entering ...
 

FAMOUS WYCK GATHERING-PLACES
        Stonehenge in southern England was once a powerful place for the Wyck, a place where they went to draw upon the powerful energies tapped by the ancients, and to make contact with the land of Faerie and its strange inhabitants.
        The Black Forest in Poland is one of the oldest gathering-spots for the Wyck, its world-tree bearing the bloody marks from millennia of ritual sacrifice and celebration.

SPHERE PARADIGMS -- Primordialism & Blood-Magick
        Unlike the ecstatics, the Wyck do not pursue sexuality so much as an enjoyable experience as a life-celebrating means of reproduction, a natural enactment of the continual cycles that occur in each human, as well as in the world and the entire cosmos.  The rise and fall of the god in orgasmic release and death that fertilizes, the symbolism of the fertile woman as the earth goddess.  The sexual fluids focus the energies of life, passion, and power quite well, and the blood of a woman's menses is especially powerful.
        Blood itself carries the legacy of the Wyck, even that of Sleepers whose blood is too weak to Awaken.  As the vampires know, blood is power; to the Wyckae, every Blood Point (normal humans have 10, children 3-5, animals 1-3) counts as one point of quintessence.  Most witches use their own blood, but are not above using animal blood-sacrifice in times of need.  The blood-sacrifice of humans is used only in times of direst need -- such as when the king must die to save the land -- and only when the sacrificial party agrees to the sacrifice.

BACKGROUNDS & ABILITIES --  Spirits, Avatars, Destiny, Ascension
        Familiar -- Wyck are among the most likely mages to have familiars
        Avatar -- the Avatars of the Wyck almost always take the forms of gods and goddesses, with one Avatar sometimes manifesting as many deities.  The next most common manifestation is that of the Self, when the Avatar appears as a mirror of the mage -- sometimes older, or different in some way, but definitely as the mage.
 

MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS
        REALMS of the WYCK -- The Seasonal Realms, Annywn & Faerie, The Wyck Paths (Null Zone), Midrealm, Asatric
        THE PATHS OF THE WYCK -- mystick trails between the Otherworlds and the mortal lands.  In most places the Paths resemble rough trails worn through overgrown forests.  Thick mists shroud the surroundings, and an endless maze of branches and fog blocks out all but the faintest bit of moonlight.  In some places the Wyck Paths become moonlight itself, and rise into the air.  Most Otherworld travelers would rather cross vast distances on foot than wander these uncanny mystickal shortcuts; the journey is just too unnerving even for most magi to bear.  (See M:tSC, U:tVS Null Zone)

 

WYCK GATHERING-SPOTS

THE BLACK FOREST (POLAND, AUSTRIA, GERMANY)
        one of the oldest gathering-spots for the Wyck, its world-tree bearing the bloody marks from millennia of ritual sacrifice and celebration.

THE TOWER OF WITCHES -- in Lindheim, Germany (?)

OLD WOMAN'S MOUNTAIN -- in the Carpathians, famous for the Sabbats celebrated there

GERMAN SABBAT-MOUNTAINS -- Huiberg, Koterburg, Horselburg

ITALIAN SABBAT-MOUNTAINS -- Paterno di Bologna, Tossale di Bergamo

STONEHENGE -- in southern England was once a powerful place for the Wyck, a place where they went to draw upon the powerful energies tapped by the ancients, and to make contact with the land of Faerie and its strange inhabitants.  now controlled by the Hermetics, they allow witches to visit.
 
 
 

PERIPHERAL WYCK GROUPS

FAMILY CONSORS & ACOLYTES
        Family Consors are those who did not or could not Awaken, but have other abilities and powers that are useful to the witch.  This includes shapeshifters, hedge witches, psychics, changelings, and even simply those with a great deal of mundan skill or authority -- doctors, wealthy landowners, survivalists,
        Family acolytes are those Sleepers who know of the witch's true nature, are basically familiar with witchcraft, and do not act as vulgar witnesses.  Some traditions dictate that a male must be taught by a female, or vice versa; some say that males can only be taught by males, and females only by females.  These acolytes may eventually wind up Awakening, if the Blood is strong enough in them.  If not, they often go on to pick up at least minor abilities in hedge-witchery.
 

WYCK FOCI

BLOOD / BODILY FLUIDS
        Unlike the ecstatics, the Wyck do not pursue sexuality so much as an enjoyable experience as a life-celebrating means of reproduction, a natural enactment of the continual cycles that occur in each human, as well as in the world and the entire cosmos.  The rise and fall of the god in orgasmic release and death that fertilizes, the symbolism of the fertile woman as the earth goddess.  The sexual fluids focus the energies of life, passion, and power quite well, and the blood of a woman's menses is especially powerful.
        Blood itself carries the legacy of the Wyck, even that of Sleepers whose blood is too weak to Awaken.  As the vampires know, blood is power; to the Wyckae, every Blood Point (normal humans have 10, children 3-5, animals 1-3) counts as one point of quintessence.  Most witches use their own blood, but are not above using animal blood-sacrifice in times of need.  The blood-sacrifice of humans is used only in times of direst need -- such as when the king must die to save the land -- and only when the sacrificial party agrees to the sacrifice.

PLANTS & HERBS

WAND or STAFF
 

WYCK REALMS

        THE AUTUMN CIRCLE

        AN GIBLIN COILLE (The SPRING COTTAGE)
 

WYCK ROTES (?)

CALL THE WYLD HUNT (Spirit 3, Corr.2, Prime 3, Node)
 
 

 
WYCK LINKS:

 
 
 
THE SHAMANS
"...should I paint my face, should I pierce my skin
does that make me a pagan, sweating out my sins..."
 
 
NOTABLE SHAMANIC SOCIETIES
        The Lodge of the Gray Squirrel
        The Lodge of the Winter Wolf in Canada

TYPICAL SHAMANIC GATHERINGS
 

FAMOUS SHAMANIC GATHERING-PLACES
        The Wheels of the Heavens

SPHERE PARADIGMS -- The Umbra and Gaia
        Using Spirit for Everything

BACKGROUNDS & ABILITIES  
        Shapeshifter Blood
        Tribal Lore
        Reservation Influence
        Third World Contacts
        Nunnehi Allies

MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS
        Northsong: the Shaman's Ties with Shapeshifters
 
 
 

PERIPHERAL SHAMANIC GROUPS
 
MEDICINE SOCIETIES

TERRORIST GROUPS (AIM, etc.)
 

SHAMANIC FOCI
 
DRUMS

CRYSTALS & STONES

DRUGS

THE FEATHER
 

SHAMANIC REALMS

        THE SECOND WORLD OF THE DINE

 

SHAMANIC ROTES (?)
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

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