From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: Singin' Those Apocalypse Blues
Keywords: gloom doom magic survival
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 00:49:05 GMT

In article <lj3q67INNgrd@news.bbn.com> dhardin@bbn.com (Dawn Hardin) writes:
>In article <1992Dec17.224711.14248@u.washington.edu>, grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer) writes:
>> 
>> a) in order to make it your group is going to have to have sources of food
>> and other resources in its control that will meet its needs for the
>> indefinite future.  That doesn't mean huge stockpiles -- it means having 
>> the necessary skills to create those resources out of naturally occurring
>> raw materials.  Farming is an obvious example.  You'll want some stored
>> food, in case the processes of collapse involve changes in the weather
>> patterns sufficient to wreck your crops a couple of years running, but
>> beyond that you're going to want to concentrate on learning how to produce
>> food, not just living off an irreplaceable backlog.
>> 
>> I'm not sure why, but a lot of survivalist types seem to miss this point.
>> I've met plenty of people who are feverishly storing freeze-dried foods,
>> and plenty of others who are planning on living off the (already severely
>> stressed!) natural ecosystems of their retreat area.  Both of those are
>> variants on the same sort of consumerist thinking that played such a big 
>> role in getting us into the present mess.
>
>I agree with your point, but if I were going to make the switch from going
>to the grocery store every week to growing my own food I would want to 
>have a full year's plus an extra winter's supply of staples on hand before
>I tried it.  That first year of farming is more likely to be supplementing
>food stores, building up a seed banks, and getting mistakes out of your
>system.  Even if it all went well, you're not harvesting very much to eat
>until August or so.  Even if you have the gardening skills and the preserving
>skills making the transition to doing it for real is going to be tough.
>Especially the preserving, when you can't go to the super market for a
>year's supply of rubber rings for your canning.  
>
>A year and a half's supply of freeze dried gunk is a hell of a 
>lot of food to be stockpiling.  That alone would probably put you in  
>the "crazy survivalist" camp in the eyes of your neighbors.
>

True enough.  And you're quite correct that stored food has an important
place in this kind of planning.  Instead of waiting until you have to
depend on your farming for survival to start making your mistakes and 
figuring out how to handle a survival situation, though, why not get a head
start on it?  Start working on the gardening and preserving skills, and
so it as if it were for real -- for example, no rubber rings even though
the supermarket still stocks them.

Other than that, though, point well made.


>I've really enjoyed reading this thread and it's subthreads.  Although 
>I *was* hoping that there might be more at the end about what kind of 
>magickal skills might be useful in this situation. 


Hmm...  I'd intended to avoid the details, because the differences
between the various magical systems in use just among alt.magick people
-- let alone out there in the rest of the world -- are such that I'm
not sanguine about the chances of useful communication...

I'll give it a shot, though, in general terms.

a) invisibility and concealment.  Golden Dawn types will remember the
Neophyte formula rituals for invisibility and transformation; Regardie
had a fairly strange idea of what the latter was about, but from the
ritual (and my experience with it) it seems to be intended for the 
purposes of disguise.  *Please note* -- neither of these produces (at
least in my experience) _physical_ invisibility or transformation; 
their effect is psychological.  Nonetheless, it's remarkable.  Using
the invisibility ritual, I once walked down a street half full of
drunk teenagers who were hassling everyone in sight; I was never
approached or even, as far as I could tell, noticed.  It does give one
to wonder about the claims that the old Rosicrucians were invisible.
If this could be applied to a community, survival against potential
looters might be made much easier.

b) healing magic.  There was a thread on this a little while back,
wasn't there?  In conjunction with effective medical treatment, magic
seems to be able to speed healing of wounds to a remarkable degree.
Worth checking out.

c) fertility magic.  Last I heard, there were some magical-religious 
traditions running around which claimed to have their roots in ancient
fertility rites...  In the context of the probable ecological and climatic
problems that may accompany a collapse, this might be worth testing out
-- in conjunction with competent farming methods and lots of compost!
Ceremonial magic types might want to look into the use of the Grail
legends as a basis for rituals for the healing of the Waste Land.

d) physical amplification.  The Eastern esoteric traditions are way ahead
of us on this one; some judicious borrowing may be in order.  Chinese,
Tibetan and Hindu traditions contain some remarkable tricks for increasing
effective physical strength, speed, body heat and so on, and these might
be critical in extreme situations.

e) combat magic.  This one makes me uncomfortable as hell, but there it
is:  one of the best authenticated uses of magic is as an adjunct to
violence.  Enchant your weapons; you may not be able to make yourself a
+5 shotgun, but it would be interesting to see what effect this would
have on weapons effectiveness and on your own speed and accuracy.  There
are other options as well, but I'll leave those to anyone with more
knowledge in the field; this is anything but a specialty of mine.

No doubt there are others.  Just to ward off unnecessary flamage, though,
let me say once more that all of these are _adjuncts_ to material means,
not replacements for them!  (Are there any other Dion Fortune fans out
there?  Remember the stuff she wrote about how magical operations need
to be brought all the way down to the material level in order to function
properly?)


                                              (I sorta figure that
>I'm personally too little and wimpy and neurotic to have much hope of 
>being a decent survivalist, but it's still an interesting topic of 
>conversation.)


Well, you're obviously doing some coherent thinking about the subject,
which puts you head and shoulders above too many of the would-be 
survivalists I've met.  You may do better than you think...

-- John Michael Greer
   grimoire@u.washington.edu

Newsgroups: alt.magick