Alternative Traditions Origins

[Ramnesis]

This is an idea I’ve been churning around since this thread: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...tive-hermetics

The history of the Traditions is quite a mess. They were written first and foremost as basic magical archetypes, like wizard or cleric, put through a 20^th century lens and then crammed into a history they didn’t fit into. Very often the history itself breaks suspension of disbelief.

So my plan is to reimagine some or all of the Traditions with more plausible origins that, if it doesn’t mesh with actual history, at least meshes with a believable magical history.

As I see it, the Traditions have the following problems:

• The Dreamspeakers are a diverse group with little in common dumped into a single group by outsiders who did not understand or value them. Those not under direct threat from the Technocracy had little reason to play along and those who were had little reason to trust the Traditions.
• The CoX has the same problem as the Dreamspeakers just without the overt in-game racism. Someone just shows up and a large number of mages from extremely diverse origins just fall in line.
• The Verbena, The Chorus, and The Akashics bypass the diverse culture problem by invoking ancient aliens. The practices of some conveniently placed cultures and groups are remnants of ancients. The practices of the Wyck and Mt Meru respectively are watered down among the cultures these Traditions represent so that Mages can follow the ‘true’ way.
• The Chorus especially shows the dangers of the approach. The common history here is an extremely niche 20^th century Theosophical society backdated 4000 years. This society was present in, and even influential in the propagation of monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam despite being completely incompatible with them.
• The Order of Hermes is a fictional society from another game grafted into history and given too much development so they could bring in certain game ideas.
• The remaining three don’t need as much work. I’m not in a position to say with the Chakravanti, but they’ve gotten a lot of work over the years and I rarely see them brought up in rewrite discussions. Meanwhile, the Etherites and the Virtual Adepts are much more modern Traditions..

[Ramnesis]

Thoughts on approach:

• Most Traditions face two opposing challenges. They need to offer a way to play a generic archetype like witch or cleric, and they need to not be completely offensive to the cultures they relate to. You shouldn’t have to have a degree in anthropology of theology to play, but if you are an actual believer you shouldn’t run screaming. That means that any argument that a Tradition understands the secret truth that real world practitioners are blind to is a nonstarter (looking at you Chorus). Some Traditions may still not represent the cultures they take inspiration from, but if so, there should be an in game reason.

• This is a magical world, and as such it is reasonable for it to be more fantastical than our own. Where possible each Tradition will mention secret parts of history. These serve to make the world stranger, show what was lost, offer fictional cultures players could be a part of, and sometimes justify significant changes to the faction or setting. The presumption is these strange histories were largely purged by the Technocracy in later years.

• Also, most of the Traditions should have some prior experience with at least one of the Conventions. That gives them more incentive to join and more to bring to the table. This stretches out the conflict that became the Ascension war so that the struggle started before either faction fully formed. The exception to this is the two Traditions that were created by the Traditions.

• This is going to change many of the more ‘gamey’ elements that were in the founding of the Traditions. Things like each Tradition representing a sphere, or nine initial seats for numerology reasons, or a common understanding that everyone is a Mage aren’t really.

[Ramnesis]

Note: Names in [brackets] are placeholders for Conventions and other names that may be changed later. The [Craftmasons] especially need a more academic name.


The Hermetic Schools


The Problem:

The Order of Hermes is the prime example of 20th century ideas backdated and arbitrarily plopped into history. They get away with it more because they are introducing something rather than replacing it.

Goals:

• A Tradition for high ritual magic, arcane lore, scholarship, and knowledge
• Predates the Traditions as an organization
• Still involved with the discovery of subjective reality
• Still brings forth the idea of will

The Idea:

The wizard, the wise old scholar who dredges magical knowledge from dusty and arcane tomes, was born of the scholars that rooted through monastic libraries for old roman texts. The wizard Tradition, then, will lean into that.

The Rewrite:

The Hermetics are not the continuation of ancient knowledge cults, but the inheritors of them. They arose in the tangled time following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In the wake of that fall, much of the knowledge and writings were left in disarray in monasteries and private libraries. The scholars and lords who poured over old Roman texts found a treasure trove of knowledge, both mundane and magical.

What started as an informal network of scholars grew into an association. Scribes who could read and write the lost languages joined, bringing their own lost traditions with them. Using willpower and more than a little desperation these seekers hammered away at an ecclectic mix of secrets, lore, mathematics, and traditions until they wrested understanding away. Schools and competing philosophies were born and named around prominent Mages or philosophers. This knowledge spread across Europe and by the 1100s it was taught in universities. Many a young lord or merchant’s child received at least a partial education in the arts, while a smaller group of lords and prodigies continued on to master the harder levels that required something extra. This is very much like the spread of knowledge in our world and that’s no accident because this is also part of the history of the Technocracy.

Within the Schools there was always a divide between those who were interested in what the hidden knowledge meant and those who were only interested in what it could do. The pragmatist schools leaned towards philosophies that were easier to use and more reliable, whereas the hermetic schools leaned more towards the philosophies that required special enlightened understanding or will. In the days before Paradox the Hermetics had the edge in power and visibility, while the pragmatics had the edge in numbers and understandability.

That changed with the discovery of the consensus. While the Hermetics initially saw it as an idle curiosity a few members of the School of [Craftmasons] saw an opportunity. Using well timed challenges and coups they were able to unseat and disgrace their opponents in the public sphere. The next few decades saw a steady purge of Hermetics from positions of power and education. When they rallied and started to use their connections and secret societies to turn the tide, the [Craftmasons] and the [Celestial Masters] took their knowledge of the consensus to the [Gabrielites] and the [Explorators] and the Order of Reason was born.

The Secret History:

Prior to the founding of the Order, Europe was a much more magical place with various studies of magic and mystery taught in university or passed around in everyday life. The Technocracy has expunged much of this from history, though bits of it remain.

Magical universities remain, though they are pared down and understaffed.

Changes:

The main change here is that the Hermetic Schools are not an organized alliance of mages with a specific character, but a network of mage scholars with a similar approach. They do not bring in the Sphere system as that has little to do with learning the hermetic arts. They also don’t pigheadedly insist on nine chairs for the council. They do bring in a parlance built for describing magic, even the magic they don’t understand, and that language does spread throughout the Traditions over time. The benefits of taking the minutes.

They probably do still bring Certamen in, at least in some form. University professors used to have to defend their positions against challengers in their respective fields. Mathematicians would have mathematics duels. Mages would have magic duels.

The Hermetics thoughts on Will come from the approaches they needed to take to get various incompatible styles of magic to work together.

[21C Hermit]

I fiddled with replacing the Dreamspeakers with the Scions of the Sky, a Mongolian cult of Tengri turned alliance of East Asian shamans turned coalition of several cultural cults worshipping a Sky Father/ Storm Master figure. They (well, the then-Craft that would become today’s Tradition’s center) contacted Europe’s Crafts/Traditions via the Mongol Empire, which is why older Eurocentric Traditions are still wary of them.

Which kinda leaves the original Dreamspeakers in the cold. I guess some Scion in-universe could’ve just shrugged and said the Rainbow Serpent counts as a Sky God too, and invited them over.

[Ramnesis]

The Verbena

The Problem:

The Verbena are one of those Traditions that try to have it both ways. They are both connected to real world pagan cultures, and they are more generic witches. The secret Wyck origins are used as a justification, but in many ways that makes things worse.

Goals:

• A tradition for folklore and a witchcraft aesthetic.
• To give a reason why they don’t need to fully embrace a culture.
• Give them a history with other factions and a reason to work with the Traditions.

The Idea:

The Verbena have connections to real world cultures, but they mostly weren’t practitioners of them. Instead they were born from countless other traditions that were forced together and then banished to the edges.

The Rewrite:

Much like the Hermetics, the Verbena were a makeshift mix of various cultures and lore. This mix was created partially as Rome mixed and merged the various cultures of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. This didn’t just spread the traditions and lores across the world, it spread their mythologies, monsters, and pantheons. When those practices were then pushed to the edges during the Christianization of Europe, so were the monsters and gods. With the fall of the Empire the people of Europe had to deal with those problems. Between barbarians, monsters, and other phenomenon it was a European Wild West.

The Verbena were born of that struggle. They tended to the isolated communities, played the forces against each other, forged alliances with some entities, appeased others, and drove still others out. Theirs was Hellenistic mix of cultures and their practice was a mix of mythology, folklore, and whatever works.

Also born of that struggle was one of the wings of the future Order of Reason. The Verbena weren’t the only group of Mages trying to deal with the situation, the Church was there too. The relationship between the two was strained at best. Sometimes they could work together for a common goal, other times they were at cross purposes.

Still, if the Verbena’s relationship with the Church was rocky, their relationship with the [Gabrielites], an overzealous alliance of monster hunters and witchfinders, was openly hostile. The two factions clashed regularly over how to handle the challenges of the wildlands, with the zealot’s assuming the worst of the witches. For a time the strange geography of the wildlands and lack of logistical support kept the [Gabrielites] from making much headway, but that changed when they allied with the [Explorators]. The two quickly discovered that mapping the wildlands solidified them and sometimes even closed off pathways forever.*

*This mapping idea doesn’t show up much in modern Mage outside of the Umbra, but if I remember correctly it was part of the struggle of Sorcerer's Crusade. At the very least SC indicated that the world was far less linear, so I think the idea works here.

Bolstered by this, the [Gabrielites] pushed the chaos and the Verbena back both logistically and metaphysically. Indeed, the Verbena would have faded into obscurity if the [Gabrielites] didn’t push too far and accidentally make a city 'disappear'. That made the Hermetics and Church take notice.

The Secret History:

The Medieval Period was a truly dark and mythological time. In addition to the various mortal barbarian invasions there were also more supernatural invasions as well as Fae, monsters, and pagan gods that preyed on people. The cities were largely unaffected, but much of the countryside was. For lack of a better term I am referring to the troubled areas as the Wildlands.

The Changes:

The Verbena were at best a loose confederation of mages prior to their conflicts with the [Gabrielites]. They don’t have a secret history tying them to the Wyck, thought that idea might develop later.

At the time the Traditions formed the Verbena were not tightly tied to any one culture. In later generations other Crafts would join with the Verbena and bring their practices and beliefs with them.

[Ramnesis]

I fiddled with replacing the Dreamspeakers with the Scions of the Sky, a Mongolian cult of Tengri turned alliance of East Asian shamans turned coalition of several cultural cults worshipping a Sky Father/ Storm Master figure. They (well, the then-Craft that would become today’s Tradition’s center) contacted Europe’s Crafts/Traditions via the Mongol Empire, which is why older Eurocentric Traditions are still wary of them.

Which kinda leaves the original Dreamspeakers in the cold. I guess some Scion in-universe could’ve just shrugged and said the Rainbow Serpent counts as a Sky God too, and invited them over.

The Dreamspeakers are next on my list. I was initially thinking of breaking them into several smaller Traditions the size of what you created. For game purposes it is too clunky, though, so I took a different angle.

[Astromancer]

The problem you're facing is that to realistically handle the traditions you'd need a council of nine hundred. Mystic and magical traditions were small and local. An attitude I've seen in real world magical practitioners would be common to most of the WoD. Basically, if you are in my tradition, you are a magic worker, if not, you are an evil witch.

I've seen that viewpoint expressed by occult practitioners in live interviews of Haitian VouDou priestesses, Dine shamans, and shamans from Borneo. I've read it in interviews of magical practicianers from every inhabited continent and island chain. Any "realistic" Mage game would be about the Technocracy mopping up the remnants of older crafts.

I like what you've written, but the problem is like bailing out the sea with a sieve.

[Ramnesis]

The problem you're facing is that to realistically handle the traditions you'd need a council of nine hundred. Mystic and magical traditions were small and local. An attitude I've seen in real world magical practitioners would be common to most of the WoD. Basically, if you are in my tradition, you are a magic worker, if not, you are an evil witch.

My issue is less perfect realism and more a history that is at least somewhat believable in the context of a magical world.

Fractiousness and enmity is a big problem, but there are ways of overcoming it. Mage tried to address that issue in two ways, by appealing to common enemies and by appealing to fictional secret societies. The former was a good play, the latter was less so. It gave common ground for the Tradition but often divorced it from the real world cultural roots, sometimes to comedically offensive effect. It solved one problem but caused a much bigger one.

One thing I am not assuming, though, is that there are only nine seats on the council. I'm not giving it much wordcount because I've already said the number of seats doesn't matter, but it is quite possible that several of these Traditions are actually a shorthand for a cluster of traditions.

Of course having said that, the next two Traditions are the only ones I wrote with seats in mind. Figures.

[Ramnesis]

The Spiritwalkers and the Seers

The Problem:

The Dreamspeakers are massively disparate groups with no fictional proto-organizations or paradigmatic commonalities to speak of. Their existence as a single Tradition is largely inflicted by outside chauvinism. There’s little to no reason they would accept these conditions.

The CoX are similarly disparate but sort of come together anyways.

Goals:

• To give a reason for the existence of these Traditions as singular Traditions
• To allow for culturally appropriate practices
• To allow for completely fictitious cultural practices.

The Idea:

There’s nothing in our world that could unify such disparate groups, but there are certain things that are true (or we can assume are true) about the WoD. Shared experience with the Middle Umbra and with the future is the path forward here.

The Rewrite:

These Traditions were not made as dumping grounds for ‘primitive’ cultures, but for political and strategic reasons.

One thing the newly minted Order of Reason did not have was access to the Middle Umbra. Skill in navigating it and negotiating with its denizens was (and in some ways remains) a powerful advantage. So an Order of Spirit was made and offered to those Mages who were specialists. The Hermetics, Verbena, and Batini initially thought they’d be the ones contributing the most members to these ‘Spiritwalkers*’ but soon found themselves outnumbered by Mages from animistic cultures.

*The name does imply that the Middle Umbra is spirit related while the High Umbra the rest of mages gravitate towards is something else. I'm open to suggestions here.

Conversely the predictions of the [Celestial Masters] gave the Order of Reason a powerful advantage and the Order of Foresight was set up to collect Mages to counter that. The first members mostly came from the Verbena and the Chakravanti but there are augury traditions worldwide and the ‘Seers’ were quickly as diverse as the Spiritwalkers.

Part of the reason that they were so populous was Order of Reason. Smaller cultures were the most vulnerable to either complete destruction, conversion, or being written off the map. Many were lost, never to be seen again (or live on only in Horizon Realms). In many cases their magic practitioners were lost along with them, but those who could see the future and those who could navigate the Spirit Wilds were much more likely to survive and find their way back. Those survivors joined the Traditions in numbers and quickly found a place in the two Orders.

Neither Order ever had much in the way of cultural coherency but shared experiences (both magical experiences and OoR atrocity) usually gave them enough common ground to work together.

These two Orders held a strange place on the Council. While they quickly came to outnumber most other Traditions, they were not officially recognized as such for some time. Nevertheless, they did have full representation on the Council, leading many smaller Crafts denied that privilege to either join or leave the Traditions entirely. Certain prominent lineages within the two joined at this point.



The Secret History:
In the early days of the Ascension war there were many places and societies that could only be reached in specific ways, and even after cultures were ‘lost’ it was still possible to find them for a time in distant pockets of reality.


Changes:
These two Traditions are the only ones in my rewrite that are strongly related to a Sphere.

This origin change doesn’t strip the racism out of Traditions history, merely displaces it. Many other Traditions mages would still make rash assumptions about the talents of ‘primitive’ cultures, as many of those cultures would end up in the Spiritwalkers or the Seers. Unfortunately, this was less confirmation bias and more survivor bias.

Many of the early members belonged to cultures that no longer exist. They were either wiped our or mapped out of the world. Because of that, there are practices and lineages within both Traditions that do not track with any real-world culture.

These two Orders are not the only ones made for political and strategic purposes, but few proved as enduring. One potential example: If the Wu Lung are a part of the early OoR, a chair might have been made for European Alchemy to bring mages together to combat them. The members would primarily come from the Hermetic Schools, and the Tradition would largely be a failure. That would be one way of handling the Solificati.

[Ramnesis]

The Chorus

The Problem:

By sheer numbers, Catholic and Muslim paradigms should outnumber just about everyone else. Instead, the main monotheistic Tradition is dominated by a fringe group that rejects just about everything either religion believes. The group is also sometimes considered responsible for things done in the name of Christianity despite not being beholden to Christianity.


Notes:

I’m using The Church as shorthand for the Catholic Church because the struggle described in this section is largely taking place in Europe.

Goals:

The Celestial Chorus needs to have a place for two kinds of characters. It needs to have room for Mages with a more traditional monotheistic paradigm and it needs to have room for Mages who see the "real truth" behind those religions. Verisimilitude requires the first group, but many players (particularly those who’ve had bad experiences with Christianity) need the option of the latter. In typical 90s fashion the Chorus was written with the latter in mind. There was no need to choose, though.

• Write the Chorus as an ecumenical alliance
• Keep the meta-religion but reduce its impact
• Make sure the Chorus doesn’t dominate the Traditions
• Sideline the most influential faction of mages in Europe until the Order of Reason has momentum.

The Rewrite:

The single biggest change here is that the Chorus is not a secret meta religion hiding within real religions. That is far to niche an idea to be a unifying thread for the Tradition. Instead, the Chorus is precisely what it needs to be for Modern Mage: an ecumenical alliance of religious Mages that work together for protection. That's how they formed in the face of the Order of Reason and that is what they are now.

As for the Meta-Religion, instead of originating in 2000 BC, it originates around 100 BC as a fictional mix of gnostic and other contemporary groups. It never claimed to be a true religion but sought for a truth that it claimed other religions pointed towards. Finally, it never hid itself in other religions but would just be a group of fringe scholars with strange ideas that never claimed to be Christian, Muslim, etc. This gives these Seekers a connection and character that ties them in with the history of modern Monotheism without putting them in the driver’s seat.

The Chorus was one of the last Traditions to fully to come together in its modern form. The Seekers, unused to being in the direct crosshairs of the [Gabrielites], joined almost immediately and spread the word as wide as they could, quickly bringing in heretical groups of Christians and the Jewish mages of Europe. The response of the more mainstream Christian mages was mixed. Many, shocked at the disappearance of a city, offered aid and counsel but only a smaller number joined. Those within the hierarchy of the Church condemned the actions of the [Gabrielites] but would not support the Traditions. The [Gabrielites] were still believers, or so they thought, and should be brought to heel not fought. They underestimated the [Gabrielites]’s zealotry, they underestimated it’s influence within the Church, and they underestimated the tools the other Conventions could bring to bear.

The [Gabrielites] responded badly. They used their influence in the Church to try to embed their own views within the Church and get all sorcery declared as heresy (see the Malleus Maleficarum). When their theology was condemned by the Inquisition (yes, really. See the Malleus Maleficarum), they had their allies use the new media (the printing press) to fan the flames of division within the Church*, turning an internal dispute into the Protestant Reformation. That schism caused shockwaves through Europe, both politically and metaphysically, causing war and outbreaks of paranormal and demonic activity.

*The [Gabrielites] did not cause the dispute. It was already there.

The [Gabrielites] made gains with the people during this chaotic time, but they also tipped their hand. Though Catholic and Protestant mages still squabbled with each other, they saw the [Gabrielites] as a true threat and joined the Chorus in droves. This may have been the first misstep that eventually led to the ousting of the [Gabrielites] from the Order. Even so, the largest faction of Mages was sidelined before they could put a stop to the Order of Reason. By the time they did organize the Order had a foothold.

The Secret History:

There’s a time of metaphysical instability around the Reformation, with lots of strange activity, some demonic, some not. It would last for at least a century. Whether it was caused by the consensus, the weakening of the Church, or opportunistic Nephandi is not clear.

There is a real-world legend that Martin Luther once banished a demon by dropping his trousers and showing off his butt and I thought it fitting to play into that. Whether it is true in real life or not, it definitely happened in the WoD.

Changes:

Without a 4000 year old cult to bring forward the ideas of the Pure Ones, there are no Pure Ones in Traditions lore. That’s not a terrible loss. The Chorus also won’t bring in the idea of Avatars, so that will have to come from elsewhere if it comes in at all.

The Chorus does not have a faith over dogma policy. That makes no sense in Mage. It does have a 'don't actively fight each other' policy.

I’ve largely left Islam out of this story. Muslim mages were present in the early Chorus, but I suspect that far more of them joined the Batini. They only started joining the Chorus in numbers when the Batini receded.

I don’t actually have a reason to call them the Celestial Chorus, I just don’t have a better name.

[Ramnesis]

Fair warning, this last one is less detailed because I’m not the best person to tackle it. The Akashics don’t lend themselves to a syncretic origin like the Hermetics or Verbena. They need to be handled like the Chorus, with a history that ties into the culture and religions they draw from. I don’t have enough familiarity to do that. These are just my initial thoughts on how I might approach the issue.

If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to suggest them.


The [Akashics]

The Problem:

The [Akashics] suffer from a similar problem to the Chorus. They are a Tradition tied into real religions but instead represented by the Theosophical Society. The Akashic Records themselves are an idea from Theosophy. So, similarly to the Chorus, the [Akashics] are a group of warrior monks that are closer to the truth than the cultures they take inspiration from. I don’t know if the Mt Meru backstory conflicts with real faiths and philosophies as much as the Chorus’ does, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

The Goal:

• Keep the Warrior Monk and ascetic aesthetics
• Make it possible to play a practicing Buddhist member of the Tradition

The Rewrite Idea:
I am the wrong person to try to pull this one together. My inclination, though, is to dump the Mt Meru storyline, strip the obviously Theosophical elements (including the name) from the Akashic Record, but keep at least some of the idea of inherited memory and wisdom from the cycle of reincarnation to provide a common thread for otherwise disparate groups. This wouldn’t unify the tradition per se, but it would give them a longer shared history.

I’d keep the struggle between the [Akashics] and the Chakravanti, but scale it back to more of a generational philosophical feud rather than anything that tipped into full scale war. There’s nothing wrong with a full scale war, it just implies more organization than I think would be present. I’d also lean on the enmity between the [Akashics] and the [Wu Lung]. That sets the stage for the [Wu Lung] to join with the Order and instigate the [Akashics] to join the Traditions. It’s not a great fit, honestly, but the Order has certain things the [Wu Lung] want so they will play along for a while.

The Secret History:

TBD

Changes:

Without the Akashic Record, the [Akashics] really need another name.

The [Akashics] (along with the Chakravanti) are the right Tradition to bring in the idea of Avatars.

None of the Traditions has reason to think that all mages are the same kind of thing. The only real hint is that the Hermetics have been able to strongarm bits of other Traditions into their magics, and that’s not enough to push forward the idea. If that idea is to come in, then, it will happen because the Order is brainwashing people into other paradigms. The [Wu Lung] might be the ones to figure that out, though that has less to do with who they are and more to do with convenience.

[Ramnesis]

I haven't really touched the Batini, partly for the same reasons I didn't do much with the Akashics. I don't have a plan for them, but I do have a few comments:

1) Having them accept Islam as the creator advancing the peace they were supposed to advance was a clever idea. I can't speak to the theological accuracy, but it neatly sidesteps the idea that the religion is a lesser understanding of the truth.

2) I don't think they need to start as a hybridization of Akashics and CoX (I think it was CoX), but if they are it is a good reason to handle them as a syncretic Tradition like the Hermetics or Verbena

[Michael]

1) Having them accept Islam as the creator advancing the peace they were supposed to advance was a clever idea. I can't speak to the theological accuracy, but it neatly sidesteps the idea that the religion is a lesser understanding of the truth.

I think this speaks to a problem with trying to make the Traditions 'less offensive'. A lot of occultism just is quite offensive by its very nature. Like, the very name Batini is a reference to the idea that there are esoteric aspects to Islam that outsiders simply don't get. Equally, the Batini draw on Aristotelean conceptions of religion that historically were defined by a sort of two-tiered understanding of religion; that there's the true religion that only philosophers understand, and then the popular religion that the masses have.

[Ramnesis]

I think this speaks to a problem with trying to make the Traditions 'less offensive'. A lot of occultism just is quite offensive by its very nature. Like, the very name Batini is a reference to the idea that there are esoteric aspects to Islam that outsiders simply don't get. Equally, the Batini draw on Aristotelean conceptions of religion that historically were defined by a sort of two-tiered understanding of religion; that there's the true religion that only philosophers understand, and then the popular religion that the masses have.

That was one of the difficulties I had in the rewrites, yes. To be clear, there's nothing wrong with saying Mages understand their religion better than sleepers. As you say, philosophers and theologians often have a deeper understanding of their religion than laypeople but, provided the laypeople are properly versed in their own religion, it shouldn't be a contradictory one. There also isn't a problem if they conflict because the Mages aren't actually practicing the same religion or culture. Too often, though, Mage wrote Tradition History to either implicitly or explicitly contradict the cultures the Tradition represented and that was a big issue.

That's why of the five Traditions I fully tackled, two of them are syncretic conglomerations of many cultures and two of them are united by something other than culture. That way, if those Traditions do conflict with a real world belief it isn't because of some arrogant idea that Mages understand the truth and real world practitioners are idiots.

[Michael]

I like the Hermetics write-up a lot. It has a more naturalistic split between the Order and the Craftmasons, and it puts them in the world, rather than cloistered in their towers.

As a suggestion, have you considered having the Hermetics become a more coherent Order around the the 18th/19th century? Like, there's a real historical movement there, between individual adepts who keep their ideas mostly to themselves, and the creation of organisations like the Free Masons which allow for more organised transmission (I mean, the Freemasons aren't really a mystical organisation, but there have been plenty of associated orders that were).

Prior to the founding of the Order, Europe was a much more magical place with various studies of magic and mystery taught in university or passed around in everyday life. The Technocracy has expunged much of this from history, though bits of it remain.

I mean, that's not really much different to real life. You have events like the University of Paris telling their students to stop practicing necromancy. Plus, a lot of what comes down to us as Western ritual magic is really the ideas of law and theology that would have been taught at universities, applied to metaphysics.