Tome of the Pentacle on DTRPG

[Isator Levi]

I really like that the Seers are more integrated into Mage society. Like, they're still enemies, but they're still somewhat bound by the same traditions.

I do think they're most compelling when there's a foundation for there being some capacity for diplomatic interaction between the sects, even if it's probably atypical for them to take place in good faith.

Even on the part of the Pentacle, probably, with the possible exception of the Silver Ladder. I don't expect they often really believe good relations with the Seers are possible, but the Diamond precept at least demands the effort be made.

Plus, it probably helps to make it clear that there's not some all-encompassing "kill on sight" policy in most respects, that it can be possible for a mage to go somewhere while not wearing their colours where the enemy will recognise them but not molest them.

If nothing else, it can provide a basis for mages from opposing sides to trade barbs.

And perhaps some firmer ground for the Aquarian Free Council's history with Pantechnicon and what that did to their relations with allies to stand on.

I do think that between Sanctum & Sigil and the Seers book, there was some basis for these things in First Edition, but it seems more consolidated and emphasized here.

[Johnny Awesome]

I don't know if I like the idea that every time you go into the Temenos there's no Temporal Sympathy (due to Lacuna) to anything in the past. It seems to go against the idea of the collective unconscious. The Lacunae idea is cool to a point to prevent ridiculous temporal scrying to the beginning of the universe, but they went a little to far where the Astral is concerned IMO.

[Isator Levi]

It seems to go against the idea of the collective unconscious.

I think Astral Realms have always been presented in terms where whether or not they can be conceived of as places that exist independently and have events occur within them when a real person is present has been ambiguous at best.

Aaaannnddd... I don't actually think the idea that they periodically reset their temporal sympathy even necessarily resolves that. Not when the biggest example of a lacuna is the Sundering, where the material and Shadow worlds undeniably existed before their earliest point of temporal sympathy. Like, mages can do real paleontology to find the physical evidence of sites whose pasts they cannot view through magic.

It doesn't make them non-existent, it just means they have a fluidity that can't be reconciled with the usual processes for mages getting at the past, which I think would be consistent enough with the idea that it's an unconscious and experienced in terms of emotional volatility and dream logic rather than a series of extra universes that human minds are connected to.

My question is, what do you see about the premise of a collective unconscious that means it by definition needs to retain sympathy to events in its own past?

[LostLight]

So, does anyone has an idea why the Jewish Great Cult was left unnamed? I mean, name alone can help a lot to ground it in the setting, imo, and let it feel more unique/interesting and less generic, and they did gave more context for other Great Cults which have only showed up in the timeline (I still hate it that it took me way too much time to get that why Ebla's Maskim got their name... Like, I got the meaning, but the connection to the pool took too much time -_-)

[Satchel]

So, does anyone has an idea why the Jewish Great Cult was left unnamed? I mean, name alone can help a lot to ground it in the setting, imo, and let it feel more unique/interesting and less generic, and they did gave more context for other Great Cults which have only showed up in the timeline (I still hate it that it took me way too much time to get that why Ebla's Maskim got their name... Like, I got the meaning, but the connection to the pool took too much time -_-)

It's named as the Synhedrion in the Lexicon and namedropped as the source of contemporary records listing Jesus as one of many revolutionary preachers in 4BCE-33CE; this is one more named appearance than most of the Great Cults in the Lexicon get, and while the Karpani, Pelasgians, and Mantra Sadhaki have their material from Dark Eras to go off of, the same can't be said for the Fang Shih compared to the Hong Fu-Sang.

[Satchel]

My question is, what do you see about the premise of a collective unconscious that means it by definition needs to retain sympathy to events in its own past?

The one thing that springs to mind as an issue is that postcognition has been the described method by which a character can access lapsed connections to isolated realms, which was notionally still a thing at least as recently as the Beast Player's Guide alluding to it in a sidebar about disconnected dreams in the Temenos. Given the difficulty Astral Realms described for that feat, it could be that the onus for gaining access to isolated realms now lies with insulated sources of temporal sympathy to get what one needs to reach the realm using Space spells or other methods, but Chronicles has been on record in multiple books that places in the Temenos don't disappear just because nobody thinks about them anymore.

[Isator Levi]

The one thing that springs to mind as an issue is that postcognition has been the described method by which a character can access lapsed connections to isolated realms, which was notionally still a thing at least as recently as the Beast Player's Guide alluding to it in a sidebar about disconnected dreams in the Temenos. Given the difficulty Astral Realms described for that feat, it could be that the onus for gaining access to isolated realms now lies with insulated sources of temporal sympathy to get what one needs to reach the realm using Space spells or other methods, but Chronicles has been on record in multiple books that places in the Temenos don't disappear just because nobody thinks about them anymore.

You make a good point there.

If I was looking to reconcile it, I'd think that the lacuna of an Astral Realm comes in terms of the sympathy that subjects within a realm have to their own past, but the realm as a whole can still have temporal sympathy to the past of its connection to other Realms. Could be thought of as a semi-external thing to be beyond the boundaries of the usual rule, and perhaps the only kind of past it really makes sense for an Astral Realm to have sympathy to anyway.

Although with that being said, I think there's a reasonable case to be made that accessing isolated Astral Realms should be an uncommon and challenging thing in a way that they arguably aren't if that kind of Time mage can be used. A narrative surrounding them and their disconnect might function better if it actually is necessary to do something like somehow discover a subject that would have sympathy to the Realm or locate the kinds of Goetia that might possess powers to access isolated realms.

[LostLight]

It's named as the Synhedrion in the Lexicon and namedropped as the source of contemporary records listing Jesus as one of many revolutionary preachers in 4BCE-33CE; this is one more named appearance than most of the Great Cults in the Lexicon get, and while the Karpani, Pelasgians, and Mantra Sadhaki have their material from Dark Eras to go off of, the same can't be said for the Fang Shih compared to the Hong Fu-Sang.

Thanks! I think I noticed the name but I didn't check the lexicon so I didn't connect the dots.

[LostLight]

About the seeming counterintuitive feeling of the Astral Realms being the "collective soul/subconscious" and lacking temporal sympathy- for me it actually makes some intuitive sense. I mean, the collective soul of humanity means that past, present and future are all mixed together, countless years of experience, memories, ideologies and belief systems crushing down upon one another regardless of time and space. As such, it feels more natural to me that time has much less meaning in a collective dimension that transcends time, and so that there is no temporal sympathy. But just my two cents on it.

[Isator Levi]

About the seeming counterintuitive feeling of the Astral Realms being the "collective soul/subconscious" and lacking temporal sympathy- for me it actually makes some intuitive sense. I mean, the collective soul of humanity means that past, present and future are all mixed together, countless years of experience, memories, ideologies and belief systems crushing down upon one another regardless of time and space. As such, it feels more natural to me that time has much less meaning in a collective dimension that transcends time, and so that there is no temporal sympathy. But just my two cents on it.

I don't know if it's what Johnny Awesome had in mind, but this feels like a point to remind people that temporal sympathy does not connect a subject to anything besides its own past. The Astral Realm of the American Revolution will not provide you with a link you could use to examine the time period in general. The Declaration of Independence will not provide that. When you cast a spell to connect to the past on something, you can only connect to its past.

The only kind of past that would exist prior to a lacuna in an Astral Realm is the past of events that took place within that Astral Realm. The only way you can use magic to get at the past of real things is to find something or somewhere that was present during them.

[LostLight]

So another question about the Jewish Cult- considering it's name, is the text actually suggesting that the real life Sanhedrin (the Hebrew variation of Synedrion) was a organization of Awakened? Because that explains why I missed the name in the timeline (I just assumed it talked about the RL Sanhedrin) when I didn't read the lexicon. I assume it could be a similar situation to the Onmyodo in the Tokyo writeup? The thing is that I am not exactly sure how "mystical" was the RL Sanhedrin (it was basically a court meant to interoperate and oversee the religious law), even though they were made of priests and sages so.. it works I guess? I just assume that it could be that the text doesn't refer to the same entity, but it seems very unlikely considering both the context and the relation to Jesus in the text.

[Satchel]

So another question about the Jewish Cult- considering it's name, is the text actually suggesting that the real life Sanhedrin (the Hebrew variation of Synedrion) was a organization of Awakened?

Per the lexicon, a Great Cult is just the cultural context of mages in a given society/nation/people. "The Synhedrion" is later mages' way of saying "mages from the Judean culture of mages." Organizations within a Great Cult were Schools, i.e. pre-Diamond Nameless Orders.

[Dave Brookshaw]

So, the Synhedrion’s description appears to have been lost at some point, but they were…

1) called that because it’s literally the word in that time and place for “council”
2) heavily preoccupied with interpreting Mage Sight and Awakening visions, cataloguing symbols and their meanings
3) also heavily preoccupied with how dangerous witnessing magic was to the unprepared

basically, if you apply Mage: the Awakening’s powers and cosmology to second temple Jewish Merkabah, you get a group of mages who were extremely keen on debating what their visions meant and that not everyone was cut out for the life of a mage. If every Great Cult provided something to the melting pot of the Diamond, their main contribution was a sense of responsibility.

[Isator Levi]

2) heavily preoccupied with interpreting Mage Sight and Awakening visions, cataloguing symbols and their meanings

This would also make me wonder if the state of Jewish monotheism might have helped them to conceive of Awakening itself in less religious terms that at the very least could have contributed to the schools of other Great Cults eventually moving away from viewing the Exarchs as the actual gods of their cultures.

[LostLight]

So, the Synhedrion’s description appears to have been lost at some point, but they were…

1) called that because it’s literally the word in that time and place for “council”
2) heavily preoccupied with interpreting Mage Sight and Awakening visions, cataloguing symbols and their meanings
3) also heavily preoccupied with how dangerous witnessing magic was to the unprepared

basically, if you apply Mage: the Awakening’s powers and cosmology to second temple Jewish Merkabah, you get a group of mages who were extremely keen on debating what their visions meant and that not everyone was cut out for the life of a mage. If every Great Cult provided something to the melting pot of the Diamond, their main contribution was a sense of responsibility.

Just to clarify- it is not that I have any objections towards the name, as the name does makes sense in that context. It is just that when there was a real life organization with practically the same name it creates a confusing situation for those who know about the subject (as I said, I didn't even realized while reading the timeline that the Synhedrion there actually referred to the cult and not to the RL Sanhedrin). Anyway, I really enjoy the book, I was just confused by this while reading.

Also, thank you for sharing the extra info! It really helps to get a better grasp of the Cult and makes their place in the setting more clear.