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 Many game designers in the TTRPG world speak of the so-called Stafford Rule. It goes something like this:

"If you think you came up with a clever game mechanic, Greg Stafford already came up with it." 

Stafford--sometimes nick-named the Grand Shaman of the Gaming World--was the founder of Chaosium, the TTRPG label famous for games like Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon. His greatest work was perhaps the world of Glorantha, the setting in which RuneQuest takes place, and one of the most robust examples of worldbuilding you're likely to find anywhere. Stafford was also a practicing shaman whose lifelong love of mythology and spirituality informed his work until his passing in 2018. 

As I continue on in this blog's quest to discuss the intersection of RPGs and spirituality, I'm discovering that something like my own Stafford Rule is emerging: if I think I have something to say on this topic, Greg Stafford probably already said it (and more eloquently, too):

In an interview he gave The Escapist magazine in 2009, Stafford had this to say:

“Roleplaying activates a critical human process that has nearly been killed by over-rationalization and materialism. Roleplaying is a way for humans to interact with our deep, hidden mythological selves. They are a way to feed our souls.”

He continues:

 “Human beings have urges that defy intellect and rationality, but exist anyway. And we have senses – non-material senses – to help us satisfy those urges. They are so hardwired that we are essentially unaware of them. Who ever thinks of “seeing” when we look around? It just happens.

So what makes us curious, or funny, or loyal, or loving – or, more to this point, what makes us feel those? I’ll just call it the mystery sense for now. Nearly everyone has it. What we do with it varies, of course, but one thing’s for sure: It is better to use it than not. Why? Well, it’s not science here, but anecdotal life data has indicated pretty consistently that people without the mystery in their lives are unhappy, bitter, selfish, often spiteful, always unpleasant.

Roleplaying is one way for us to stimulate that mystery sense. Furthermore, its tropes activate all kinds of deeper curiosity and let us exercise both beneficial and gruesome fantasies that lie dormant in us. Choose anything from great heroics to serial murders – what greater opportunities do geeks like us have than to seek these while sitting at a table of friends? Are we heroes as a result? Nah, course not. But we are friends with shared thoughts, and that is good for the soul. And when we romp through those tropes, something deep inside is exercised – the mystery stirs.”


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The Dhampir and his friends crept carefully through the underwater Temple, anticipating danger around every corner… 


They’d come to this place through magical means: they’d found an island in the middle of a huge lake by surprise–it didn’t appear on any map. On the island stood a dark obelisk. Touching the obelisk caused a tunnel to form through the water, leading to the perfectly-preserved Temple, its dark stone and grotesque idols giving the adventurers a strong sense of foreboding. 


After searching through a few rooms and felling a few monsters, the party came to a crossroads: three separate paths presented themselves. The Dhampir suggested taking the middle exit. After some debate, the rest of the adventurers agreed. 


The Dhampir, we should note, is played by a friend of my son’s. He’s a great kid who happens to struggle quite a bit with ADHD. It’s fairly obvious to the rest of us at the Dungeons & Dragons table that his character’s Dhampir lineage–essentially he’s a half-vampire, half-living human–is a metaphor for feeling demonized for something he was born with. In the backstory he wrote for the character, the Dhampir is an orphan. His parents’ final wish was for him to find a way to be fully human. 


The party followed the middle path into a large room. At the center stood a strange table with arcane carvings. As the players investigated the table, a ghost appeared. He introduced himself simply as “the Professor.” Explaining that while he was alive, he had studied many esoteric practices as well as the biological sciences, the Professor let it slip that he had discovered how to transform Dhampirs into fully-alive humans. 


He made our Dhampir an offer: hop up on the table and we can begin the procedure immediately. You can stop being a Dhampir. 


The table fell silent. My son’s friend paused for only a moment.


“If you had offered me that even just a few weeks ago, I would’ve said yes. But now that I’ve met these people [here he gestured at the other boys at the table], they’ve taught me that I have a lot to contribute as a Dhampir. There are a lot of things that have helped us on our adventure that only I could do because of what I am. I think I like myself the way I am. So I’m going to have to say no thank you.”


I started to get misty-eyed. One of the other boys promptly stood up, walked around the table, and wrapped our Dhampir up in a big hug.


***


Carl Jung once wrote:


“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if once he saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain”. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives some faith and trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to sustain him, for everything that menaced him from inside he has made his own. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means. He has arrived at an inner certainty which makes him capable of self-reliance.” 


One of the profound things I most appreciate about Dungeons & Dragons is the opportunity to face that dark ground of ourselves. The dragons and monsters we face in a good TTRPG aren’t exterior to ourselves. We are making what menaces us from the inside our own. 


We are learning, in other words, to be truly ourselves and no one else. 

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Let us imagine, for just a moment, that you are a regular player in a Table Top Role Playing Game. At the risk of being rather didactic, we will call it “The Stupidest Game in the World” (SGW). 


You show up for your weekly session of SGW one Monday evening, and the Game Master sets the scene: you and the party are in a dungeon. So far so good. The Game Master then proceeds to give you a map of the dungeon that details exactly where everything is, from monsters to treasure chests to trap doors to the final boss that guards the princess you are sworn to rescue. Because he’s the “nice” Game Master in the neighborhood, he even gives you handouts he’s printed with hints on how to beat each of the dungeon’s challenges, such as which spells will be particularly effective against the goblins you run into rooms 3 and 6. 


As you glance over the map, already a bit glazed-over in the eyes, you notice something: this week’s map is the exact same map as last week’s. Not a single difference that you can noti… ah, there we go. Last week, room 6 had 4 goblins. This week there are 7 goblins. 


The Game Master gives you all a solemn look. He reminds everyone that while today’s dungeon is a review of many of the concepts of dungeon adventuring, next week, you will have a dungeon to play through that will actually count towards the game. And you will not be allowed to use the notes he’s been providing you with, so you should spend a bit of time reviewing beforehand. This has happened a few times before, and you know that the dungeon “that counts” will be another near-perfect facsimile of the dungeon you’re doing now, though perhaps the goblins will be replaced by skeletons. 


At this point, you are forced to admit, you’re only showing up to play the SGW out of a sense of obligation to your friend, the Game Master. And, well, he does buy pizza for everyone each week… not good pizza, mind you, but bad free pizza is better than no free pizza at all, in your humble opinion... 


***

Perhaps you’ve realized already, gentle reader, that the SGW is an allegory for the kind of school system that’s all too common in the world and in which you yourself may have suffered. Perhaps, having sat through an Algebra course or two in your lifetime, you will have guessed which subject matter I’ve taught for most of my career and therefore have no qualms about picking on. 


Paulo Freire, the great Brazilian educator and author of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” would have referred to the SGW–as well as the school systems to which it bears a remarkable resemblance–as following a “banking model” of education. The banking model sees children as being rather like an empty “account,” into which it is the teacher’s job to “deposit” knowledge. At some point later, the teacher will make a “withdrawal” in the form of a quiz or test. The transactions having been completed successfully, the students are then passed on to the next banker.. er, teacher. Should the students be found to have “insufficient funds” in their account of knowledge, they will be sent back to the teacher for further deposits. 


The whole thing is just as interesting and exciting as you remember it to be. 


Paulo Freire proposed that the “banking model” be replaced with a problem-posing education. To give an all-too-quick summary, problem-posing education is exactly what it sounds like: the job of the teacher is to pose a problem to the students. The students are then called upon to work together towards a solution. The teacher doesn’t impose solutions from above, but can gently guide things along by asking timely, non-leading questions. 


So yes, being a Problem-Posing Teacher and being a good Game Master do have an awful lot in common. 


***


Freire–who mainly wrote in the 1960s and 70s– still hasn’t gained wide-traction in the school systems of the Western world. I suspect that’s as much to do with his leftward political commitments as it is anything to do with an honest appraisal of his pedagogy. 


But Dungeons & Dragons – despite a rocky start in the 1980s and the Satanic Panic–is actually gaining some traction in the school system.


There are numerous articles being written on the benefits of D&D and other TTRPGs in educational settings. Here is one such that I’ll offer as an introduction: How ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Primes Students for Interdisciplinary Learning, Including STEM 


In my opinion, it has those benefits because Dungeons & Dragons is not the Stupidest Game in the World. In other words, it is not the “banking model” of education. Players are not treated like mindless banking accounts into whom deposits of information should be made and withdrawn. D&D players have real agency. They have to use real problem-solving skills, creativity, logical reasoning, and critical thinking. They have to be able to make a plan, but also to be flexible when a bad dice roll comes their way. Real teamwork and collaboration are required, as are diverse skill sets.


And these requirements aren’t an accident: they’re what makes Dungeons & Dragons fun and engaging to play in the first place. They’re what sets D&D apart from what I’ve described in the Stupidest Game in the World. And they’re precisely what D&D has in common with Freire’s pedagogy. 


***


And yet, most math classes still bear a strong resemblance to the Stupidest Game in the World. So don’t most history classes, science classes, etc. 


Why do we do this to our children? Why do we give them sets of math problems to practice that resemble the SGW’s boring dungeons and then act surprised when they hate math? 


If I tried to run a dungeon like the SGW’s, I should expect precisely zero people to want to play my game. And yet, teachers are expected, required by law even, to teach like that. “Tonight, you will do problems 1 - 33 odd. If you have the notes you took in class and the handout I gave you, none of them will surprise you. They are remarkably similar to each other, with slightly different numbers in each (watch out for the negative numbers in problem #27!). Next Monday you will have a test, which you will not find too challenging if you’ve done the prescribed exercises.” 


How dreadfully boring. Why do we do this to our children? 


I can’t help but think that it has a lot to do with a certain “a-word” that I used a few paragraphs up: “agency.” We’d rather not like for children to have any of that. If they were taught to have agency in our schools, why, they just might grow up to be functioning citizens capable of democratic self-governance…


If school looked more like a good TTRPG and less like the world’s stupidest one, I suspect we’d have a very engaged student body. We’d have children learning a lot more than they ever have. We’d have students beginning the individuation process. 


And yet, you and I both know, gentle reader, that math class isn’t likely to look like D&D at any point within our lifetime. 


The good news, though, is that they can play high quality TTRPGs just as soon as the 3pm bell signals the end of the school day… 



 


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 Note: I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with John Michael Greer recently. For those not yet familiar with the incomparable JMG, he is a leading expert on the Occult, a past Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, a prolific blogger, and the author of far too many fantastic books (both fiction and nonfiction) to list here. His writing has been profoundly helpful in my own spiritual practice, most especially The Druidry Handbook, which I’m very grateful to have read early on in my journey with Druidry.

Those who are familiar with his work know that JMG is incredibly generous with his time and his wisdom. Each Monday he hosts a Q&A post on his Dreamwidth journal, Ecosophia, where he takes questions related to the Occult and magical practice. It was there that I first received encouragement–both from him and his readership–to write about the intersection of RPGs and Occultism, Druidry, Jungian psychology, and more, and so I was excited and humbled when he agreed to this interview.

I do hope, gentle readers, that you will enjoy reading JMG’s responses to my questions as much as I did, and that you’ll join me in thanking him!

~Gabriel West

 

Thanks so much for being willing to do this interview, JMG. I know that there is an RPG that takes place in the universe of your Weird of Hali series of novels. Will you tell us a bit about that, and what the process was like designing it? And beyond the Weird of Hali, what is your personal experience like with RPGs?


I hadn’t originally planned on creating an RPG to accompany my tentacle novels, but one of my readers suggested it, several others chimed in, and the proprietor of Aeon Games—a more than occasional reader of mine—decided to offer me a contract, so I went ahead with it. There’s a scene in the opening section of Marcel Proust’s tremendous novel Remembrance of Things Past where the narrator eats a cookie of a kind he loved when he was a boy, and the taste sends him spinning back in thought to his childhood. That was more or less what writing the Weird of Hali RPG did for me.

I got into RPGs in the mid-1970s, right about the time that D&D stopped being the only game of its kind. My first DM still used the three staplebound pamphlets of original D&D, but the circle of gamers I played with all through my high school years snapped up AD&D as soon as it appeared, and we played other games—Traveler, Tunnels and Trolls, Boot Hill, and Gamma World among them. I got into some of the very early Steve Jackson games when they came out, but my favorite game was first-edition Chivalry & Sorcery, mostly because in those days I was crazy about the Middle Ages.

All this was secondary to my interest in reading and writing fantasy fiction, but it was a lot of fun. I liked to invent annoying items to leave in the dungeons I ran; one that comes to mind was the Incomprehensible Apparatus of Yog, a sphere about eight inches across with a big red button on one side. Everybody assumed it was a grenade. It wasn’t. If a character pushed the button, it ran through a random series of actions—emitting the smell of stale popcorn, glowing bright magenta, sprouting nine thin tentacles that waved around aimlessly for one turn, and so on—according to whatever I rolled with a d100. After 4+d6 turns, the red button would pop up and that would be the end of it. Watching players try to figure it out was always entertaining.

I drifted away from playing RPGs in the mid-1980s, mostly because by then I was hard at work trying to break into a career as a writer, and that was where all my creative energy was going. That made work on the Weird of Hali RPG a trip down memory lane, and also an enormous amount of fun. I’ve rarely enjoyed a writing project more. I had the advantage of working with an existing rule system, the Mythras system (formerly known as RuneQuest 6—long story there) so I didn’t have to wrestle with the mechanics; it was mostly a matter of figuring out how to fit my giddy reworking of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos into the framework of roleplaying. I didn’t put the Incomprehensible Apparatus of Yog into the game, but some of the things in the section on mad scientists must have come out of the same corner of my brain.


The Incomprehensible Apparatus of Yog! I love that. That’s a more-or-less perfect encapsulation of the style of humor that one encounters in much of RPG culture. I haven’t personally played with the Mythras system… Was that chosen deliberately as a good fit for the Weird of Hali?


No, it was more a matter of who approached me and offered a contract; Mythras is Aeon Games’ house rule system. That said, Mythras is well suited to the project; in particular, the focus on character skills rather than character classes works well with the very open-ended kind of adventures that feature in the novels. The characters in my books have to fight, cast or counter spells, flee through wilderness or water or Greenland tundra, figure out the meaning of strange inscriptions, and so on—they don’t have the luxury of fitting into a single character class! I wanted players to have the same kind of experience.


The history of RPGs in this country is inextricably linked with the Satanic Panic of the 1980's and 90's. As a kid growing up in an evangelical household back then, for me it was (in retrospect) a strange time to be alive—every game (especially D&D) and cassette tape was a potential tool of the Devil to ensnare my soul, and my mother and my youth pastor were sure of it. As someone who was studying the Occult during those days, how did you experience that time period? For those who are newer to the Occult or to Druidry, what would you want them to know about the lessons learned during the 80's and 90's?


I watched the Satanic Panic from a distance. I didn’t grow up in a religious family, and when I was still at home my dad and stepmom weren’t worried at all about RPGs; my dad built World War II aircraft model kits, and the best hobby shop in Seattle for those also had a big RPG section, so we’d go up to American Eagles in Ballard on Saturdays and he’d check out the latest model kits while I picked up the latest Tunnels & Trolls and Judges Guild products. By the time the panic got under way in the 1980s, I was married and living in a little apartment in one of Seattle’s hipster neighborhoods, and nobody I knew was into the conservative religious frenzy of the time.  It was a frenzy at a distance; it concerned me, because it reminded me of all the other times in the past that occultists have been persecuted by fanatical mobs, but it never touched me directly.

One of the odd things about the Satanic Panic is how little any of it had to do with actual occultism—or for that matter actual Satanism. I know of a couple of times when somebody accused a genuine occultist of Satanic ritual abuse; in each case the occultist responded by getting a lawyer and threatening to sue for slander and defamation of character, and the accuser backed down fast. The victims of the panic, the ones who got accused and in some cases imprisoned, were ordinary people who couldn’t believe that they were being targeted by a witch hunt. I’d encourage today’s occultists, Druids, Heathens, and other practitioners of alternative spirituality to look into what happened, and remember that the same thing can happen again.


Very sound advice! Thank you for that. What connections do you see between the Satanic Panic’s hostile stance towards RPGs and Spengler’s Second Religiousness?


The fundamentalist movement that gave rise to the Satanic Panic is what happens before you get to the Second Religiousness. The movement Spengler was discussing, which occurs late in the history of every civilization, is what happens when that civilization’s version of rationalism finally sinks under the weight of its own failures. (The thing to keep in mind about rationalism is that the world isn’t actually rational; what we call “reason” is simply a set of cognitive habits in our brains, to which the universe need not conform, and so rational models never succeed in explaining the universe very well.) When a civilization’s Age of Reason ends in embarrassment and defeat, as it always does—and as ours is doing now—most people drift back to traditional religious forms as the only bulwark against mental chaos.

That’s the Second Religiousness. What differentiates it from the religious forms that come before it is that it’s tolerant. During an Age of Reason, religion becomes intolerant because it’s always on the defensive, backed into a corner by the assaults of fashionable rationalism. Once reason proves its inadequacy, the assaults end, and intolerance gives way to the sort of genial calm you see in so many old religions. The Satanic Panic was a frantic outburst on the part of religious people desperately trying to defend their faith against rationalism, and doing so more often than not in clumsy and counterproductive ways. Once the Second Religiousness picks up speed, that’s going to be an embarrassment nobody wants to talk about.


I refer back to your Well of Galabes posts often (thank you, by the way, for keeping them archived on Ecosophia!). In one such post, you discuss "the use of the trained imagination as an instrument of perception" as an important tool in the traditional occultist's toolkit. To me, in reading that description, the key word (that many will overlook) is "trained." Do you think that playing RPGs could provide the type of training needed for effective use of the active imagination, or "scrying in the spirit vision," as the Golden Dawn tradition calls it?


The training of the imagination involves several different skills. You can certainly develop some of those through roleplaying games, though there are some that have to be developed in other ways. Certainly, though, every gamer I’ve known had a good strong imagination, and so the other aspects of training—the ability to imagine something clearly with all five imaginary senses, for example, or the ability to clear the mind and let images rise spontaneously from the unconscious—came very easily.


From being a longtime reader of your blogs, I know that you and I share a deep appreciation for Herman Hesse's novel "The Glass Bead Game." In the book, students of the Glass Bead Game are required to compose a "Life" each year, in which they write a fictional autobiography set in a previous period of human history. In writing these "Lives," the main character, Joseph Knecht, comes to a much deeper understanding of himself and the life he is actually living. As an RPG enthusiast, I can't help but relate that to the process of character creation, in which players immerse themselves in an imaginary life and (in my experience at least) often wind up telling everyone at the table a great deal more about themselves than if we'd simply said "so, tell us about yourself!" From your perspective, or perhaps from the Western Occult perspective, what is the value in composing a fictional "Life"/player character? What is it about that process that aids us in heading the admonition to "know thyself?"


Jungian psychologists will tell patients who can’t remember their dreams to make up a dream on the spot. Reliably, the made-up dream has the same kinds of clues about the inner struggles of the mind that an actual dream offers—no surprises there; it comes out of the same mind. When you let your imagination run free, especially when you’re imagining an alter ego, the same thing happens.

Fiction is exactly the same way. Write a story about a character, and if the character isn’t simply a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the Mary Sue variety, it’s going to reflect important elements of yourself. This is especially true if you let the character do what he or she wants to do, instead of treating the character as a puppet you move around as you wish. My fiction always works that way; my characters quickly develop minds of their own and will tell me what they want to do in any given situation. I’ve had characters sit down and explain to me in detail what I’ve misunderstood about them!

If you set out to imagine the thoughts, feelings, choices, fears, and hopes of another person from within, inevitably you’re going to use your own experiences as a basis, and you’re also going to have the chance to explore other ways to think, feel, and so on. A player character is an experiment where you can imagine yourself as a different kind of person, and see how that works for you. You can learn a very great deal about yourself that way!


Is there a comparable benefit to the well-imagined villain? I think here of the oft-misquoted passage from Chesterton, which Neil Gaiman rendered as something along the lines of “The purpose of fairy tales isn’t to teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. The purpose of fairy tales is to teach them that dragons can be defeated.” Do the villains we choose to have our protagonists fight–whether in a well-written piece of fiction, or in a D&D campaign–tell us as much about ourselves as the protagonists themselves? What could a Jungian analyst turned DM (or a DM turned Jungian analyst) accomplish by thoughtfully constructing a campaign in order to have a patient fight the right dragon?


Good heavens, yes. Half the reason that so much modern fantasy fiction sucks is that so few writers these days know how to craft a good villain. It’s all Lord Blorg the Bad, Evil Lord of Evilness, who has no reason to be evil but the mere fact that he’s been assigned that role. When Tolkien invented Sauron the Dark Lord for his trilogy, that was a brilliant and unconventional move; he did pretty much everything useful that you can do with that trope, but everyone’s been copying him ever since.

RPGs are way ahead of the game here, and I wish some of the creativity that goes into inventing good villains for RPG campaigns would find its way into fantasy fiction. As for Jungian RPGs, Jung himself offered a great pointer here. He noted that whatever people hate the most is inevitably a projection of their own shadow—that is to say, the aspects of their own personality they can’t stand. Listen to someone ranting about the evil evilness of those evil people doing evil things over there, and what you’re hearing is a detailed description of what the ranter knows to be true about himself or herself, but won’t admit it. Use that to create villains for your campaign and things might get very interesting indeed.


I agree completely with your critique of the “Lord Blorg” villains that are rampant in so much fiction. Interestingly, I’ve also noticed an opposite (and equally unsatisfying) trend in a lot of the children’s books and movies that are popular these days: too often, there’s no such thing as a bad monster, only a misunderstood one. I’ve been working on an essay for this blog on this topic, noting the proliferation of sweet dragons that can be trained, cuddly zombies, vampires that make for the kind of gentlemanly boyfriend you’d be delighted to have your teenage daughter date, etc. It strikes me that the “plushification” of the monster not only gaslights children about the existence of true evil in the world (most all of them know better, in my experience), it also deprives them of the chance to see how evil might be bested.

Would you agree that part of what a conscientious Dungeon Master might do to help his players–especially the younger ones– to develop spiritually and psychologically is to give them truly evil monsters to battle?


Yes, very much so—but also different kinds of evil monsters to battle, and subtle forms of evil as well as obvious ones. It’s not much of a gain if they alternate between cuddly plush monsters and the latest rehash of Lord Blorg the Bad. Most of the evils we encounter in this world don’t wear nametags saying “Hi, I’m Evil!” on their shirts. Characters in roleplaying games should expect to encounter deception, treachery, all-too-plausible lies, and the like. Oh, and throw some things at them that look cuddly and aren’t. One DM I knew used to stock his dungeons with adorable big-eyed kittens. If you picked one of them up, it sank its cyanide-tipped claws into your flesh, then called the rest of the pack out to feed on your corpse. That had a lesson or two to teach!


Recently, I've been running a campaign in Dungeons & Dragons that contains a bit of mock divination (the module is Curse of Strahd, for the gamers in the audience). The DM is supposed to shuffle a deck of mock tarot cards and, in the character of a fortune teller, lay out a spread that reveals the location of important items in the game. This is supposed to be a surprise even to the DM and determines the directions the game takes from there in a randomized fashion. All of that has gotten me thinking about the potential for RPGs as a tool for divination. After all, there is already a randomized element in most games with the roll of the dice... what are your thoughts on that? Could an RPG be designed specifically as a divination tool? Or could an already existing RPG be used as one?


That’s a fascinating idea. Games have been used for divinatory purposes for a very long time; some writers have claimed, in fact, that all games started out as divination. The occultist Nigel Pennick has written a fine book, Secret Games of the Gods, which explores the divinatory and magical meaning of traditional board games; the Golden Dawn tradition of magic also includes the game of Enochian chess, which is designed to be used for divination.

Yes, you could create an RPG for divinatory purposes, but any RPG could be used for divination. Imagine a short campaign where the players either will find a certain treasure, or won’t. The players don’t know this, but the DM has decided that if they find the treasure, that gives a “yes” answer to a question in his mind; if they fail, that’s a “no,” and the details of their success or failure will reveal the details of the way the question will work out. The game is played, the players succeed, but nearly all of them get munched by wandering monsters. The answer to the divination?  “Yes, but it will cost much more than you expect.”

The great problem with using RPGs for divination is that most campaigns are too long! Most divinatory questions can be settled very neatly with three to six cards, runes, or what have you. A D&D campaign that takes four to six nights to play by comparison, is like a 200-card reading—every choice the characters make, every randomly generated monster that they encounter, every significant roll of the dice, is the equivalent of a card being laid down in a divinatory reading. That’s the kind of thing you can only use for a very big question—“Who am I?” is one example, and of course that’s what you’re answering in the process of gaining self-knowledge.


I’m reminded that in the 20th century, there was a push in some circles of the Christian theological world to develop a robust theology of play. Some sought to interpret Christian liturgies as a game played with God. What might an Occult theology or philosophy of play look like?


Oh, it would be a philosophy, not a theology—occultists tend to leave theology to mystics, who spend enough time in the company of gods to do it right. From an occult perspective, play is one of the most important ways that human beings make connections between the planes of being. We start on the mental plane, with a glimpse of meaning, purpose, or value, and embody that in imagery and emotion from the astral plane—that’s the plane of concrete consciousness, where the imagination is at home. Then we bring that down through the etheric plane, the plane of life force, to act  it out in some form on the material plane.

That’s how play works. That’s also how ritual works. A magical ritual is what the alchemist Michael Maier called a lusus serius, a serious game; it might better be called a game with intention. In ritual, you create forms on the astral plane with your imagination to embody some force or insight from the mental plane, then charge it with the life force and enact it with words and gestures and physical objects on the material plane. Because the world we experience is always partly created by the way we assemble experiences in our minds, that can have a potent effect on the world around us—and of course also on who we are and how we confront the world.


At the risk of conflating correlation with causation, I can’t help but note that the creation of D&D and the rise of RPGs generally occurred at a time when many Western religions were getting rid of rituals like their lives depended on it. The Catholics were taking a post-Vatican II wrecking ball to the Mass, the Protestants were exchanging vestments for blue jeans… Do you think part of what makes RPGs so potent and increasingly popular is the felt lack of a lusus serius? Are we playing D&D in part because the major Western religions have largely gotten out of that playful business of helping us make connections between the planes of being?


Very much so. The mainstream churches got rid of ritual, of symbolism, of all the richness that made their Sunday services something other than a dull lecture and a bunch of people singing off key. Somebody had to pick up what they dropped.  Occultism took on some of that job—the occult revival of the 1970s drew an enormous amount of its impetus from the failure of churches and synagogues to provide an alternative to the dreary blandness of everyday life.  Imaginative fiction also played a big role in providing what the churches no longer offered. But RPGs also had a very large role in that, and it was particularly potent in that it allowed players to create their own rituals and symbolism and richness of experience. That’s not something the religious mainstream is comfortable with, though alternative religions have been doing it for a very long time.


JMG, I’m incredibly grateful for your time and your insight! Let’s end with an RPG twist to an old fun question: if you had to choose between battling 10 gnome-sized dragons, or 1 dragon-sized gnome, which would you dare to face and why?


Oh, the dragon-sized gnome, no question. In occult tradition, gnomes are the elemental spirits of earth, and so I’d simply trace a banishing pentagram of earth and chant the right words of power, and the gnome—however large—would go back to the elemental realms!

 

 

 

 

 

Dec. 10th, 2022 03:53 pm

Of Dragons

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  “The purpose of fairytales isn’t to teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. The purpose of fairytales is to teach children that dragons can be defeated.” 

Neil Gaiman began the tradition of trying to quote G.K. Chesterton on this topic from memory (and therefore, naturally, misquoting him) in Coraline. I’ll continue the tradition by offering my own misremembered version of the quote above. After all, it’s only fitting: fairytales evolve with each new telling, and so, I suppose, should sayings about them. 


As all versions of Chesterton’s saying suggest, the world is filled with terrible creatures, and no one who has spent much time around children believes they need to be persuaded that this is true. Even in this Weberian age of disenchantment, children have an innate understanding that a dragon or bogeyman or some other fell creature might cause them enormous harm–even if (especially if) those fell creatures take the form of adults who shouldn’t be trusted. The world is a scary place, and today’s children still know it despite what adults tell them, not because of it. From a vague terror of the dark, childhood fears grow and crystallize into more concrete fears: “maybe there aren’t monsters under my bed, but I saw on the news that another child in my city was kidnapped recently, and that is very scary!” 


How this sense of dread develops and at what age varies from child to child, of course. In both my personal and professional life, I’ve had occasion to be involved with gifted education. In those circles, the cliche is a precocious kindergartner who reads the newspaper over his father’s shoulder: such a child may well have the cognitive ability to understand what it is he’s reading, but not what we adults would call the “emotional maturity” to handle the content, and will thus lose a great deal of sleep to nightmares. But children need not be able to read to understand the terrors the modern world holds… just ask any parent of a preschooler who has been through an active-shooter drill at school. Dragons abound. 


What’s needed, then, is a way to teach children that these dragons in their lives can be defeated. Even better if we can teach them that they themselves might be the ones to prevail in battle. After all, we don’t want children to grow up to be petrified by constant fear, nor to be the sort of people who always waits around for other people to solve their problems for them. 


And for the longest time, we had ways of imparting that lesson: the aforementioned fairytales. The societies of mankind have always had myths and legends that featured big, terrible monsters that seemed to be on the verge of destroying everything we love and hold dear. These monsters could often only be stopped through great personal sacrifice and uncommon bravery… but they could be stopped. 


To be sure, we still have fairy tales, of a sort. Something’s happened to them, though. The monsters have been… sanitized, shall we say. 


And that, dear readers, has been a disaster for children, in my humble opinion. 


Let’s take dragons as our starting point. 

***


Dragons used to be more-or-less uniformly terrifying in the Western imagination. They were the sorts of creatures whose odious appetites required the frequent ingestion of virgin maidens. They hoarded stolen gold for no apparent reason other than the stroking of their own egos. They belched fire hot enough to melt a suit of armor (and the knight within it). They left villages in smoky ruins and they terrorized countrysides.Their malevolence was only matched by their cunning, and (in some versions) their skill in magic rivaled the greatest wizards of the land. 


That’s not to say that dragons were never good in the older legends. It’s just that even when they were good (which was rare), like C.S. Lewis’ Aslan, they were never safe. 


What are today’s dragons like? 


Well, more often than not, in modern fairytales they’re the sort of misunderstood creature you might make your friend if you try hard enough. In fact, a popular series of children’s movies today suggests that a dragon might not only be your friend, he might be the sort of creature that can be trained (as if he were a scaly, flying horse). More importantly for the corporations behind these dragons, they’re the sort of creature that make for adorable plush animals and other merchandise. 


This has been a growing trend for several decades now. If you’re my age or slightly older, you might remember Pete’s Dragon, in which the creature is, well… not going to be haunting the dreams of any peasants anytime soon. 


There are a handful of frightening dragons still roaming the skies of our imaginations these days, but often they’re portrayed only in the sort of content we don’t expect for children to consume–I think here of Game of Thrones, which is off-limits to children for many reasons not having to do with wings and scales. In modern children’s stories it’s profoundly difficult to find a terrifying dragon. 


***


Dragons are far from the only monsters who have undergone this friendly makeover. I recently caught a bit of a preteen movie my child was watching in which the protagonists were zombies attending the local high school, struggling to fit in and (against all odds) perhaps even be elected homecoming king & queen. I couldn’t help but imagine George A. Romero rising up out of his own grave in protest…


Perhaps no other monster has gone through such an intense process of nice-ification (if I may be allowed to make up a word) as the vampire. Vampires reigned as the most horrifying creatures around for many years. Nowadays, as often as not, they’ll teach your young children basic math skills or be the kind of devoted and gentlemanly boyfriend that you’ll be delighted that your teenage daughter is dating.

Again, horrifying zombies and vampires still exist, but usually only in tales meant for adults. Children have a hard time finding terrifying monsters. 


***

While I suspect some of the motivations behind this trend are honorable–wanting to teach children lessons about not fearing the Other as a way of combating racism and xenophobia and other forms of bigotry is no doubt part of this, and I support that wholeheartedly– I still believe that children need stories with truly horrifying monsters, especially when they’re instructive on how the monster might lose. After all, art ought to reflect reality on some level.


Children know this too, by the way. As a teacher, I’ve seen an increasing number of students (of an ever decreasing age) carting a Stephen King book tucked under one arm while walking through the hallways. I’m not sure how many of them have parents that know what they’re reading, but none of them ought to be surprised: the grown-ups sanitized all of the Grimms Fairytales and other scary stories for children, so the kids have had to find fright elsewhere…


***

Is there a place for good monsters in stories?


Absolutely. I’m not going to lie to you, as someone with a deep love for Tim Burton’s work (among other things), I’m all about a monstrous protagonist. 


But the difference there is that these stories–when well done– represent the hard work of incorporating the Shadow in a Jungian sense. The Nightmare Before Christmas isn’t a great movie because Jack Skellington makes for an adorable plush toy, it’s a great movie because Jack learns to embrace the dark parts of himself he’s tried hard to bury (pun very much intended). Edward Scissorhands isn’t great art because Johnny Depp makes for a hot boyfriend despite his monstrous hands, it’s great art because Edward’s very monstrosity is what both sets him apart as a hero and marks him for inevitable suffering. Burton’s monsters never cease to be monsters; they never pretend the Shadow isn’t there. 


None of that incorporation of the Shadow (as we’ve mentioned before, a vital part of Jung’s theory of Individuation) is possible when we pretend that a dragon is as cuddly as a cocker spaniel. 


***


One of the things I most appreciate about Dungeons & Dragons and other TTRPGs is that they’ve done a wonderful job of restoring the frightening nature of dragons and other monsters. None of the artwork that accompanies D&D by the greats like Larry Elmore or Jeff Easley ever invites you to snuggle the Dragon–it’s meant to scare you, but also to let you know that if you should defeat such a ferocious and gargantuan Thing, that will be an accomplishment worth remembering. 


As a parent and an educator, I particularly appreciate the treatment of vampires in D&D. Take, for instance, this quote that Tracy Hickman wrote in the introduction to the Curse of Strahd module for the 5th Edition of D&D:


“But the vampire genre has taken a turn from its roots in recent years. The vampire we so often see today exemplifies the polar opposite of the original archetype: the lie that it’s okay to enter into a romance with an abusive monster because if you love it enough, it will change.


When Laura and I got a call from Christopher Perkins about revisiting Ravenloft, we hoped we could bring the message of the vampire folktale back to its original cautionary roots…”


Amen. 


The good news is that not only do you not have to date vampires, they can be defeated. Just like even the most evil of dragons… 


Oh sure, you may have to level up for quite a while before you yourself are ready to face the fell beast down. You will have to learn spells, and master weaponry, and perhaps form alliances with people you’d just as soon not have to deal with. You’re certainly going to have to face your own monstrousness first. 


But fairytales and RPGs alike impart this truth: slaying real dragons is never easy, but it is, without question, possible…



 

 
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Note from the Blog Host: Rusty and I have corresponded a bit, and he was kind enough to not only engage in conversation, but also to write this guest post. Rusty’s perspective is informed by an experience I didn’t have: growing up with D&D. Sadly, I was absolutely forbidden from playing D&D as a child–much more on that in future posts–but Rusty is able to share first-hand about some things I’ve only observed. I hope you’ll enjoy reading what he has to say as much as I did! ~Gabriel West

I had the great misfortune of turning thirteen years old in 1980. The role of history’s middle children, as Generation X is, is to stand baffled while the ragged remnants of the past are dragged kicking and screaming to the great ash heap while the future arrives on the silent paws of a unicorn and then announces itself with the might of an angry red dragon; claw, claw, bite, stomp, stomp, tail swing, flaming breath. I can, however, credit the few times I have eluded the arrival of the future to some of the skills gleaned from or enhanced by a ridiculous number of Saturday afternoons sacrificed on the Altar of Gygax.

Initiation, for the purposes of this discussion, is a rite of passage. It marks acceptance into a group and the withdrawal from a previous association. The Jungian concept of individuation, the process of integrating the diverse aspects of the personality into a balanced whole, is a related development process, and can be propelled by initiations, though they are one-and-done rather than ongoing. The irony of experience is that the obscure often becomes visible, and just as the Cold War resolved itself, so did our adolescent struggles play out in part on the backdrop of that conflict, in part in the Boy Scout troop that my D&D group came from, and finally in our education.

To begin at the beginning: In 1980, I turned 13, and I was already a Boy Scout in one of the militarized troops that turned out to actually have played a role in the Cold War, even though we didn’t know it and were hardly aware of the Bear or President Regan. As usual, the kids interested in the same things drifted together, and my D&D party formed from members of our troop. Our parents even started rattling off our names in the same order: Eric, Mike, Steve (our DM), Other Mike, Scott. The first four had birthdays close to mine, and Scott was Mike’s whip-smart younger brother who had a wild talent for rolling the elusive twenty when the rest of us were cornered. We were a big bucket of intelligence mixed with testosterone, and we had no idea what to do with either. That changed quickly once we started playing regularly.

Some decades later, I found out that our D&D party was a product of some sorcery by our moms. A group of speculative fiction fans, our moms had picked up on the good-for-you aspects of RPGs and made sure we had dining room tables to roll our dice. My mom has more than once commented on the rapid development of cooperative play – within a few months we had passed through Tuckman’s stages of group development; forming, storming, norming, performing. The overlap in our Boy Scout activities was screamingly obvious to everyone but us, but we five ended up being the ones who took on the most difficult outdoor activities. We were also the ones who played RPGs through high school, college, and even after that.

So, we became a group, but as we became a group, we became individuals as well. At the time we began playing, I was short, fat, and suffered from allergies and asthma. Naturally, my character was always a ranger, which seems to have predicted or contributed to my solitary, outdoorsy, lifestyle and spirituality. And because this blog’s host does have a bead on spiritual development, I suppose the hilarity of finding myself at game night turning down an opportunity to play a druid and playing a very ordinary fighter instead bears mention.

     “But look at all the perks! Why wouldn’t you want to play a druid?”
     “Because I am one!”

And I wanted a study break instead of more-study-no-break, so I played the fighter, which rather brings me full circle – having achieved much of what I wanted to do at 13, playing a regular guy is a break from an over-complicated reality.

And the rest of the party? A pity that we tried to ride the wave of Reganomics and scattered ourselves with degrees and careers; however, we do bump into each other once in a great while. Unsurprisingly, we’re all extensions of our characters from 1980. We might have pulled off something interesting together if we’d followed the rule of never separating the party, but we didn’t know, and nobody told us, that D&D and reality have quite a bit in common.

With that, I hope our host and anyone out there in computer-land with a table full of intrepid adventurers helps them make the connection that they can be a party in the really real world as well as the sadly fictional realms of D&D. To this end, I can wholeheartedly recommend Green Wizardry: Conservation, Solar Power, Organic Gardening, and other Hands-On Skills from the Appropriate Tech Toolkit by John Michael Greer. And as a fellow educator, I will help get all you nice people out there in computer-land started with some homework from Green Wizardry.

Imagine, if you will, the liveried herald of an elvish princess standing in front of her castle accompanied by waving banners and melodious trumpets announcing a quest for any brave enough to accept the challenge and reading from an ornate scroll:

Exercise for Lesson 36
The exercise for this lesson consists of imagining the rest of your life – however long that is likely to be – against the background of a future of gradual economic contraction, social turmoil, and technological regression. Your goal is to envision ways in which you and those you care about can lead creative, humane, and meaningful lives in such a time. This often takes a major effort of imagination for people nowadays, but the effort is worth making; it’s those who can reimagine their lives in a way that doesn’t rely on the crutch of faith in perpetual progress who will be best prepared to accomplish things worth doing in the years to come.

     Well? Are you a party, or just tavern idlers?

     What say ye?



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My first principle of being a Dungeon Master for young people is precisely that: be a Dungeon Master. Not a Game Master.

Yes, I understand the intellectual property reasons behind the use of “GM” rather than “DM” in most printed tabletop RPG materials. No, I do not judge you for using the other title. But, at my table, I’m the DM.

I used to be much less insistent upon this point. Then, over the course of the first six months or so that I was running a campaign for my middle school aged son and his friends, I slowly realized that no one was gathering at my kitchen table on Wednesday nights to simply play a more imaginative take on the average board game.

They were gathering in order to fight their way through Dungeons. That meant that what they needed was a Dungeon Master…

***

“Dungeon” is a strange word. It doesn’t always quite mean what you might think it means in this context.

Gary Gygax, the Dungeons & Dragons co-creator often cited as the father of modern role playing games, said that “Dungeon” came into use in his RPGs during an old wargame he was playing with friends. They played through a scenario in which the invading force had to get into a fortress through an escape tunnel that had been dug out of the fortress’ dungeon. The scenario proved to be a hit with the players, and thus the “Dungeon” became a fixture at his table, and therefore in the gaming scene at-large.

Is the story true? It seems plausible enough. Students of the history of RPGs know that Gygax, who passed away in 2008, often liked to play fast and loose with the truth, so maybe it isn’t as simple as that. Much of the initial D&D lore was inspired by the Lord of the Rings, and more than one person has noted in the past that the early RPG “Dungeons” tended to bear a striking resemblance to the Mines of Moria (which in turn bear a striking resemblance to… well, we’ll get to that). Moria was a “Dungeon” in the sense that a Balrog had been imprisoned there, so perhaps there’s something to that theory. However it came into its now-common usage, to millions of RPG fans the word “Dungeon” now means something quite different from “a place where prisoners were kept in medieval castles.”

Essentially, a “Dungeon” is any enclosed area which the players must navigate through, face a series of challenges, and finally defeat a big “boss” monster, in order to achieve a major goal. Perhaps that goal is finding a lost jewel or a magical weapon, perhaps that goal is learning a truth that will lead to ultimate victory in the campaign, or perhaps it is to rescue an imprisoned ally. Dungeons are often subterranean and dark, and more often than not are easy to get lost in if the players aren’t careful. Typically, players will have to explore numerous rooms and levels of the Dungeon with baited breath, knowing that danger lurks around every corner.

“Dungeons” are a vital part of most RPGs. Most campaigns will feature several, and often one of them will be the climactic challenge of the entire storyline. D&D’s greatest Dungeons, such as Castle Ravenloft or the Tomb of Horrors, are the stuff of legends and populate the tales of many older players. The word “Dungeon” is used this way in video games, too. Nintendo’s 1985 masterpiece The Legend of Zelda included 9 “Dungeons” that bore all of the hallmarks described above, and the on-screen gaming world hasn’t looked back since.

***

“Dungeons” go by a different name outside of the gaming community: Labyrinths.

The classic example that may have come to mind when you read the word “Labyrinths” was the infamous maze in Crete built by Daedalus, into which the hero Theseus descended in order to slay the Minotaur and save the Athenian children from further sacrifice to that monster. In that tale, Theseus’ escape from the Labyrinth is made possible by the beautiful Ariadne, who gave Theseus a ball of thread which he used to retrace his steps through the complex and bewildering path he traversed to the center where the Minotaur dwelt.

Was Daedalus the original DM? Hmm…

Other Labyrinths appear in myth and literature, of course. The aforementioned Moria is an example. The Fellowship of the Ring gets quite lost on their trip through Khazad-dûm, and instead of a Minotaur the party faces another horned and fearsome monster, a Balrog. Fans will recall that, while battling the Balrog, Gandalf the Gray falls into Shadow–an event that the other members of the Fellowship see as a disaster, but which results not only in the monster’s defeat, but in Gandalf’s resurrection as Gandalf the White.

And for this reason, Moria emerges as a particularly interesting Dungeon/Labyrinth for our purposes, because, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, we see Gandalf go through what Carl Jung would call individuation. Gandalf isn’t the only LotR character that goes through this process, nor is Moria the only Dungeon/Labyrinth in the story, but it’s a great example for our purposes.

What is individuation? To put it entirely too briefly, Jung says that it’s the process by which one becomes his true Self. And to summarize in a sentence what we could take many volumes to explicate, the process of individuation involves becoming aware of and integrating the Shadow (the personal traits we dislike about ourselves, or have ignored or repressed), being guided through our unconscious minds by our Anima/Animus (the feminine soul of a man/masculine soul of a woman), and finally achieving wholeness as the Self.

We’ll chat about this more in later blog posts. A lot more, in fact. But suffice to say, for now, that Gandalf’s journey through his “labyrinth,” his descent into the dwarven dungeon, was, without question, crucial to his character development and thus absolutely vital to the story.

***

“We’ll take your bones,” he said sweetly. “We’ll bring you where you belong,” added his friend.

It was the first night of our second “campaign” as a group. After their first adventure wrapped up, the middle schoolers had somehow talked me into running “Curse of Strahd” for them, an infamous horror-themed D&D campaign that scares the pants off of many a strongly-constituted adult. After getting the full consent of every parent involved, we were diving into the deep end, beginning with a Dungeon that the source book calls simply the “Death House.”

Death House doesn’t seem like a Dungeon at first. The adventurers encounter a girl and a boy in front of a large, four-story house, begging for help because their “baby brother Walter is inside and there’s a monster in there!” After bravely rushing in and quickly discovering themselves locked in, the adventurers soon discover that everyone living in the house–including the siblings they saw out front–have been dead for at least 300 years. Venturing to the top floor, the party discovers the bones of the two children–and their ghosts reappear, this time expressing sadness because their final resting place wasn’t with the rest of the family.

Where is the rest of the family? Well, somewhere in the dark, horrifying, three-story subterranean crypt below the house, naturally. They’re down in the heart of the Dungeon.

I wish I had the words to explain what happened that night. Something about middle school kids lovingly reenacting a mission to set the past right and showing compassion to the dearly departed is… beyond description. Was I overcome by the sudden display of maturity and grace this roleplaying scenario evoked from adolescents? Was the game giving them space to grieve the loss of their own childhoods as they prepared for adulthood by having them take a vision quest to “bury” these “children’s bones?” Was it the fact that, even though they were scared out of their minds–we’d dimmed the lights and turned on scary background music in the dining room in order to set the mood–they wanted very much to go and ritually find themselves in the darkest parts of that Dungeon?

Yes, I suppose, to all three of those things and much, much more…

***

I find it fascinating that Dungeons & Dragons and other TTRPGs emerged at a time in Western culture where rituals are at an all-time low.

Even for those of us who belong to religious communities, ritual life has been significantly pared down. Even many of the more liturgical churches of the Christian tradition, such as the Catholic Church and Anglican Church, have reduced their ritual life to the point of being borderline iconoclastic, in many cases. Judaism has maintained its Bar & Bat Mitzvahs and other rites of passage, to varying degrees in various places and denominations, but for many Jewish families, ritual life doesn’t seem to go beyond lighting a menorah at Hannukah.

But what is a ritual, and why does it matter?

Joseph Campbell, the author of the masterful The Hero with a Thousand Faces and someone who was deeply influenced by Jung, said: “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”

In particular, initiation rituals symbolically mark the beginning of the Individuation process. It’s one of the great mysteries of the human soul that our process of becoming ourselves seems inextricably linked to participation in Stories greater than ourselves, but such has been recognized by cultures and religions throughout the ages. It is the depth wisdom of initiation.

Taking this understanding as our basis, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to argue that D&D is filling a need for ritual participation in the labyrinth myth. For many of its players, it's an initiation into the kind of Shadow work that needs to be done for the individuation process to work.

Young people seeking to begin the individuation process–that slow process of becoming their true Selves-have precious few opportunities for ritual participation in myth in our modern culture. Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs offer them that opportunity. In particular, they give them an opportunity to ritually participate in the same basic myth structure that Tolkien recognized as being absolutely crucial for Gandalf and the other heroes of the Lord of the Rings–the Labyrinth. Young people subconsciously sense the need to incorporate the Shadow. They want to face down the minotaurs in their lives and in themselves.

Don’t get me wrong: the young people I play D&D with absolutely do not consciously realize that’s what’s going on. Or, at the very least, they’ve never verbalized anything like that to me. Nevertheless, we’ve had plenty of nights at my kitchen table where I couldn’t help but imagine Jung and Campbell giving me a knowing smile…

And so I create Dungeons for them. I make them very, very dark and scary. I fill them with horrible monsters. And then I narrate them without the slightest hint of how they might fight their way out of them, save perhaps for some loving encouragement from the occasional Goddess. To escape, they’ll have to rely on their companions and themselves. These are their labyrinths to conquer, after all. This is their initiation ritual. This is the myth they create for themselves, out of themselves, in order to participate fully in themselves.

***

Joseph Campbell had this to add about journeying into labyrinths:

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known ...we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a God.
And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.”
If we take Campbell seriously–and I very much do–should we be surprised if a group of Dungeon-going middle schoolers, traveling together into the labyrinths of their own souls through a kitchen table ritual, accomplishes some small part of what Campbell promises to Heroes? I think not.

So please, call me Dungeon Master. No one is here to play mere games.

And join us on the journey ahead, if you’d like. This blog will dare to enter some dark places along the way, but you’ll be among friends.
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