The Grey School is apparently a real world school for studying wizardry. It is a non-profit organization in California, and apparently has over three hundred students. The idea that there's a real, tax-exempt school of wizardry, in the United States, surprises me.

Anyway, so I was looking at this, and the first thing that came to mind was, 'so this is how Hermeticism popped up so quickly with the Awakening'. Now I'm wondering, how would this group have functioned when the Awakening happened. Was the founders members of the Black Lodge? Were they Immortal Elves and Spike Babies, preparing for the awakening?

I'm ... intrigued at the possibilities.

Which, of course, just means that the people running it just have to make sure they pay themselves everything that would otherwise be profit.

I'd always put the rise of hermeticism with the large contingent of new age crystal power types. There are tons of real magic books out there. I suspect if you start seeing auras you'd pick one of those books up quick. Though now I want to check this school out, it would be a funny addition to me education.

Not really so surprising.

The Rosicrucians have had the The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) established in the U.S. (also based in California-coincidence?) since 1915 and offer to help initiate to the higher mysteries.

With the Awakening, they would be in a good place to putting things to use.

Plus add in te fact that magic was a new an undiscovered field of study, where no one had made a name for themselves in hermetic magic. The feeding frenzy of mages trying to "discover" aspects of magic in what would be a essentially an ethical/standard vacuum where one could essentially experiment how they wanted in many ways because no rules had yet to be established.

That probably helped too. Oh and grants. Lots and lots of hnuversity/corp/govt grants

ShadowPork™

You play a lobbyist scrambling to schmooze and win over various government officials to get funding/grants or laws passed favorably for your organizations.

And you thought they fought dirty in the streets.....

Is it wierd I could actually see this being a really entertaining game?

Mix of Scandal (haven't watched much but the missed does) and house of lies. The players are each specialists in their profession (decker is the person who looks up digital secrets, goes through any data for black mail opportunity, Mage does crowd control through manipulation spells as wel as surveillance, Sam can strong arm, face would be a typical lobbyist etc). Each run is a contract they have been hired to lobby through. Be a damn good use of the Dirty Tricks book

Perhaps the players could be of less savory groups too (black lodge, humanis, new American revolution) and play the bad guys.

As long as SR hermetics didn't spring from a bunch of teenagers yelling bad Latin while pointing wands around wearing robes.

You are surprised an organization claiming certain ritualized actions will cause events through some supernatural means gets tax exemptions?


You are aware that Hermeticism and similar beliefs already exist right now? It didn't pop up, it just got vindicated by the Awakening.

(In fact, I once read somewhere that one of the people behind SR's magic system was a practicing hermetic mage)

We (my wife and I, for her ongoing game) are actually working on this right now. It's loosely based on Fate. Each character has a card, with name, concept, motivation, a list of special aspects (including dirty secrets and weaknesses), special abilities ("stunts"), and relationships. Keeping characters simple lets me have a wide network of them with relatively little GM overhead or player memory requirements. Her little crew uses their stunts (or just good roleplaying) to alter the aspects of other characters (giving them injuries, dark secrets, bribes, etc.), and vice versa, until they have enough leverage to win their support.

I hope to start running it in the next few days. I'm very open to thoughts and suggestions on it.

Shadowrun's magic is based on real-live magical traditions. And most of these are still active today, even though none has been scientifically proven to work.
IIRC, one of the writers of the first ed of Shadowrun was into Hermetic magic himself.