From a Motel Six commercial:
"Feng Shui, the Chinese art of arranging the furniture so you don't trip over it."
"Feng Shui, the Chinese art of arranging the furniture so you don't trip over it."
Help. Eastern mysticism is impenetrable to me
- Thread starter RangerWickett
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Nuclear Platypus
First Post
Nyeshet said:
I think its called a Lo P'an (yeah like the 10' roadblock with light coming from his eyes), some info of which is here.
Ba gua mirrors are octagonal (for the 8 trigrams of the I Ching) and used to reflect negative energy / general all purpose protection ward. The "Spooky Encounters" movie I mentioned earlier had the good wizard reflecting a spell with one. Crystals are supposed to work similarly by redirecting the chi, which flows like water and neither too fast or too slow is good.
Foo dogs are somewhat like gargoyles (pre D&D). Whether or not you can use that, I've no idea tho.
Nuclear Platypus said:
Stone guardians. According to legend foo dogs would animate whenever somebody trespassed in the area they were set to guard. Large, powerful creatures.
Foo dogs started off as foo lions. Ancient China was home to lions at one time. But they were driven into extinction. The first foo lions carved were realistic representations, but as time passed and people forgot when lions looked like foo lion carvings started to look more and more like dogs.
This process was helped by the development of the breed we now call the pekinese. The lion dog. In time the pekinese became the model for the foo dog.
(BTW, the pekinese is a small dog who thinks it's a large dog.
)
Runesong42
First Post
Divinations (I Ching coins or sticks); numerology (influence numbers have on your life); astrology (Chinese Zodiac); the fact that the Chinese calendar is Lunar instead of Solar; lots of symbols/diagrams (maybe skimming the Magic chapter from another RPG that kinda sounds like Paladin for ideas); feng shui to influence luck, wealth, influence; power over spirits (banishment and/or compulsion); perhaps acupuncture/pressure to heal wounds/imbalances in chi; CHI (duh...) and its pervasiveness in all things; belief that all things are inhabited by a spirit; respecting your ancestors...
Just by brainstorming things I've identified with Chinese faiths and traditions, there should be lots of Divination, Necromancy, and whatever spells can affect die rolls. There shouldn't be a lot of flash-bang magic... maybe limit Evocation spells to 3rd level?
And, of course, buy the Oriental Adventures handbook.
Just by brainstorming things I've identified with Chinese faiths and traditions, there should be lots of Divination, Necromancy, and whatever spells can affect die rolls. There shouldn't be a lot of flash-bang magic... maybe limit Evocation spells to 3rd level?
And, of course, buy the Oriental Adventures handbook.
You could try differentiating between traditions in how a spell is cast.
Western: Gestures, words, and materia.
Chinese: Ideograms on flash paper that is burned for the casting.
Scandinavian or Celtic: Song.
Indian: Dance.
African or American Indian: Drumming.
Modern American: Jazz improvisation.
Western: Gestures, words, and materia.
Chinese: Ideograms on flash paper that is burned for the casting.
Scandinavian or Celtic: Song.
Indian: Dance.
African or American Indian: Drumming.
Modern American: Jazz improvisation.
resistor
First Post
All forms of Chinese mysticism placed a great deal of weight on the mystical properties of writing. The ideographs of the Chinese writing system were considered to hold a certain magical property of their own, the results of which was that most more developed systems of "magic" featured written spells/incantations/whatever.
Beyond that, traditional Chinese thought can be divided roughly into Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.
Taoism was the earlist Chinese belief system. I'm not incredibly well-informed about it, but I know that the I'Ching, the major work of Taoism, is largely concerned with divination and predicting the future.
Confucianism was not so much a religion as a belief system about the structure of the world. Confucianism gave rise to a highly educated class of scholar who did practice magic in a more Western-alchemy style way. That is to say, they did believe in logical consequences, but some of their assumptions of what was logical/possible were pretty far off base. If you wanted to introduce Chinese-themed arcane magic, that would probably be the way.
Buddhism was marked by a call for restraint. The Buddha's chief tenet was that all pain derived from desire. Therefore Buddhists should strive to desire nothing, even to the extent of not developing attachment to anything.
That's as much as I can remember off the top of my head.
Beyond that, traditional Chinese thought can be divided roughly into Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.
Taoism was the earlist Chinese belief system. I'm not incredibly well-informed about it, but I know that the I'Ching, the major work of Taoism, is largely concerned with divination and predicting the future.
Confucianism was not so much a religion as a belief system about the structure of the world. Confucianism gave rise to a highly educated class of scholar who did practice magic in a more Western-alchemy style way. That is to say, they did believe in logical consequences, but some of their assumptions of what was logical/possible were pretty far off base. If you wanted to introduce Chinese-themed arcane magic, that would probably be the way.
Buddhism was marked by a call for restraint. The Buddha's chief tenet was that all pain derived from desire. Therefore Buddhists should strive to desire nothing, even to the extent of not developing attachment to anything.
That's as much as I can remember off the top of my head.
Last edited:
tarchon
First Post
Green Snake 青蛇 (White Snake, Green Snake) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106559/ is another good film for this. You get to see both the stereotype Buddhist monk caster and the stereotype mad Daoist caster (Daoists are almost invariably portrayed as weird, scroungy, and antisocial in Chinese literature) along with several examples of the stereotype uppity evil critter caster.
With magical writing, the power is less regarded as being in the symbols as in what they express (which is why a sutra scroll isn't used up like a D&D scroll). It's not exactly like a symbol of pain, but more like reciting the Lord's Prayer to ward off evil. In some cases, single characters can have this function as shorthand for holy invocations, but it's the holiness of the sutra itself that makes the evil critter writhe in agony. It's not like you use the character for fire 火 to cast a fireball (that's more characteristic of Norse magic, where inscribing and "coloring" the rune for "curse" is actually what you might do to curse someone). Yeah, OK, you could probably find some example of that in anime if you looked, but it's not very traditional.
With magical writing, the power is less regarded as being in the symbols as in what they express (which is why a sutra scroll isn't used up like a D&D scroll). It's not exactly like a symbol of pain, but more like reciting the Lord's Prayer to ward off evil. In some cases, single characters can have this function as shorthand for holy invocations, but it's the holiness of the sutra itself that makes the evil critter writhe in agony. It's not like you use the character for fire 火 to cast a fireball (that's more characteristic of Norse magic, where inscribing and "coloring" the rune for "curse" is actually what you might do to curse someone). Yeah, OK, you could probably find some example of that in anime if you looked, but it's not very traditional.
Geoff Watson
First Post
What type of Chinese magic?
"China" covers a huge mix of cultures and stories, you could find anything in a Chinese myth or story.
Geoff.
"China" covers a huge mix of cultures and stories, you could find anything in a Chinese myth or story.
Geoff.
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