THE SNAP BACK

Real occult study informs LowLife TTRPG mechanics.

The first thing I thought after learning that I had had a stroke, was, “This doesn’t happen to me.” I was partially paralyzed, on oxygen, intubated, with hoses coming out of my head, my groin, my stomach. It was a lot.

Being intubated, I couldn’t speak so Katie came up with a letter board that I would use to communicate. I had to point to letters with the arm that could still move & hope that whoever I was talking to could keep up with me.

Later, after learning from Katie & various doctors about the situation & how dire it had been, we came to the conclusion that avoiding the stroke was impossible & that the lucky thing about it was that I was still alive & even though I had died & basically every bodily system failed on me. Most of them came back online.

I never got a concrete “why” I had the stroke. No one, not the doctors or informed family could give me a definitive answer. I know that I had a number of factors but they lacked the overarching narrative that I always look for, that I always create.

Around twenty years ago I read Richard Cavendish’s book “The Black Arts”. This was probably the best overview on magic I have seen. His theory that all magic is essentially “black” because it is rooted in the human desire for power, selfishness & the manipulation of reality really stood out. He argues that the distinction between “white” & “black” magic is largely illusory.

I was thinking about Richard Cavendish’s concept that the Universe corrects, frequently overcorrects for the bending of reality that is required for magic & then I found myself struck down, in the hospital, immobilized.

This idea resounded to me, & especially after I had the stroke. I saw that all the magic I did in Eugene in order to be successful probably led to a massive “Snap Back” which resulted in a stroke which killed me & reduced me to zero, after having been at 150% for a decade.

I didn’t put it together while I was doing it, but I was using myself, my hard work as the necessary energy to trade for being able to bend reality. I was my own sacrifice, burnt offerings.

I don’t write about my occult practices/studies very often because it is so easy to dismiss them as insane ramblings or wishful thinking. However, I am trying to be honest here, with you. Centrally, I don’t “just believe” these things because I want to. No, I have witnessed these things in my life.

I began toying with pragmatic magic when I started to understand how luck worked & saw my own luck increase as I performed certain tasks. I threw away any pennies that I found, I burned incense as an offering, I found the patterns in reality & emphasized them, I used the same numbers, words, colors, repeatedly.

I gave back to the Universe an appreciation for creation, in turn I increased my lucky breaks. It was small things, like parking spots opening up for me, police leaving me alone, timing being perfect, being able to find things without looking for them.

Eventually, I started seeing the characters in my art appear in reality, repeatedly. It would make sense that each artwork was a spell.

Science grew out of occult studies, because understanding the nature of reality went against the teachings of the Catholic Church. If we go back to Francis Bacon & Isaac Newton we come to the truism of physics that every action has an equal & opposite reaction.

Space is a closed energy system. The Snap Back is an inescapable law of esoteric physics. I warped the probability around myself to draw in luck. With that energetic shift, I created a vacuum of probability. The stroke was simply the universe rushing in to violently equalize the pressure.

While I was writing the magic system for LowLife, it wasn’t coming from conjecture or just as some kind of nerdy world-building exercise, it was an attempt to put into words what I have actually experienced.

Ultimately, anyone offering an easy way out, a magical fix, or a sudden stroke of luck is selling you a debt that will eventually be collected with interest. The Snap Back is the reason life, that LowLife is a grinder. Every time someone tries to rise above their station using unnatural means, the world breaks their legs.

A million years ago I was given a shout-out in a Punk zine that talked about not seeing me at shows for a bit. The writer talked about the candle that burns bright, burning out faster. That was thirty years ago, I was 18.

However, this isn’t a cautionary tale of flying too close to the sun. I still think that you need to run the engine ragged & really push it, it’s just very important to know that you end up doing real damage.

The LowLife kickstarter preview is open & the campaign goes live on the 14th! Check it out!