The Stranger: The First Annual Post-Reality Celebration and Winter Solstice Gathering of the North American Occultural Society
(Current Game Time) Monday Morning, Dec 21st, 2325
All The Strange That Is Fit To Print... What’s this, faithful enquirer, The Stranger bringing you news of yet another tired neo-pagan celestial celebration? Fear not, for this is news of a far weirder variety. This is not only a celebration of the longest night of the year, but the first official celebration of the end of reality. That’s right, you heard it here first (or maybe you’re more properly connected, and you’re hearing it here second): reality is officially over, and we’ve entered a new period: malleality. Or so says chaote, social engineer, and president of the newly formed North American Occultural Society, Ryt Seid. “For the past 800 years reality has this ghost of a concept, haunting every aspect of contemporary society, from physics to law. Those of us who have questioned its tentative nature and shoddy definitions have been laughed at, scorned, imprisoned, or worse, but 2325 seems to have brought a surprise ending to all of that... and one none of us expected. There’s a glitchiness to things now, and whether you attribute it to memetic engineering failures on the part of the epistemic elite, hiccups in the simulation system modeling the universe, or some sort of energetic awakening among the people, non-anecdotal proof is starting to roll in. The Occultural Society is our effort, as the youth who stand to inherit this more malleable world, this malleality if you will, to gather, explore, and try to understand these new, fluid rules sets that seem to govern things. The cat is out of the bag...it is an exciting time to be conscious and alive.” The astute reader will notice that there is nothing particular new in Seidd’s rhetoric that we haven’t seen a thousand times before from gurus, transjectivists, and fans of esotericism... but what struck The Stranger was the no-nonsense air with which she talked about the Occultural Society’s goals. “Governments, Religions, and Institutions of Knowledge have been the foundation of life and society for thousands of years... all of history, really. No one can really argue their value, or their resiliency. But they’ve been as caught off guard by these recent shifts in the scheme of things as the rest of us have, and the standard reaction to these kinds of changes from the powers that be is almost always restriction, limitation, and control: all tools that work perfectly well in reality, but none of which are particularly well suited for existence in malleality. We, as empowered, conscious citizens of the world, need to begin developing new tools, new perspectives, and new modes of interaction to deal with our new environment. In just the last two seasons we’ve seen an explosion in ‘psychic phenomenon’, mass encounters with xeno- and cryptozoological organisms, and... uh... lets just say magh is becoming a less externally isolated, more internally-based thing every day. So these gatherings are more than just another way to try slap a hierarchical structure down on folks, manufacture bullshit social power, or create a new scene, which is pretty much what we’ve seen from the existing spiritual and esoteric groups in the Coalition States- we’re looking to demonstrate what is possible, measure it, document it, and see what we can learn from it about ourselves and the world around us. No cowls, no secret handshakes... Hell, no secrets at all, if we can manage it. The parties are just ways to try to draw people out so we can do that. Come for the music and merry making, and if you see a little something that changes your life, well, you come back again with a purpose.”
Hyperbole or hyperstition in action? Hard to say. We’ll be counting down until the sky goes pink in the Chasm tonight. For those bored with reality-as-it-stands, the Post-Reality Solstice Celebration runs tonight from dusk until dawn at Tree Bar (Ivory Sector 4).
(Event hosted at Tree Bar)