I feel like I'm finally, FINALLY, starting to get just a little handle on why human magic(k) has two extreme poles. Christianity does too—have you noticed?

1. Extremely ceremonial. All your ducks have to be in a row. Timing, setting, ritual preparations, everything, before you can possibly hope to succeed.
2. CHAOS!! Just do it baby! Stamp your magical intention all over the Cosmos, you're the MAN!!!^*

• Unfortunately chaos magicians tend to be...men. Very men.

It stems from the inherent paradox of freedom. Magic ultimately is about freedom: the more free you are, the more drastically you're able to alter your surroundings. "Do what thou wilt" isn't a bad way to put it, and it makes the paradox visible: everyone else is running around, doing what they wilt, and therefore bringing about one's will must invariably be a contest. There's lots of other wills to take into account, and not all wills are equally powerful.

Hence the ceremonial mages take one approach: carefully negotiate with as many other sources of power as you can before trying to do anything. The chaos mages take the other approach: just TRY something and see what happens. Uh, so far, this has been my general method. >_>

~Chara

BTW recently we unearthed something that traumatized us from childhood. It's not exactly...good...because it refers to that bullshit trope about lemming suicide (that I think was promoted by some Disney documentary where they, y'know, arranged one) https://archive.org/details/lemmingcondition00arki

Alan Arkin, the actor, did this! And I suspect it might have seared my childhood just a bit. I would never be a good herd animal after this book. Oh, no, not at all.

I haven't even been able to peep inside.

~Chara of Pnictogen

Developing a more elaborate "spoon theory" has been a private project—run by whom, I wonder—for a while, and I think I'm getting nearer to a formalization of the idea. Really! I have been thinking about specific actions that add or subtract "spoons".

I made a crucial realization a while back: one of the most telling experiences that reveals the nature of "spoons" is the extreme upset that comes from realizing, halfway from your car or your room to the door, you forgot your keys or some other important item. Do you turn around and repeat yourself, going back for the item, or do you feel at wit's end and keep going? I suggest that in turning around to go back, you are consuming a "spoon".

Hence I suggest that there's a deep-seated alliance between "spoons" and the quality of angular momentum. Spending a spoon must be something akin to spending a quantum of angular momentum, enough to enable your change of direction.

This has implications for the behavior of money-driven purposes and other such single-minded persons. "Spin", in the sense of marketing and sales technique and so forth, is a figure of speech. Yet we conjecture that it also describes a physical reality. Persons deeply invested in a singular cause, furiously overdriving themselves, are literally spinning. They are performing repetitive actions in tight loops, shuffling back and forth between the same few places and persons (with occasional exceptions), and I suggest that this furiously repetitive activity gives them a physical advantage. They store up more angular momentum, more "spoons", and therefore do not easily falter.

There are broader implications. The Hajj has recently concluded, a great yearly cycle that almost suggests that the very revolution of the Earth round the Sun has expressed itself through Islam. It's like bringing oneself into resonance with the cycles of the Solar System. Numerous other cyclical celebrations attuned to celestial objects come to mind. One can perhaps conjecture that participating in such festivals is an admirable source of angular momentum. The Sun and the planets are abundant in angular momentum.

~Chara of Pnictogen