TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. This is another post about the real life spirituality that inspired me to become an author. What is magic? My definition is as follows. Any change caused through subtle means. This means a few things. One, the original cause of the change has to be invisible. Two, the change has to be noticed in the world somehow visibly. Three, the change has to happen on purpose and be the one desired by the magic or the person using it. Then the question becomes, how does it work? And, more specifically, what do I want from it? Me, the author. What did I go into this looking for? The one problem with researching magic professionally is that it all seems to work regardless of how it’s done. Sacred prayer chants. They work. Prayer using passages from holy books. They work. Tarot cards. They work. Ancient Norse secrets of the runes. They work. Summoning a video game character to advise you on a chemistry midterm. I’ve never done it but I’ve heard a number of people say that it wor...

 Hello. C J here. A few days ago I posted three articles about the real life spirituality and mysticism that inspired me to write the Astral series and to design the Astral setting. Those are now three of the most popular posts I’ve done on the whole website. That took about a day. I was expecting people to be a bit cautious about learning about spirituality or mysticism. I wasn’t expecting the flood of views I’ve seen. I was wrong. Really wrong. So I’m doing some more of them. I am happy about this. My whole career is based on finding cool spiritual ideas somewhere on the internet or in a book and then finding a way of making them compatible with my stories. I want everyone’s favourite mythology, genre, or pursuit to have a place here. I guess I just never realized that extended to me as well. I like the research and the book time that goes into the job almost more than the job itself. Science is an amazing thing. I’ve trained in just about every science discipline there is. Anato...

 Hello. C J here. I have some more adventures in reading cookbooks for you all today. The book I’m currently reading is a thin paperback about traditional Chinese food written by an Indian author. While the author takes great care to represent Chinese culture and recipes properly ome of the instructions get a bit strange. Here’s some fun observations about how to not make traditional Chinese food. We are starting with the chapter ‘Saucy Food.’ Great. Is the food going to give me attitude? We’re making vegetables in Szechuan sauce. First we cook mushrooms in boiling water. Then we wash them. Then we cut them. Then we wash them again to get rid of the hidden dirt. Really? Where is it hiding? Also maybe wash them before you submerge them in water and dissolve the dirt. Okay cool. Chop bok choy. Cool. Boil water. Let it cool. Then cook the broccoli and cauliflower in the cooled water. What? Sorry, what? Then refresh them by giving them a cold water bath. Okay, were they stressed out be...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve just updated the Regency page with some new information. I’m working on designing cards for it full time now but as with most jobs I do the buildings, furniture and landscapes need to be done in Minecraft first to make sure they work. What does a Nexus look like? What clothing goes well with an Ascalan alleyway? Does Ascalan magic need to go well with their wallpaper? Well, Minecraft can answer these questions. These cards and the spells they contain are all based on real life magic. Regency is entirely real stuff that I’m drawing to keep the ideas in circulation. No one really practices Medieval Alchemy anymore, for example. I can draw Medieval Alchemy concepts. I feel I should to keep the science alive. I’m currently working out a puzzle. I want the art on the gems you use to pay for spells to correlate to the text on the spell. If a spell requires one coin, a shot of rum and a prayer then I want there to be gems that depict a coin, a shot of rum and that e...

 Hello. C J here. This is my third post for today about the real life magic, spirituality and religion that inspired me to make the Astral setting. The third key point that I learned while researching these three subjects was that everyone agrees dreams are important. Dreams convey messages, grant insight into the future and are often shared with others, but only if they check with one another after they wake up. One subject kept coming up over and over though. Lucid dreaming. This is the ability to be fully awake in a dream, change its subject matter and remain in it for as long as you want. Dreams often feel longer than the amount of time we spend asleep. Wherever it is that we go, where most animals do as well, when we sleep time works differently there. I’ve hunted down whatever scraps and pieces of knowledge there are about this discipline and it claims that it is easy to learn. It isn’t. The Astral setting is supposed to feel dream like and lucid dreaming exists there as well...

 Hello. C J here. Intuition is a very real force in the world. People are smarter than they think and that word sums that concept up perfectly. When I was younger I read a lot of blogs and books by psychics about how their jobs worked, their perspectives on the world and what they learned from their work. I’ve gotten a number of very well done psychic readings in the past. I wanted to know how to do it myself. That was what I was after the whole time. It didn’t take work doing this by the way. I aged into it. It’s just hard to be intuitive when you’re not fully grown. I just kind of got good at it through repetition. Here’s a warning though. Spiritual powers, magic and intuition are skills not talents. They come through practise and not innate abilities. But there’s a warning here. One of the psychics I got a very good reading from years ago told me something kind of alarming. She said that most intuitives, mediums and psychics end up dying quite young and normally in a hospital. W...

Hello. C J here. Welcome to my new series of posts about the inspiration and real life history behind the Astral setting. With the mini-conventions planned and novel writing done for the time being most of my job is playing Minecraft and typesetting the cookbook. This project was next on my list so I thought I’d take a break from Minecraft to type it up. There will be several of these posts here. Fiction is rarely as made up or fake as it seems. A good novel, especially one in the fantasy genre, has to be realistic enough to be believed. People can just tell if a spell, story concept, or magic location makes sense. How? Why? Because magic is real. I don’t mean stage magic. I mean the sorcery kind. The Astral setting is supposed to every spirituality, occult system and mystical practice all meeting together and coexisting within one galaxy called Creation. Creation is vast and this is the part of it where everyone meets on equal terms. I’d list the books and spiritual disciplines I’ve s...