Implications of a karmic system.

[madd0ct0r]

From the notebook of High Mage Osbourbe the Reliable*

It is known that the world exists, that it is full of bored spirits, that karma is believed in and that Apple's do not fall upward, burnt ashes cannot return to wood and yet the sun burns.

Hypothesis the first:
That most actions in this world require the use or release of creative energy, such that the net amount of organisation decreases. I name this Enopy

Hypothesis the second:
This reduction in available creative energy is, in the long term, balanced by the creative output of the sun

Implication:
The sun contains an angel. By contrast a demon would absorb and destroy creative energy in vast proportions.

Evidence:
Most of the sky is black, for the demons and angels arein near balance
Summoning a demon incurs a hefty karmic debt, equal to the energy lost to thereon

Karma is thus the fraction of the suns creative energy apportioned/captured by you. An excess of karma allows you to energise spirits to locally reverse the rules - water flows uphill, light without burning,.Your Karma store can be increased by consumption of other beings and the energy within them. Left alone, this would rezult in a lone super predator entity wrapped around the sun.

Hypothesis the third.

The spirits expend their portions of creative energy to punish super predator behaviour and also punish those with a karmic energy debt. In short, they defend the status quo.

Why? I suggest it is because they enjoy the show humanity provides, and doubtless shaped our development to make us more appealing to them.

Final hypothesis : as such magic users that conserve energy and put on a good show will receive extra support from their spirit audience.


*not really

[Simon_Jester]

I like Osbourbe. His system is appealing in the cosmological sense.

That said, "karma" is generally tied into the concept of reincarnation, more so than in terms of direct material rewards in this life.

[SpottedKitty]

Intriguing; I'd put it about on a par with Phlogiston Theory.

[Formless]

I like Osbourbe. His system is appealing in the cosmological sense.

That said, "karma" is generally tied into the concept of reincarnation, more so than in terms of direct material rewards in this life.

True, but that's not absolute. Even in Hindu religion, Karma can happen at any time. But death is inescapable, and reincarnation ensures no one can escape their Karma even if it never happened to them in life.

Buddhism conceptualizes Karma as a Law of Consequences or Causality that the universe obeys, and Reincarnation indeed is tied to causality or so the claim goes; thus Buddhism's view of reincarnation is divorced from its Hindu roots and the Hindu concept of the soul. Zen Buddhism in fact sometimes re-frames Karma as specifically a psychological consequence of action, thus divorcing it from Reincarnation completely as those practitioners see reincarnation as a distraction from Enlightenment-- their true goal.

[Simon_Jester]

Intriguing; I'd put it about on a par with Phlogiston Theory.

I think it's a more interesting theory than phlogiston, in the context of a fictional universe, for a number of reasons.

[madd0ct0r]

I like Osbourbe. His system is appealing in the cosmological sense.

That said, "karma" is generally tied into the concept of reincarnation, more so than in terms of direct material rewards in this life.

True, but that's not absolute. Even in Hindu religion, Karma can happen at any time. But death is inescapable, and reincarnation ensures no one can escape their Karma even if it never happened to them in life.

Buddhism conceptualizes Karma as a Law of Consequences or Causality that the universe obeys, and Reincarnation indeed is tied to causality or so the claim goes; thus Buddhism's view of reincarnation is divorced from its Hindu roots and the Hindu concept of the soul. Zen Buddhism in fact sometimes re-frames Karma as specifically a psychological consequence of action, thus divorcing it from Reincarnation completely as those practitioners see reincarnation as a distraction from Enlightenment-- their true goal.

I'm still working my way through enough of the book of living and the dead to get a grasp on reincarnation and karma interactions. In a world suffused with spirits, reincarnation makes sense, but the wife explains it to me as another layer of a soul being added on top of the previous life's one with the damage to the starting soul equivlent to the damage you did to yourself/the world. This seems a bit fairer than some new concuousess being inheriting all the shit you built up. I think. Not really got even a narrative level understanding yet.