From: cipher@pentagon.io.com (Rev. Dr. J. B. Bell)
Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.pagan,alt.paranormal.spells.hexes.magic
Subject: Re: Pneuma, gesture magick ???
Date: 23 Jul 1994 15:03:12 -0500

In article <1994Jul22.164008.7858@vax1.mankato.msus.edu>,
Rosebud <graber@vax1.mankato.msus.edu> wrote:

> I was talking to a friend about magick and psi abilities.  He told
> me about a type of 'gesture' magick.  He called it PNEUMA.  It uses
> movement, gestures, and breath.  Does anyone know ANYTHING about
> this?  Where I might look for information?  I have looked in the
> library system for books on the subject and can find nothing.  Has
> anyone used anything like this?  Thanks for your time, Rosebud

Your friend has described the fictional magick found in Clive Barker's
book _Imagjica_.  Barker has always had a knack for making up entire
universes with highly consistent rules, often involving magick.  His
work is very enjoyable, I find, though I think the later stuff
(starting with _The Great and Secret Show_) suffers from the
elephantiasis that afflicts so many successful American writers who
aren't as subject to the editor's scalpel.

If your friend was deliberately deceiving you, making it sound like
this was some venerable magickal practice, you may want to take
everything he says with a grain of salt; or at least ask him to give
better sources when he spins his yarns.

Perhaps Barker is using something from an authentic source, but I
doubt it is more than a piecemeal borrowing.  His use of language
lends a ring of authenticity to his wonders and horrors.  For example,
the "Cenobites" in his _Hellraiser_ movie (from his novella _The
Hellbound Heart_), fiendish demons of pain, were originally a monastic
order that practiced mortification of the body.  The demigod Baphomet
in _Nightbreed_ is a Gnostic idea.  And so on.

If, in the spirit of those magicians who steal gleefully from history
and fiction alike, you decide to go ahead with doing "pneuma", please
post your results.

                 Sincerely,

                 Rev. J. B. Bell

------------
   "Who died and made you Josh?"  --Tyagi Mordred Nagasiva