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 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