Issue 5.6: Elden Lore, Part 2
Raya Lucaria and the Politics of Magical Knowledge in Elden Ring [A Narrative, Historical, Philosophical, and Metaspiritual Analysis]
Game & Word Volume 5, Issue 6: Thursday, Feb. 27th, 2025
Publisher: Jay Rooney
Author, Graphics, Research: Jay Rooney
Logo: Jarnest Media
Table of Contents
Summary & Housekeeping
Feature: “Elden Lore, Part 2” (~43 minute read)
Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts
Further Reading
Game & Word-of-Mouth
Footnotes
Summary:
Last time, we examined how FromSoftware’s 2022 masterpiece Elden Ring explored the politics of spiritual control through its depiction of the Lands Between’s dominant religious institution, the Golden Order.
In this issue, we’ll take a look at how another powerful institution, the Academy of Raya Lucaria, regulates “dangerous” spiritual knowledge of the more magical variety—and how it clashes with people who don’t see eye to eye with it on these matters.
A prominent NPC, Sorceress Sellen, was expelled from the Academy for conducting forbidden research into a magical phenomenon known to be dangerous. But in Sellen’s view, the Academy’s approach is restrictive, cowardly, and counterproductive—she wants magical study and practice to be completely unfettered, regardless of the risks involved.
Who is right? As it turns out, that’s not a straightforwardly easy question to answer. And not just in the Lands Between—as we’ll also see, IRL magicians have been grappling with variations of this same question for centuries.
And this is more broadly applicable and generalizable to just about all areas of life—as current events shows, the tension between restrictive safety and unfettered freedom is playing out, in full view, on the cultural and political stage worldwide.
And don’t worry, we won’t get into that side of things, but it does illustrate the ways in which fictional worlds can help us safely explore and reckon with these thorny philosophical dilemmas.
I hope it all gives you some serious food for thought. In the meantime, Tarnished, I will see you on the other side.
~Jay
Previous Issues
Game & Word’s most recent issues (currently, all of Volume 5) are available to all, free of charge.
Older issues are currently archived and only accessible to paid subscribers. I am in the process of organizing all my posts, and I’ll lower the paywall once I’m done. In the meantime, you can always DM me if you want access to the full archive:
Volume 1 (The Name of the Game): Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Issue 4
Volume 2 (Yo Ho Ho, It’s a Gamer’s Life for Me): Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Bonus 1 ● Issue 4 ● Issue 5 ● Issue 6 ● Issue 7 ● Bonus 2 ● Issue 8 ● Bonus 3
Volume 3 (Game Over Matter): Intro ● Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Podcast 1 ● Issue 4 ● Video Podcast 1 ● Bonus 1 ● Issue 5 ● Podcast 2 ● Issue 6 ● Issue 7 ● Issue 8 ● Issue 9 ● Podcast 3 ● Bonus 2
Volume 4 (Tempus Ludos): Intro ● Issue 1 ● Video Podcast 1 ● Video Podcast 2 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Issue 4 ● Issue 5 ● Podcast 1 ● Issue 6 ● Issue 7 ● Issue 8 ● Issue 9
Volume 5 (AbraCODEabra!): Intro ● Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Issue 4 ● Issue 5
Feature: Elden Lore, Part 2
Warnings & Advisories
🚨🚨🚨 SPOILER ALERT 🚨🚨🚨
This series (including this post) contains MULTIPLE huge, bigly, and absolutely GINORMOUS story, lore, thematic, and visual SPOILERS for Elden Ring, including the late game, multiple endings, and its just-released DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree. We’re digging deep here, and almost no stone will be left unturned. You've been warned!
⚠️⚠️⚠️ READER DISCRETION ADVISED ⚠️⚠️⚠️
Elden Ring is an M-Rated game, and one that sprang from the twisted minds that gave us Dark Souls and Game of Thrones. Some of the events and themes we discuss are very dark, bloody, and gory. So if you’re squeamish, exercise extreme caution before reading ahead.
🫠🫠🫠 AMIBGUOUS LORE WARNING 🫠🫠🫠
Elden Ring is the brainchild of FromSoftware, a studio notorious for stuffing its games with layers upon layers of cryptic, ambiguous, and multi-faceted lore. Much about the lore, especially when you start reading between the lines, is deliberately vague so as to encourage player theorizing and discussion.
As such, this series will contain my own interpretations and occasionally speculation, which may very well differ from yours—sometimes, very noticeably so. While I do my best to ground these interpretations in evidence from the game, I sometimes have to fill in the blanks with my own headcanon.
If you disagree, feel free to challenge these theories and offer your own counter-explanations in the comments. All I ask is that you be respectful about it. After all, while I can’t definitively prove or disprove my interpretations, the same goes just as much for yours.
💡💡💡 POINT OF CLARIFICATION 💡💡💡
To more easily distinguish between “stage” magic and “for realsies” magic, most practitioners spell the latter with a “k” at the end, as “magick.” However, this is a fairly recent convention, having mostly been popularized by the notorious 20th Century British
philandereroccultist, Aleister Crowley.As we’ve seen and will soon see some more, “magic” is already enough of an “othering” term as it is, and I believe that adding the “k” subtly contributes to the further marginalization of an already heavily marginalized spiritual practice.
Therefore, while I acknowledge people’s preferences as to how to spell it, I’ve opted to use the original spelling. If you’re used to spelling it as “magick” or are unclear if I’m referring to the stage or supernatural variety, remember that I’m talking about the latter, unless otherwise noted.
Hey, listen! If you missed Part 1, be sure to catch up before reading ahead:
Part 2: Raya Lucaria and The Politics of Magical Knowledge
Introduction
At some point in the player’s explorations of the Lands Between, our intrepid Tarnished will come across a beautiful and serene area which, nonetheless (and quite characteristically for this world) is in the later stages of falling apart.
Liurnia of the Lakes takes its name from the huge shallow lake that dominates the landscape, ringed by coastal mountains, with the collapsed ruins of a once-thriving town strewn throughout the water. Right in the middle of the lake, rise sheer, majestic cliffs housing a Hogwarts-esque castle that overlooks the region.
But try as the Tarnished might, he’s unable to enter, as the complex is warded off by impenetrable magic seals that prevent outsiders from barging in.
But if you explore the nearby region, sift through the ruins, and talk to the NPCs, you’ll start to glean more about this mysterious and majestic magical fortress: The Academy of Raya Lucaria.
With enough exploration (and perhaps a bit of luck), the player can come across a key that will grant her entry to Raya Lucaria’s illustrious halls. This being the Lands Between, however, it’s apparent that the Academy’s seen better days.
A somber and bereft air lingers in the halls, which seem eerily empty. The Raya Lucarians you do encounter will treat you like an intruder (because, let’s face it, that’s kind of what you are) and attack you on sight. Corpses, strewn tables, and knocked-over piles of books betray a sense of hopelessness, as if it wasn’t worth the effort to clean up the mess. Same with the broken facades, rubble, and corpses that tell of an armed struggle (or five).
If you persist, and make your way to the Grand Library deep in the academy, you’ll find the venerated institution’s leader, Queen Rennala of the Full Moon… who’s completely lost her mind, whispering creepy inanities to an amber egg about rebirthing and mothering whatever’s growing in it, while her students—who seem to have also lost their minds, and the use of their legs, chant creepily while casting spells to try and keep you away.
What the hell happened here?! How did such a lofty and prestigious institution fall so far? And what lessons could it hold for us, here in the real world?
This is where our explorations will focus on this week. While the last article dealt more with the religious side of the religion/magic coin, this article will be more or less solely focused on the magical part.
After all, Raya Lucaria is the preeminent (and, actually, the only) school of sorcery in the Lands Between. Its resemblance to Hogwarts is not coincidental.
Therefore, Tarnished, pour some points into your Intelligence stat and ready your scepter, because we’re about to cast some spells… of knowledge!
A Brief History of Raya Lucaria
“Sorcery is the study of the stars, and the life therein.”
~Sorceress Sellen
As with the last piece, a little1 bit of lore explanation is necessary so that you grasp the foundations of what we’ll build on for our analysis. If you’re already an Elden Ring lore wizard, feel free to skip to the next section, as usual.
To understand how Raya Lucaria became the prestigious (if troubled) institution it is today, we need to go way back to before the Age of the Erdtree. In these ancient times, the Astrologers—the direct ancestors of Raya Lucaria’s sorcerers—set up shop way up high, in the Mountaintops of the Giants, where they could be closer to the sky.
This was important to the Astrologers, because—as their name indicates—they were all about studying the stars, which they believed controlled (or at least illuminated) fate.
In this regard, these Astrologers mirror the IRL astrologers of our world, who believe that the positioning and motion of celestial bodies like stars, planets, and comets directly affect people and events on Earth (or at least indicate how they’ll play out).
At some point, some of these Astrologers discovered Glintstone, which falls to the Lands Between as meteorites and contains the literal life essence of the stars:
“Glintstone is the amber of the cosmos.
Golden amber contains the remnants of ancient life and houses its vitality,
while Glintstone contains residual life.
And thus, the vitality of the stars.”
~Sorceress Sellen
You can see how such a material would highly be of interest to a group of people who’s literal purpose in life is to study and learn more about the stars. So they got right to studying Glintstone, applying the same scientific and intellectual rigor as they did to the stars.
At some point, the discovery was made that Glintstone could be harnessed to cast sorceries. And from that point on, everything changed. Eventually, the study of Glintstone overtook the study of the stars, to the point where the Astrologers abandoned their settlements in the mountains and moved camp to Liurnia, where massive Glintstone deposits were discovered.
Sometime later, the Academy was founded. Over time, it grew into a venerable institute where the Lands Between’s brightest minds poured their efforts into unlocking the secrets of the cosmos.
At some point, an heiress of the Carian Royal Family, who’d ruled Liurnia for many generations, was gazing at the stars when she caught a glimpse of the Full Moon. Mesmerized, she became attuned to the moon and its magic, using its powers to beguile her way to the top of Raya Lucaria’s academic hierarchy.
This ambitious noble scion was none other than Queen Rennala of the Full Moon. Under her leadership, the Academy not only advanced by leaps and bounds, it was even able to repel an invasion by the Erdtree’s forces, led by Radagon of the Golden Order.
This was mainly due to the performance of the powerful Carian Knights on the battlefield. Though only 20 in number, these adept warriors used insanely strong Carian sorceries to hold their own against Radagon’s far more numerous forces.
But it was love, not war, that would ultimately spell the end of Raya Lucaria’s golden age.
Radagon and Rennala met on the battlefield, and—as is wont to happen in these situations—they fell in love. They got married by Miriel, Pastor of Vows at Liurnia’s Church of Vows, and an alliance between the Erdtree and the Academy was born.
Alas, this was not to last, as after Marika’s first consort, Godfrey, was exiled from the Lands Between, she then chose Radagon to take his place.
Devastated and heartbroken, Rennala descended into a spiral of depression, solitude, and eventually madness. She became increasingly obsessed with performing imperfect, dangerous, and highly taboo resurrection magic on her students, and neglected the Academy to the point that the higher-ups rebelled, sequestering her in the Grand Library, precipitating a civil war with the Carian Royal Family.
Meanwhile, Rennala’s demigod children with Radagon—Ranni, Rykard, and Radahn—were incensed at Marika’s snatching their father away from their mother, and began conspiring against the Golden Order. Ranni, in particular, played a major role in destabilizing Marika’s regime, orchestrating the Night of the Black Knives that resulted in the Rune of Death being stolen and Marika’s favorite demigod son, Godwyn the Golden, being murdered.
Now it was Marika’s turn to be heartbroken. In her grief, she shattered the Elden Ring and absconded with Radagon from the Lands Between, pitting her offspring against one another. By this point, Ranni had also mysteriously vanished, while Rykard and Radahn were now in open rebellion, warring against the Golden Order (now led by Morgott, one of Marika and Radagon’s demigod children).
The wars that ensued devastated the Lands Between. Liurnia was not spared, as the ruins strewn throughout the region can attest to. The Academy, however, deciding it wanted nothing to do with this round of conflict, barricaded itself with magical seals, walling itself off from the outside world.
So while the Academy got off mostly easily, by the time the Tarnished happens across it, the illustrious house of learning had become a shadow of its former self. Hermetically sealed off from the world, its influence vastly diminished, with the remnants of its forces still skirmishing with the equally-diminished Carian dynasty (whose heirs have either scattered to the winds, or succumbed to madness and despair).
But the Academy still holds an ace up its sleeve: it still controls the vast deposits of glintstone in the caves and tunnels of Liurnia. And so, it still controls and regulates the means and the knowledge to use it.
And should the player decide to unlock the power of glintstone, she’ll discover that it’s quite the powerhouse, indeed.
Institutional Control vs. Dangerous Freedom
“The academy does not welcome the indolent.”
~Academy Glintstone Key (item description)
By the time the game starts, the Astrologers of old were but a distant memory. Their direct descendants, the Sorcerers, had become inexorably associated with Glintstone. And while the study of the stars never entirely vanished, it was basically marginalized in favor of the study of Glintstone.
But Glintstone can also be very dangerous.
Glintstone sorceries, for starters, are powerful enough for many a salty melee player to accuse mage players of “cheating.”2 Unlike Faith-based incantations (the other type of magic in Elden Ring), which are mostly healing and support-based with a few offensive spells, sorceries are almost exclusively attack-focused. And the strongest spells are mind-bendingly powerful, able to melt through even the final boss’ HP in a matter of seconds:
As such, it’s fairly obvious why the powers that be would not want to allow such power into the hands of the masses, all willy-nilly. If even a literal god doesn’t stand a chance against a mage wielding these spells, what hope do a bunch of lowly mortals have (especially considering that mage characters are, with few exceptions, quite physically weak—the tradeoff they make for their magical proficiency)?
In the Lands Between, knowledge is quite literally power.
But there’s another reason why the Academy so tightly regulates the knowledge of sorcery: it can be hazardous to your health, your mind, and your soul.
Glintstone is an alien substance that does strange things to earthly matter. Adept sorcerers have been known to go a little batty after a lifetime of studying and using the mesmerizingly hypnotic crystals, and they often suffer physical ailments as well. You could argue this is an allegory for radiation poisoning in our world.
Glintstone also has a nasty habit of “colonizing” other matter, gradually transmuting adjacent materials (both organic and inorganic) into more glintstone. Glintstone miners and sorcerers alike often have outgrowths of glintstone portruding from their bodies, and in the most extreme cases, their entire bodies slowly transform into glintstone throughout several decades. Their minds, presumably, are also taken over by the energies that live in the crystals.
As such, the study of Glintstone is entirely controlled and regulated by the Academy of Raya Lucaria. Not just for the protection of people in general, but also of those who would wield sorceries in particular.
Oh, and glintstone also serves as a conduit for glimpsing into the nature of the cosmic void between the stars. Foolhardy sorcerers who take a peek invariably break their minds from the sheer incomprehensibility of what they discover.
This is where we get into the Primeval Current Sorceries—very powerful and very dangerous spells that are, according to the Academy, very much forbidden knowledge.
The Primeval Current Controversy
“When Lusat glimpsed into the primeval current, he beheld the final moments of a great star cluster, and upon seeing it, he too was broken.”
~“Stars of Ruin” Sorcery (item description)
——
“When you gaze long into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you.”
~Friedrich Nietzche
Early on in your quest, the Tarnished will happen upon a mage imprisoned in a dark cell underneath one of the crumbling ruins that dot the Lands Between. Immediately, you can deduce that she’s a sorceress—if her appearance (like all other Academy sorcerers, she wears blue robes, no shoes,3 and a stone mask depicting one of the Raya Lucaria’s founders) doesn’t tip you off, the nearby piles of glintstone and magic scrolls certainly will.
She introduces herself as Sellen, and offers to teach you sorceries. But not before giving you a quick courtesy warning: she was exiled from the Academy of Raya Lucaria. And not just exiled, but specifically exiled as a “reviled, apostate witch.”
Should you brush off her warnings, Sellen will take you on as an apprentice, teaching you spells and asking favors of you in return. And as you complete her quests, you’ll start to piece together why she was exiled and why she’s so feared and reviled by the Academy: her transgression was attempting to revive study of the Primeval Current.
The Primeval Current is the essence of the Abyss—the maddening, endless void between the stars, from whence all life came, and to which it will all return when everything’s said and done.
Sellen considers it a fundamental area of inquiry for any sorcerer, and is incensed that Queen Rennala not only forbade study of the Primeval Current, but also cast out the sorcerers Azur and Luzat—two of the Academy’s founders—for their research into the Primeval Current.
Of course, it was Sellen’s defiance of this ban that also resulted in her own banishment from the Academy.
As you progress Sellen’s questline, you’ll get the chance to help her sneak back into the Academy and instigate a coup against Queen Rennala. Most players will feel inclined to lend her a hand—although she can be smug, and there’s a vaguely sinister air about her, Sellen is a true ally to the Tarnished (quite a rarity in the Lands Between!).4
She is nothing but sincere about taking the Tarnished under her wing, genuinely wishes for your success in taking the Elden Throne, and comes to deeply appreciate you not just as her star student, but also as a friend. If you succeed in helping her usurp Rennala, she expresses a heartfelt gratitude and immediately pledges the Academy’s allegience to you as the future Elden Lord. She also tells you, without an iota of sarcasm or underhandedness, that you’ll always have a place in the Academy under her tutelage.
All in all, the player will walk away from this quest feeling quite good about himself for helping out one of his most steadfast supporters.
But alas, this is a FromSoftware title. And if you’re at all familiar with how NPCs usually end up in Souls games, you should’ve really known better than to expect a happy ending.
If you come back to the Academy to check on Sellen, you’ll see that Rennala is back in charge, and Sellen’s nowhere to be found… wait, what the hell is that weird stone ball of faces in the corner?
…Oh. Oh no. Sellen, my beloved… er, my teacher, what the hell happened to you?!
We should probably back up for a bit. Let’s examine why, exactly, Sellen was booted from the Academy.
Sure, she herself states that it’s because the higher-ups (particularly Queen Rennala, of whom Sellen’s grudge feels viscerally personal) disapproved of her attempts to restart forbidden research into the Primeval Current.
However, it’s not quite the clear-cut matter of “stuffy academics vs. true mysticism” that Sellen presents it as.
Sellen’s Salacious Sins
“She was known as the graven witch. Obsessed by the primeval current, countless sorcerers fell to her hand. The most dangerous mage in the entire history of Raya Lucaria's Academy.”
~Witch-Hunter Jerren (referring to Sorceress Sellen; emphasis mine)
At a certain point in your quest, the Tarnished will happen upon Witch-Hunter Jerren, an old commander of General Radahn’s5 forces and bodyguard to the Carian royal family. Having a strong sense of honor and duty, as well as a healthy veneration for strength and martial prowess, he ends up taking a liking to the Tarnished.
The “witch-hunter” title seems significant, but it’s not immediately apparent why. After all, you first meet Jerren while partaking in a combat festival he’s organizing on Radahn’s behalf, where the world’s best warriors gather to battle the now-insane and practically feral Radahn, in the hopes of giving him an honorable warrior’s death.
Nothing much to do with witch-hunting, though. Unless you progress Sellen’s quest enough, that is.
At some point, Sellen will reveal that you’ve only been talking to a projection of her, and that her physical body is imprisoned in a cell underneath another crumbling ruin. Believing her life is in danger, she asks you to transfer her soul onto a piece of glintstone and then plant it into another body. If you do so, you’ll later run into Jerren, who’d gone to Sellen’s cell to kill her, only to arrive a little too late.
While Jerren suspects that Sellen’s soul is still alive (because it is), has a hunch that she’ll probably return at some point (which she does), and notes that it’s a bit fishy that she “died” right before he arrived to kill her (*whistles nonchalantly*), he doesn’t suspect you of anything. He also takes the opportunity to tell you more about your mentor, in the form of the quote above.
Sellen, as it turns out, was once a well-respected sorceress who’d even founded her own conspectus (area of study) in the Academy, presumably involving the Primeval Current. But her experiments were apparently so ghastly—and claimed the lives of many of her fellow sorcerers—that she was given the moniker of the Graven Witch, expelled from the Academy, and imprisoned in a dark cell on the other side of the world.
There is some ambiguity as to both the nature of the accusations against Sellen, as well as her complicity in it. For instance: Thops, a bumblingly earnest apprentice at the Academy, refuses to believe that an illustriously prominent sorcerer like Sellen could actually be guilty of the horrific crimes she was accused of.
On the other hand, Jerren—who seemingly embodies the virtues of honor, chivalry, and justice—doesn’t appear to have any reason to lie to you (that said, it’s generally a good idea to be skeptical of outside appearances and motivations in the Lands Between).
And if you dig around enough, you’ll uncover evidence of Sellen’s misdeeds.
You remember that weird stone ball that Sellen turned into? The one that looks like a bunch of sorcerer’s heads grafted together? Well, they’re called Schools of Graven Mages. One actually guards the ruins where Sellen’s physical body is imprisoned, and another can be found in a sealed room deep in the Academy, lined with portraits of Sellen (which can’t be found elsewhere in the Academy, presumably because they were all taken down).
The talismans they drop give us hints as to their nature and provenance:
“The primeval current is a forbidden tradition of glintstone sorcery. To those who cleave to its teachings, the act of collecting sorcerers to fashion them into the seeds of stars is but another path of scientific inquiry.”
~Graven School Talisman (item description)
So, basically, Sellen melded a bunch of sorcerers together to fashion them into stars. It’s unknown whether these sorcerers consented to being used in this way (though it’s heavily implied that they didn’t), but either way, it didn’t seem to go well for them. Their agonized expressions say it all.
And it didn’t end up well for Sellen, either. By the time her transformation (ostensibly from experimenting on herself following her usurpation of the Academy) is complete, she’s barely able to string together coherent sentences, and both her mind and her soul appear to be in the final stages of completely unraveling.
Crucially, similar fates befell Azur and Lusat—the founding sorcerers who first discovered the Primeval Current, and whom Sellen deeply admires (to the point of asking the Tarnished to bring their dead bodies back to the Academy).
When the Tarnished happens upon Azur and Lusat, you can’t help but feel pity for them both. Exiled in disgrace from the institute they co-founded, they’ve spent an untold number of years wasting away in the jagged wastes of the Mordor-like Mt. Gelmir or locked away in a sealed cell underneath the ravaged hellscape of Caelid (respectively).
Their bodies seem to have been completely overtaken by glintstone, and they can barely nod and grunt in acknowledgment of the player. By the time you next see them, they’re both dead—though you get the feeling their minds have both been long gone, perhaps subsumed by the very glintstone that also took over their bodies.
And the game outright tells you that their glimpses into the Primeval Current directly led to their long, agonizing descent into madness and eventually death:
“When Azur glimpsed into the primeval current, he saw darkness. He was left both bewitched and fearful of the abyss.”
~“Comet Azur” Sorcery (item description)
It’s a very Lovecraftian tale of two minds broken by receiving knowledge that mere mortals had no mental capacity to process, or indeed any business poking around in.
So, you can see how Rennala may have been a little freaked out by what the Primeval Current did to two of the Academy’s most renowned scholars, and a little alarmed at Sellen’s intentions of dragging even more people into it.
One also has to wonder if Rennala’s sidelining of the study of stars—an area of study deeply ingrained in the souls of both the Carians and the Raya Lucarians since the days of the Astrologers—is related to this. After all, the Primeval Current is implied to undergird the life and motion of the stars themselves.
Whether or not you think the shunting aside of astrology is a step too far, you can somewhat understand the underlying impulse. As Sellen’s fate—transformed into a helpless ball of babbling heads—shows, some areas of study carry real dangers.
The rub is… who gets to decide which dangers are worth risking?
🌅🙅♂️🪄SIDE QUEST: Breaking the Dawn
Sellen’s rebellion and eventual expulsion from the Academy of Raya Lucaria mirrors infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley's tumultuous relationship with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—their split would become one of IRL occultism's most consequential schisms.
Now, it’s not a straight comparison. For although Sellen’s magical insurrection ended in horror and ignomity for the once-illustrious sorceress, Crowley’s clash would come reshape Western esoteric traditions for generations to come. Nevertheless, the nature of Crowley’s falling out with his fraternal order is instructive and illustrative.
What began as Crowley’s enthusiastic initiation in 1898, devolved within three years into bitter confrontation and theatrical magical battles, ultimately culminating in a complete severing of ties, launching Crowley's independent magical career.
The seeds of this conflict—much like the one between Sellen and Rennala—were sown by the fundamental tension between institutional control and individual magical sovereignty that has characterized Western occultism since at least its late-19th century revival.
The Golden Dawn, despite its (at the time) revolutionary synthesis of various magical traditions, remained fundamentally conservative in its governance structure and approach to knowledge transmission. Its elaborate hierarchy of grades, carefully controlled dissemination of teachings, and insistence on traditional authority stood in stark contrast to Crowley's emerging ethos of radical magical individualism.
Personality conflicts catalyzed these philosophical differences. Crowley's flamboyant demeanor and deliberate provocations clashed with the Victorian respectability that many Golden Dawn members (among them such illustrious figures as the poet William Butler Yeats) sought to maintain. His open bisexuality, recreational drug use, and gleeful thumbing of his nose at social conventions made him a liability to Order members concerned with maintaining occultism's precarious social standing.
Yet these tensions might have remained manageable, had they not intersected with the Order's own internal power struggles. But alas, clashes of egos always seem to strike magical orders at some point or another—regrettably, they occur so frequently and predictably that I’ve come to believe that power struggles may well be inextricable from structured and organized esoteric practice.
In this story, the pivotal moment came during the Golden Dawn's leadership crisis of 1900. As Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, the Order's Chief, battled with London members over control, Crowley sided with Mathers—likely seeing in him a more permissive authority than the London temple's leadership.
Crowley's infamous appearance at the Order's London headquarters in Highland dress, masked and armed with a dagger, attempting to seize control on Mathers' behalf, transformed simmering tensions into open hostility, famously (though likely apocryphally) culminating with Yeats kicking the iconoclastic mage down the stairs and expelling him from the order.
The conflict's aftermath proved critical for both Crowley and Western occultism broadly. Expelled and estranged from the Order that had formed his magical foundation, Crowley began developing his own system, Thelema—one that would explicitly reject the Golden Dawn's cautious approach to magical power.
Where the Golden Dawn had emphasized balance, gradual development, and the integration of powers within traditional frameworks, Crowley would champion direct experience, individual authority, and the deliberate transgression of boundaries as spiritual techniques. This is summarized and encapsulated in Crowley’s most famous axiom: “do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law.”
This rupture emblematized the central tension in modern occultism: the institution's need to protect both its members and its teachings versus the magician's drive toward unfettered exploration.
The Golden Dawn sought to create safe parameters for engaging with powerful and potentially destabilizing forces—a magical environment with guardrails. Crowley, conversely, increasingly came to view these same protections as impediments to true magical attainment, arguing that only by risking oneself entirely could one achieve authentic spiritual breakthroughs.
In this, it’s easy to see echoes of Rennala’s prohibition on researching the Primeval Current clashing with Sellen’s desire to study it unrestricted. You can also see Sellen’s transformation reflected in Crowley’s similarly ignominious death: broke, reviled by polite society, his body and spirit ravaged by syphillis, heroin, and severe mental illness.
But the thing is, whether in the Lands Between or here on Earth, both the instutional and individual approaches contain wisdom and hazard.
The Golden Dawn's institutional caution preserved traditions and protected practitioners from the very real psychological dangers of unguided magical practice. Yet, as history has shown time and time again, this same caution can easily calcify into dogma, stifling innovation and authentic discovery.
Meanwhile, Crowley's radical individualism unleashed tremendous creative power and opened entire new magical vistas, but also led many followers into psychological crisis, as well as social and even spiritual destruction.6
This tension between institutional safety and individual freedom remains unresolved in contemporary esoteric practice, with Crowley’s legacy and institutions like the Golden Dawn representing the two poles between which modern occultists navigate.
So, this dramatic split was not just a historical curiosity. It was a pivotal and foundational moment that continues to shape how we understand the relationship between magical institution and magical practitioner, between tradition and innovation, between the preservation of wisdom and the necessity of its evolution.
The Price of Power
“The primeval current is a forbidden tradition of glintstone sorcery.
To those who cleave to its teachings,
the act of collecting sorcerers to fashion them
into the seeds of stars is but another path of scientific inquiry.”
~Graven Mass Talisman (item description)
As we’ve seen both with the nature of glintstone sorcery itself, as well as the ultimate fate of Sellen, Azur, and Luzat, knowledge is power in the Lands Between—much more literally so than in our world.
Specifically, knowledge is magical power. This is even reflected mechanically, as except for a very few (and very specific) examples, sorceries in Elden Ring require a certain amount of Intelligence to cast. If your Intelligence stat is below the casting requirement for a sorcery, you can’t cast it.
And just like the Golden Order seeks to control and regulate spiritual and religious power, the Academy of Raya Lucaria likewise exerts control over magical power—by regulating the dissemination of knowledge required to unlock the magic of glintstone.
As we’ve seen, there is a very good reason for this—simply turning on the spigot of knowledge might result in many would-be Sellens turning into Graven Masses. And if the Primeval Current was too much to chew for even distinguished sorcerers like Sellen, Azur, and Lusat, imagine what completely unfettered access would do for complete neophytes.
At least, that’s the argument from institutional leaders like Rennala. But not everyone would agree.
To people like Sellen, the prohibition of unorthodox research is nothing but a form of elitist gatekeeping. In her view, the potential risks of studying the Primeval Current are worth the benefits those who study it stand to gain.
No risk, no reward, in other words.
(Besides, it’d be naive to not think that, despite the Academy’s justifications of safety and protection, their gatekeeping is not at least a little self-serving; after all, it places the institution as the arbiter of the most powerful magic in the realm. Whether this is the whole point of the gatekeeping, or merely a convenient side benefit, is besides the point.)
Such is the nature of power—if something can lead to fortune, it can also lead to ruin. It’s not a superpower if it can’t also be used for ill. The risk, in her view, pales in comparison to the potential upside.
The Institutional vs. Iconoclastic Response to Transformation
“The toothless pedantry peddled by the Carian royal family can rot for all I care. I want glintstone sorceries that open our minds, unbound by terrestrial taboos. No matter what we give in return.”
~Sorceress Sellen
Rennala and Sellen embody two competing models of wielding authority: traditional hierarchy and iconoclastic equality, respectively.
We see Rennala’s respect for tradition and hierarchy in the way she runs Raya Lucaria. The Academy provides a highly structured learning environment, controlling admission to and advancement within the school’s ranks.
There is also a physical component to reinforcing this structure. For instance, Academy sorcerers wear different robes depending on their “rank.” Initiates also wear a stone mask bearing the likeness of the sorcerer who founded the conspectus they specialize in. Glintstone staffs are also issued by the Academy, and only to those it recognizes as sorcerers.
Then there’s the Academy itself—in a remote location, built high atop tall cliffs in the middle of a huge lake, and literally hermetically sealed off from the world with magical barriers, Raya Lucaria serves as a physical sanctuary for its students as much as a spiritual one.
And this concept of “sanctuary” goes to the core of Rennala’s philosophy: glintstone and the sorceries it unlocks are dangerous, both to the wielders and to those they’re wielded against. As such, everything in the Academy—from the controlled advancement of initiates to the physical space they inhabit—invokes the institution’s guiding principle of safety and protection.
Sellen, meanwhile, rejects Rennala’s notions of safety and protection in favor of direct experience and individual choice, regardless of personal risk. She would rather the Academy direct its power and resources not towards gatekeeping knowledge, but towards opening up new lines of inquiry that could prove highly beneficial—and accepting any risk or downside involved.
And whatever you may say about Sellen, you can’t accuse her of inconsistency. Indeed, she held true to this viewpoint to the end, even after it cost her not just her mind but also her very sense of self. She knew studying the Primeval Current was risky, but she accepted that risk and—when it didn’t pan out—accepted the consequences.
She very much led by example, in other words. Whether others take the same lesson from her story as she probably hoped is a bit more doubtful, but that’s neither here nor there.
🔮⚖️⛓️💥 SIDE QUEST: Degrees of Balance
Throughout the history of esoteric and magical practice, a fundamental tension has persisted between the institutional guardianship of knowledge and the individual seeker's drive toward unfettered exploration. We’ve seen this at play in the conflict between Rennala and Sellen in Elden Ring, as well as the one between Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn in the “real world.”
However, this dialectic transcends any single tradition, and in fact so consistently appears across cultures and epochs as to be a defining dynamic in humanity's approach to the mysteries. By examining how various traditions have navigated this tension, we can gain insight into not just occult history, but the broader human struggle to balance preservation and innovation, as well as safety and discovery.
The Western Hermetic tradition's graduated initiation systems represent perhaps the most structured approach to this balance. Orders like the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) established elaborate grade structures, requiring practitioners to demonstrate mastery of specific techniques and knowledge before accessing further teachings.
The reasoning for this approach is simple: magical energies, improperly channeled, can harm the individual practitioner and the people around them, along with having significant downstream effects on the broader community of practitioners.
These systems, therefore, served dual purposes. They exist to protect unprepared minds and souls from potentially destabilizing forces, while simultaneously preserving the tradition's integrity against dilution and misinterpretation.
Kabbalah's traditional restrictions offer a parallel example from Jewish mysticism. I’m hesitant to even bring this up, because (as I’ve mentioned a few times in this newsletter already) the historical prohibition against studying the Zohar before age 40—and only by married men with established Torah knowledge—is no longer operative, and is often cited to paint Kabbalists as exclusionary gatekeepers (if not to invoke tired antisemitic tropes of shadowy world-dominating cabals).
But this restriction reflects a profound concern for the initiate’s psychological stability. Medieval Kabbalists recognized that mystical practices could easily unravel one's sense of reality and self, potentially leading to madness if undertaken without the stabilizing foundations of conventional religious experience, familial life, and mature psychological development. Here again, restriction served protective as well as preservationist aims.
Seems pretty considerate, don’t you think? So, why do people use it to paint such a sinister picture of Jewish mystics? I also notice people in esoteric forums don’t complain nearly as much about actually closed Hermetic orders. But I digress.
Meanwhile, Eastern traditions developed their own approaches to this tension. Tantric lineages in both Hindu and Buddhist contexts carefully guard advanced practices through direct transmission from guru to disciple. Advanced practices (like those involving subtle body energies, highly consciousness-altering techniques, and transgressional rituals) were revealed only after years of preparation and observation of the student's character and capacity.
The emphasis on lineage—the unbroken chain of transmission from teacher to student—served to maintain both safety and authenticity, while creating institutional structures that would outlast any individual practitioner, ensuring the tradition’s enduring survival.
But then, the late 20th century witnessed a radical shift in this balance with the emergence of Chaos Magic. Rejecting the hierarchical structures of traditional orders, Chaos magicians emphasized results over pedigree, individual experimentation over received wisdom, and accessibility over exclusivity.
This approach democratized magical practice, arguing that the protective structures of earlier traditions often served more to maintain power hierarchies than to protect practitioners. In prioritizing direct experience and personal gnosis, Chaos Magic embodied a distinctly modern, individualistic approach to the mysteries, reflecting broader cultural shifts toward democratization of knowledge.
This trend accelerated even further with the New Age movement and the subsequent "mass market-ization" of spirituality. Ancient practices once transmitted solely through initiation became available through weekend workshops; techniques traditionally reserved for advanced practitioners appeared in bestselling books; symbols and concepts divorced from their original contexts were recombined in novel spiritual products.
This unprecedented accessibility brought esoteric knowledge to populations historically excluded from such traditions, yet often at the cost of depth, context, and the crucial preparatory work that traditional systems had emphasized.
In today’s day and age, digital culture has intensified both sides of this tension. The internet has shattered nearly all remaining barriers to accessing once-secret teachings, with everything from grimoires to tantric techniques freely available via a quick Google search. Yet this same technological shift has created new forms of institutional control, from online courses that resurrect grade structures to digital communities that establish their own hierarchies of authority and access.
Hang out on any esoteric subreddit or Discord server for more than five minutes, and you’ll see these dynamics at play, in full force. Join a newly-founded forum, and you’ll even get to see them form in real time!
Indigenous and reconstructed traditions occupy a particularly complex position in this spectrum. This is because many traditional practices were deliberately hidden from colonial powers as a means of cultural preservation, creating systems where secrecy served as resistance rather than elitism.
Contemporary practitioners of these traditions must now navigate between the ethical imperative to preserve teachings that barely survived cultural erasure, and the recognition that excessive restriction may lead to their complete disappearance.
Looking at this in aggregate, we see not a simple progressive narrative of liberation from outdated restrictions, but rather a perpetual rebalancing of competing values. Each approach—from the most hierarchical to the most individualistic—contains both wisdom and limitation.
Traditional systems provide testing grounds for techniques developed over centuries, psychological safeguards against destabilizing experiences, and continuity that transcends individual lifetimes. Yet, these same structures can calcify into dogma, entrench social hierarchies, and stifle the very mystical innovation they originally sought to cultivate.
Conversely, individualistic approaches foster innovation, personal responsibility, and direct experience unmediated by institutional frameworks. But without the wisdom of tradition, practitioners may rediscover—often painfully, and sometimes ruinously—the very hazards that led to the protective structures being developed in the first place. The individual seeker, untethered from tradition, gains freedom at the potential cost of both safety and depth.
Perhaps the wisest contemporary practitioners recognize that this tension itself is generative rather than problematic. The dialectic between structure and freedom, tradition and innovation, or institution and individual creates the dynamic space where mystical practice can remain both rooted and alive.
In this view, the question is not which approach is correct, but rather how each practitioner and community can mindfully engage with this tension, developing approaches that honor both the protective wisdom of tradition, and the liberating potential of individual spiritual sovereignty.
Who Controls Knowledge?
“Only those who have glimpsed what lies beyond the wisdom of stone may wield it.”
~Azur’s Glintstone Staff (item description)
So, who gets to control knowledge? Looking at the examples of Rennala and Sellen, one’s tempted to settle the matter by looking at their respective claims to authority, as is often the way these things are settled in the Lands Between—this is very much a realm where “might makes right.”
But even so, the answer’s not quite as clear-cut as you might think.
At first, you may be inclined to side with Rennala here. After all, she is a queen, and in the Lands Between, that in and of itself is usually enough to settle the matter. But Rennala’s case adds a few wrinkles to this:
First, she charmed her way to the top with her witchy moon magic. Thus, you could argue that she “cheated” her way to queenhood, and thus her authority is fundamentally illegitimate.
But even if her reign was legitimate at one point, it’s no longer recognized as such. Remember, the Academy revolted against Rennala as she increasingly slid into madness and despair after Radagon ditched her for Marika, locking her in the Great Library to wallow alone for the rest of her days.
Certainly, by the time the Tarnished shows up, neither Rennala nor her Carian Dynasty have been “in charge” of the Academy, in any meaningful way, for a very long time.
So when Sellen reveals her intentions to usurp Rennala and lead Raya Lucaria in a new direction, it’s tempting to think “well, why not?” After all, Sellen was a highly renowned sorcerer, and rose up through her own merit and ability. Hell, she even founded her own conspectus! Conspectus founders even get their own stone masks, made in their likeness, which they then make their students wear. It just doesn’t get any loftier than that at the Academy!
But as the Tarnished finds out if he successfully assists Sellen in seizing power at the Academy… she still “loses.” Once she transforms into the Graven Mass, she’s rendered so powerless that even the insane and half-checked-out Rennala is able to quickly shunt her aside and restore the status quo.
Maybe appeals to power and authority aren’t the right track here. So, how about evaluating their individual philosophies and worldviews, on their own merits, instead?
Give Me Liberty, or Give Me… Disembodied Skull Spheres?
“My apprentice, do you think it distasteful?"
~Sellen’s Primal Glintstone (item description)
Rennala and Sellen hold and represent polar opposite worldviews, and their clash is analogous to a similarly fundamental tension that plays out throughout fiction as well as the real world.
On one hand, Rennala represents the desire for safety, as well as the power of institutions to impose structure and sanction behaviors and ideas in the name of the greater good.
On the other hand, Sellen represents the desire for freedom, for empowering individuals to break free of structure and stagnation in the name of radical change and personal fulfillment.
We see this play out in Sellen’s storyline. At first, she was recognized and lauded by the Academy (ie, the institution) for her brilliance and talent. But then, after running afoul of the institutional structures placed to curtail forbidden research, she was expelled from the Academy, paying a heavy price for her pursuit of freedom—up to and including her eventual transformation into a sphere of disembodied heads.
This “Safety vs. Freedom” dichotomy isn’t unique to Elden Ring, by the way. The Assassin’s Creed series, for example, revolves around the millennia-old conflict between the freedom-loving Assassins and the “order at any cost” Templars.
It’s not unique to video games, either. In Magic: The Gathering, two of the five colors of magic you can wield are White and Black Magic. White Magic, in this context, represents order, the collective good, and submission to higher authority. Black Magic, meanwhile, represents individual freedom and empowerment of the self—no matter the price7—above all else.
Oh, and this isn’t unique to fantasy or fiction, either! This is echoed in IRL religious practice, as well. Organized religious practice, particularly of the Abrahamic monotheistic flavor, emphasizes submission and deference to God, above all else, in all matters of life.
Meanwhile, mystic or esoteric spirituality emphasizes personal enlightenment and cultivating an individual connection with one’s own inner divinity.
Sometimes, this is cast as being aligned with God’s will, in and of itself, as in Kabbalah.
Other times, it’s positioned in direct opposition to organized religion—Gnosticism views the God of the Old Testament as a false god, and Satanism takes this a step further by basically deifying the individual and the self.
And in between, there are myriad mystical and pagan practices whose views on the matter can be summed up by Aleister Crowley’s most famous axiom. You do remember it, don’t you?
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
But I’m getting off track here. So… who’s right? Rennala or Sellen?
Well… that’s for you to decide, Tarnished! Whether Rennala or Sellen was in the right is going to depend on whether you value and prioritize safety, order, and the collective… or freedom, variance, and the individual.
It’s easy to look at Sellen’s sad fate at the end of her quest and conclude that Rennala was right, and that she had good reason to restrict research into the Primeval Current.
But at the same time, it’s also easy to see that Sellen’s path was hers alone to take, and that no matter the result, she should be free to pursue it on her own terms.
Again, that’s for you to decide.
And that about wraps it up for now! For our next Elden Ring analysis, we’ll look into how many different factions (mostly centered around the Outer Gods) resist the Golden Order’s orthodoxy, and the player’s role as the Tarnished in either perpetuating or upending the status quo in the Lands Between.
Before then, there may be some detours here and there (I’m also working on a Balatro analysis, and I’m chomping at the bits to write about Civilization VII). I’m also trying to figure out a better way to organize all these articles and the themes they explore.
More to come on all that very soon. Until then, Tarnished, may the RNG be ever in your favor.
Cheers,
~Jay
Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts
While you wait for the next issue, I invite you to mull over the following discussion prompts. Please DM me with your answers, or post them in the comments—I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Who was right: Sorceress Sellen, or Queen Rennala? And why?
Similarly, do you side more with the Golden Dawn or Aleister Crowley? If your answer diverges from what you answered for the previous question, how do you explain the discrepancy?
Did you choose to help Sellen usurp Rennala’s leadership or join Jerren in quashing her insurrection? What motivated your decision?
Could the Academy of Raya Lucaria have balanced the competing imperatives towards safety and freedom better than they did? How could they have done so?
Wouldn’t you love to study under Sellen’s tutelage? (Trick question! We all know the only correct answers are “yes,” “hell yes,” and “yes, ma’am!”)
Further Reading
The Elden Ring Wiki at Fextralife — An unparalleled resource for any Tarnished who wishes to dive into the game, whether to look up lore or weapon/build stats. — Link
The ENTIRE Lore of Elden Ring (videos) by SmoughTown — This YouTube channel is jam-packed with thorough, well-researched, and thoughtful lore explanation and theory videos. If you really want to dive deep into the lore, this 36-hour long series will bring you fully up to speed! — Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Bonus (Shadow of the Erdtree)
Games Featured:
Elden Ring, developed by FromSoftware, published by BANDAI NAMCO— Steam | PlayStation | Xbox
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Footnotes
Well, relatively speaking, anyway.
The Souls community is very opinionated about the “proper” way to play Souls games like Elden Ring. It has developed a (not in the least undeserved) reputation for pure, distilled, undiluted Gamer Toxicity™️, due to its searing hostility towards newcomers, gatekeeping of “proper” playstyles, and other terminally online behavior.
So, what is the “proper” playstyle for a Souls game, anyway? According to the loudest tryhards in the community, nothing less than a pure Strength build (or “Unga Bunga,” in community parlance) will do. Thus, no Dexterity builds, no weapons that inflict poison or bleed, no NPC summons, and certainly no magic builds. The only stat you’re allowed to level up is Strength (not even Vigor), and maybe Endurance, and the only weapons you’re allowed to use are ones that scale with Strength.
Anything else, and you’re “not playing the game the way the developers intended.”
And some other tryhards take this online dick-measuring contest even further, claiming that anyone who hasn’t beaten a Souls game without leveling up at all, without wearing armor, and using only a club as a weapon, hasn’t truly beaten the game. It’s hard to tell whether these folks are being facetious or not.
Either way, what these two breeds of troglodytes have in common is a searing rage for mage builds and the players that make use of them.
Obviously, this is all hogwash. If the developers didn’t intend for you to use NPC summons, status effects, or magic, why did they code them into the game?
But even if you accept the legitimacy of mage builds, the Unga Bungas do have a point: magic does grant the player some quite significant advantages. High-level spells are not only insanely powerful, they’re also ranged. So, unlike the melee build—which has to get up close and personal with the scary dragon to even try and damage it—the sorcerer can just lob magic spheres at it from a comfortable distance.
That said, these advantages also come with tradeoffs that serve to balance out mage builds. The first is that while melee attacks only cost Stamina, spells also cost FP (Focus Points), a finite resource that (unlike Stamina) doesn’t replenish automatically. And since a mage has to level up Intelligence instead of Strength, that not only means that she can’t fall back on physical/melee attacks if she’s unable to cast magic,but it also means that her defense will be dangerously low against any hits that land on her. Therefore, if a mage runs out of FP (or if her adversary gets within melee range), she’s basically a sitting duck.
Magic is just a different playstyle than melee, and different players will gravitate towards the playstyle that they gel with more. Part of the fun of RPGs like Elden Ring is the freedom they offer to build your character according to your preferred playstyle.
And to be fair, the Souls community has gotten much better about this since Elden Ring brought millions of new players into the fold. But the problem’s still there, as the replies to any Reddit post about beating Malenia while using the Mimic Tear will demonstrate.
So, where does this hostility come from, anyway? That’s beyond the scope of this article, but the TL;DR is… it’s ego. People who try to dictate the “proper” way to play a Souls game (or any game, for that matter) have invested way too much of their self-worth in how much “better” they are at playing a video game than anyone else. Because of this, when a mage steamrolls them in PvP, they have to construct entire justifications about how that mage wasn’t “playing the game as intended” to quell the cognitive dissonance in their head.
Obviously, a more effective way to do that would be to go out and touch grass, accomplish something tangible to actually gain a measure of self-worth from, and let other people have their fun.
But let’s be real… what’s the likelihood of that happening?
Damnit, I guess I have to talk about Hidetaka Miyazaki’s alleged foot fetish now.
It’s been a longstanding meme in the Souls community that Miyazaki only makes these games to indulge his (alleged) foot fetish. As evidence, players point to the high number of barefoot characters (particularly female barefoot characters) in his games, going all the way back to Demon’s Souls’ Maiden in Black, all the way down to Fia, Sellen, Nepheli Loux, Rennala, Latenna, and Marika (among many, many others) in Elden Ring.
This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a tell. There are many longstanding narrative reasons to portray a character as barefoot. It can symbolize asceticism, poverty, “earthiness,” purity/innocence, or magical affinity, all of which can describe the aforementioned characters in some way or another. The latter is especially relevant, as mages are often described as forgoing shoes to strengthen their connection to the earth and its magical currents.
However, one can’t help but notice that the feet in Souls games are very highly (perhaps lovingly) detailed and textured, down to the wrinkles on their soles—a level of detail not even given to the player character’s face. In Elden Ring, made for next-gen consoles, this is amped to the 11th degree.
So… it does make you wonder.
Of course, not that there’s anything wrong with it. Out of all the strange things to sexually fixate on, the lower extremities are fairly benign, all things considered. So be true to yourself, Miyazaki, and don’t let those snarky Redditors get to you. We’re still going to make memes about it, though.
Not to mention, her nurturing but vaguely menacing aura makes her one of the hottest incarnations of the “sexy teacher” trope in the entire fantasy genre. Rawr.
Radahn, to refresh your memory, is one of Rennala’s sons.
And, ironically enough, Thelemic organizations formed to carry Crowley’s torch have, in the decades following his death, themselves become as dogmatic and rigid as the very Golden Dawn that he sought to supplant. The Ordo Templi Orientis, which Crowley assumed (some would say “usurped”) control of and led until his death in 1947, is infamous for its uncompromising gatekeeping and hostility to newcomers today.
Mechanically, this is illustrated in the many black cards that allow you to give up some of your Life—the most important stat in the game, to the point where you lose if it drops to 0—for a temporary boost in power.