Modern Day Mystery Schools for Magical People (MDMSMP)

Shawna was the first in her class, but it wasn’t hard for her. She yearned for something more. There was an easy clarity about the world, a lucidity… it’d always felt like she was walking through the world atop easy breezy rose petals, as though her karma were just… too good. Life was too easy. Until she met Theo.  Theo (pronounce Tayo) was the sullen, soft-spoken, dark haired kid who always wore black and sat at the back of the class reading off-kilter books that had nothing to do with any of his assignments, or writing longhand with one of his fountainhead quills which he also used for drawing anime, creating first the background, intricate esoteric drawings of ancient enlightened oriental civilizations (up high in the mountains of the Himalayas, or the misty mountains of rural China, back way back when in the Jade empire). The only thing he was missing, in her eyes, from being an emperor were jewels, some bright threads, and a snuff box. Of course the vision was ridiculous and uncanny because he was completely sober and didn’t do drugs, didn’t even drink, the way she and her friends would noisily get sloshed and divulge their deepest darkest secrets whilst doing makeup together or tousling under the full moon out in the campus gardens behind the walls of the academy. She only had it metaphorically, kept up in the recesses of her back-mind, as an abstract visual, an atemporal theoretical, as though begotten from another age.  The kids at Sagewood Academy were the brightest and best from across the world. Technically this was a secondary collegiate institution, which meant that they had to have their Bachelor’s degree already from one of the ivy leagues or her sister schools that rank around the same merit. For example, every college in Boston is about as difficult as any other; what they don’t tell you is that the bigger name ones tend to steal a lot of material from philosophical discussions with students and provide less hands-on student-teacher time, so, in a way, they’re not as good as the hidden ivies.  “Hidden Ivies are a name for outstanding schools that caught on mostly in part to the published guide. They may not be officially called an Ivy League school, but the authors absolutely consider that these are on par or rival those of the Ivy Leagues.” - (collegeraptor.com) So some of the kids had come from hidden ivies or ivy league institutions; the best and the brightest could get into the school, that was a very well-known fact. What was not so well-known was that this was only a school for magic pupils, and that there was a very specific intention behind the school, which had glass blown the place into being. Because in a way, that’s what it looked like had occurred. There was an interesting focus on eco-architecture amongst all of the skill-building secondary schools within the Mystery School roster, sort of a secondary ivy league charter school coalition that was known amongst the magical community. Everything ran off the power of the elements: wind, sun, hydrogen, water, electricity made from muon catalyzed fusion and the pacifistic dissemination of particles down to the quarks and zygotes. Given all the windows, stainglass and bubble, and the emphasis on glass (which allowed more easeful inflow of sun-energy) Sagewood was an ironic name for this place, located at the base of some of the highest mountains in the world, one of the campuses at a cherry blossom enraptured setting in Japan, the other just a short breeze away from Bondai beach on the glass blue waters of Sydney, Australia. Teleportation was second nature for all of the students at the schools, and it wasn’t uncommon to have an economics of spatio-temporal geometry class held in Japan, followed by a brief hour off for lunch, then a class on the archeological ruins of the Roman Empire and xenophobic trade practices that led to the dissemination of neo-platonic religion amongst all the sectors of the civilized known world that continues to influence culture still today.  Normal classes, normal classes. But where was the time to learn all of the requisite magics that was a preliminary requirement for advancing into the courses in the first place?  An intermediary Honors course had to be completed by all of the applicants that applied to Sagewood and its subsidiary schools. Arthur Sagewood, a Japanese Zen Master (pronounced “Art-ter”) was the original founder of the Modern Day Mystery Schools for Magical People, as it was known (MDMSMP). Arthur was a hermetic monk that spent many decades up in a cave in the northern mountains of Japan, (and then a thousand years off on a distant planet that he found via a mysterious portal made up of dark ether where a hundred years of time was equivalent to 1 earth year, and a thousand years equivalent to 10 earth years) studying under the lineage of various gurus that led him through many scores of hours of meditation to a philosophical-spiritual revelation that first gave him the power to float, then to attract things to him at will (PK - psychokinesis), then he learned he could make things fight one another mid-air as the ancient oriental battles used to be fought (as we see historically in the martial arts films from ancient China and the other pan-Asian countries), like an ancient battle commander.  Someone who has been a warrior for a long time will typically ascend up the ranks for years until they are actually the ones that commands people of equitable skill to hone their talents by fighting one another, often spending most of the battle suspended in air, practicing various aerial kicks and mid-flight moves that practice balance to set the vibe and tone for the fighters, where the mission is to demonstrate admirable excellence in their fields, be their background Jeet Kun Do, Aikido, Jujitsu, Karate, or some other elemental martial arts practice. Martial arts of course made the perfect arena in which to practice magic.  Consequently, there was a formative, formidable, focus, on building up a student’s martial arts skills and there was a strong influence of these art forms and their sister philosophies that could be seen around campus, which sported various hallways of ostentatious swords, jos, bow and arrows, whips, nunchucks, and many tools of the modern warrior. Arthur the Grandmaster practiced peaceful philosophies which meant that one should attack never to injure, and that any injury only revealed a weakness, a sloppiness, of the one utilizing the maneuvers. The school was about teaching the students to control themselves and their magic; self-control was one of the most important tenets and underlying philosophies of the institution.  The intermediary Honors course included the following magical skill building abilities: Martial Arts, Levitation, Teleportation, Psychokinesis (PK), Shapeshifting, Elemental Mimicry and Manipulation, Raiju mimicry (the ability to transform into a lightning-enhanced version of one of the mammalian daemons, be it wolf, fox, weasel, ferret, lemur, sloth, wombat, puppygod, or one of the little or big cats for enhanced speed, endurance, durability, skill, nightvision, x-ray vision, and agility), weather manipulation, and supernatural ability to leap very high into the sky as well as therianthropy: The ability to transmorphize or metamorphize into a spirit animal or beam of light called a Lite or a Shade in order to climb walls, walk on water, swim vast distances underwater without getting hurt, or to otherwise cast spells and aspersions (summonings and banishments aka anti-summonings).  You would think that such a program might cost millions upon millions of dollars, since the magics taught there were sincerely priceless. However, there was no cost to entry, only a series of tests, genetic and ability, to prove that their was indeed magic in the blood; Arthur began as a monk, true, but patented his system of martial arts in a way that clearly sold out across the known human identifying world. He was a true trillionaire, the cool Tri-o, and quite satisfied to spend the greater part of it in actualizing his vision of creating floating sanctuaries in the cloud arenas of the world (which are to some great degree absconded amongst the mists and unseeble by the human eye, thanks either to the topographical geo-patterns of the place or thanks to some web of weather manipulation spells to keep the place invisible to the blind eye). This concept is very very well-practiced amongst all wizards, saints and sages, practitioners of magic that follow some strong philosophically backed manner of decorum and sanctity.  It is a simple protection spell, after all. Even witches could do that. There were all manner of creatures roaming the halls of the school. You see, it was typically, invariably the case that regular people that qualified for the honors program arrived at the school thinking themselves ordinary (yet, presenting as undismissably unparalleled extraordinary intellect, bright and gifted, yes, self-realized, though not quite yet), and left the school knowing what their true forms really were. For you see, even if you aren’t yourself a vampire, a warlock, a werewolf, a druid, or a sylph, fairy nymph or mermaid, chances are someone in your distant bloodline was in fact one of these and the potential to become it is always there. We did a comprehensive gene test on all qualified applicants to the schools in order to ensure that they… had some sort of magical blood. Otherwise they wouldn’t last a day in this place. By looking at the telomeres of the DNA strands on a micro-level through dark-field microscopes, the institutions were able to know on a right-away basis whether or not the initiatives in training displayed magical genes or not. They were also able to use the genetic data to variably hone in on which family lineage and which characters throughout time were what famous supernatural beings - druid, dryad, nymph, sylph, nobility (often characters of nobility were linked up to charismatic caricature attributes, even yes labels, let’s see from vampires to ancient wizards, werewolves to some of the most impressive sorcerers in the solar nexus and you wouldn’t even know it outside of this highly inclusive and thorough genetic testing pods that Arther constructed around the world to help scout talent for his institutions).  One day, on one of the magical national holidays referred to as All Ghouls’ Shmool, the students overheard the teachers plotting something mysterious and edgy. They could tell because their voices were hushed, and they were all gathered around some mysterious lit-up stories in the back of the restricted section. At the opposite section of the massive temple library, depictions of all of the mythological and spiritual-religious scenes canvassing the stained glass windows, which made up a great portion of the walls, sang perfect harmonies of melodious tones, the bare inner workings of language, humming a silent sultry swanky sordid prose, that if you could listen very very carefully to, you’d make out epic sheets of overlaying tunes that picked up on the inspirations of one another and which in the most delicate of atmospheres, rang rivers through a symphony of streaming notes, teasing harmonies and melodies where there was before only the faint, echoing chambers of woodwind bells and tinkering particulates. The Ashleys were at the far end of the cathedral, as always, seemingly oblivious to the epically wondrous beautiful of the enchanting melodies within the walls of the castle, focused only on petty gossips and other banal dramaticisms that provoked the conquering spirit of the rajasic realms up and down, a merry go ride of adrenalized cattiness and paranoias pertaining to boys, ever the high school topic of the hour.  “Tom is so cute you know,” the one Ashley was saying to the next. “But I feel that he exudes too much alpha energy, too much Main Character energy, and he’s intimidated by others and wants to kick them out. kjkjlkjkj;Remember when he roughhoused Michael and sent him running for the hills with his tidie whities pulled up over his face!! What kind of knot was that? Where did he learn such a maneuver - sailing? He couldn’t show his face for weeks, poor guy! It wasn’t even his fault at all.” “I agree,” responded the second Ashley, much the outstanding enthusiast, the one who protected and propped up the other girls’ crowns if they drooped, who felt it an insult to not be around her girls 24/7 during the few occasions where the teachers would separate them for their morning time or mid-afternoon solo assignments. “I disagree,” said the third Ashley, who always disagreed, in order to enact if you will, the devil’s advocate, to highlight the corollary measure of reason in solid equal proportion to the strength of the utterance of the first declaration in all manner of instances and occasions (it really was quite the pattern; almost campy, had it not just been merely the case). “Of course you do,” replied Ashley 1, rolling her eyes sardonically (although she quite liked being stood up to because no one else would ever bother or dare to, given her very high levels of self-appointed prestige at the mystery school). “Well yea,” she responded unfazed. “Technically Tom is a tutor, so he has leverage rights.” “Are you serious,” replied Ashley 1. “There is no excuse for bullying whatsoever. Thom is a sad wannabe Alpha that has to overcompensate and fight his way into every social gathering on tooth and nail. He’s always challenging the other alpha’s roles.” “Yea and he’s not even a werewolf,” said Ashley 2 who virtually never disagreed with anything, who was kind of the libra pacifier of the group. “He’s a warlock,” she said, snickering, and sneaking a peak over at the gangly curly haired hood enshrouded cloak as he walked through the library doors with his typical fair faced scowl. Dark, beautiful, curly locks, like Michaelangelo… yet named as simply as a peasant child. Tom. It had no ring to it, and besides, was already worn in by the Tom Cruise character from TopGun and Vanilla Sky who was (despite being quite short actually) the picture of manliness and cool suavimente high caliber living. Back in the day before his Scientology stunts with the lady lead of Dawson’s Creek, he’d been the pinnacle of purity of the role of the aspired-to archetype of the male actor, much similar to a serious and dignified version and complement to the lady’s man sandy-haired blonde manly physique of a bodybuilder, seen in Brad Pitt in his heyday, or side show to even a Vin Diesel and Arnold Schwartzennager… possibly. This Tom had all the looks, and none of the bravado. He kind of carried himself in a stooped over posture like he’d already given up, but sought to command every social situation with complete austerity and control. It was like a Tom Cruise character of a sort… gone dark. And he’d been this way since she’d first met the guy. Everyone with intelligence intact kind of kept their distance from Tom. It’s not like they were in gradeschool - a grown man giving people nookies and wedgies and all sorts of humiliating disservices to their integrity was not aggressive so much as just sad.  But he had his cronies- Bullwart and Unican’t, as the girls called them. Ewan McCanter and Bud L’wart. Bud and Ewan were always at his side, picking fights in the halls and kind of just sticking to the really machismo wannabe jock outlook. Non of them had made any of the sports teams, yet they carried themselves with their muscular, lank frames from just - picking fights, presumably? - with a type of bravado and a resolute and composed self-respect. They always felt that their fights were justified, that much one could tell. But they definitely lived for the fight, for the wanting to stand up and pick a little territory battle in order to draw more lines in the sand. Typical warlock business. So undignified to the more sattvic spirits on the field, that avoided confrontation at all costs and worked diligently on the daily to keep the vibes sattvic and chaste. War and s*x are… very similar. People that are very war-based typically have a suppressed homosexual attraction. Otherwise they wouldn’t crave the thrill of picking fights. It’s the only way they can get close to members of the same gender without having to enter the realm of sensuality, intimacy, or ...anything too orgiastic. Cagefights was the closest they’d get, but on the school premises, most of the indoor hallways qualified as some sort of type of just that. Everyone knew to avoid them like the plague; duck their heads down, bring their sweaters up, hunch over to appear weak, not to threaten their reign of terror to any extent. In this sort of manner they did almost appear to wield the power of emperors when they walked down a proper hallway - so they were either winning battles or coercing those to pre-eminantly free, to run away in fear, to walk quickly, to avoid smelling the roses when nearby the pretentious and aggressive goons.  Shawna decided to shift her lazer focus eyes to the teachers back in the restricted section. Since she came from a long line of wizards and werewolves, there was no question in her mind that she could see and hear exactly what they were talking about. ‘Jeez,’ she thought her eyes skirting around the room like a piranha, scanning everything and clairvoyently picking up on its backstories (clairvoyence is both real and a synthesis of intuiting information from a series of product systems).  One day with enough information on the subject, we’ll all know how to scan people and pick up on exactly what they are about and what they know.       ‘I can’t…. Quite make out…. Or there we go.’ She used her supra-sensory hearing abilities to focalize in on the professors making eyes in the restricted section. She could lip read as well, for further distances, but that wouldn’t be necessary on this occasion at least. Shawna was used to being alone, to doing her snooping solo, to people watching with yours truly, to being singled out in a group of cliques, to kind of being a lone ranger. She wasn’t overly Alpha… or maybe she was. She didn’t think so. From her point of view, she was calm, supremely collected, neither tamasic nor morose, simply a dream to hang out with. Yet she’d always found herself a sort of lone wolf. It didn’t make sense why groups didn’t take to her; she just had her own vibration, and it was usually higher than all of them. Maybe that’s what put them off.  Anyways, she wouldn’t be as productive at learning magic if she didn’t hunker down to the books, and she wouldn’t be as athletically gifted if she didn’t take to the streets on foot or bike, to the seas on freeswim to various islands, nonviolently breaking into the multimillion dollar houses there and breathing in the negative ionic particles from the air that’d set in before, during, and after every thunderstorm that set the water’s surface ablaze with kaleidoscopic color. Rainbow prismatic glass surface, currents running underneath from the night before to align with for maximum speed and proficiency in the waves. And frankly it wasn’t really a group’s approval that she craved, even though that’s what werewolves were supposed to want. A pack of their own, you know? She’d get there, and not by her own will’s doing, but karma alone. But for now, what she wanted, was a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Someone that would think about her all the time, who she could call up in the middle of the night just to chill with, and talk with throughout the moonlit hours. She craved effortless intimacy of communication, of touch, of jokes, of deep philosophical perplexities. Was that too much to ask?  She was always first in her class and had to create new projects on the side because she burned through her school studies so quickly. Various money and creativity building concoctions were put on the docket and she made her way through all of them, checking down the list; lucid dreaming journal, sculpting classes, biking to hot yoga class (she wore through all the free trials in the city of Shanghai during her time as a teacher's assistant of calligraphy classes and martial arts training down by the Buddha statues up the gondola and hundreds of steps into the mountainous jungles of rural China where she discovered the MDMSMP (Modern Day Mystery Schools for Magic People) one day on a flyer in one of the cafes in the main square below the statue where she ran stairs up to go pray. She’d jumped into a teleportation kiosk the same day, after hunting down her passport and rummaging through all her things to find her very favorite things which she promptly consolidated into a gigantic hiking/travelling cameo army backpack that she’d procured new, half off, from a Japanese trading site called Mercari for alt traders and resellers. She didn’t even know, or have any real assurance, that she’d make it into the school. She’d always just went where the wind took her, being something of a Pocahantas, “Listen to the Spirit Guides” type of girl. Fomo..was not in her lexicon. She was “lucky” in the sense that she was always where she needed to be, thanks to this cunning skill and strategy and brave heartedness (exercising the card of the fool often, putting her heart on her sleeve, jumping into the crystal aquamarine deep of her subconscious territory, doing the spiritual work to keep up with the messages of The Force). Life was an ever roaring river, and if you didn’t stop to look around you might miss it. Well now, she was always on the cutting edge, and she never missed a thing. Life became a dream of her design, and when her heart leapt at the chance to explore her magic and be amongst other magical people, how could she say no? When there was a TK Kiosk just 2 miles from her street what logical-seeming justifications could one employ to chicken out? Backpack donned early before dawn that very next morning, she’d trudged the two miles to go and apply for an international teleportation at the kiosk, was approved through her identification card checks and the face scan to determine no identity fraud, and snap bang boom - she arrived on the front gates by dawn that day, at the very foot of the headmaster’s office himself up on Treasury Hill.  A few tests later, she was in.  "You're easily one of the greatest talents I've had the pleasure of knowing," he'd told her, uncharacteristic of his normally uptight, withdrawn personality that barely made a noise or a gesture at all, apart from referencing esoteric or confirmational texts.  He'd helped her float into a flying arena, as he does with all his students, the ancient oriental master coaching from the sidelines, and all that, but what she'd shown him at those heights was nothing short of extraordinary.  A genetic scan determined that she was actually a descendent on her mother's line from a long line of samurai witches ("brujeria" in the Spanish culture) The fox witch is by far the most commonly seen witch figure in Japan. Differing regional beliefs set those who use foxes into two separate types: the kitsune-tsukai, and the kitsune-mochi. Indeed, Shawna was to discover that she was indeed a shapeshifter and that the fox emblem was to be her daemon and spirit animal. On her dad's lineage... things got rather more mystical and deep because you see, he and quite a few others of his pack were Very powerful werewolves, who disguised themselves as warlocks in order to make it through society without being afflicted by harm or envy by others. "You're in," he'd told her, smiling happily with tears in his eyes. "You've never been more in. you've found a home here... and perhaps you'll find your pack." Such a fantasmical introduction to her hero's journey, and so far nothing outside of the banal had occurred short of spending odd hours in the middle of the night stuck in the library poring over esoteric text to work out her magical spells and struggle to keep up with the homework load that was much more intensive than anything she'd prior been accustomed to even at Haverford, the all-women's college where she'd attended in upstate Pennsylvania. Well, she hadn't found her pack... yet. Being that it was a national holiday, she didn't have much else to do but snoop, so she did a lazer-sensitive scan of the teachers in the restricted section and even read a bit of the text they'd been poring over.  "At the time of the fifth moon of the new year (that was today, Shawna reasoned intelligently), on All Ghoul's Shmool, the rift will break and the spirits will take, aim upon the human race. (Was this for real?! Shawna adjusted her x-ray spectacles and refocused with her lazer vision) The schools from every continent will compete as though they're heaven-sent, calmly claiming precedent, over the spirit realm. The necromancers who summoned them will surely be resent to the helm of the original dissent." (The helm of the original dissent... what possibly could that be? Where were these nefarious necromancers wreaking havoc on the veils and doors connecting up all of the realms? The text made no mention of this.)"  The professors seemed deeply troubled over this and were enravelled in a meaningful conversation to try to sort out the x's from the y's and get their world back on track.This was a serious prophecy, and prophecies were never to be overlooked, on pain of the portent of a future demise, of dishonorable death. They knew it too, they knew something was askance. The way they looked at one another... as though they were about to journey up the front lines to take up some kind of torch from which they could never again back down.  Thus was Shawna prepared for the announcement that came through not only on the loudspeakers that very night, but through the emergency broadcast station on the digitally set facetime-abled holographic watches that were endowed to all the students as part of a conclusive package of materials and supplies that enabled the magical pupils to be yet more magical, more evolved, more progressive, keeping Arther's Mystery Schools pioneers of the cutting edge.  D-d-d-d-d--d-d-dd-. D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-. "Hello students, this is your exam proctor, Professor Copernicus. Will all students please report to the main assembly hall on the Concert Quarters immediately. Thank you. Come prepared for battle. And bring a pencil. Thank you, that is all."  Well, f**k.  Shawna packed up her office supplies, zipped up her bulletproof faded leather jacket, hit the sides of her legs with her palms to ensure that all her protective amulets and gemstones were locked in the way she'd intended in her little sewing adventure the night before, felt from the contours that all the opals and amarynth was locked in location, swung her cameo backpack over her shoulder and started running to the race tracks to be let in through the towering gates into the competition quarters in which the students competed for awards and international recognition. She was aware of the threat of a culling - sometimes people were expelled from the premises for absolutely no personal reasons whatsoever, sheer assessments based on skill alone, the results of being a poor diplomat, fighter, or academic.  As she booked it out of the library, the teachers suspending their whispering to pay her a brief look of concern, and sprinted up to the competition campus quarters, there was only one thought replaying in her mind:Today was going to get interesting.