Humans tend to be grey, but some spirit races can be truly either White or Black only.

conxtion wrote:Come to think of it, the opposite of White is Black, and the opposite of Dark is Light; so yeah, it should be:
a) White Arts, Grey Arts, Black Arts
or
b) Light Arts, Grey Arts, Dark Arts.

Likes2Read wrote:

conxtion wrote:To most people, Dark Arts = Black Arts

I would prefer to use Lisa Hankin's way -White Arts, Grey Arts, Dark Arts

Leaving aside the avoiding of using "white" or "black" for a moment, if I had my way, the terms we use here would be "White Arts, Grey Arts, Black Arts". That, to me, gives a clearer picture of the full spectrum of the Arts.

Using "Light" and "Dark" as shorthand for "Good" and "Evil" might have a similar painful impact to using "White" and "Black". Countless people have suffered oppression over the mere fact that their pigment was darker than someone else's.

I don't think the magical terms used by the world at large are going to be totally replaced in our lifetimes. Still, it's good to consider the impact of our words, and come up with synonyms that say the same thing but don't bring the same emotional baggage. What good is a phrase that triggers needless emotional pain? The listener who is triggered by it will shut down on the spot, and any message said after that will never even register. That helps no one.

Might not be the easiest to go with but how about order and chaos for Wa and Da.Not entirly sure how to put Ba without using a word with a inherent negative association but when I put words to thous distinctions thats what I put to them and if chaos doesn't work that well I aslo would associate it as primal.Though I imagin their would still be bias in some sence regurdless how you put it considering most people seem to have a habit of trying to lump thing as eather good or bad without a grey area for thing which don't fit.That and the words that can be used have a meaning to them already which would add to the biasness of the people looking at them I imagin.Unless someone thinks up a origenal word for them I imagin the current terms would be the least bias ones.Or they would be if media didn't add bias to them to begin with like how dark arts gets a negative bias because of harry potter for example.

blessed be

Personally I have never been big on the distinction between the different "color spectrum" concepts but that is because I see the universe as pure energy ultimately. That said, I think Benevolent, Neutral, and Malevolent as recommended above are really the better classification with the caveat that these are generalizations. A benevolent being is like a benevolent person, they can still go to war for what they love, they can still fight for what they believe in, and while their core might be what we identify as "good" if we find we have abused or harmed them they can still aim some incredible offense against us. The contrast remains as well that a malevolent being can still love others, they simply have a mean streak to them that comes out. They could still sacrifice their very essence to save someone they love, or stand in the way of an attack. This comes down to why I disdain classifications at times though, no classification is completely truthful, its the best the person can do at the time.

So for example a benevolent being who has someone tearing it down, talking bad to it, insulting it, blaming all their life on it, and otherwise causing emotional harm could still back lash as a result. Some beings have an infinite well spring of peace in them, but like most people I think that is rare. Likewise a malevolent being who is volunteering for binding/bonding with a person is likely to have a reason to come through. The thing about a malevolent being is that it doesn't need a conjurer to step through the veil any more than a benevolent being does. So a being classified as "malevolent" generally ISN'T for the person they are coming through for. If they wanted to just beat someone up they wouldn't sound the red alert by going through a conjurer.

You can see I've given some deep thought to it, and ultimately even Light and Dark are terms I don't like because the Light can blind you, and the Dark can provide safety.

Traditional Norse Philosophy tends to eschew concepts of Light and Dark instead for "Order and Chaos" with the Aesir being beings of order and the Jotunn more of chaos.

Charles_Odinforce wrote:Personally I have never been big on the distinction between the different "color spectrum" concepts but that is because I see the universe as pure energy ultimately. That said, I think Benevolent, Neutral, and Malevolent as recommended above are really the better classification with the caveat that these are generalizations. A benevolent being is like a benevolent person, they can still go to war for what they love, they can still fight for what they believe in, and while their core might be what we identify as "good" if we find we have abused or harmed them they can still aim some incredible offense against us. The contrast remains as well that a malevolent being can still love others, they simply have a mean streak to them that comes out. They could still sacrifice their very essence to save someone they love, or stand in the way of an attack. This comes down to why I disdain classifications at times though, no classification is completely truthful, its the best the person can do at the time.

So for example a benevolent being who has someone tearing it down, talking bad to it, insulting it, blaming all their life on it, and otherwise causing emotional harm could still back lash as a result. Some beings have an infinite well spring of peace in them, but like most people I think that is rare. Likewise a malevolent being who is volunteering for binding/bonding with a person is likely to have a reason to come through. The thing about a malevolent being is that it doesn't need a conjurer to step through the veil any more than a benevolent being does. So a being classified as "malevolent" generally ISN'T for the person they are coming through for. If they wanted to just beat someone up they wouldn't sound the red alert by going through a conjurer.

You can see I've given some deep thought to it, and ultimately even Light and Dark are terms I don't like because the Light can blind you, and the Dark can provide safety.

Traditional Norse Philosophy tends to eschew concepts of Light and Dark instead for "Order and Chaos" with the Aesir being beings of order and the Jotunn more of chaos.

So true,But its easier to discribe what your looking at when it has a lable of some kind to it.Like how you have salt water,brackish water and freash water which is simaler and can have thousands of diffrent consitencies of salt and other minarales in each form but most fall on the sides of the spectrum which warents the lable for clear distinction without to much detail.Its just most people seem to just ignore if they even acknoledge the other 100+ colors between the main ones and just lump them together without looking at the finer details.It probably would help if ether people could instinctively know the diffrences to not need lables or have as many names for the entier spectrum as most colors that exist to tell them apart by having a word for it.Which seems like a limit on the mortal mind thats to hard enough to break on a individual level let alone on mass if it even could.Its not the most ideal thing when people don't take every little aspect of the spectrum into account but classification is necessary for understanding.At least from what I know it is.

blessed be

DualWanderer3 wrote: So true,But its easier to discribe what your looking at when it has a lable of some kind to it.Like how you have salt water,brackish water and freash water which is simaler and can have thousands of diffrent consitencies of salt and other minarales in each form but most fall on the sides of the spectrum which warents the lable for clear distinction without to much detail.Its just most people seem to just ignore if they even acknoledge the other 100+ colors between the main ones and just lump them together without looking at the finer details.It probably would help if ether people could instinctively know the diffrences to not need lables or have as many names for the entier spectrum as most colors that exist to tell them apart by having a word for it.Which seems like a limit on the mortal mind thats to hard enough to break on a individual level let alone on mass if it even could.Its not the most ideal thing when people don't take every little aspect of the spectrum into account but classification is necessary for understanding.At least from what I know it is.

blessed be

Oh I totally agree. Sometimes we use a term not because it is the best term, and not because it is perfect in every way, but because it is necessary to understand a topic or explain a principal. It's much easier to say "This is a White Arts Being who focuses on Order" to quickly convey a message over "This is a being who gravitates toward concepts of honor, truth, dignity, and has a strong moral compulsion while being against hurting others and is considers Order the highest virtue."

The same thing happens with people socially though. I don't know about anyone else but when I'm in polite conversation with my friends invariable the conversation will go "If you were a character in XYZ who would you be?" or "Who do you think I'd be" since we all seek to define, redefine, and self actualize. I think we create a mountain of information where it is more subtle because the human mind needs to grasp on some kind of data to make sense of the world.

I think the confusion comes then into beings who fall into many spectrums. To give an example.

Morality: Light to Dark
Energetic: Yang (Light) to Yin (Dark)
Appearance/Presentation of Self: Light (Angelic, Classic Greek Gods) to Dark (Demonic, Norse Dwarven, Classic Underworld Gods)
Personality: Light (Compassionate) to Dark (Lacking Empathy)

And the list goes on and on and on and on haha

What happens is that many people, more when starting out I think, tend to see a check mark in one box as a check mark on that side for all. You say a being is Light and you mean morality, and they ascribe Yang Energy, Light Appearance, and Light Personality.

I actually kind of like the way the RPG D&D handled alignment concepts. You had scales of alignment based on concepts that were Moral (Good, Neutral, Evil) and Ethical (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic). It broke down Morals (Personal concepts of right and wrong) and societal concepts in the form of Ethics concerning the view of law and things like contracts.

So for example a Lawful, Evil, Demon of Light Energy is one who will hold to contracts and agreements (safe to work with) but ultimately seems morality as something that gets in their way to get what they want outside of agreements (not safe to work with without gaining their permission, could be hostile to others) and who radiates energy that when viewed gives the sense of "Light" or Life Force based energy.

That said, for CH's purpose I think the system works, could you imagine if people get confused between DA and BA how confused they'd get using an Alignment Spectrum for people new to these things? Heck, you want to see a fight break out, get into a discussion on True Neutral with a group using that in D&D.