Paying the Price
a brief sermon by Tau Apiryon
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You want X, so you do a ritual or pray to some God or Saint. Millions of testimonials over the centuries leave us no doubt that both magic and prayer (is that redundant?) actually work, and that the details really don’t matter. However, sometimes success in these matters can be worse than failure, for in the immortal words of Robert A. Heinlein, TANSTAAFL. For convenience, we will lump all Gods, Saints, spirits, demons and others of their ilk together, the allegedly good as well as the allegedly evil, under the umbrella term “egregores”. Well, Egregores do NOTHING without due compensation.
If you want El Shaddai to give you victory over the Canaanites, you’ll get it, but you have to give Him His hundred unblemished lambs, eight hundred bags of flour, etc. If you want Jesus or Allah or Satan to buy you a Mercedes Benz, you’ll get it, but you’ll have to sacrifice your freedom. If you want Andrealphus to annoy your chemistry professor, he’ll do it, but he’ll also show up at your girlfriend’s house. If you want Venus to bring you Love, she’ll do it, but you’ll have to take out the trash and fix the sink and change the diapers and listen to…well, you get the picture. Some call it Karma, some call it quid pro quo, some call it equilibrium, some call it balancing the books.
What do you do? You can’t escape it, even “mountain men” have to come down to buy ammo once in a while. You can proceed with business as usual; or you can, by an act of will, change your perspective. If, for instance, you want to give yourself completely in devotion to Our Lady Nuit, she’ll accept you. BUT, you’ll have to burn to her perfumes, wear to her jewels, drink to her, and exceed the nations of the earth in splendour and pride. Otherwise, forget it.
Love is the law, love under will.