A Word on Sacrifices
A Word on Sacrifices
There are times when it becomes necessary (or at least desirable) to
attempt to redirect the current flow of universal energies in your
direction (bearing in mind that this may or may not be a good thing,
depending on what kind of mood the universe is in -- caveat preemptor).
One way of doing this, as the Ancient Aztecs and the Puritan
Witch-Hunters knew, is by means of a sacrifice. Often, it is believed that
a sacrifice made to a deity puts you in that deity's favor and that they
will then grant you some favors. This, of course, is silly -- what on
Earth would a deity want with (for example) a charred body? And if
they did suddenly have an odd desire for one, well, that's why
they invented lightning. Nay, nay -- a sacrifice releases power (for
example, the power that was previously being expended to keep a
particular body believing that a particular mind should be allowed to
boss it around), and that power is used (often unwittingly) by the
person performing the sacrifice.
Now, before you go tying the nearest virgin to a pole, consider that
there are much more efficient ways of opening a bottle than dynamite.
If you go grabbing a whole basketful of someone's life force, you're
going to have to go through some very costly (in the soft-money market that
is the occult plane) currency conversions to make it into something other
than a force to make Betsy's body follow Betsy's mind around the office (or,
given the possible nature of the sacrifice, a force that is very good at
converting a pork loin into a charcoal briquette). All in all, it's much
better to put some thought into the matter and get the kind of energy
you actually need. In many cases, you can do what could be called a
``exothaumic sacrifice,'' in which the sacrifice has the effect of giving
power a nudge along lines it
has a tendency to go anyway (like giving one of those precariously-perched
balancing rocks a
push in order to convert a lot of potential energy into a flattened coyote),
such as
the tendency of imposed order to become disorder (as
indicated by
the
Law of Eristic Escalation and shown practically in
the Ritual of the Paper Clip Sacrifice). In
addtion to saving you from a lossy occult energy conversion, this has the
added bonus of not (to my knowledge) setting you up for any sexual
harassment charges (face it -- if you set fire to Betsy the Virgin
Secretary, the ACLU is going to be a lot more concerned about your bias
against sexually-challenged female administrative assistants than
about some mundane murder charge).