Also, re: sacrifice. Yes, plenty of occultists do it. Some frameworks include arbitrary rules, like that anything you send out comes back threefold (or tenfold, depending who you ask - nobody ever has a good reason for assigning their number), etc etc. Hermeticism espouses manifestation rather than karmic forces, ie, the energy isn't coming 'back to you' disproportionately but rather, you're just making your life out of the energy you put out as a matter of course. Thelemites believe that "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and either reject karmic principles altogether or believe that they can outrun them. I know of Wiccans, Satanists, Hermits, and Thelemites who have done animal sacrifice, or else, some kind of rituals using blood/bones/flesh. It's not as nefarious as outsiders might assume. One of the most prized elixirs of Thelema is an alchemically produced tincture of menstrual blood and semen.
Discordians (what I am) think that all this is equally (little-t) true for the practitioners but not (capital-T) True metaphysically. That is, reality itself doesn't have these rules, but when we believe in them, our subconscious makes the expected outcomes happen. One book on low magick (I forget which paradigm now) said that "it's all in your head - you just have no idea how big your head is". A Discordian is 'prohibited of believing what he reads' for this very reason. To the person who believes nothing, there are no limits.
Edit: punctuation nit.
This post has been edited by SwiftBenjamin: 16 June 2015 - 02:38 AM
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