Greetings, seekers of arcane wisdom! Today, we embark on a journey to demystify sacrificial magic, a practice often shrouded in myth and misconception. At its core, sacrificial magic is a pact-based art, but it is not making pacts with any external entity or force. It’s a profound commitment between the practitioner and the universe within them. Let’s unravel the mechanics and dispel the myths that have cast shadows upon this powerful practice.
Understanding the Pact:
In 2023, the concept of pacts are very far away from where they used to be. It’s led to many misconceptions that they are bad, dark magic, and even evil. Especially if there are “sacrifices” or certain other types of exchanges involved. They are really just ways of expressing profound promises we intend to keep with someone else.
Men used to spit in their hands before a handshake, to seal deals. Kids used to become blood siblings by cutting their hands until blood came out and intertwining their hands so their blood mixed together. It created an unbreakable promise between them to always be there for each other. No matter what. Pinky swears, hand-fastings, candle lightings, these are all forms of pacts, with and without Sacrificial Magic involved.
In the 80’s, Aids and a lot of unknowns surrounding it, made people very leery and fearful of any kind of practice or act that involved an exchange of bodily fluids. Spit handshakes, blood sibling ceremonies, and many others were still done, but they became much more symbolic than actual, in much much smaller amounts.
The Universe Within
Sacrificial magic is not about making nefarious deals with malevolent forces; unless you are a malevolent force. Sacrificial Magic is the art of making sacred pacts with the universe within. Oneself, not someone or something else.
We will, quite frequently in fact, break promises we make to ourselves much more quickly and easily than we will to someone else. We do it for all kinds of different reasons too. It’s harder than we thought it was going to be to keep it. Someone else’s opinion about it we value says something negative about it. We discover something else we want to pursue more. And on and on.
Since we break promises to ourselves more often than not we need something that will help us keep more of the promises we make to ourselves. This is where Sacrificial Magic comes in. Every commitment made in Sacrificial Magic is an agreement with oneself, that should not be broken under any circumstances, and a sacrifice is made to seal our commitment to it and remind us of it. Understanding this inner connection is the cornerstone of unlocking the true potential of Sacrificial Magic. When we keep the promises we make to ourselves, we thrive.
Breaking Down the Myth: Devil or Inner Self?
The damage attributed to “making a deal with the devil” is not a malevolent external force punishing the practitioner for breaking their promise. Instead, it is the result of breaking a deal with oneself—our inner universe.
When we break promises to ourselves, there is disappointment, heaviness, guilt, and consequences that ripple through our existence, and we feel it hardest because we are supposed to be the one person that doesn’t let us down. That’s heavy. Especially if we have made large strides in keeping them and stop suddenly.
These things are where the concept of someone made a deal with the devil and didn’t keep it, stem from. Things go bad when we get out of “alignment” and break promises to ourselves. Goals we wanted to achieve are missed. Things don’t just fall into place like like they did before. We get what looks like really bad luck. We don’t “feel” right.
Keeping the Covenant:
The Empowerment of Self-Commitment: Understanding sacrificial magic is creating a covenant with oneself empowers the practitioner. It shifts the focus from external forces to the internal realms, where intentions shape the very fabric of reality. We promise ourselves we will do what will get us to where we want to be.
Keeping the covenant becomes an act of self-empowerment as well because we created the terms, so they are terms we should be able to keep easily enough. It isn’t always easy, but if we are fully committed, nothing will stop us.
Closing Thoughts:
As we unravel the inner pact of sacrificial magic, let this truth guide us—every pact is a commitment to oneself. In understanding the universe within is who we make our pacts with, we dispel the myths that have obscured the beauty and power of this practice over the years.
Follow the trail of magic dust to the next post in this series, Time and Other Intangible Sacrificial Magics.
Blessed be,
The Twisted Witch
