Proper Ritual Terminology

Recently, someone asked me about the differences between invoking, evoking, summoning, banishing, and all that jazz.  As a ceremonial magician, there’s a lot of different ritual I use depending on the need that can fall under different categories, each with a different label.  Then again, much of the ritual is fluid enough to defy categories or change between them with the use of a few different words.  So, let me clarify my stance (and only mine, I dunno how much others may agree with me on this) on the difference between the following words: invocation, evocation, conjuration, summoning, exorcism, banishment.  After all, I seem to be doing so well with clarifying my use of particular words, so why not?

Let me clarify first that much of the distinction drawn between these words is strictly a modern thing.  Traditional sources and grimoires from the medieval and Renaissance eras made no distinction between invoking and evoking, and used these terms interchangeably with conjuring and exorcising.  Because humanity likes to bin and classify everything endlessly, drawing the thickest lines between the smallest groups, and because we’ve inherited a knack for classification from our Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical forefathers, we insist on making these distinctions known.  In my practice, I tend to stick to the broadest, most applicable words used, mostly because these categories are strictly artificial and not always replicable in magical practice.  Ultimately, when working with the spirits, shit either gets done or it doesn’t.  This isn’t engineering where we can always follow the same procedures to obtain the same results, because magic doesn’t work like that, more often than not.

First, let’s talk about the high-level word “conjuration“.  It comes from Latin, literally meaning “swearing together”.  In a conjuration, one makes a pact, agreement, or oath with one or more spirits (or other brand of non-physical entity, that kind of classification can be talked about in a later post).  The oath taken can be just a simple request or a trade of services (you do/give X for me, I do/give Y for you), or something more complicated such as appearing physically in the name of some higher power.  In this sense, “conjuration” is the most general term to be used for any work with spirits.  A similar term is “adjuration“, or “swearing to”, often used to force a spirit to accomplish or do something.  This is a little more forceful and heavy-handed, and is often used in some of the more traditional Catholic or Solomonic rituals to really bind a spirit to the magician’s will.

Similar to conjuration, the word “exorcism” also means “binding by oath”.  It comes from Greek through Latin, originally meaning “to cause to swear”.  Even as late as the Renaissance period, this word was used in the same way as “conjuration” to refer to any ritual where one works with a spirit under some oath, pact, or agreement.  However, as most of these rituals were historically done to get rid of spirits, “exorcism” eventually picked up the meaning of “conjuration so as to banish”.  Since a lot of ritual texts from the Renaissance use “exorcism” and “conjuration” interchangeably, I also consider “exorcism” to be a very high-level broad term though with connotations or implications of getting rid of something.

Speaking of, let’s talk about what “banishment” is.  This is probably the most agreed-upon term of the bunch, and is also the only one of the bunch that has a Germanic origin instead of a Greek or Latin one.  ”Banishment” is getting rid of spirits or other entities or energies, depending on your view of magic and models thereof.  Whether this is from one’s own personal sphere or internal world, or from one’s external surroundings and a given place, “banishment” gets rid of, clears out, and bars the entry of spirits into a particular area.  Simple enough, I think, though some people would align “exorcism” to be a kind of banishment; in these cases, “banishing” refers to cleansing one’s sphere and inner world, while “exorcism” is clean an external area or person.  This is certainly a modern meaning of the words, but are fairly interchangeable.

On the other hand, we have the words “summoning“, “invocation“, and “evocation” to refer to rituals that introduce or call up spirits in a particular area.  Of them, “summoning” is the broadest, and refers to calling on any spirit for a particular need; we summon them, they’re present, and then stuff gets done either with or without a charge or pact that would be signified with “conjuration”.  After that, we have “invocation” and “evocation” as two different kinds of summoning, or as synonyms for it.  Going by etymology, the former means “call in” while the latter means “call out”.  Still, more than any other set of terms, these were never seen as different in traditional texts.  I can’t stress this enough: any distinction that might be drawn between them is (as far as I’m aware) purely a modern thing.  Even if it’s a useful distinction for some people to make in theory, it’s ultimately not that big a deal or a difference in practice.

The difference lies in the use of the prefix “in-” versus “e(x)-”.  Some people might distinguish the difference in “invoke” versus “evoke”, especially in non-magical contexts, as a “calling upon a higher power for aid” versus a “calling forth or summoning”.  In magical settings, one might invoke a god for aid but evoke a spirit for a conjuration, perhaps invoking a god to swear by.  Alternatively, one might invoke a power to buff one’s sphere out or imbue oneself with the blessings of a particular spirit, but would evoke a spirit to accomplish things external to one’s sphere and body.  However, this isn’t always the case; the Roman notion of evocation was to call on the gods of an enemy city to abandon them and come to the side of the Romans for aid, which would normally fall under the notion of invoking enemy gods.  Similarly, the old myths have various instances of people invoking the gods for aid and then having the gods appear next to them or otherwise manifest for their external aid, which would often be considered evocation.  Depending on what one expects and one’s magical background, the same ritual might work to produce internal results, external results, or some combination of the two.  As a rule of thumb, one pulls power through an invocation and pulls out spirits through evocation, but this is still a very rough rule that has a lot of exceptions.

Like I mentioned, magical ritual can produce a wide variety of results; there is no laboratory setting or control group to measure effects against, and different people may perceive different effects resulting from the same act.  The old authors and magicians didn’t see much of a difference between many of the terms, and used yet others that we’ve largely forgotten or don’t like anymore (such as “karcist” from Fr.MC’s “Crossed Keys”, or to a lesser extent “exorcist” from any number of old grimoires that have a particularly strong Christian bent).  There are two primary ways of working with spirits: having them come to you in some way or having them leave you in some way.  The specific ritual in question might accomplish either of these aims in any number of ways, depending on tradition or philosophy, but that’s pretty much it.  These categories of ritual simply don’t hold up for any but the most rigidly defined and limited of magical practices, and don’t accomplish much on their own.  I feel like this is a debate for people who study magic more than practice it, anyway.

Humility versus Modesty

One of the areas where I catch flak as a ceremonial magician is that people constantly assume I’m some kind of spiritual control-freak.  It’s true, lots of Solomonic literature makes use of perilous heavy-handed conjurations against demons and the like, but that’s not the kind of work I often find myself faced with.  I mean, far be it from me to grab Astaroth or some Old One by the tentacles and whip them around the planes to get me a lil’ more coin in my purse.  I’d rather go the route of respect and honor, which is just as much an exchange of effort as anything else and even more effective in the long-term.  Working in a framework of respect involves being humble when needed, but the notion of humility is something that not a lot of people understand.  I suppose magicians have this problem extra-bad, and it’s not unwarranted that I hear tell of haughty magicians whose photos are in the dictionary under “hubris”.

As in many religions, humility is seen as a virtue, usually meaning a recognition of oneself, one’s talents, one’s skills, and one’s accomplishments, with nothing (good or bad) added and nothing (good or bad) removed.  Similar definitions exist across cultures, but that’s the general idea.  I like to use its etymology (as always) to help me clarify what it means; in this case, the word has its origins in the Latin word humus, meaning “earth”.  Humility is the state achieved by being brought low, down to the earth, or with your feet on the ground.  It’s often seen as diametrically opposed to pride, which I don’t quite agree with, because pride is often needed to drive one on to act.  There are also times when I find some expressions of humility to be ungainly debasing or badly humiliating that achieve nothing but hurt or harm, so it might be helpful to break these two words out into four: humility and modesty, pride and boastfulness.

To me, pride and humility are very similar concepts.  Pride is recognition of all that you are and can be or do; humility is recognition of all that you are and have done in the grand scheme of things.  In other words, these things are statements of truth.  Boastfulness or hubris, on the other hand, and its inverse of modesty are essentially lies we tell to ourselves or others.  Boastfulness is the lie we tell to make ourselves to be more than we actually are; modesty is the lie we tell to make ourselves less than we actually are.  I ended up with this four-way distinction by combining my two favorite sources of religious and spiritual philosophy, Buddhism and Hermeticism.

In my early days in studying religion, I was really into Theravada Buddhism.  It’s a simple, elegant, and effective tradition of Buddhism that was easy enough for a middle schooler to read into and understand the basic tenets of.  I recall reading somewhere (but I can’t seem to find it anymore) that, once upon a time, Buddha was confronted by someone who thought he wasn’t being humble at all.  The Buddha in the old sutras did often expound on how difficult, how rare, how unfathomable the thing he did (complete and total enlightenment) was in the grand scheme of things, even though he frequently told his students to give up exaggerating and lying and boasting of all kinds.  After all, if the Buddha could obtain enlightenment, everyone could, so it couldn’t be as rare as he said so!

Not so, replied the Buddha.  If enlightenment were as common as his prosecutor was suggesting, then other people would be following those teachers and the Buddha would just be another arhat.  The Buddha was recounting a fact that there hadn’t been anyone like him in quite some time, that there wouldn’t be anyone like him for another stretch of time, that the road he took to get to his point was not easy, that he had in fact accomplished a miraculous release from samsara.  He was also recounting that anyone could, in theory, accomplish this, and he was teaching a method that other people could accomplish to attain the same states.  After all, the Buddha was human, too, and as such indicates that all humanity can obtain enlightenment.  Whatever the Buddha did, anyone else can do; that they haven’t indicates how difficult it was.  What the Buddha was not doing was lying about his attainment, neither overstating what he was doing or making himself out to be some cosmic savior and redeemer of all things that exist (though he would have liked to, I’m sure), nor was he making the path out to be easy or kind to people and making himself seem like a weak or intellectually simple person.

In other words, he was humble about his attainment, but he wasn’t being modest about it.  Lying goes against the Five Precepts of Buddhism, which includes exaggeration of any kind, be it for one’s own sake (boasting) or against one’s own sake (modesty).

Granted, modesty does mean “to keep due measure” or “freedom from self-exaggeration”, or a synonym of humility, but often enough it’s used to belittle oneself and make one seem less than they are.  Consider a woman’s beauty, which is often kept regulated in many cultures: I’m against head-coverings, face-veils, and the like because it turns a beautiful form into a shapeless blob so that they won’t tempt men with their sultry ways and sex-radiating hair.  Less severely, consider a servant before his king.  Let’s say that this servant is an expert in several fields of engineering, but due to his stature before the regent, he can’t discuss his accomplishments or expertise without being directly prompted, and even then he has to defer to the excellence of the king.  He’s making himself to be less than he is for the sake of modesty, which reduces his worth instead of increasing it unless the king is somehow made to know of the servant’s actual expertise.

As for pride?  Pride is accepting that we have accomplished and learn things, and that we can accomplish and learn yet more.  It’s something that keeps us going and something that helps us establish our value and rank in the world.  As opposed to Buddhism, Hermeticism informs my notion of pride.  It’s bad to be prideful, or literally “full of it”, but it’s no bad thing to be proud of oneself.  After all, humanity has an important role to play in the world, both for the spirits and for our fellow mankind, and it’s just as important to realize that we’re awesome.  In the Hermetic view, we’re considered the children of God/the gods and, as such, given permission and ability to interact with and communicate with our older sibling spirits, if not outright granted authority to act over them and the world around us.  It’s bad to lord it over other spirits (a la boastful Solomonic invocations), but as children of the gods, it’s also our job to manifest, create, order, and reckon the cosmos according to our roles in it.  And, as the angel Michael once told me, when something in the cosmos does not do their job and their job needs to be done, we need to make them do it.  Qabbalistically, humankind is seen as the angelic choir of Malkuth, meaning that it’s our job to maintain and uphold the order and functionality of this material world of ours and its connections to the worlds and cosmos around us.

It’s a fine line to walk between pride/humility and boasting/modesty.  Often enough, I err on the side of caution and go into modest-mode, since the lying incurred by that rings a little less harmful than the lying incurred by boasting.  Still, I often get on some of my friends’ nerves by being humble to the point of modesty, but that could just be the culture I find myself in which finds more value in pride than humility.  I frequently comment on how awesome and fantastic (in the senses of awe and fantasy) the things I do are, but I always back it up with how little I feel I’m actually doing, coupled with how little I’ve been studying and practicing this stuff.  As of this writing, I’ve only been at my Hermetic stuff for just over two years, and my geomancy stuff at six or so.  These are not long periods of time, and even though I had a head start and good resources to work with, I know that other people with less than me in any sense can make just as good progress just as fast as me.  People trust me with the messages and forecasts I deliver with divination, and I try my hardest to get it right with them, despite that the techniques I use are barely occult or arcane at all.  The stuff I do as a service for the world is important and needed, which I’ll do when there are no others to do the work, which I’ll help when there are, and which I’ll teach when there aren’t any yet but there are those willing to learn.

That’s both my humility and my pride.

Divination and the Limits of Possibility

Recently on the Twitters, one of my fellow occultist friends, the lovely Rachel Izabella from The Way of the Transgressor is Hard, asked whether I was ever worried whether “divinations sorta quantum collapse possible futures and precipitate the one future that’s divined”.  It sparked an interesting conversation between us, but given the response lag and enforced brevity of Twitter, it wasn’t the greatest medium for such a chat.  The idea was originally spurred from Kalagni’s post (which I hadn’t read before) on using the Tarot to both read and influence probable events.

To this, I gave a befuddled “no”, and after some more talking a more solid “no”.

First, some background. Quantum entanglement is basically the idea that, on a quantum level, the positions, behaviors, and all its theoretically possible quantities and qualities of a particular object exist simultaneously until observed.  Upon observation, the object falls into one particular configuration of its qualities and states.  Basically, until something is observed (seen, heard, touched, informed about, sensed in any way, etc.), literally anything can happen and is happening constantly, but once observation occurs, what happens is what’s observed, and since observations of multiple states in the same object cannot occur simultaneously, the object must fall into one particular state.  This is called “collapsing the waveform” or some similar phrase, depending on the author.  However, pleasing as this idea might be, it only applies on the quantum level.  Things that exist bigger than a few molecules don’t follow the rules of quantum physics.

Every generation of occultists since the 1700s has wanted to help occultism and magic “catch up to speed” with modern science and industrial innovation, in some weird kind of keeping up with the metaphysical Joneses.  Read back on some of the literature from those days, and you’ll find claims that magic works based on rays of light, electricity, magnetism, or (even today) some kind of unspecified energy.  Indeed, the notion of “energy” as we (kinda sorta) understand it today in magic didn’t exist until electricity became widespread; there was no “energy model” of magic.  Whether occultists believed magic to work literally on these physical concepts or metaphorically, it’s still kept up today with notions of “galactic alignment” or, you guessed it, “quantum physics”.  Whether these theories apply to magic doesn’t concern me; I just don’t bother, since magic was reckoned as a more-or-less complete system for thousands of years before we had these newer ideas.  Admittedly, some of these ideas offer a useful interpretation of magical operations, but by no means do I conflate the two.  And, given the micro/macro divide in physics, notions of quantum physics and waveform collapsing as applied to my life and work are next to meaningless.

I was a little placated once it was cleared up that Rachel only intended her question metaphorically instead of physically, since it cleared up the conversation to get to the real meat of the topic: does divination affect outcomes in addition to relaying information about them?  Now we get to an interesting topic, and here’s where philosophy really kicks in.  To talk about this, some background information might be required, which could very easily tip this talk of a narrow aspect of divination into a huge blogosphere-churning debate about the entirety of the art (or maybe I’m just flattering myself).  For the sake of the question above, let us assume the following:

1. Divination is done in earnest by the diviner, not fraudulently.
2. Divination obtains omens, messages, or some other symbols containing useful information from some occult, metaphysical, or spiritual source.
3. Divination doesn’t care who benefits from the reading (the diviner, the querent, anybody else), so long as information is delivered.
4. Divination is performed strictly for the sake of gathering information, not to intentionally change it by the act of divination itself.  (This precludes Kalagni’s probability wave Tarot technique, which I would claim is divination plus magic instead of just divination.)

Is divination as a skill necessarily accurate?  No, but why this might be depends.  If the divination is inspired like prophecy, the inspirer might be a trickster spirit or the god, if authentic, might intentionally deceive or lie in the message; the first is usually protected and warded against, and the latter is rarely heard of, so neither of these cases are likely.  However, I have heard of cases where diviners were intentionally misled due to the will of God for some other purpose, so it may still happen.  If the divination is technical like Tarot or geomancy, the diviner might misinterpret the omens, or in generating the omens the diviner might not have a clear enough connection with the source of information.  If one believes set and setting to be important in divination, then anything from turbulent current affairs, local spirits interfering, or even the weather might upset the transmission of the message from the source to the diviner.  If one assumes perfect circumstances, with clear and correct interpretations of omens and messages, then divination relies on another question…

Is reality fixed?  The answer to this relies on one’s worldview.  The prevailing opinion is that reality and the flow of time isn’t fixed, and that what divination shows is only one possible way that flow might go.  Divination might show the most likely path or outcome, but not necessarily the only one.  This is where one’s ideas of fate and free will mingle and mix and mangle each other to unrecognizable conceptual pulps.  Personally, I think that there is a kind of “divine plan” that indicates what should happen, but not how it should happen.  I point out the Fall of Troy, which was destined to happen by the will of Zeus.  However, Poseidon mentions to an impassioned Aphrodite that if he had known Aphrodite held Troy so dear to her heart, he would have given the Trojans better walls to last even longer against the Greeks, though they would still have had to fall eventually.  This indicates that although certain events might be “fated” from on high, how they might be brought about depends on the actions of us down below.  What things are fated and what’s not, however, isn’t known to me, or whether either of those is an illusion based on the other.  For my worldview, I assume that there is a high-level set of fixed events that will eventually be brought around in some manner or another, the which manner may have otherwise chaotic side-effects that do not change the occurrence of the fated events but affect other non-fated or less-fated events.  In short, “what will happen will happen”, but how it will happen is up to us.  It’s like writing a software program: so long as the program fulfills its requirements and constraints, the actual flow of bits and commands sent to the CPU don’t have to follow any set or known pattern.

Does divination affect the future or merely relay information about it?  Technically, divination only ever relays information without changing it, but I have to say both yes and no to this, because it depends on whether something is one of those fated events or one of those non-fated incidental side-events I mentioned above.  It’s because of the human element that may want to change things, and may have the power to do so when armed with particular knowledge through divination if and only if the event is non-fated.  For instance, it is fated that we will all die one day.  The method by which we die may not be fated, or may not be fully specified (consider that terrible series of movies Final Destination, where everyone was supposed to die and eventually did but not necessarily in the manner foreseen).  In my experience, what was said to come to pass in divination in fact did come to pass, even when I’ve tried to act contrary to it…except sometimes when magic is involved, actions that mess with fate and the wills of the gods and whatnot. 

I guess I don’t have a concrete answer to this, at least for now.  Trying to answer this question for divination brings up the same question of any method of relaying information, from news media to any other kind of communication.  Hell, it brings into question the notions of fact, truth, correctness, and accuracy of information, consciousness, and reality itself (how can we know that what we see is real? do two people seeing the same thing recognize the same thing? etc.).  This is way more philosophy than a single blog post, or even a whole blog, can cover.

At any rate, to answer her actual question about whether I “worry” about it, no, I don’t.  As a magician, I use information to my advantage.  I’ve likened magic and divination to a river with both treasure and junk flowing down it; using divination, we can figure out where to position ourselves to catch the treasure and avoid the junk, but with magic we can lure the junk to us and keep the trash away.  If I know something is going to happen and I don’t like it, either I’ll change it to something else I like or I’ll be changed to like it, or some combination of the two.  I’m never worried that I’m whittling down the range of possible events that could happen, but rather I aim to have my preferred events happen as much as possible given the circumstances amongst all possible events.

What do you guys think about divination, accuracy, free will, fate, and the like?  This is a really hairy topic, but I’d like to hear your ideas and opinions on the matter.

Things I Don’t Believe

Inspired by the wonderful Patrick Dunn over at Postmodern Magic, I’ve been interested in doing a similar post (though not quite a series of posts) on various subjects in spirituality, the occult, and magic that I don’t believe in or have no basis for believing.  I mean, there’s a lot of BS out there, and even though I deal with BS quite seriously on a daily basis, I have to set my BS tolerance threshold somewhere.  To be fair, part of this list might just be due to the fact that I’m still fairly young and may not have as much experience with some of the things below as others may, but those are reasonably few and fair between.  After all, young as I am, I’ve still seen and done a fair amount in my life that a good number of others haven’t.

And with that bit of mysterious nostalgia out of the way, let’s begin:

Some upcoming mass spiritual revolution, dawning of the Age of Aquarius, galactic realignment, whatever.  This ties in right well with any apocalyptic or end-of-the-world theory (hopefully you all haven’t forgotten that 2012 was just last year), none of which I believe in.  Rather, I’m a proponent of the idea that there’s nothing new under the sun.  Consider that humanity has only been around for about 200,000 years as a biologically distinct species, 50,000 years as a culturally self-aware race, and 10,000 years as a race that works with agriculture and cities.  Evolutionarily speaking, this is not a long time (we normally see evolution taking place over the span of millions of years).  To think that we’re due for some new mass spiritual awakening because the biases and structures of the past millennia or two haven’t been too friendly towards a specific generation or countergenerational revolution is folly.  Do I think humanity doesn’t evolve, ever?  No!  We’ve been changing and (I like to think) getting better, inch by inch, mile by mile, man by man, but it’s not going to happen all at once in a year or two.  Maybe over a handful of millennia, if we’re disciplined and adept about it, but I’m not holding my breath.  Much as John Michael Greer has been saying on his blog The Archdruid Report, people want such apocalyptic change not because they’re too lazy to have it done by themselves or to work for it over a span of time.  On the other hand, I’m not saying that there isn’t some kind of storm in the offing metaphysically, but it’s not some kind of 2012-esque mass enlightenment nonsense.

Orgonite.  I’m not talking about orgone energy or technology in general, but specifically orgonite.  Maybe a year or so ago before I started the MaGOS project, I’d've dissed and tossed orgone tech from here to Kathmandu, but the tech does generally seem to work, and shares similarities with Franz Bardon’s stuff.  However, that cannot be said for orgonite, which (for those blissfully ignorant) is a congealed mass of resin mixed with metal shavings and, optionally, bits of crystal and decorative material (glitter, dyes, etc.).  Their intended effect is to purify local areas of “deadly orgone” or bad energy into “positive orgone” or good energy, given the basic hypothesis of how orgone energy works (ambient vital essence attracted to organic materials and repelled by inorganic materials).  Still, if the original orgone tech was unable to differentiate between the two, orgonite (a more portable extension of the tech) won’t either.  Add to it the fact that some of the crazier of the hippies out there like to “gift” or throw the chunks (often poured into and hardened in muffin tins or martini glasses for the shape) at cell phone towers, in Indian burial grounds, or in African reservoirs, and you have a recipe for utter stupidity.  Plus, in my experience, it oftentimes comes out looking like jagged congealed robot vomit.

Karma (the popular conception of it, aka The Rule of Three).  I understand karma from a Hindu or Buddhist perspective, with a bias towards the Buddhist interpretation of the idea.  In short, karma is an action arising from an intention of an unenlightened or conditioned being that has an effect.  Once enlightened (or, perhaps in a more Western phrasing, acting in accordance with one’s True Will), one acts without karma.  This is how the thing works, people, not this “rule of three” or “what goes around comes around” nonsense.  The modern use and meaning of karma is just another example of both horrible cultural appropriation and a way to isolate a basic human need to see retribution done on others.  Try as we might to remain altruistic and detached, humanity has an instinctual taste for revenge and justice that likes seeing itself effected, especially on others for whom we may not know the whole story.  On the flip side of this, though?  No matter what religion, philosophy, or path you fall into, if you need the threat of punishment to keep you in line and keep you from harming others, you’re doing it wrong.  Besides, this stolen idea of karma completely throws out the (also Buddhist) notion of expedient means, or the ability to use normally unfruitful or harmful methods to arrive at a better state of the cosmos.  Examples are using white lies to lure distracted children out of a dangerous situation, or killing one person to save a million others.  In other words, the ends justify the means much more than the means do on their own.  For those with a more Hindu bent to their cultural appropriation, you’re also neglecting the fact that karma can often be “atoned” for and, through the proper offerings and rituals, washed away completely, similar to Christian confession and absolution of sins.

Claims of unbroken lineage from time immemorial for modern pagan or magical movements.  Yes, humanity has always had a spiritual bent to it.  Yes, spirits/gods/whatever have always existed.  Yes, magic has always been done in some form or another.  Yes, every generation of humanity has its fair share of witches and magicians.  No, you cannot make claims that your modern reconstructionist orthodox tradition of whatever has been passed down in secret family lines for thousands of years intact, especially if you don’t have the pedigree or diplomas to prove it.  I’ve seen this claim been made of several branches of occult work, and especially those of (Dianic) Wicca and other “families” of witchcraft.  Witchcraft, especially done nowadays, is not a “surviving pre-Christian tradition”.  While some ancient godnames and the like might still be in use in extraordinarily rural areas of the world, if only in utterly derived or devolved forms, a lot of the modern reconstructed stuff you see nowadays is just that: modern (i.e. not of the past) and reconstructed (i.e. built according to assumptions from extant historical sources).  Believe me, if you actually did practice a “pure pre-Christian pagan path”, you’d be using a lot more animal and blood-based sacrifice than you are.  Purity in spirituality is a fairly stupid concept to my eyes (there’s value in learning a complete system as-is, but whole systems often have multiple parents).  On a related note, the belief that the Burning Times was as bad as many people claim it was is also bogus to my eyes and ears. Nine million people killed?  Weren’t there, like, nine million people in Europe to begin with during those times?  C’mon.

There’s no need for animal sacrifices.  I’ve gone over this before after bringing up a ritual from the PGM that involves a donkey’s head and blood, but honestly, this is a simple matter for me.  Life energy is powerful, and when it’s appropriate (and it’s not always appropriate), it’s a good idea to use a sacrifice of life.  Modern traditions, especially those from the African Diaspora, still use them, and every ancient culture practiced them.  Ritualists collectively stopped doing them with the advent of Christianity, which wiped out most forms of animal sacrifice along with most other religious traditions to replace it with the transubstantiation of Communion (which, theologically speaking, is pretty freaky when you think about it and just as awesome).  Not all gods desire blood or life sacrifices, sure, but a lot of them sure do.  While cultural norms may evolve and change over time, the gods don’t have to (being immortal and whatnot); after all, if you’re serious about worshipping your gods, you listen to them and not some fluffy Llewellyn-addicted white-lighter.  If you want to worship the gods, you do what they ask or tell you to, not what others judge you by.

Now, there are a few things out there that I’m inclined against believing outside of dogma and mythology, but I’m open to the idea of it having some chance, and convincable with demonstrative proof of their existence.  So, wanna try fielding something with an example and seeing whether it passes my BS threshold?  Let me know in the comments!