Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: For this week, I’ve selected four text with a common theme concerning philosophical outlooks among mages. This expert represents the work of the Left Hand Path, a worldview the player character can subscribe to, through a choice made during character creation. It is more or less congruous with the general concept of black magic, but as it often is, trying to link it to any kind of “evil” outlook on the Arcane is misguided.
It is a curious, flowery notion that all routes and Path Left carry and wear a mask of spiritual gluttony. It’s supposed, according to such cantankerous claims, to be a kind of hideous expression of wrought inculpability that only scoundrels and would-be charlatans would think to wear. Moral stigmata worn with possibly misplaced pride and confidence. To such claims, it is Sin in Itself, and Sin should be met with Despair, and those without Despair are only monsters and hedonists, all without an attempt at reprieve. This state of things is widely familiar even to those with only a deliberately faint knowledge of anything even haphazardly spiritual, shaped as it might be by religiopolitical clamouring in the ear of the intellectually modest beholder.
Even amongst common circles of gathering Magi, there’s a shared notion of a masquerade-in-the-guise-of-responsibility. Even despite what we’ve come to learn about the everyman’s relation to magic and their innate, subconscious reluctance to perceive nor internalize what their senses catch, our magical brethren would sooner see it fit ‘to be sure’ of things. “What fun is the flagrant indulgence in the arts so access to which was so graciously granted to us if we do not treat it with a wanting modicum of respect and societal care”, they’d tell you. If you’d believe them, there’s only the thin line between politely using your talent for the ever-distant arcane in controlled environments and for topping off your afternoon tea on the sly or tasting a virgin goat’s blood for the rejection of all forms of perceived physical normality. Modesty and moderation exist, by this logic, only in the eye of the watching beholder.
And we shouldn’t kid ourselves; as every finger on the Left Hand shifts, extends or crooks, someone will always take things too far, again and again. We know, and denial is stupid. The right to freedom might include the freedom to choose ignorance, but down that route lies only self-affecting harm. The question we propose, then, is whether this knowledge should be used to judge and guide all of us; should we pretend we as humanity can control anything or anybody beyond our own actions? Is there some form of strange, paperwork-heavy comedy to denying ourselves the ability to use our knowledge as we might fancy? When the very Laws and Boundaries of everyman reality cater themselves to us, should we really focus on Risk and Chance instead of Possibility and Opportunity?
All too often, people choose to only focus on what felled the Morning Star, and not what he intended, neither why he failed. People teach the wrong conclusion by teaching failure as the lesson, and thus the lesson becomes lethargy and shrugged acceptance, a physical ‘Oh well’. But those that know the Path would encourage you to look upon him anew, to remind you that his power laid not in from what he was spawned, but in his ability to make his own decision, and step above impositioned authority. Opportunity and Possibility will and can not be killed, no matter how much they might try to; all that happens is that another finger on the Left Hand crooks inward.
Esoteric Musings... 