<< Worship is magic. Veneration (Malkioni parallel of worship) to pagan (Orlanth pantheon) deities is either meaningless (no return) or so similar to worship that the difference becomes meaningless.>>
Well, it seems clear that sacrificial (i.e. theist) worship of the Invisible God or his minions is not entirely useless, since at least some of the Stygians do that. Not as useful as veneration of those entities, granted, but better than 'no return' and certainly not a meaningless distinction. If that's true one way round, I'm inclined to believe the reverse would be true, also. Although whether anyone actually does so is another matter.
<< > But since the Stygians do exist, how do we treat those? Greg's
> latest thinking or perhaps his intent all along but hitherto
> misstated seems to be that the Stygians, Aeolians, etc. are tantric
> worshippers of the Invisible God, i.e. they use deliberately
> wrong methods to understand God.
Deliberately wrong in whose POV? >>
That they're 'doing it wrong' is an objective fact, which can be seen by the fact that their magic is cack by comparison with those who worship the appropriate gods correctly (though, as Peter says, there are doubtless some exceptions to this general rule). It can't really have escaped their attention that most of their magic is weaker, so in some sense they must be aware that their worship style is 'wrong', from an objective-magical-results-obtained POV. Clearly they think there's some benefit to doing it this way, however, or they wouldn't bother. What that benefit is, I admit I'm unclear about.
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
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