The most famous image of the left-hand path is a signature in blood. The scholar who sold his soul, the musician at the crossroads at midnight, the witch who put her mark in the devil's book: the pact is what the world thinks the path is about. Practitioners themselves mostly laugh at it. And yet promises are central to practice. Practitioners dedicate themselves, swear oaths, renounce old faiths, and bind themselves to disciplines for years, and they do so well or badly.
This page considers the pact of folklore, the promises practitioners actually make, and how to make one that can be kept.
The Pact of Folklore
In the legend, a person signs over their soul in exchange for knowledge, wealth, love, or skill. The devil keeps his side of the bargain, and when the term expires he collects. The story of the scholar who made such a pact, told in a German chapbook of 1587 and described on the page Origins of the Left-Hand Path, has never gone out of print, and the musicians said to have learned their art at a crossroads belong to the same family of stories.
Practitioners who have spent their lives on the path give the legend a short answer. If selling one's soul brought success, everyone would have done it. The only price that any mastery has ever demanded is paid daily, in work. In that sense, they add, every serious artist has sold their soul to their art, and collects nothing for it but the art.
Pacts in Practice
Some practitioners do make formal pacts. Some dedicate themselves to the adversary or to a patron spirit in a written rite. Some renounce their former religion in the same rite, and report that the renunciation made their later work feel stronger. Some groups sell instruction in making pacts, which the Order would describe as charging a toll for a signature.
Some demonolaters read the pact differently, and their reading needs no position on whether any spirit exists. On their account a pact is a contract with oneself, and the spirit named in it serves as a witness to one's own accountability. The obligation it creates is the practitioner's to the practitioner. The page Demons and Spirits places this reading among the others.
The Pacts Made Without Ceremony
Some practitioners point out that everyone makes pacts every day, without any ceremony at all. A behavior repeated is a promise kept. The person who drinks every evening, scrolls every night, or answers every slight with anger has made an agreement with themselves about who they will be, and keeps it faithfully. A person becomes what they repeatedly do.
This is a useful thing to inventory. In the same way that the Inventory in First Workings lists what one was taught, a practitioner can list the agreements they are keeping by habit, and ask of each one whether they would sign it if it were put in front of them in writing.
Oaths in Groups
Many groups ask their members to swear: to keep secret what they are taught, to be loyal, to serve. Some describe their oaths as eternal and unbreakable. Some say that their god accepts no excuses, that a member is all in or all out, and that there are consequences for anyone who walks away.
The Order asks no oath of anyone, and its position on the oaths of others is stated on the page Working With Others: no oath binds a person to their own harm, and no working done by anyone can change that. An oath of secrecy about teaching is one of the three tolls. An oath that cannot be broken is a lock, and a practitioner who is asked to take one should ask who holds the key.
Before You Vow
Practitioners who have made and broken vows tend to give the same advice: ask some questions first, and answer them in writing.
- Do I want this, or do I want to be the kind of person who wants it?
- Am I ready for what it will ask of me?
- What will it cost, in time, in money, in comfort, in relationships?
- Is this a lasting commitment, or a phase that will pass?
- Can I actually keep it? A vow not made is better than a vow broken.
- Who benefits if I keep it? Who benefits if I make it and fail?
Two rules follow. Never decide on a vow in a heightened state, whether in the middle of a working, in grief, in anger, or in the first excitement of a new path. Decide it beforehand, in writing; a working is where a considered vow is spoken, not where it is made. And never vow more than you can deliver. Promise a month, and keep it, before promising a year.
Making a Vow
The Order prescribes no rite of dedication. Practitioners who want to make a vow have found the following form workable, and it is offered as advice.
- Write it. One sentence, in the record, in plain words.
- Make it specific. State what will be done or not done, so that the record can say whether it was kept.
- Give it a term. Thirty days, a season, a year. A vow without an end cannot be reviewed.
- Keep it within capacity. Choose what can be kept on a bad day, not only on a good one.
- Speak it in a working. Open, state the vow as written, and close, using the structure on the Practice page.
- Mark it. Some practitioners keep a token. Some practitioners who gave up drinking kept the cap of the last bottle where they would see it every day. An object can serve as a reminder without serving as a charm.
- Review it. At the end of the term, read the vow and the record together, and write down what happened.
- Renew, revise, or release it, in writing, and date the change.
Breaking a Vow
A vow that is broken is information, and it belongs in the record like any other result. Write down when it broke, what was happening, and what you now think about the vow itself. Perhaps it was too large, or too vague, or made for someone else's reasons. Revise it, or release it, and decide whether to make another.
Nothing punishes a practitioner for a broken vow except their own conscience, and the conscience can overdo it. A vow exists to serve the one who makes it. When it stops doing that, it has done its work. The page The Long Work says more.
Dedications
Many groups begin with a rite of self-dedication, in which a newcomer marks their decision to take up the path, and some practitioners renew their dedication each year. The third working in First Workings, the Name, is a dedication of this kind: the practitioner states aloud a name for the self they are becoming, and what it stands for. It is dedicated to no being, and it can be changed when it no longer fits. A name is also a skin.
Where the Order Stands
The Order makes no pacts, asks no oaths, and accepts no signatures, in blood or otherwise. It takes no position on whether any being witnesses a promise made in a working. It holds that every vow a practitioner makes is a vow to themselves, that it should be written, bounded, and reviewed, and that the one who made it may always revise it. A practitioner bound by a magical or group oath they now regret is free to release it, and no one has the right to say otherwise.