From:	shadowrn@*********.com (Christian Casavant)
Subject:	[OT] Good Blood Spirits
Date:	Mon Mar 25 09:05:01 2002

Back to the original question of sacrifice in Blood Magic, I think the issue has
become diluted somewhat by the large number of examples which are detracting from
the central issue of sacrifice in blood magic.

While each game master will run a different universe with varying morality
systems, I believe blood magic is inherently bad.

I disagree that life is the source of all magic, there is a strong causal link
between life and magic, which is not central to the argument, but an important
issue nonetheless.

Within a legal and moral framework, Blood magic is defined as having a visceral
and murderous nature, where murder requires malice of forethought, and usually has
"lawful" connotations. (Killing in self defence is not usually necessarily
murder,
rather as manslaughter, or perhaps even criminally negligent homicide.)

Since death is naturally occuring, it is probably possible to include death in
magic without having the guilty (mens rea) intent, and therefore without making
"sacrificial" magic Blood Magic. So, a GM can probably include ritualistic,
sacrificial magic, into the hermetic tradition without the inherent "evil"
intent
of Blood Magic Sacrificial Magic, although I believe that this model would fit
better into Shamanic magic.

Blood Magic should be considered Corrupt in line with the spirit of the rules.

So back to the idea of Good vs. Bad Blood Magic: Self Sacrifice doesn't equal
murder so it's not Blood Magic. Call it something else, but I don't think it fits
into the Blood Magic paradigm.

As per the questions Bryan originally asked about Free Blood Spirits, if you
haven't found your answer already, MiTS explains everything about this quite
clearly in the Free Spirits and Blood Spirits sections.

Questions, comments?

Christian