The "Price" of Magick

[whimsicalwarlock]

Hello Wizards,
I hope this finds you well.

Throughout magickal speculation and theory, is this idea that all magick comes at a cost.
Those fearful of magick will often tell you the cost is far greater than what you gain, or that you "lose your soul" in the process of using magick, especially when working with Demons. People even tell tales of Angels creating chaotic change that can often create severe consequences as part of the "payment"
Some say that you can do the work and that if you don't "pay" then nothing will happen, while others believe that you can still get results but that the "payment" will be "garnished" from your magickal results or in other mundane areas of your life.

Many modern grimoires include the reassurance that there is no "price" or "karmic backlash" while others say you need to "pay' the spirits for their work.
Is there any actual validity to any of these claims or are they simply just a superstition held by those who don't understand the magick? Have any of you ever done work and experienced this?

Personally I don't believe I've ever experienced this but I've only had my feet in the shallow end of the magickal pool.

Any insight is appreciated.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

There is a hefty price to the earnest practitioner, though the size of it depends on how secular & in-the-zeichguiest the practitioner is. Sometimes the price is so great it drives the practitioner permanently mad. The price, from my understanding, is solidity, safety, and normality. Magic demands transformation. Your comfortable spot hidden in the flow of the crowd and your old understanding of the nature of reality are changed until the day you die, if you die. Let me explain:

Imagine you've lived in a house for as long as you can remember, a house so big you can't reasonably think anything could exist beyond it, and everyone else in the house is of the same understanding, only schizophrenics think otherwise, only the ill reject the Dogma of the day.

Then, you you read hidden and not-talked-about books written by people who earnestly call themselves mystics, witches, and mages. As you read, you have a choice: to pay nothing and set the books down unphased, moving on to live & die in the house, scoffing at the absurdity of the books, or pay up with your old beliefs of assurance, security, knowledge, etc, and actually start to question the nature of your reality, going way past Descarte in doubt, and Alice in disorientation.

The walls of your house melt and you discover infinity expoding chaotically in all directions, your whole identity unraveling in a string of meaningless words, your awareness as unflickering and unique as a star in the vacuum of space, and everyone around you look like drooling amoeba reacting and straining under the currents and imagined dramas of their meaningless petri dish.

This is of course a dramatization just to get the point across. The more you give, the more you get. The power you acquire comes at the cost of the chains that make you feel safe.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

The only cost is what you're willing to give. Depending on the practices you follow, the cost could just be your time to learn and master the methods, or it could be the cost of ritual implements and objects of sacrifice, or it could be a certain type of social interaction.

It really all boils down to what sort of practices you are following and what sort of cost you are willing to pay. I'm a hermetic myself, and the only thing I've really had to pay is time and effort. I mean I have bought some stuff to make ritual implements back when I still needed tools for my practice, but now my practice is basically all mental work.