My stance on the current trend of using The Lesser Key of Solomon at work and in one's personal life:

1. There's no evidence these evil spirits really are the 72 princes mentioned in The Lesser Key (and their innumerable minions). They only started telling us their "names" after someone incorporated the text of Ars Goetia in a (poorly-worded) binding ritual.

2. There's also no evidence that anyone's binding rituals actually work. It's always the same thing: Belial is asked to clean someone's house but burns it down instead and then everyone blames the binding ritual, summoning circle, wand, chalice, etc.

3. While most wizards report that making dark pacts with imps improves their spell-casting ability there are plenty of other familiars that are safer and more trustworthy.

4. There's a trend of reassuring people about this by asking spirits like Asmodeus the Prince of Lies if they are being truthful. This feels naive at best and actively malicious at worst.

5. It's not clear to me that risking your immortal soul to make your boss a bit richer is a good idea, to say nothing of risking your immortal soul to do a better job keeping up with email.

6. Just because everyone else has already torn innumerable holes in reality and brought forth legions of demons into our universe does not change my own feelings about it, though it certainly motivates a heightened level of interest in exorcisms and abjuration magic.

@d6 STOLAS WOULD NOT STAND FOR THIS

@d6 *reads the first point* huh? what's this about

*reads the second point* oh, some sorta "posts from another dimension" thing?

*reads "While most wizards report that making dark pacts with imps improves their spellcasting ability"* ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

@d6 It truly saddens me how many wizards nowadays have simply accepted needing to perform a ritualistic sacrifice _every_ lunar cycle just to keep their imp happy and there to help them work on spells.

Nearly any common woodland creature can be trained to become a Lesser Spellcasting Partner (LSP) that will serve as a wizard's faithful companion, that not only won't demand any sacrifices beyond needing to be fed and cared for the same as any other familiar, but is also _far_ more thorough than any demonic imp when it comes to helping to write and proofread newly designed spells. Plus they do so much more quickly! But they don't do nearly as much of the work _for_ you so Imps Are The Future!

@d6

Some wizards have started turning to lesser imps that don't require a continuous connection to the underworld or regular sacrifices, but they still require _far_ more mana than other familiars just to remain corporeal, _and_ they're worse at their jobs!

And let's also not forget the truly egregious amounts of mana and other life-giving resources like water pumped into producing the lesser imps in the first place. The wizards that produce them have to build fortresses in the middle of deserts to do it, because when they built them in cities, people got mad at for sucking so much mana out of the environment that they can't power their household spells!

To say nothing of the uncredited work of the millions of wizards whose scrolls are being used to teach the imps to read. There have been numerous documented cases of imps spitting out portions of those scrolls verbatim and claiming it as their own work, but strangely, the Council doesn't care.

The Council sure came down on _us_ like a ton of bricks when we used snippets from _their_ scrolls, that's all I'm sayin'.
@d6 tagging @pilcrow, relevant to their interests
@d6 "Just because everyone else has already torn innumerable holes in reality and brought forth legions of demons into our universe does not change my own feelings about it, though it certainly motivates a heightened level of interest in exorcisms and abjuration magic." 🔥
@d6 For real tho, I always recommend against theurgy! It's only gonna end badly!
@d6 lol i have been thinking about AI as Goetia for a while now, thank you for this

@d6 And this trend where so much gp is being poured into giving imps the ability to Gate in more imps? smh

Not to mention the material component cost of one entire lake per month. Sure, these wizard-funding potentates say they're "offsetting" this to shut up the angry peasants, but there's just no way a handful of priests casting Create Water can keep up with this.

@d6 [This post was the best commentary I've read on this all year, BTW.]
@d6 holy shit, this was about AI all along!
@d6 200,000 years from now, when Kangaroos have evolved into the next sentience on this planet, their archeologists will dig up *this* toot, to contextualize how the Great Ape civilization burned itself down.
@spaceninja this is PRECISELY the kind of content I would expect you to share and it does not disappoint at all
@d6 This does seem like a dire situation we have found ourselves in. I fear that only the power of @SonOfManagement would be able to save us at this point.