The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 6

[The following is the twenty-sixth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, and here is the twenty-fifth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

One of the purposes of war, usually the main one, if not the exclusive one, is to steal the land from those invaded and to enrich one’s own nation at the expense of the invaded. Such a truism leads us to a discussion of the next sin.

Magic should never be used in aid of stealing, or to gain excessive wealth at the expense of others.

There are so many different ways to steal, apart from the obvious, direct forms of thievery that we usually punish the poor for committing. Yet it is the less obvious forms of thievery that are so rarely punished by lawmakers, since it is often those very lawmakers who are guilty of those indirect forms of stealing!

Even without the punishments of the state for those less-known thieves, there will be a way that those thieves will one day be punished. That punishment will come from the law of sow and reap that is the Echo Effect.

There is thievery through grand or petty larceny, there is thievery through the spoils of war, and there is thievery through the accumulation of wealth by making poor workers produce that wealth and not remunerating them in proportion to the value that they create. Not paying them enough is stealing.

The effects of this subtle kind of stealing are obvious. One need only see the stark contrast between the thieves, who live in opulence and luxury, and those stolen from, who live in filth, want, and wretchedness. A day is no longer for the wealthy than it is for the poor. The wealthy cannot be working much harder than the poor are to deserve such wealth…if the wealthy are even working as hard as the poor, or if they are even working at all.

Using magic spells that take the energy and effort of the working poor to multiply the wealth of these thieves is an especially grievous sin, making not only rich and poor individuals, but making also rich and poor families, who pass on their excess or lack from the parents’ generations to their children’s. This inheritance of abundance or want is never earned through proportionate work.

The inheritance of abundance or want is also spread throughout the world like an infectious disease. We Luminosians, enslaved by the Zoyans and yearning for liberation, must heed the warning never to take what is not ours, especially not with the aid of magic. The eighth of the Ten Errors is clear on this point. The temptation to commit this sin must be resisted. In our enslavement by the Zoyans, we have felt the sting of being punished for committing the sin. When liberated one day, we must not let ourselves be tempted to steal again, be it through direct acts of larceny, through stealing from workers, or through stealing others’ lands.

If after our liberation, we don’t heed these warnings, the Echo Effect will bring us the misfortune of being stolen from and made poor. We must not think we will be safe from such misfortunes if we ever sin again!