Magic 501: Attunement
The tendency of people to adapt to their environment and mirror the culture surrounding them is extremely well documented, a subject in a variety of sciences. In the sciences, this adaptation tends to get discussed in terms of natural selection (evolution; surviving long enough to reproduce) or in terms of cultural/social pressures (as in the social and medical sciences.)
Priests and spiritual workers consider that tendency to adapt an innate response to ambient energy, or a response to the dynamics of the situation. Metaphorically, that energy is understood in the same way one considers a breeze or pockets of difference in the ambient temperature: as one observing the effect of something that is not directly visible. A priest or spiritual worker will look at the effects to understand that energy, and some will be able to measure that energy more directly.
For most people, that adaptation is a series of unconscious shifts in their energy which manifest as mental and behavioral changes. A priest or spiritual worker takes a more active approach, making more or less purposeful shifts in their energy to match some current or charge in the energy around them. Observing any group will yield the effect of those shifts as the mood changes.
Some priests and spiritual workers take this a bit further and can make shifts in the energy around them, causing the mood of a situation or other people to change. The mood or emotional tone of a situation is the side effect of that energetic change in the same way, metaphorically, that the movement of a leaf or putting on a coat is a response to the environment. Small shifts are a relatively common talent in priests and spiritual workers. Large shifts require a specific type of priest or spiritual worker.
Unfortunately, people are not the only thing which can attune. It is not uncommon for priests and spiritual workers to develop relationships with various spiritual entities in the process of serving their lwa and community. The flexible nature of people is a mirror of the flexibility of spiritual entities. What this can mean is that any spiritual entity who has worked with the priest or spiritual worker long enough has picked up enough of that priest or spiritual worker to imitate them, in addition to influencing that priest or spiritual worker. Strongly negative spirits can and will use this maliciously, imitating the priests or spiritual workers they are familiar with. Close association with these spirits will allow them predatory access to the people the priest or spiritual worker serves.
Priests and spiritual workers are required to understand and control, to a greater or lesser degree, their energy and its influence. They are required to be aware of attunement. The same care we might take with a person whose motivations are manipulative, negative, or unknown, we need to take with spiritual entities, reducing our exposure to any one entity and recognizing their nature. While a priest or spiritual worker cannot control everything, we are responsible for the risks we take.
People are a necessary risk, and attunement can always go wrong, temple or society members behaving poorly in the community.
Spiritual entities might be able to attune to us via observation, but the use of them provides them with much greater access to the energy of the priest or spiritual worker. Extraordinary care should be taken when dealing with them, recognizing their often negative nature.
