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Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill, ‘an it
harm none, do what ye will.
I am baffled by people and groups in the Pagan
community who tell me
some version of the following. "I don't call myself Wiccan because I
don't
follow the Rede." And here's why.
The Wiccan Rede, like so much else in the Craft,
is a huge, voluminous
lesson all wrapped up within a cute little sound bite; an easily
remembered
phrase that packs so much punch it would take a lifetime to unravel its
possible interpretations. But we can begin to try, by examining what it
doesn't mean.
First, note that it doesn't say anything about
magick. For decades, witches
of all sorts have been interpreting the Rede as a rule about what kind
of
magick they are allowed to practice. But it never mentions magick. It
only
mentions harm. Do whatever you will, so long as you don't do any harm.
Judy Harrow, founder of Proteus Coven, has a
fabulous essay titled
Exegesis on the Wiccan Rede, which can be viewed on
Proteus Coven's
excellent website. But in the meantime, I'd like to get into this
from my own perspective, which may or may not be in keeping with yours,
and that's fine either way. Everything I write here is my take on the
subject. Not the "right" take. Not the "only" take. Just my take, which
is the only take I have to offer. Take it as that, and no more.
Okay, so to me, in order to do no harm, we have to
first identify exactly what
"harm" is. At first glance, one would think that an easy thing to
define. But it's
not so easy. First and foremost, we must do away with the notion that
positive
work equals "good" and negative work equals "harm." Nothing could be
further
from the truth. Lots of positive spells could be extremely harmful. A
spell to
help cancer cells grow, for example. Whereas a spell to kill a tumor,
negative
magick by definition, would be positive in effect.
So what is harm? Anything that causes pain, right?
Well, maybe not. Surgery to
remove a tumor would cause pain. So do C-sections, tubal ligations,
stitches in
a torn kneecap. Okay, okay, you might be saying. So anything that causes
pain,
except for medical procedures. Well, then we'd better not ever wean our
babies
from the bottle, because that causes considerable pain. They cry and beg
for the bottle for night after night. Come to think of it, my teenagers
seem to experience pretty intense pain anytime I answer one of their
requests with a "no." And let's not deny an addict his drug of choice,
or we'll cause him or her considerable pain.
I think you see where I'm going with this. Like
negative work, pain is not the same thing as harm. Emotions we perceive
as negative or painful, such as sadness, grief, fear, anger, are all
legitimate parts of the human condition, and all are parts of what we
incarnated in order to experience. Souls come into lifetimes like actors
coming into roles. They don't want the boring parts to play–the want the
meaty ones.
How about loss, then? Anything that causes loss is
harm. Would that definition work? Loss of a job, a lover, a friend,
money, health. But what about when those losses, harmful as they seem at
the time, are necessary parts of a person's growth process? Loss clears
the way for new growth. Forest fires, for example, happen on a regular
basis, and always have, even without man's presence on the planet. When
forests grow old and dense, it's part of the natural process for
lightning to strike, fire to begin, and the forest to be burned. The
fire and ash fertilize the ground, and the new growth will be blessed by
the nutrients provided by the old. Some seedpods only break apart,
releasing the seed to the soil in the intense heat of a forest fire.
In fact, death itself can't even be considered
harm. Death is a part of the natural cycle of life on this planet. You
cannot live, die and live again without it. New life cannot continue to
arrive without the old moving aside to make room.
So what is harm?
Here's how I've come to define it for myself; harm
is anything that works in opposition to the cause of the greater good.
And by the greater good, I mean, the good of the Whole. Pollution of the
environment is harmful, because it does harm to the Whole. Working
negative magick against a corporation that is systematically destroying
the eco-system would be the kind of magick some would consider harmful,
because it could harm the corporation. But in fact, it might not be,
because it is for the good of the whole. Stopping the corporation from
polluting will be positive for the planet. Stopping a rapist from raping
would be a positive act for his or her potential future victims–and in
fact for his own karma.
Consider the planet, the universe, is your body.
If you find a cancerous tumor growing within your body, destroying parts
of you bit by bit, you must remove the tumor for the good of the body.
Another way to define harm is anything that
interferes with the progression of the universal plan. Murdering
someone, or committing suicide for that matter, would be to stop a
lifetime from proceeding to its natural end. It would prevent that soul
from experiencing all the things it was meant to experience in this
incarnation, and that soul would have to return and start all over
again. Suicide is no escape when you look at it that way. And to take
the life of another, even an evil-doer of the worst kind, is to force
him to return and live that lifetime again. So no good has been done. We
can only act to contain the evil, to stop the acts. In the case of a
person who has stopped experiencing anything but pain, who is being
forced to exist in a suffering, dying body, on the other hand, death
might be sweet release. For such a person, suicide might be more a
matter of taking control of one's own destiny, than of interfering it
the natural course. After all, mankind has found many was to
artificially extend the length of the average human lifetime. The
"natural course" for some, might be to leave a bit earlier than modern
science would prefer to allow. But cases like this one are personal
choices based on private feelings.
What if committing harmful, evil acts is part of
the evil-doer's life plan? Would
stopping him or her from committing them be interfering in his natural
progression?
I don't think it works that way. I think a
person's life plan includes broader, more
general goals. Experiencing darkness, violence, (in theory) have been
part of the plan for that person in this lifetime. HOW he experiences
it, is up to him–and up to those with the power to stop him. He can get
as solid a handle on those life experiences from behind prison walls or
within a mental hospital as he can on the loose, inflicting harm on
innocents. He could have gotten the experiences, in fact, without
inflicting harm at all. Someone wishing to experience the range of
physical battles and violence could have chosen to become a boxer, a
police officer, a soldier, or an actor, for example–experiencing
violence in defense of others or in a competitive venue, or playing the
roles of those who do so. Their choice to experience it by acting out in
harming others, means they must accept the repercussions. Karma is going
to nail them one way or another–Witches acting to help speed up the
process changes nothing in the end.
Anytime harm is done to any part of the Whole,
harm is done to the Whole.
Keeping that in mind is a great help to me in determining what is
ethical in
my day to day life.
What if I choose to do nothing?
Eventually, you're going to think it might be
safer to do nothing at all.
Don't help the harm to continue, but don't actively work to stop it.
Nice, safe, middle ground.
Or not.
As Judy Harrow points out in her Exegesis on the
Wiccan Rede, the word
"Do" implies action, not inaction. When you see evil thriving, harm
being done
to the Whole, and you do nothing to stop it, then you are a part of the
harm being done. By your complacency, you allow it to exist. I believe
fiercely in that great Spiderman line, "with great power, comes great
responsibility." We, as witches, are blessed with greater power than
mundane folk, if only because we exercise it, spend our entire lives
sharpening and honing it, and know how to tap into untold wellsprings of
energy in the natural world around us. Because we have access to all
this power, we have the responsibility to use it wisely. If we have the
power to do work that is for the greater good, we must use that power or
risk losing it.
Now with my words about interfering with the
natural order, some will think I'm against advances in medical science
that prolong life or cure disease. I'm not, not at all. Mankind's ever
increasing knowledge is part of the natural order. If we were not meant
to find cures for various diseases, we wouldn't. However, we must always
look at the greater good, even when it's sometimes hard to see. Wicca
students are often assigned exercises in which they track the
repercussions of their actions as far into the future as they can
imagine, like tracking the widening rings in the water after tossing a
pebble into a pond. Some things that may seem great at the time, might
end up causing harm. Just as an example, let's look at the present
tendency to overuse antibiotics. While providing a cure for the
individual, the preponderance of antibiotics in the environment is
deeply harmful to the whole. Bacteria are living, evolving things. When
confronted with a drug that can kill them, they mutate and evolve into
ever stronger strains, becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics.
Future generations will be battling killer bacteria to the point where
civilization as we know it could be wiped out by what today is little
more than a mild infection. So what's good for me, popping pills to cure
my sore throat–might prove deadly to my great great grandchildren as
that same bug returns to them with super-powers no antibiotic can fight.
Or if I, and my family, take to washing our hands, bodies, dishes,
laundry and floors in anti-bacterial soap, our descendants may very well
lose the ability to fight off bacterial infections at all. (E-coli, for
example, has been around forever. My theory is that we've been eating
super-sterilized foods for so long, our bodies have forgotten how to
fight it.)
If I think of the greater good, I might choose to
let my body cure my sore throat in its own good time, reaching for the
prescription bottle only if the natural means fail. I might decide that
if I'm not living in a bacteria-laden environment, (working in a
hospital for example) then I can probably get by with regular soap–if I
can still find any in the grocery store. I might have to resort to
making my own within a few years!
I hope the examples I'm giving here make my
thoughts a bit more clear.
What About Personal Gain?
Lots of witches seem to be of the opinion that the
Wiccan Rede means we must never do magick for personal gain. A quick
review of the Rede is enough to see that is says nothing about us not
doing things for our own good. Nothing at all.
Look, if poverty were somehow noble, if suffering
for the sake of suffering were somehow holy, then why would the earth be
so full of joyful abundance? We are a nature religion. So we look to
nature to find the answers. Nature is filled with beauty. So should we
be. We should feel no shame whatever in wanting to surround ourselves in
beauty and comfort to the best of our ability; in our homes, our
clothes, our lives. Nature provides plenty for all her inhabitants. We
should feel no shame in partaking of all we need in life. Working magick
for personal gain does not take anything away from anyone else. There is
plenty to go around. However . . . . (you just knew that was coming,
didn't you?) here's the kicker. You don't necessarily need to do this
sort of magick. What the heck is that supposed to mean? Well, when we
start out on this path, it seems the most urgent spells on our minds
always seem to be those of personal needs. A better job, a higher
income, lower bills, a happy love life, a better car, ridding ourselves
of streaks of "bad luck."
But after awhile you find those sorts of spells
less and less necessary. You get to the point where things seem to fall
into place. You no sooner begin to notice something lacking in your
life–it might even cross your mind to work some magick for it–and bam!
It's there. It arrives, in your driveway or your mailbox or at your
front door.
I'm not sure why this happens–whether we become so
in harmony with the rhythms and cycles of nature that things come to us
as needed–or, (probably more likely) that we stop seeing those tiny
things as quite so important, and worry about the bigger things. Our
work on ourselves evolves into becoming a better person, loving more
freely, living more fully, giving more of ourselves in service to the
Whole, getting more in tune with our gods, ourselves and maybe evolving
a teeny bit closer to enlightenment.
More and more, as we mature spiritually, we find
the real work we do is for others. At first, it's to help them with
their jobs, their bills, their love-lives. But after a while, we start
to realize that things will fall into place for these others just as
they have for us–that, perhaps, they need to learn to do this part for
themselves, for their own (and hence the greater) good. At that point,
we really start the Great Work. We work for the good of our coven, our
tradition, our communities, Paganism itself. We work for the good of the
Goddess, for mankind, the planet, the Universe–as if we are finally
seeing the bigger picture. What's really important? Not which job we
have this month, for how is that going to matter in fifteen or twenty
generations, anyway? We'll be living another lifetime by then, and maybe
will have learned something valuable–or even essential--from having been
in that hated job we've long since forgotten.
It seems to me, that the less we worry about what
we have, what we want, and the more we simply live our lives in harmony
with nature, moving in tandem with the currents of our lives, rather
than fighting against them, the more likely we are to find our calling,
and our paths to all we need.
If this isn't happening, if the currents seem to
work against you, and roadblocks appear consistently in your path, then
you may need to consider a different path. Rather than fighting against
the flow, go gently with it. Let it carry you where you need to be.
I have a friend who is bound and determined to
make a living writing novels. He steadfastly refuses to give up and
finally landed a contract with the most notoriously under-paying
publisher in the biz. He writes book after book, and is constantly
miserable because his print runs are so dismal and his income minuscule.
He complains loudly and consistently with each and every release that
his publisher's advances are too skimpy, that the company does nothing
to publicize the books, that the royalty rates are far too low, that the
print run was so small it would be impossible to make any sort of
bestseller list, and so on and on and on. With every book released, his
heart and spirit are crushed a little more thoroughly. He has constant
money problems, because his career pays so little. His self-esteem is
dismal, and everyone he knows has stopped expecting to hear anything but
complaints from him when he shows up at a writers' convention.
And yet he keeps right on doing the same damn
thing, writing the same kinds of books, for the same sorts of publishers
over and over and over, and wonders why nothing changes.
In the time this writer has spent banging his head
against a brick wall, fighting the current, he could have earned a PhD,
become a doctor, a lawyer, a CEO, a small business owner, or a million
other things.
In order for the output to change, the input has
to change. If you keep throwing the same old ingredients into the same
old pot, the same old stew is going be the result. Sometimes the key is
to start with a whole new recipe. Heck, you might even try throwing out
the stewpot, and trying to bake a cake. Or leave the kitchen, and try
knitting a sweater, for that matter.
In the Eastern traditions, it is said that when
your boat is sailing against the wind, waves keep rising up to turn it
aside, storms keep appearing in its path, and the current is pushing
against its bow, the message is clear. The boat must turn around, change
course.
The solution is to try brand new approaches,
radically different approaches. Totally change the input. And let the
currents pull you. My friend might try writing something that is not a
novel at all, maybe not even fiction! Or maybe writing is not what he's
supposed to be doing. Or, at least, not doing for the money. Maybe, for
him writing is meant to be a sidebar, something done for the love of it,
and the sheer pleasure it brings him, but not meant to be a career.
Maybe if he were making a living in some other means, the writing could
give him the joy it should be giving him, rather than the sheer misery
it is now providing.
Okay, so let's review. To work magic for personal
gain is not sinful, or wrong or selfish. But to focus all one's energy
on the things one doesn't have, is to draw in more of that very lack.
Alanis Morrisette sings:
"The moment I let go of it, was the moment I got
more than I could handle,
The moment I jumped off of it, was the moment I
touched down."
Truer words were never spoken. Stop fighting the
current. Let it guide you to where you need to be. Focus on what you do
have, and on what you have to offer to others. And you'll suddenly
realize how wealthy and how lucky you are.
What about "Manipulative" Magick?
All magic is manipulative magick. We manipulate
energies, forces, spirit and form. We create change in accordance with
our will. Our will–that's the key here. We use the power of our desires,
emotions, and our will to create change. So long as we keep it there,
we're all right. It's when our will is in conflict with the will of
another that we get into trouble.
Say I want another woman's husband. (I don't. I'm
deliriously happy with my own, thank you.) But just for the sake of
argument, let's say I want him. I want to do magick to make the two of
them break up, to free him to be with me. I want to do magick that will
make him love me more than her. Her will, his will, these things don't
enter into my concern. It's my will and mine alone I'm concerned with
here.
Well, that's all well and good, but I've forgotten
some important things. First, by interfering with their will, I have
meddled in their life paths. The repercussions of my acts could reach
far, from preventing the conception and birth of their offspring, to
causing trauma to any existing children, to–well the possibilities are
endless. Divorce is traumatic, (especially a divorce that was never
meant to happen!) Such a trauma could lead to all sorts of problems from
depression and suicide to drug or alcohol abuse to a string of failed
relationships for either party.
And since the rule of three applies, I could fully
expect the manipulative magick would not end there, with my act. Because
further repercussions would include the ripples expanding until they
found their way back to me, doing who knows what harm on their way. And
when they did reach me again, it would be my will being ignored,
manipulated–my life path being altered.
Setting such a course of events into motion is
like knocking over the first in a parade of dominoes. It can't be
stopped until it returns to its source, and everything in its path is
knocked on its backside. Harm is done. Not just to the people in
question, not just to you when it returns, but to the Whole. It must
always be the Whole foremost in your mind.
According to the Qabala, part of the evolution
along the Tree of Life, comes when you suddenly find that your will and
the will of the Gods, is one and the same. At this point, acting
according to your will, becomes the best possible course of action.
To Review
The Wiccan Rede means simply this:
First, act in accordance with the greater good–the
good of the Whole.
Second, act in accordance with your own free
will–but not in opposition to that of another.
Does it mean I cannot act in self-defense? No.
Does it mean I cannot do negative magick? No, so
long as the negative magick is for the greater good.
Does it mean I cannot do magick for personal gain?
Absolutely not.
So tell me again why anyone would say they do not,
cannot, will not honor the Rede?
Negative isn't the same as evil. Black and white
work together, for the greater good. Creation and destruction, increase
and decrease, masculine and feminine, positive and negative polarities:
all are necessary to create the spark that produces power–that produces
life itself. We must not be afraid to embrace and explore both sides, so
that we can understand them.
With harm to None
Wiccans often end their spells with the words,
"with good to all and harm to none, so mote it be." Like the Rede, this
is a tiny little reminder that our magick is always designed for the
greater good, for the good of the whole, the all–even if we must perform
a negative spell for the greater good. But the Rede isn't about magick.
It's about us, our lives, our thoughts, everything we do. So long as we
work with the good of the Whole in mind, we won't go wrong.
I cannot think of a single reason why any group
currently practicing a nature based, earth-centered, Goddess
acknowledging system of spirituality would have any problem following
the Rede. It's all in the interpretation.
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Those mystical things we call "the Wiccan
Mysteries" (or just "the mysteries for those who shun the term Wiccan)
are right in front of us. We find them hidden in plain sight. Where? In
experience, of course. That's why they're mysteries–because they can't
be described or written down, but must be felt, lived, to be understood.
But there are other mysteries in the Craft. We find them in our most
common, some might say our most cliché words and phrases. On the
surface, our favorite axioms might seem simple and straightforward,
their meanings blatantly obvious. But if we look more deeply, we will
notice that they have a hidden depth, one that can only be seen by
peeling away the layers of familiarity, and by open and ongoing
discussion.
This one, for example:
Ever mind the rule of three,
three times what thou givest, returns unto thee.
I know a Witch, one I respect deeply and from whom
I have learned scads, who recently voiced the opinion that teaching
students the Rule of Three is a mistake, because it suggests they behave
themselves only out of fear of repercussion–much like the threat of
hellfire is used to keep Christians in line. Respectfully, I disagree
with her take on this matter, but I'm grateful she brought it up,
because it made me examine my own thoughts and take a deeper look at the
Rule of Three.
I feel the above argument would be a good one if
the Rule of Three was a simple threat, perhaps designed by older
Witchies to keep younger ones in line.
But it's not a threat. It is not meant to suggest
to us that some angry God will judge us and punish us should we sin. At
least, that's not my take on it. Rather, the Rule of Three is more like
a law of physics. It is so because it is so. The Rule of Three
illustrates one of the Wiccan Mysteries to the student who cares to dig
deeply enough. And we'd be lax in our duty to students if we didn't
teach it to them out of fear they might read it wrong.
What you give comes back to you.
Meaning, what leaves you, will return to you.
Meaning what you "emit" you also "absorb."
Take air as an example. We exhale, and then we
have to inhale. We have no choice. The same carbon monoxide we exhale,
gets processed by the plants and trees, which emit oxygen, so that we
can inhale it again. The same stuff, over and over in an endless cycle.
Someone wrote that the very breaths of everyone who's ever lived, from
Buddha to Jesus to Hitler, still exist in the air we breathe today. It's
a perfect example of how the things we produce never really "go away."
They become a part of the great whole.
Another example we can use to identify the
pattern, is that of moisture. We cry, we sweat, we urinate, and so we
must drink. We have no choice. We would die if we didn't drink.
The very universe reflects this principal. Dry air
wafts over bodies of water, sucking up the moisture until it becomes
laden with it. Clouds form, and the tiny droplets of moisture begin
flowing in rapid circles, dropping down, but not quite heavy enough to
fall, they get flung back upward again, gathering more moisture to them
with every pass, until finally, they are heavy enough to fall. They
nourish the earth, only to rise in the morning mists, by the heat of the
sun, as the dry air blows over them, and begin the process again.
Everything is energy. Thoughts, moods, motion,
actions, emotions, possessions, associations, everything. Everything we
do is an emission of energy from us. Everything we say. Everything we
feel. Everything we even think! All these things are things we "giveth."
All these are energy forms we emit the way a car emits exhaust from its
tailpipe.
Now, these emissions have to go somewhere. They
don't just stay still. Nothing is static. So where do they go? Into the
astral? Into a tree? Into a rock, a cloud, another person, the sky?
Maybe none of the above, or maybe all, but in fact, it doesn't matter
where they go, because the result is the same. They end up back with us.
That's because everything in the universe, every
planet, animal, plant, molecule, stone, star, breath, heartbeat,
daydream, nightmare, footstep–are parts of one giant organism. One
massive "Whole." We are a part of the Whole. So are the Gods. So is
everything that exists.
So the things, the energies, you emit don't really
"go" anywhere. They simply become another part of the whole, and
therefore, a part of you. A part of me. A part of everything.
When we focus on creating, on pleasure and joy, on
healing, and love, on doing whatever we must do, so long as it's for the
greater good, we add positive energy to the Whole. (This even applies
when we find it necessary to do negative workings for the greater
good–something I'd like to talk about more in my aritcle, The Wiccan
Rede.) So, since we're a part of that Whole, any energy that aids the
whole, that is good for the whole, is good for US.
But if we focus on destruction, on pain and
heartache, on harming and hatred, and doing harm to any tiny part of the
Whole (except for the greater good) then we are not only harming that
one part we might be targeting. We are harming the WHOLE, of which we
are a part, and therefore, we are harming ourselves. Not just ourselves,
either, but our loved ones, our spouses and kids, our parents, our
friends, our planet . . . even our gods!
The Rule of Three isn't saying we should be good
because we'll be punished if we are not. It is simply a reminder that we
are all part of the same whole, and that doing harm to any part is doing
harm to every part, ourselves included. It's a physical fact. Not a
threat. It's not a reason for behaving. Nor should it be, my friend was
absolutely right about that. But we need to know it, and our students
need to know it. It's part of the mechanics of the universe, and it's
one of the mysteries.
The Rule of Three is a very simple way of stating
a rather complex Universal truth. Often, in the Craft, we find that new
seekers are fed things in sound-bites, simple statements that are easy
to remember, easy to recite, and fairly easy to apply. Like telling a
child, "don't talk to strangers" or "look both ways before crossing the
road." We don't go into great detail on the reasons for these things–if
we did we'd probably frighten the child so much he would never leave the
house again. There's time for her to learn the reasons as she grows. In
the meantime, it's enough just to know the rules. But we certainly
shouldn't decide not to tell them the rules just in case they
misunderstand the rationale for them.
New seekers will have plenty of time to dig
through these teachings and explore their deeper meanings as they grow
spiritually. It's all too much for the first day–but at the same time,
we don't want them out causing all kinds of undesired ripples in the
fabric of the universe just because we didn't have time to give them an
hour long lecture on the Rule of Three the first day.
So we give them the rule. The reasons for it, its
inner meanings and layers of depth, will come. But first, they must have
the rule. They have to walk before they can run.
We can only hope today's teachers, rather than
turning their backs on these old adages, as too shallow and too simple
to be worthy, will encourage that kind of digging and seeking from their
students and even join them in it.
Now, what about the "three" part? Why does the
line state that things return to us multiplied by "three?" Why not six
or ten or seventy-two?
Several reasons spring to mind. One very wise
Witch suggested to me that when you point your finger at someone else,
three other fingers remain folded back, pointing toward yourself. I
found that bit of knowledge extremely profound, and maybe worthy of an
entire paper all its own.
Another thought I had is that three is the number
of synthesis. Numerologically, as well as Kabbalistically, three is the
number where two things unite to create a third, completely different
thing. The energy we send (1) meets the energy to which we send it (2)
(and it doesn't matter one bit if we sent it deliberately or not) and a
new energy (3) is created from the combination of the two. Another way
of saying it is that the energy we send is Force. The recipient is Form.
And the combination produces a spark and a new living thing. Life.
That new energy now lives in the Whole, which
means it lives in ourselves. Transmuted, integrated, empowered, bigger
than before–it lives. And that's not an ordinary three, that's a three
to the infinite power, because that new energy will have an impact on
other individual parts of the whole, and that contact will transmute
into something else again, and on and on and on. It's as if an avalanche
has begun.
That is my take (and only my take) on some of the
deeper meanings behind The Rule of Three. It might not be yours, and I'm
cool with that. Everyone's truths are equally valid. I'll bet, if you
start peeling away the layers, you'll find other, even deeper meanings
in this and other Pagan/Wiccan soundbites. Try it. It's fun. |
