It is highly fitting that the day of All Hallows Eve is fast approaching and I am penning, or typing at any rate, an entry which centers upon neo-pagan ethics. Recently, I was involved in a court decision which was disappointing to a parent’s desire to protect a child. However, it seems that there was a little spell work which has been done throughout the entirety of the case to empower someone to gain something to which she should not be entitled. While it wasn’t completely successful, it has created a poor situation for an innocent.
In the midst of this comes a principle of Celtic Brehon Law which allows for an injured or wronged party to seek redress first in court and then before the Gods should the court not be able to address the wrong. I believe for my own injuries and those visited upon a child, I have the right to seek that redress from the Gods. A member of my family has also mentioned a desire to seek that redress as is proper considering family has been wronged and the wrong not fixed at the courts. (When you have two Brehon trained in the same family, it’s entertaining, put them in the same house, and well, there are many druids running for cover.) She was admonished, when discussing the need to seek redress, to be mindful of “Three-fold Law” and the karmic implications should she act to gain that redress.
I take issue with that admonition. Notwithstanding the most basic point of someone delivering an admonition who should ensure a house in order first; the idea of both three-fold law and the other Wiccan “law” lifted from the ethics of that most honourable of magicians, Alistair Crowley, “Harm ye none, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” being the guiding foci behind such an admonition reminds me of the large hole in the collective public ethics of contemporary neo-paganism.
Let us start this deconstruction with the Crowley instruction and work our way forward. While so many will workers both neo-pagan and non like to quote Mr. Crowley’s instruction as a good guidepost for their behaviours; strictly speaking, this is not actually possible, neither is his statement plausible. Every action taken or any action left untaken has the potential for some form of harm by the action or inaction as the case may be. Therefore, there is no way to “harm none”. Even the most devoted vegan has to come to grips with the reality that in harvesting their food, even from a non-animal source, a living entity dies. Studies have shown recently a broccoli will recoil from a knife, exhibiting the symptoms of fear. Consumption of resources harms others as it denies those same resources to them. However, non-action can be just as harmful. Failure to act can cause great harm. The bottom line is that there is no way to “harm none”. One can take actions to mitigate harm if needed, but in some instances, harm may be called for, which leads me to my next point.
Then there is the Wiccan standard of “three-fold” law. Simply stated, whatever energy one sends out into the universe will be returned to you thrice. Effectively, this is considered a neutral acting principle. If one only does what is considered good, then the return would be three times the good. This isn’t too far afield, in its positive description, to the prosperity gospel in modern Evangelical Christianity. If you give to the church a tithe, even if it is painful, G_d will reward you by giving you even more money, goods, lucre, et al. Both of these are ethically flawed because they do not promote good works for the benefit others, but for the expectation of reward. When this is considered, do those works then actually count as good works? Does the risk then merit the reward, since the risk is taken only on such an expectation? With its other face, the three-fold law seeks to work as a deterrent by its wielders by offering the expectation of doom and gloom for acts which cause greater or somewhat lesser harm than daily living. However, I have seen too many instances, this one included, where it seems continued spell work can stave off portions of this “reward”. Granted, the universe does balance out, but modern physics and ancient texts agree, energy is neither created nor destroyed, so to multiply any energy/intent/will expended by any integer greater than one requires said energy to be created ex nihilo, a physical and universal impossibility. (Before anyone quotes the Big Bang, do remember that the entirety of mass and energy were contained in the singularity at the outset, therefore, nothing was created or destroyed, only changed in form.)
Having shown that both “Harm ye none” and the three-fold law are both ethically suspect and impossible to maintain, what then is left as an ethical framework for neo-pagans to use for daily life? Well, frighteningly enough, most major religions do propose very similar ethical guidelines, the simplest being “Do to others as you would want done to you.” From there, most of us have grown up with the basics of ethical and moral training and it really doesn’t need to be overdone. Yes, there should always be a dedication to family and to tribe, but it should not be such as to exclude the other simply for being different. Before I digress to far, I think we can all develop and express ethical guidelines while accepting the fallacies of modern neo-pagan trite phrases designed to convince other religions we possess what we have possessed for centuries. Should one go back to the discussions from pagan Rome, pagan Greece, pagan Egypt, the ethical and moral guidelines did not hold for multiplication of your fortunes, but they did believe your fate was majorly what you made of it. If you had strong ethics, you would see the fruits of your decisions in your lifetime. I still believe that true, but I also know should you poke a wolf enough, it shall awaken and defend itself.
The awakening wolf above leads me to my next point. Should the wolf restrain from acting upon the poking, injury, disturbance and rest safe in the knowledge that some nebulous concept of fate or karma will eventually deliver the same treatment or a similar injury unto the perpetrator? Absolutely not, though if anyone is interested in trying the experiment, there are wolves in Minnesota, Wyoming, and Montana who I think would be interested in participating in the experiment. Instead, the wolf becomes the instrument of fate at the same time it defends itself against the wrong. Therefore, using such a nebulous concept, fate chooses the wolf to be the instrument of payback for an injury to itself. When most of my “fluffy-bunny” cousins in faith speak of restraint so fate/karma can take care of things, I wonder, just how do you know how fate/karma is going to “balance the scales” as it were? Do the “fluffy-bunnies” have a special hotline to fate/karma which allows them to know with complete certainty how the scales will be balanced without their involvement? Truthfully, no. There are times when any person can be called to be that instrument of fate to balance the scales. If I am injured, it may be upon me to balance those scales and to be the payment fate will require in future. If I take the attitude fate will take care of it, a passive, not pacifist, attitude, then nothing may happen and the perpetrator could walk away clear. I must take an active role in my own defence and my own justice. Granted, I’ve experienced the old salt “the wheels of justice grind slowly”, yet through that, they still grind and I might be the one turning the wheel at the appropriate point.
In the end, since I know my ethical and moral boundaries, so long as I work within them, I have the right and the responsibility to address any injuries to me and to mine own. The admonitions of “three-fold law” and “harm none” fail as certainly as most spell work which allows for so many caveats in order to stay within the fallacy. If my assailant is willing to work within her ethical framework, then I can stay in mine and be the hand of fate to balance the scales.
