'Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfil: An it harm none, do what you will.'
As Janet and Stewart Farrar say in A Witches' Bible, "Wiccan ethics are positive, rather than prohibitive. The morality of witchcraft is far more concerned with 'blessed is he who' than with 'thou shalt not.'" Although different traditions of Wicca may have different sets of rules, underlying all such rules is one basic concept: Harm none. The following is from Scott Cunningham's books Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca, The Law and The Law of the Power:
The Law of the Power
Cunningham wrote these as examples of laws which you can use as a solitary practitioner. The underlying theme is: Harm none. The Farrars discuss this further in A Witches' Bible: "If you deliberately set out to develop your psychic abilities you are awakening a faculty by which you can influence other people, with or without their knowledge; a faculty by which you can obtain information in ways that they do not expect or allow for; a faculty by which you can either enhance their life-energy or sap it. By which you can help them or harm them. Obviously, you are taking a great responsibility on yourself and this responsibility calls for a set of willingly accepted rules. And these rules are all the more important because very often only you know if you are honestly obeying them... All these rules are summed up in the phrase: 'An it harm none.' A witch must never use his or her powers in a way which will cause harm to anyone -- or even frighten anyone by claiming to. Another Wiccan rule says: 'Never boast, never threaten, never say you would wish ill of anyone.'" This rule does not mean you leave yourself open to attack from others. There are acceptable ways of dealing with such things. One is a binding spell designed to render evil actions powerless -- the spell is against the deed, not against the doer. Another is to set up your own defense against psychic attack. The key to both is to set up strong psychic defenses without counter-attacking. To end as we began: 'Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfil: An it harm none, do what you will.'
To run an experiment on action and reaction, go to a quiet lake, pond, or a smooth area in a stream. Take a small pebble in your hand and envision that you are the stone. When you throw it into the water, think "This is the action." Watch as the stone hits the surface and understand that the initial rise of water is the main consequence of the action. Then watch as concentric circles flow from the point of impact. These circles represent the fall-out of your action, the stone hitting the water. Some of the circles are very definite in nature, others are almost indistinguishable in design. Carry this thought further and consider the impact of a good deed: the environment and all that is in it vibrates around the deed, and changes occur that are positive in nature. Now imagine the impact as a negative deed, and ponder on the domino effect because of that action on the environment and those people that are contained in it. |