THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.religion.wicca,alt.witchcraft,alt.traditional.witchcraft,alt.religion.gnostic.orders,alt.pagan.magick
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: Kraig and the 3-Fold Law of Wicca
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 08:03:43 GMT

lorax666 wrote:
> 
> 50000815 Vom
> 
> a correspondent wrote:
> > I'm just wondering exactly what you people think of this (its
> > a quote from the book):
> >
> >       If you have caused evil, if you have been a source of
> >       spiritual darkness, it will surely return to you.  In
> >       many Wiccan traditions, it is believed that what you
> >       do will return to you three fold.  Those doing Black
> >       Magick always have a heavy price to pay.......Just
> >       as there is a law of gravity, there is an inviolable
> >       law of what is called in the East, Karma, and by
> >       Kabalists 'Tikune'.  Put out good and you will receive
> >       good.  Put out evil, even unintentionally, and evil is
> >       what you get.  Such is the law"
> 
> this is par for the course of many Hermetic magicians, and is
> a little on the light side for Crowleyans. it reads like someone
> who has more regard for Rosicrucians and Theosophists or New
> Agers than Wiccans (because he encapsulates his moralism in the
> guise of 'karma' rather than 'The Three-Fold Law' (of Wicca)).
> 

>
> > What are your opinions & experiences on this subject
> > [of the 3-Fold Law of Wicca]?
> 
> my opinion is that there is no causal mechanism of which
> I am aware that oversees a moralistic repercussion to
> what human beings do. if there was, then our species
> would, long ago, have been dealt with very harshly in
> response to the exploitation and species-decimation we
> are extending to the terran biosphere.
> 
> my opinion is that the Three-Fold Law of Wicca can be
> seen as an esoteric instruction concerning the activity
> of coercion and it can be used to persuade those whose
> doctrine integrates it to cease whatever you can convince
> them is immoral (i.e. it becomes a leverage for
> manipulating them).
> 
> you can find out more about what I think about Wicca and
> its history and doctrines within the following file:
> 
>         http://www.luckymojo.com/avidyana/eldar/liberwicca.tn
>

>
> lorax666

I just ran across something interesting that had a vivid bearing on this
question. It was from an interview in a book called "Company of
Prophets: African-American Psychics, Visionaries, and Healers" by Joyce
Elaine Noll. One of the people interviewed was a gifted psychic and
spiritualist who cared for foster childen. When asked to give an example
of her divinatory powers and the role of spirit guidance in her life,
she gave the following example: 

She had some doubts early on about caring for handicapped children, so
she resorted to a form of divination called Bibliomancy, wherein one
opens a large book at random (usually the Bible or a Holy book of some
sort) and reads whatever is found there as a sign or message. She asked
about caring for handicapped children and opened the Bible randomly  --
to the passage in which Jesus and Peter are discussing a blind person
and Peter asks whose fault it was that he was blind, that is, whose sin
brought it about, the mother's or father's -- and Jesus says that it was
not a matter of what we would now call karma at all, but rather God's
specific will that this person be born blind. 

That really struck me as the essence of what distinguishes Western
theology from Eastern. In the West -- by which i mean the folk-religions
of all of Europe and the Middle East as well as the specific Semitic
teachings that that gave rise to Judeo-Islamic-Chistianism -- the idea
of karma and of transgenerational suffering caused by parental sin
largely does not exist. God's will is seen as a force, to be sure, and
Christians, at least, believe that you will have to stand judgement
after death, but there is no Cosmic Accounting Firm in the Sky keeping
track of how you're doing on a day-by-day basis and and meting out
punishment in this or any future lifetime. In India, on the other hand,
belief in reincarnation and karma is the justification for an oppressive
system of caste-division and blame-the-victim heartlessness that leaves
handicapped children with no help at all. The idea is that if
something's wrong, *it's THEIR fault* because they must have done
something bad in a pst life. That is so dismissive and disrespectful of
human suffering that i cannot begin to tell you of my antipathy toward
it! 

Why Wicca, which purports to spring from ancient *European* sources
contains the obviously imported *Indian* notion of karma -- and even
goes so far as to multiply it by *THREE* -- is something that i cannot
understand, except insofar as the founder of Wicca, Gerald Gardner, was
influenced by an assortment of neo-Hindu claptrap promiulgated by the
usual half-baked British Theosophists and their fellow-travellers, such
as Aleister Crowley. 

That Kraig believes in such Theosophically-transmitted pseudo-Hinduism
is probably the result of his seeing, as Aleister Crowley did before
him, a guidepost casting a long shadow from East to West.  

Frankly, if i wanted to live in a grossly impoverished, heartlessly
cruel, caste-divided society like that of India, i'd go whole hog and
just become an guru-worshipping yuppie. 

Karma -- feh. Three-fold "law" -- yick. 

Let's take full personal responsibility for our own actions here and now
out of an *ethical* imperative, not because we believe that some Big
Cosmic Accountacy Firm in the Sky is totalling our plusses and minusses
and is going to poke our eyes out in a future lifetime if we don't do
right today. 

cat yronwode 

The Mage's Guide to the Internet ------ http://www.luckymojo.com/magi

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