Wicca 101~Lecture #8 Ethics

Section 3 LORE
Ethics
"These eight words the Rede fulfill: An it harm none, do as ye will."
"Whatsover ye put out will return to thee, multiplied times three."
Wicca is an ethical religion. A VERY ethical religion. And to make things more interesting, the decisions about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad are left up to the individual. Wicca has no code of laws, no ten commandments, no rules of conduct, just one piece of advice and a principle of return. So let's pick apart our piece of advice and our principle and see what it really means.
An it harm none, do as ye will is an archaic phraseology. "An" is a nearly obsolete word that means if or provided that. Ye is the old form for plural informal "you" (thee or thou is informal singular)(English has almost lost it's informal tenses..but compare these to the informal pronouns and verb conjugations in Romance languages like French ...tu es as opposed to vous etes). So in modern English the Rede (which means advice) translates to : If it harm none, do what you will.
The crux of this then is the word harm.
What is harm? Harm is a vague word; it could mean any injury however slight, or a major injury under a specific context. The degree of injury in the word harm must come to us from the context it is used in, but in the Rede we have very little context, so what constitutes harm?
This is the bit that you have to think about, use some common sense and intuition. The following is my definition of harm and the reasoning I used to arrive at it, but please, please do not take my word for it...in this most crucial aspect of Wicca you must form your own conclusions based on your own reasoning and moral sensibilities.
Taking the most extreme version of harm...any injury whatsoever...the Rede is useless. It is not physically possible to live without causing some small injury to someone or something. For instance: if you brush your teeth, you are causing harm to the bacteria that live on them. If you take antibiotics to cure an infection, you are causing more harm to bacteria. Not to mention that you can't possibly eat anything...whatever you might eat, plant or animal, is harmed by your ingestion (possible exception is milk, but then milk is obtained by a cow eating a plant so there is harm involved, it is just one step removed). A lot of practioners taking this most extreme view of the word harm have declared the Rede useless and thrown it out all together. You will find this view common among those who state that they are witches, but not Wiccans. So using common sense and Goddess given wisdom, we see that this is not the type of harm that is meant by the Rede.
So we are back to the question...what constitutes harm. Well to answer this I turned to Nature. What is Nature's definiton of harmful? I started first by looking to plants and animals to answer those things that might be considered harmful to someone but occur regularly in all of Nature and came up with the following.
1. It is not harm to kill and eat something to continue your existence.
2. It is not harm to defend your young from predators.
3. It is not harm to defend your body from disease and parasites.
4. It is not harm to use natural materials to construct your nest.
Okay...so far, but what if you take ALL the natural materials from an area and leave nothing for someone else to use....as when locusts swarm or humans strip mine..then everyone else dies and that is definitely harm. So some other concepts come into play. Moderation, necessity, and balance. When injury is caused is must be driven by necessity (to continue living, to grow, to procreate) to not be a harm. It must be confined to the specific need and no more...moderation. And it must preserve the natural balance...when things fall out of balance as in overpopulation by any species...(habitats are stripped and destroyed to support the unbalanced population and eventually death ensues by starvation thus restoring balance, but that process is to be avoided by maintaining the balance in the first place). SO proceeding from these concepts my definition of harm goes as following: Harm is any physical, emotional, or spiritual act that destroys the natural balance or does not serve to promote life, healing, growth or enlightenment. In this context, it is not a violation of the Rede to remove a tumor, or brush your teeth, or eat meat, or dig up weeds. There are some injuries that are necessary to promote life, healing, growth and enlightenment, and these are not harm.
With harm defined then the Rede becomes a good piece of advice...there is nothing forbidden to us, but in every act we must consider what the consequences will be, not only for ourselves but for all of Nature, so we are always striving to act correctly and for the good of all.
Now that brings us to the Threefold law or the Law of returns. This is a natural effect and like gravity can't be ignored, or wished away. Whenever we do something, or say something, or conjure something, we send out energy whether good (not causing harm) or bad (causing harm) and this energy affects the whole. We cannot separate ourselves from the world we live in, our actions will come back to haunt us. And this provides the natural incentive as it were to abide by the Rede; for doing harm will come back to harm us, and doing good will come back to help us.
Wicca is a religion of personal responsibilty. We are responsible for our actions, and we will pay the consequences not far away in some mystical land, but here and now, and because of this we must ever strive to make our actions correct and for the good of all.
As you get deeper into analyzing the Rede and applying it to situations, you will begin to see that many things you have taken for granted are actually, violations of it. For instance:I love deer they are magnificent creatures, but if I were to protect deer from wolves and upset the balance, then the deer would begin to overpopulate and destroy their habitat, and in the end starve. If there are no wolves, then it is my responsibilty to either replace the wolves or hunt the deer myself (gasp from the pagan crowd) to maintain the balance. Forest fires seem bad, but they are the wolves of forests. Small fires eliminate the weak, diseased and the old trees, and make way for new growth. If I stop the small fires, then eventually the dead wood will cause a huge fire that destroys all trees. When I drive my car, I am causing harm on so many levels it boggles the mind (air pollution, road pollution, noise pollution, oil spills, road accidents, global warming from greenhouse gases..the list is huge). So driving my car is a violation of the Rede, even though it's perfectly legal. Many things that are illegal though are not violations of the Rede, for instance using peyote to enter a trance, or having multiple wives or husbands. The Goddess has given us greater understanding and reasoning abilities than our animal brothers and sisters, and with greater gifts come greater responsibilities. In all things, we must ever consider the consequences and strive to work with Nature and with the Goddess, for the good of all, to preserve the balance and to send out positive healing energy.
Next lecture~ Correspondences

This page last modified 2/12/99