Last night two new people came to our gathering.
You will remember how I've commented before that one of the functions of
magical people getting together is to bounce off each other and prevent us
going too much off the rails: I value being challenged by other people very
highly, especially a 'stranger', just in case I and my circle of significant
others have got something wrong. This post is prompted by a discussion last
night which I'm still reeling from this morning.
Anyway last night we were introducing ourselves
to each other and then one of the visitors said something which drew me up
short. I was feeling slightly incoherent anyway because he was *hot* and I was
frankly preoccupied with the things that I wanted him to do to me, but the
thing he said was, 'What about the Law of Threefold Return?'
What?
I thought he was joking. In the circles I move in
*nobody* believes literally in the law of threefold return as a natural
inescapable law of physical return which should be respected. I had told him
that I tend to attract piss-takers, and he also said that that was because that
was obviously the energy I was putting out into the universe. I thought these
people only existed in the world of Fluffy Wiccy-Poo, and am astounded at these
ideas being expounded seriously by a grown man. I told him why I didn't accept
either of these phenomena as a reality and expounded by alternative home-spun
system of ethics, but he seemed happier with his off-the-peg system that comes
from someone else. Weird.
Anyway, here's why I think the Law of Threefold
Return isn't a real physical law. It breaks virtually all of the laws of
physics. In traditional mechanistic physics you don't get a return that
multiplies the original energy like that: if the law conformed to the laws of
physics it would be merely a law of return, without the threefold aspect. In
modern quantum physics, there is a greater acceptance that what happens is less
predictable, and here the LoTR falls down again, because there the question
would by 'why three?' If things are more random, there would be no reason for
the return to be limited to threefold, it could be virtually any number, and
probably be fairly unpredictable.
Secondly the LoTR is posited by its fans as if it
is a system of ethics. The theory is that someone who holds this idea in mind
will be inhibited from doing 'harm' to others by the idea that it will return
to them threefold. This rings alarm bells in my head for several reasons. As a
responsible adult I aspire to go through life making decisions and taking
responsibility for them: even difficult decisions concerning my own life and
relationships with others. I do not want or need some threat of threefold
return at an unspecified time in the future over me to make me act responsibly:
my expectation is that I will be able to say 'I decided to do this.' The other
major shortcoming of this idea came out clearly in the discussion last night:
we can all point to examples of people who go through life abusing others in whatever
way, people who tread on the poor, who physically, sexually or emotionally
abuse other people. For me personally it is not necessary to know *why* they do
this, it is sufficient that they are doing it. The person tried to tell me that
they *will* get their threefold return, we don't know when.
If you're going to go down that route you might
as well be a Christian. This came up in the context of me telling him that I
cast a spell on someone so that every time she bullied someone else it returned
immediately (in the same measure) to screw up her own life. He thought that by
doing this I was somehow interfering with the laws of nature. My own take on
this is that if someone is causing unnecessary suffering I will feel obligated
to do something about it. To me saying 'So-and-so will get their comeuppance,
we just don't know when,' is exactly the same as saying 'Father So-and-so
abused the altar boys and God will be very angry with him on the day of
judgement, and it's not for us to say when that will be, and only God has the
knowledge to know what is going on.' The LoTR actively takes the ability to do
something about their situation away from people, and I see this as either an
attempt at public relations to make witches seem respectable or a remnant of
the Christian mindset in which most of us are in reality brought up in Europe.
I should say this conversation was with someone who also said proudly, 'I've
always been a Pagan.' No you *haven't*.
I personally will not accept what I perceive to
be unnnecessary suffering in the world as long as I can do something about it.
I will not accept the infringement of the individual's sovereignty over
themselves (yes, I've thought about it carefully and that word is actually what
I mean) by another. I will not accept an external authority as justification
for not intervening. I will not accept the fear that is instilled by people
saying, 'if you do X it will come back to you threefold.'
In the case of the specific spell we were talking
about the person actually merely made her own life a living hell. She knew full
well that she should not be doing what she was doing to people: this is of
course where divination comes in so that you know you are not barking up the
wrong tree. The person we were talking about clearly targeted weak individuals
and avoided those who would stand up to her: almost the hallmark of bullying,
and clearly indicating that this wdeliberate behaviour not an issue with self
awareness. As long as there's a witch around these people should know that they
will not get away with treating people like that.
Threefold Law? I'll fold them up three fold in
lead and put them down a drain. Similarly, my property is hexed. Probably
merely saying that has caused a dozen fluff bunnies to have asthma attacks, but
once again where's the problem. If I give someone something that belongs to me
that's OK, but if someone takes something of mine without my permission I will
not accept that they do not know they shouldn't do this. Once again it's about
demarcating where my sovereignty ends. If you break into my house and steal my
stuff, you know full well you shouldn't be doing that.
I think possibly the reason I attract piss takers
is that the universe knows that I can and will do something about it. My own
magical power really came after a situation in which I knew some senior people
in my employers were taking the piss and covering it up, so I did something
about it, both magically and on this plane. That situation has not arisen again
because I rose to the challenge. I do not believe that I will attract this sort
of thing because of the energies I am putting out, but rather my experience is
that if you duck the challenges that come to you they will keep coming back the
same until you go through it. If you try to avoid doing the one thing you don't
want to do it will keep coming back to bite you on the bum until you do do it.
Crowley says somewhere that at some point you
will be put in a position where you have to make irrevocable decisions rapidly
and with no way of really knowing what the consequences are - to me this is
almost the definition of magical initiation. Beyond the introductory books the
magician is obliged to go into a world in which there are no signposts - of
course we hedge witches call this the hedge - to return transformed. The key to
this is accepting personal responsibility and sovereignty. This does *not* mean
riding rough-shod over other people; I can hear a little voice saying, 'but you
cast a spell on someone else without asking their consent!' - Shock, horror.
Yes, I did. Why? Because they were doing something they knew they shouldn't be
doing, they only had to stop doing it to prevent their own hell coming back on
them, I was not about to stand back and watch this. I expect personal
responsibility of myself and will not accept excuses from other people.
We are really really not in Kansas any more!
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