Owning it

(This is the text of a blog post I tried to post earlier this week, at least twice. If it doesn't work this time I will be forced to conclude that a Black Magician has taken over my blog. That's a joke, by the way)

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!