Monday 30 December 2013

What is "Wiccan"?

What is "Wiccan"?
 I always find the concept of "core laws", concepts, rules and commandments abhorrent, especially when it come to what is and is not Wiccan. What is and is not magick. While the search to define and understand is laudable, it often seems to miss the point. While a tree is subject to the laws of the universe, like gravity and entropy, giving it a long list of what you think it should or should not be, does not change the tree.You can cut it, even chop it down, but it will persist in being as it knows it's self to be.
Wiccan "commandments" were set down a long time ago in The Charge of the Goddess. It doesn't need simplifying or making into commandments.(Granted I dislike pseudo Shakespearean text that is sometimes used and a I have a version with such, ye, thee, thoust, removed but the core meaning in modern English persists).
Writing "new rules" to make it more comfortable for yourself or someone else, or to make it more palatable for "marketing" again misses the point.  These new yardsticks to measure and contain something that can not be measured or contain are at best a joke, at worst very damaging. You can not measure "goodness" or faith. You can not measure how magickal someone is. There is no standardized test.The young, and the inexperienced want and are used to tests like this. Yet the world in which magick dwells is and should be beyond defining. It is in that place between, where poets and seers dwell. It is in kind hands. It is in comfort and mercy. It is love. In the words of The Charge
"My law is love unto all things."
No clauses.No get of jail. That doesn't mean it is "weak" or "fluffy", tough love is exactly that.
The more you try and standardize Wicca, the more boxes you want it to be in the less you understand and respect it's true nature. This isn't a Disney version of love, some movie version were everything is peaches and roses. It is in hardwork. It is is long sighs. It is in mud, and shit and puke and it is real. It is in a thousand tiny and marvellous things, in ways that change the world for the better. It is the kindness of strangers, in manners, and respect. It is the compost pile, and the dishes. In how you speak to your children. How you speak to your friends, and how you treat those who wish to harm you.
I do not believe I can know all there is to know. Nor would I ever imagine that I had the right to tell people what and how their faith should be measured. What should or should not be "in the box". I find it disturbing and frightening that there are those who want to try.
I never, ever tell people people what to believe. I show them how I do it. It show them how and why, what and where, yet it I have never told someone what to believe. That is theirs and it is sacred.
In that vein, my faith, my belief is sacred, please use your stick else where, or put it down and climb a tree.
  
 

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