The Wiccan Rede
The primary Ethic of Wicca is stated by the Wiccan Rede, often called simply The Rede. "Rede" is an archaic word meaning "counsel; advice" and the Wiccan Rede advises us that:
Eight Words The Wiccan Rede Fulfill:
An It Harm None, Do What Ye Will!
The word "an" used in the Rede is an archaic word meaning "if," so the Rede is telling us "If it harms none, do what you want." Thus the Ethic of Wicca is positive and permissive, rather than negative and prohibitive. Rather than a list of "thou shalt nots," the Rede tells us that anything which does no harm is permitted; and by doing so, it establishes harmlessness as the ethical standard Witches must strive to live by.
The Rede is very similar to the Buddhist ethical concept of "ahimsa" [Sanskrit, "non-injury"] or total harmlessness. The fundamental difference is that ahimsa is prohibitive: the Buddhist is forbidden ever to injure any living being. The Rede, on the other hand, establishes the least harmful course of action as the best, while recognizing that sometimes injury is unavoidable or necessary. Eating, for example, is essential to human life - but is obviously injurious to the plant or animal eaten; and self-defense may require injury to another in order to prevent injury to oneself.
If the Wiccan Ethic was a prohibitive "Thou shalt not harm," instead of a permissive guideline or Rede, it would be impossible to live up to. Instead, we are told that the path of least harm is the ethical path, and expected to think before we act, and to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions, and also our failures to act, because not acting to prevent harm is to cause it, by an act of omission rather than commission. Acting to prevent greater harm - but in the process causing lesser harm - may then be ethical, if there is no harmless, or more harmless, method of preventing that greater harm.
Actions must be evaluated in terms of their motivations. All too often, human actions result in consequences that were never intended; and one must distinguish between intentional harm, and unintentional harmful effects. In either case, the person is responsible for the consequences of her/his actions; but inability to foresee those harmful consequences is different from failing to think ahead; and both are different from a deliberate, conscious intent to cause harm.
The Question Of "Evil"
Wiccans refuse to believe that humans are born innately "sinful" or conceived in "sin." It is impossible for the natural process of reproduction to be a violation of Divine Law; and it is absurd to assert that Divine Justice causes all generations of humanity to share in the "guilt" of some original "sin" by their primal parents. In fact, the very concept of "sin" is harmful to the human spirit, causing as it does a sense of separation from the Divine and instilling the great guilt neurosis which lies behind so many human problems, insecurities, and hatreds. It is equally absurd to assert that the Divine is divided against itself, or that the Wholeness of the Universe is a battleground between some divinely-created but rebellious Principle of Evil and the Divine itself which is immanent in the Whole.
There are many actions which we perceive as "evil" by their effects on us or others, because we do not like those effects. Life feeds on life, yet for the mouse being devoured by the serpent, the serpent may well be perceived as evil - if not by the mouse, then by a human observer. Violence against another may be perceived as evil, but then if one is violently attacked and defends oneself, that violent self-defense is not normally considered evil.
In general, then, "good" and "evil" are subjective evaluations of actions and their consequences - with one exception. The key to that one exception is this: "evil" is "live" spelled backwards; objective evil is that which is anti-life, which opposes the natural cycle of manifestation/evolution of the Divine Potential.
Enlightened Self-Interest
Self-interest can often motivate people to act selfishly, without concern for the consequences to others of those actions. Enlightened self-interest recognizes that what we do to others, we grant them the right to do to us in return. The "Golden Rules" of various faiths and cultures all say generally the same thing: do not do to others what you do not want done to you; do unto others what you would have them do unto you; what is hateful to yourself, do not do unto others; love thy neighbor as thyself. The moral impetus is not a Divine Commandment, but simple enlightened self-interest: what I do to others, I thereby grant them the right to do in return, since I can have no rights that my fellow humans do not. The principal ethic of Wicca, the Wiccan Rede, expresses the same concept. (Sadly, human insecurity and selfishness has often caused people to brand others as less than human, in order to deny equal rights to those others; and it is one of the flaws of dualistic "good vs. evil" theologies that it becomes possible to demonize those who are seen as "evil" or "sinful" and deny them the rights of the "good" person.)
The Threefold Law
The Threefold Law, also called the Law of Three and the Law of Threefold Return, states that:
Whatever you send forth, whether of good or of ill, returns to you threefold.
The Threefold Law is a version of the Law of Cause and Effect, which says that for every action, there is an equal reaction; but rather than equal, the Law of Threefold Return states that all actions will return to the sender three times, or in threefold intensity. The number three is symbolic, rather than literal: once for the intent, once for the action, and once for the result; once for the planting, once for the nurturing, and once for the harvest; once for the thought, once for the word, once for the deed; once for the effect on our own character and karma, once for the declaration of that act as something we ourselves are subject to, once for its effect on the intended subject.
Love Of Nature
Mother Nature is no mere romantic conception to a Witch, for the Divine is manifest in, and as, Nature. The Earth is our Mother, from Whom we are born, by Whom we are nourished, and Who devours our bodies at death. As we are part of Nature, so harming Nature is harming ourselves; and therefore ecology is a vital concern to a Witch. While not every Wiccan is an ecological activist, each must strive to preserve the natural balance necessary to the continuation of all our fellow beings.
Related to this is the concept of personal harmony and attunement with the tides of Nature and the changes of the seasons. The life-cycle of Nature is not something we are separate from, but which we are directly involved in and with, since we ourselves are conceived, are born, are nourished, are capable of reproducing, and must die at the end of the body's life. Hence the Wicca relate to the cycles of Nature through the Eight Sabbats or seasonal festivals of the Wheel of the Year.
"Keep pure your Highest Ideal..."
In The Charge Of The Goddess the Goddess tells us,
Keep pure your Highest Ideal; strive ever toward it;
let naught stop you or turn you aside."
In addition to the cycle or circle of the seasonal round, the ever-turning wheel of the year combines with the evolutionary climb of Life and manifested Divine Potential, so that the seasons mark out a spiral of physical and spiritual evolution as each generation builds on what has gone before. Thus, as conscious beings we have a moral obligation to pursue our own spiritual evolution, to strive to unfold our own inner/higher Divine Potential.
The Charge goes on to tell us how to pursue the Divine, both within us and outside us:
I call unto thy soul: "Arise! And come unto Me!"
For I am the Soul of Nature, Who giveth Life to the Universe: from Me all things proceed, and unto Me all things must return. And before My Face, which is beloved of gods and men, thine innermost Divine Self shall be enfolded in the Rapture of the Infinite.
Let My Worship be within the heart that rejoiceth, for behold: all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
And thou who thinkest to seek for Me, know thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not, unless thou knowest the Mystery: that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee.
For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am That which is attained at the end of Desire.
We are told to rejoice, to take pleasure in life and its richness, that the pleasures of the flesh are not sinful but are in fact celebration of the Divine made manifest in all things. We are told that the Goddess calls us to come to Her, and to give Her worship - and that Her worship is expressed in every act of love and pleasure, as well as in formal worship; and indeed, that Her formal worship should be joyful, and full of mirth as well as reverence.
We are told of four pairs of balanced qualities that should be part of our nature: beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence. And we are told that by finding Her, we shall find the Rapture of the Infinite: that we shall experience in our inmost being the Infinite Oneness. And at the last, we are told a Mystery: that if we wish to seek Her, we must look within ourselves, as well as in the world outside us, or we shall never truly find Her.
The True Will
Every man and every woman is a Star, for Hidden in Earth, the Seed of Stars. Every being possesses a Spark of the Infinite Divine Potential, and that Spark may be kindled into a shining Star, where every Star gives Light and has its proper course in the Cosmos. That combination of Nature and Motion is the True Will.
In other words, the True Will is the Will of the highest and divine Self, the actualized potential of the Divine Spark, the Higher Self expressed as a verb: the Individual's Divine Nature and Potential expressed through action within manifestation. Just as we have a moral obligation to pursue our own spiritual evolution, we have the same obligation to discover, and then do, our True Will.
There are some corollaries that follow naturally from the foregoing. The first of these is that nobody's True Will can be in conflict with someone else's, since both are part of the Universal Harmony and the Infinite Oneness. The second is that the inertia of the Universe, the movement of the Oneness, is behind the True Will of the Individual, since that Individual is part of that Oneness.
The third is that the inertia of the Universe is opposed to actions which conflict with the True Will of the person performing those acts. (Which is one of the explanations of "Threefold Return.") The fourth is that each Individual who realizes and actualizes her/his True Will makes it easier for others to do so, by increasing the inertial force of the Universe.
The fifth is that when two individuals collide, one or the other is off their proper course; that is, one or the other (or both) has strayed from doing their True Will. (That is somewhat of a simplification, since it may be the case that the Intent of the True Will is being done, but a contraproductive method of carrying it out has been chosen.)
Know Thyself
We are told that the Temples of the ancient Mysteries told the Seeker, "Know Thyself." As should be obvious by now, Wiccans have an obligation to their inner/higher Divine Potential to strive to know, to understand, to comprehend their Divine Nature - to achieve spiritual self-realization - and then to actualize that Divine Potential by bringing it into full manifestation.
This involves the process of "spiritual alchemy." The formula of the ancient alchemists was "Solve et Coagula," "Dissolve and recombine." The Witch must strive to examine her/his nature, character, and feelings, and to dissolve the neuroses and complexes which interfere with her/his spiritual evolution. Mechanisms which were perhaps once necessary as a crutch to help the person survive and function, but have become contraproductive, must be transformed into more functional and productive methods of dealing with life's needs and interactions with others. We must learn to forgive past harms at the hands of others, and of ourselves as well, in order to free ourselves of the emotional complexes which plague the "inner child" and bind us to nonproductive or even harmful reaction patterns and behaviors.
Perfect Love, Perfect Trust
The "Perfect Words" or Passwords on one level mean "Perfect Love for the Goddess, Perfect Trust in the Goddess." As such, they can be summarized as "Let go, and let Goddess." Yet on another level, they speak of the relationship that must exist between the members of the Coven.
"Perfect Love" is unconditional love, total love; however, it is not blind love. One loves the other, warts and all, in spite of -- and sometimes because of -- their flaws and blemishes. "Perfect Love" means loving the other person as an evolving manifestation of the Infinite Oneness, in whom the Divine is made manifest, and accepting them as co-travelers on the path of spiritual evolution, members of the close-knit "spiritual family by choice" of the Coven. It also means forgiving them when they transgress against us, whether inadvertently or in the heat of emotion.
"Perfect Trust" is trust which is earned, and returned, both at the same time and on both sides. It is not blind trust, however, as it takes into account the flaws and blemishes which Perfect Love forgives, and does not attempt to exact a burden from the other which that other is not capable of bearing. "Perfect Trust" means trusting that the other person has our best interests at heart, and would never deliberately intend us harm - even when their actions might hurt our feelings or do us injury. One must have Perfect Trust for each of the other members of the Coven before one joins that Coven; the members of the Coven must have demonstrated their worthiness of that Trust before we join them. And conversely, one must have earned the Perfect Trust of the members of the Coven before one will be accepted among them.
