Witchvox Article

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Posted: January 25th. 2003
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People are entitled to call anything sacred, or everything sacred, or even to claim that nothing is sacred. What is important is that their beliefs and actions do not harm or inconvenience anybody to an unacceptable level, and that if they do, their right to practice these 'sacred' acts be taken away. Therefore, a group can claim as much as they like that their act of sacrificing babies is sacred--they will, and should, be forbidden from doing so.

This raises the important question: 'What is harm?' On a basic level, harm is something that takes away a person's will or dignity, acts that undermine the value of life of the individual. This general idea is formulated in the Rede (an harm it none, do thy will). So, basically, call anything sacred and feel free to do it--so long as it doesn't get in the way of anyone else.

However, it is impossible to go through life without doing harm. Life depends on death, cannot exist without it, and whatever I or anyone else does, it always has the potential to harm someone, whether directly or indirectly. If I walk across the street and a car swerves to not hit me and hits someone else, maybe even a group of people, then my action has caused harm, even if that was never my intent, and even if there was no way I could possibly foresee the consequences. (Okay, so actually looking before I crossed the road might have helped, but we'll ignore that part.) This is, to my mind, perhaps the greatest weakness of the Rede--that it assumes I will know for sure what the consequences of my actions are. This is rarely the case. However, it is important to remember that the Rede is just 'wise counsel', not a steadfast, inflexible law. It is the purpose of the Rede to make the individual think about the possible and likely results of a particular action. If you do something and inadvertently harm someone, you have not, in my opinion, violated the Rede.

It could be claimed that there are acts in a religion that are so much a fundamental part of the belief system, and are so important to the people practicing it, that they should be allowed to carry it out regardless of the harm they cause. Take the case of sacrificing babies: most people would find this practice abhorrent, and determinedly not sacred. But suppose the people of a certain culture were experiencing a severe famine, and many members of the community were dying. What if a sacrifice was the people's last hope? Suppose they believed that if they did not sacrifice the child, their entire community would suffer and many more people would die. Suppose, indeed, that they believed the baby would gain a position of honour in some form of afterlife, and be much better off than struggling to survive on earth, where, as things stood at that time, it would have little chance of surviving. Could we categorically say to them: no, you're wrong, you cannot sacrifice that baby? What justification would we have? That the taking of life is wrong? But within their belief system, we are killing far more people, albeit indirectly, by not doing what their gods want. Using the category of 'no harm' presumes a certain, by no means universal, viewpoint, which values earthly life over death, happiness over sadness and pain, and presumes that suffering is necessarily bad. But people cannot grow without experiencing loss.

Similarly, there are some Christian groups that claim that all Witchcraft is the work of the devil, and having pentagrams and other religious symbols endangers people, as it allows the devil access to that area. The fact that Wiccans do not believe in the devil is irrelevant in their eyes. Sometimes the differences in opinion are so vast that it is impossible to find common ground. I'm not saying all Christians think like this, but for those who do, there is no way anyone can change their mind. The point is that their way of seeing what is harmful and what is not is so vastly different to that of Wiccans that there seems little space for compromise.

Overall, there are no easy answers. It is possible to defend any position, and the ability to defend it does not make it right. (And just because I have defended a position in my essay does not mean that I believe in it. Obviously, I do not condone the killing of babies.) Everyone sees the world through his or her own viewpoint--to a certain degree, at least, and we can never escape from that. This does not mean that humanity should adopt a completely laissez-faire attitude. It is crucial to examine what groups are doing and why. In the more difficult cases, examine what people know for certain. No one can claim to possess absolute knowledge about what happens after death. Approaching the problem in pragmatic terms is crucial. Harm might be doing the person some good, but it probably isn't.

We cannot take away people's right to claim something to be sacred. But if there is evidence that their acts are harmful, then not intervening because the group might possibly be right is basically the same as giving people the right to do whatever they want in the name of religion.

A final thought: I would call nature sacred. And yet animals kill with indifference; and earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods reduce what people have worked for years to achieve to nothingness. Nature is indifferent to morality, death, and the passage of time.

Blessed Be

Elijah Jordan

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Bio: Elijah Jordan lives in Britain and has been studying the Craft for about a year. He welcomes e-mails about his essay, or anything to do with Wicca. He likes to write, read, and watch (hopefully one day direct?) films. He is currently studying philosophy at university, and this is his first essay for Witchvox

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