55 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
55 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
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FROM: Paul Hume
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SUBJECT: Ethics
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George -
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The outcry at the end of your last post of three: does this belong on
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Mundane or are ethics central enough to religion (presumably Wiccan
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religion) to stay on Magicknet, triggers this response in my guts:
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If ethics are not a central consideration in magico-religous dialog,
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we are all in the wrong line of work.
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What indeed are the ethics of the witch/mage/shaman? Most of the
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principle guides to our behavior are "shorthand," almost koans, which
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guide the "initiate" but are meaningless or even scary/dangerous to the
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"common man."
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"Do what thou wilt..."
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"An it harm none..."
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"The eightfold noble path"
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It is all well and good to say "listen to the inner voice." When the
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inner voice (or a plausible imitation) says "Kill them all, let God sort
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them out," what then?
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Can occult ethics generate an ethical code for the non-occultist?
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Crowley tried his hand at this, and some of the modern Wiccan writers do,
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as well as assorted New Age writers, whose stuff at least has the
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advantage of innocence as a rule.
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My aikido sensei recently remarked "What we do is not for everyone."
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This was not in defense of excluding anyone from the dojo, but rather to
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answer the puzzlement of several people when a person who'd seemed quite
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interested observed class, and left with some denigrating observations on
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the "wimpy" nature of our style. Heaven knows what he thought aikido
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was.
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Not only our magick but our lifestyle is not for everyone. The terrible
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burden of freedom from authority, of distinguishing ethics from morals,
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of fixing the eye on the star of the Will and steering by that alone:
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these scare the excrement out of many people. "I don't KNOW what's
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right," they cry! "I need someone to tell me."
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Our perfect world contains people who perform right action automatically,
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by virtue of training themselves to do so. Your "good practice" rather
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than "good law," to paraphrase you and Confucius.
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The Rede, Thelema, etc. are enough for their adherents - they are not
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enough - cannot be enough - for
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anyone who has not taken that first step onto the path of initiation (I
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use the term in its widest sense - not just "formal" initiation into a
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trad., order, etc.).
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