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#19- November 2006 c.e.Some Ideas toward a Wiccan Ethics

By Sam Wagar

(Loki said) “You got to understandthe god thing. It’s not magic. It’sabout being you, but the

you

thatpeople believe in. It’s about beingthe concentrated, magnifiedessence of you. It’s aboutbecoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. Youtake all the belief and becomebigger, cooler, more than human.You crystallize.”-Neil Gaiman

American Gods

(NY:HarperTorch, 2001), 443.

The single most common Wiccan ethicalstatement is “an ye harm none, do what you will.”This, plus the belief in the “Three-fold Law,” thebelief that whatever one does returns to onemagnified three times, probably reduces the amountof wilful harm of others done in the Wiccan religiouscommunities. But neither of these precepts saysanything about how we

should

behave or what kindof people we should aspire to become.Our Gods are not role models that we wish toemulate. They are powerful and beautiful andobsessively centred in their areas of excellence. Theycannot point us toward a happy and balanced life, noton Their own, because They are anything butbalanced. They cannot show us an ethical, just andmoral way of living because They are neither ethical,nor just, nor moral, nor living beings. In the same wayas it is absurd to speak of an ethical or moralmountain, it is meaningless to speak thus of mostGods.I am very happy to be receiving the newslettereach month and read it eagerly from cover to cover. Ithas been quite a long time since I contributed to itscontent but I have a request to make instead.As you know, it has been a long and thorny rowthat I am continuing to hoe on my path of recovery.With help from my partner, my excellent psychiatrist,and the good people of AA. and the AddictionsCentre, I have been making this journey. While thehelp and understanding from these groups and thelove, patience and loyalty of my partner and my familyhave been paramount to my recovery, the journey onthe most part is a solitary one. My tremendous pridehas often left me handicapped in my ability to reachout for help when help was really needed. I havewound up pushing people away in my ‘need’ to do iton my own. Even though I have a loving family and asmall circle of loyal and patient friends, I am literally

Talking About Mental Illness and Addiction

By Aurora Rose

Announcing With Great Joy, theInitiation of Anne Doré, lay clergy of the Vancouver-Burnaby Temple, tothe Second Degree in Pagans forPeace Tradition!Anne has read, studied, andperformed numerous public andprivate acts in devotion and inservice to the Gods - she is wellprepared and deserving!-Sam Wagar (Maphis 3rd)

2What we need to develop, as we develop Wiccanethics and ways of being together, is a model of human excellence that we can aspire to. We need amodel that is not a single person, because eachperson differs in needs, capacities, and tastes – onesize does not fit all. We need a model, moreover, thatfits well with the individualistic streak of Paganismand that respects our need to be moral agents and tomake individual ethical choices.The great Pagan philosopher Aristotle came upwith an ethical system and model 2400 years ago thatis still suited to these needs. Aristotle argued that wedon’t need ethical systems that list rules, does anddon’ts, or that attempt to deal with every conceivablequestion. This is because people are different andthere are simply too many situations to ever have aperfectly exhaustive list of responses, and becauserigidity and rules-based behaviour is not natural andrational nor spontaneous and beautiful.What we need, instead of rules, said Aristotle, is todevelop strength of character, character expressed inaction. A person of good character will naturallychoose to do what is right under whatevercircumstances they are presented with. They willhave a well-developed sense of appropriateness,appropriate to them, not necessarily to anyone else,and will consistently act in tune with the good.The means to develop strength of character, saidAristotle, is to understand that there are virtues thatcan be cultivated, effectively like developing a seriesof good moral and ethical habits. By developing thehabit of always doing the right thing, informed bypractical reason and judgement,, we will respond toany situation by doing what is right in that situation.Aristotle is fundamentally healthy in his ethics: thegoal of ethics is completely practical and concernedwith good human functioning here in the world, withliving the good life, which he considers to be thehappy life, the soul in accordance with reason.Although Aristotle complied a list of virtues likecourage, generosity, public-mindedness, friendship andso on, he refrained from saying how exactly thesewould be expressed for a given individual. Moreimportantly, he said that virtues are the actions andthe passions occupying the middle path between twoextremes, each of which is a vice – one being toomuch expression of the action and the other too little.For example, although generosity is a virtue, givingaway everything that you own is a vice, as is givingfar less than you can afford. Each of us, however,must find what is virtuous to do and to find thebalanced middle ground of correct action thatexpresses the virtues in tune with our nature andcircumstance. Ideally we will also enjoy doing what isright – we are virtuous not because of rules butbecause the good, or virtuous, life gives us morepleasure.So we have here a positive model of right actionto aim toward, one that is in tune with the basicethical precepts of Wicca I mentioned at the start,and that can include our devotion to particular deities.Although the servant of Aphrodite will behavedifferently than a devotee of Quan Yin or of Odin orMars, all can be ethical people who pursue the goodlife. The aim is not to adhere to a rigid list of rules, butrather to seek to become people who have a strongunderstanding of themselves and a good personalethical code: people who can be trusted to behaveappropriately under any circumstances.Aristotle’s ethics do not seek to limit our pleasuresor to deny the body or the spirit. Instead we arerequired to choose and to take responsibility for ourchoices. It is based on the understanding that whatwe do, we are. By choosing to lie, we become liarsand it becomes easier for us to remain dishonest thanto become honest. By not standing up for what webelieve to be true we become cowards. But the vicesof cowardice or greed or untrustworthiness are flawsof personal character, not flaws in the universe. Inother words, we cannot fall back on the claim that“the Goddess made me do it.” Vices can beovercome by changing our actions so we can becomethe kind of people that we want to be.Aristotle doesn’t give us any kind of an easy outfrom our ethical responsibilities, nor a simple set of rules. What he gives us, from within a polytheisticPagan framework, is a dynamic process and a systemof mutually reinforcing virtues and vices. Just as theGods should be understood in and through theirrelationships to each other rather than as all-powerfulsingular figures, no one virtue is a complete guide tothe good life, and no one person is complete withoutcommunity and interaction.By adding a sense of the virtues to the ethics of “an ye harm none” we know not only what we shouldnot do but what we should do and how we should goabout doing it. Even more importantly, we learn whowe should be, whatever we are doing.(The main piece of Aristotle’s ethics is

The Nicomachean Ethics

, available in numeroustranslations.)

3and honest.Now for the request; I have fallen back on solitaryritual and prayer, and while there are blessings to befound within a solitary practice, I am sorely feelingthe loss of the blessings that a group conscious canbring. To make a long story short, I am in desperateneed of support. I have accepted my decision to stepdown from any leadership role at this time. It feelsgood, right, and proper. I have no idea how long this‘stage’ of my recovery is going to last, if, indeed, it is just a ‘stage,’ but I am willing to honour the processeven if I don’t necessarily understand it. What Iwould really like right now is some support from ourfaith community by advertising for it in the monthlynewsletter. On the last page I often read aboutsupport, prayers or rituals needed for variousindividuals…well, I would like to be considered one of those individuals. I am hurting and still so very ill, buthave a tremendous desire to be well and whole again.There are many good people in our faithcommunity who either live with mental illness orknow some one who does. They will also know theaddiction issues that often walk hand in hand withBipolar Disorder. It is my hope that these peoplecome forward to openly talk to others about thedisease or any other form of mental illness thatcripples either themselves or a loved one. It is alsomy hope that people in our faith community light acandle for me…because I cannot carry on withouttheir support and prayers. I am a broken person whodesperately needs their help.Thank you kindly for reading this email. Thisreaching out for help is not an easy thing to do, andyou are the first people that I have really and honestlyasked for help with something this intimate. If youshould wish to publish all or part of this letter in thenewsletter then I give you permission to do so. We sorarely hear of people willing to come forward to writeabout their struggles with mental illness. To tell youthe honest truth, I probably would have found it easierto have talked about losing an arm or leg, than to talk about being mentally ill – but you know, I feel betternow having put these words on the screen, knowingthat I will soon be sending them to you via cyber-space. I remain…starving to death. I am in very real danger of becoming socially anorexic, and quite frankly it scaresthe hell out of me.Please don’t get me wrong, I am a survivor andwas one before I succumbed to this illness. I countmy blessings with an open heart and an open mind ona daily basis. But I am learning to reach out, and Imay as well not even try if I am not going to be open

Mental Illness and Addictions

My Granny was a Witch

by Angela Flegel

I spent most of my summers growing up with myGranny. We had many adventures and along the wayand she taught me many things. My Granny did notcall herself a witch, but she was very proficient inpractising “old wives tales”.She followed the wheel of the year even thoughshe did not have a name for it. In the spring shewould ready her garden for the harvest of summerand autumn. In the summer she had afternoon tea inthe summer house, which was little more than a shedthat over looked her garden. There she would sit andtell me her life stories, while admiring her work. Inthe autumn we gathered the seeds from those plantsfrom whose bounty I was forbidden to eat. “Thoseare for next years garden” she explained. We wouldbury last years garden beneath the soil so it couldprepare the earth for the following spring, Grannydidn’t waste anything. She taught me how to preservemother’s bounty and her dark, musty, dirt flooredcellar would be filled once again until next autumn.Her winter days would be spent sipping tea andknitting or sewing for her great grandchildren. Shewould nest in her little “shack” - that’s what thegrandchildren nicknamed her home- as if to hibernate.Then in the spring she would emerge begin again asthe wheel continued to turn.Throughout my summers, and other times spentwith my Granny, she would teach me her ways of healing. I had come to her one summer with largewarts on my hand and she tied the warts up withstring and had me pee on them. After a few days shetook the string off and buried it in the compost pilealthough, to be done properly should have been buriedin the manure pile but we would have to make duewith what we had. To my surprise the warts quicklydisappeared as if by magick. She would cure my cuts,bruises and insect bites with what she had it could beanything from stale bread, mud and leaves tointeresting liniments she kept. She was very strictabout taking care of your teeth and I rememberdreading having to brush my teeth with baking soda.She still had her teeth when she passed away. Makesme wonder if I should switch from toothpaste tobaking soda. Upset stomachs were cured with aweed that grew in between the paving stones in heryard and when I became interested in herbal healingfound out that weed was chamomile. I only wish thatI had listened and paid closer attention to her “oldwives tales” when we still had time on earth together.