Bide the Wiccan Rede I must?

One thing I’ve mentioned and I want to explore more is why I stopped identifying as Wiccan.

When I was younger I viewed the world through rose coloured glasses, and this lasted well into my 20’s. At 29 I was running my own business, a single mum and had just bought a house and land. I met my now partner shortly after moving into my home and fell pregnant very quickly, so not long after my 30th birthday I gave birth to my gorgeous daughter. But that’s when everything went sideways.

My world became really turbulent. My son was working through his diagnosis for ADHD, my daughter wasn’t feeding well, my partner found himself between jobs and my mum went off the deep end with her mental and physical health. My household became toxic in front of my eyes and a family who I had considered family friends turned on us. Everything has turned out well, but I want to discuss these family friends.

These family friends are a Christian family, and older couple and their two grown daughters, they also have two grand-daughters who go to school with my son. If we are going to call a spade a spade, they were only interested in what they could get from me. Everything they did for me was conditional in maintaining the status quo, which drastically shifted after I had my daughter because my priorities and my time shifted to focus on her. They also felt that they could dictate to me how I managed my relationship with my mum, and I wasn’t going to allow them to cross that line. This was when I started to realise that most people do not have the ability to be morally good, to give of themselves without caveats, and to stay in their lane. I realised that I wanted them gone from my life and I didn’t care about the consequences. Doesn’t “an it harm none” include myself?

I put layers of protection magic on my home, I cleansed and cleansed and cleansed, I uncrossed myself, and I started to look into war magic. The protection magic worked. They came to my house with the intent of walking right up to my front door, and when they went to cross the threshold of my front gate they stopped. And then they walked away. Another time the wife crossed the line and walked towards my door, but she started to feel physically ill (I know because my mum told me later). This is when the penny dropped for me, when I heard from someone they go to church with say there was a rumour that I had cursed them, that even “good” magic can cause harm and that harm wasn’t a bad thing.

We talk a lot about Karma and the Three Fold Rule, but we never stop to think that maybe the buck needs to stop with us. That baneful and war magic has it’s place for a reason and that a freezer spell or cord cutting is simply not enough sometimes. So I threw those ideas away. I viewed myself differently. I started to work with both hands.

I started to learn about all sorts of stuff. Poisons, sacrifices, graveyard dirt, curses and stronger protections. I started to dip into all the knowledge that I had and then branch out further. I knew I was straying from the “acceptable” path and that I was having to really seek out the information now. I knew I needed to throw away the prejudices that had been pushed on me.

But I want to take a moment to double back to how we view magic. We tend to split magic into being Good/White or Bad/Black, but we should reassess this view. If our spells are effective, do we actually believe that we will not cause harm? I’ll give an example. In the 2019/2020 Australian Summer, we had a bushfire that was one of the biggest the world had seen. In the Black Summer over 46 million acres were incinerated. Witches worldwide joined forces and used their skills to manifest rain, and they did. So much rain came that there was flash flooding and more damage was done and more lives were lost. The rain did help stop the bushfires but not without repercussions. I do not doubt for a second that any one of those practitioners imagined that their work would cause flash flooding, but collectively it did. I doubt they thought harm would come from what they did.

On a smaller scale? Does asking to get a job harm others? What about petitioning for lower interest rates? Well, if you get that job, someone else didn’t. If your interest rates are lower, then someone isn’t getting as much interest on their savings. Negating harm can render your magic ineffective. I’m not telling you to change how you practice, nor am I telling you to proceed with reckless abandon, but maybe we need to think a little deeper and be aware of what change we are trying to ask for. We also need to consider the positive repercussions of baneful and war magic. Is it possible that hexing someone abusive could prevent more harm than it causes? Absolutely. Welcome to my world of Grey Magic.