Yesterday I wrote about my feelings on the Rede. Today, I’d like to look at the Three Fold Law. In simple terms, it says that any thing we do will be visited upon us three times, for good or ill. In her book Philosophy of Wicca, Amber Laine Fisher suggests that the Three Fold Law refers a return of actions through body, mind and spirit. While I don’t necessarily agree with her, I think that that is an interesting theory.

My thoughts are a little different then what is “traditionally” taught. I don’t necessarily believe that my actions will be returned to me in threes. Rather, I see the universe as trying to maintain some sort of balance. I don’t mean that if you do something good then something bad will happen. Goodness knows that there are enough people doing actions on both sides that there is no need to create balance that way. Instead, if I do good actions, I create an aura of goodness about me, for lack of a better term. In doing so, I draw good actions towards me. If I do bad things, then it only makes sense that I open myself up to have bad things happen to me. We draw to us what we put out.

Sometimes, however, bad things happen to good people. I don’t see this as a form of punishment or the Three Fold Law in action. Rather, it is part of the set of lessons that we must learn in this life. It may be that our lesson is to overcome pain, death, etc, and the method we choose to do so is up to us.

Bec, over at Fat Lil Wytch, has posted her feelings about the Wiccan Rede and Three Fold Law. Although she isn’t Wiccan, she does have some interesting insights into these two things.

Personally, I don’t necessarily see the Wiccan Rede, “An it harm no one, do what thou wilt”, as a rewording of the Christian Golden Rule. Instead, I recognize that many religions have some idea that encompasses the idea of reciprocity. Most religions teach love for one’s self and others, as well as mutual respect. So, it only makes sense to have some teaching that promotes this. Religious Tolerance.org has an article outlining the reciprocity beliefs of many different faiths.

I think my issue with the Rede comes with the various interpretations of it. Some people try to take it extremely literally, believing that if one follows the Rede then they cannot cause harm to anyone or anything. Some say this means Wiccans must be vegetarians, etc. There are also arguments about killing microscopic organism with nearly every action, killing bacteria with medicine, etc. I don’t feel that the Rede was meant to be taken so seriously. The word rede actually means advice, not rule or commandment. So we are meant to consider the words of the Rede, not slavishly follow them. To me this means that we aren’t required to cause no harm, rather we need to cause as little harm as we can.

This brings up another point. The Rede is about knowing your Will. That is more then thinking you know what you want. It is about knowing, deep down in your soul, what you want. I don’t think any of us, deep down, want to cause any undo harm to anyone. So, on this level, following the Rede isn’t that difficult. And what about those microscopic organisms? As awful as it sounds, we all must make some sacrifices and I hardly think that this goes against the advice of the Rede.

Multi-blog The Juggler recently had an entry about the validity of paths, Recurring Rant: “All paths are Valid.”. There are several points I agree with in this entry. Quite frankly, I am tired of the political correctness that inundates the online Pagan movement. We cannot disagree with anyone lest we be branded intolerant or even a bigot. Personally, I just keep my mouth shut. But lately so many things have driven me nuts that I have all but withdrawn from any type of community.

As Mikki says at Non Fluffy Wicca, the destination of each path may be different, so why would we say that all paths are valid? If I am a Wiccan, as I am, clearly a path based on Christian doctrine isn’t a valid path for me. Many elements of such a path would be directly contradictory to what I believe in, such as sin. I also have a difficult time believing that paths that allow, or even promote, violence are valid. To me, spiritual progress can not be made when one is focused on committing violence. That being said, I don’t think any such path is valid. And I think that if I were to say that all paths are valid, I would be betraying my beliefs.

That’s not to say that paths I don’t understand aren’t valid. Far from it. But I think that we need to be reasonable as well as tolerant. We need to examine what the path teaches and how it teaches it. We need to know if it fills are real spiritual need for its practitioners, or if it is just an ego boost and/or money making scheme for the leaders and/or followers. We need to understand a path, even if only at a basic level, before we can declare it valid. And, as intolerant as it may sound, some paths will never be valid to me, especially those that avoid difficult issues in favor of a sweetness and light approach to life.

Over on the Lotus Pond, I posted an article a while back about all the different ways to choose a Tarot significator. (I think I might have to update my ideas to deal with my new Daughters of the Moon deck though, since it only has three court cards… *sigh*) Today I came across a quiz someone designed to help one pick a significator. The questions are pretty good, but it is easy to slant your answer if you know the attributes associated with each card. But, I guess all quizzes are like this to some extent. Anyway, my results:

Quiz created by Polly Snodgrass.

WATER OF EARTH. Mommy! Well, you could be. You are good with plants and small creatures such as children. You’re very generous and basically great hearted. You probably make mad whack cookies and are good at managing the household; also businesses. You’d make a good tax person, book keeper, gardener, massage therapist, etc. The ever domestic and practical one, you can stretch a penny and make ramen noodles go a long way.

And, interestingly enough (or not), these results square with most of the methods I give in my essay. I’m a fairly typical Queen of Pentacles all ’round.

Last week when I was at the library, I overheard a librarian reading a book to a group of little children. I can’t remember the words exactly, but she was more or less reading the name of a colour and then reading things about it that related to attributes of the colour. For example, I remember that for the colour brown some of the things she read where soft and comfortable, and for pink she read cute. There were more associations and more colours, but that is all I can remember now.

As I walked home from the library, I started thinking more about these colour associations. (I even stopped to scribble down some ideas in a notebook that I carry with me.) To me, green is soft, blue is cold, and purple is comforting, etc. So where do these associations come from? How did they develop? Who was the first person to say that red meant passion and white was purity? And why, in general, are these associations so widely accepted? I can pick up a Tarot card from any number of groups and learn a lot about the meaning of the card through the colours used. Or I can pick up a stone and guess at its use because of its colour. I mean, it is fairly obvious that rose quartz is a stone associated with love and peace because it is pink.

Update: Interestingly enough, Kathryn over at Mindful Life also has an entry about colour–Color My World. Honestly, I didn’t see it until after this entry was written and posted.