I try to behave myself.
Most Wiccans
follow the Wiccan Reed, “An you harm none, do what you will.” The most cautious
practitioners refrain from any spell, even a well-intentioned one, which
interferes in the affairs of others without their knowledge and consent.
I am not that cautious. Perhaps because I am old, and have always made my living as a teacher, I tend to comfortably assume that I know what is best for other people.
I let go of the rule about knowledge and consent many years ago, when my father, a Quaker librarian, was struggling through the challenges of old age and declining health. If I told him anything about magic, he had to get worse in order to prove it was all nonsense. If I didn't mention my healing spells, they often worked.
Witches are actually quite selective in their spells. As someone once said of Catherine the Great in another context, you have to remember that there were millions of men in Russia whom she never even met.
Similarly, every Witch has daily opportunities to cast spells that she never even considers.
One of my first teachers explained to me long ago that there are no rules about what a Witch should or should not do--only the fact that what you do will sooner or later rebound on you. "If you want to take the heat, go ahead and do it."
This is not so much a high-minded ethical consideration as a principle of
nature that unfolds surely though slowly, in this life or another. It
applies to all acts, not just specifically “magical” ones. Another way to
express the situation is to say that with every act you take, you are helping
to create the universe in which you have to live.
And some of us believe that Witches are souls who have voluntarily bound themselves to the Wheel. We will cycle through incarnations as long as there is an Earth for sentient beings to inhabit. This thought, if anything, tends to make me a bit less timid about my karma. I figure that I am here for the long haul, and I might as well keep things interesting.
