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Wicca & Black Magick

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick.ethics,alt.magick.tantra,alt.religion.wicca,alt.pagan.magick
From: nagasiva 
Subject: Re: Wicca & Black Magick
Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 22:47:12 GMT

50010505 Vom Hail Eris!

 this post was too good to pass up. it has all the earmarks of the Frequently
 Confused Query and Dastardly Knowledgeable Ignoramus plus new terminology!

David Maciver :
>> I'm a Wiccan who believes in the concepts, and maybe the "gods" but
>> not as strange beings of light, but doesn't really practice much magic.

religious Wiccan, ok. honoring the Goddess at least, probably the God too.

>> The only thing I can think of to fight off the black wiccans 

'fighting off Black Wiccans'?!!! streaks of Crowleyan 'Black Brothers'!
horrors! what, pray tell, is a 'Black Wiccan'?!

>> is a taste of their own medicine. But if you do that you are 
>> risking becoming what you want to do away with.  What comes 
>> around goes around....

always the hazard of 'fighting fire with fire', pacifism, etc.
usually the most abstemious religious get around this by casting
some kind of mirrored containing spell mechanism to reflect the
evils spouted by the offender back at hirself or siccing their
god against the horrendous foe so as not to obtain Bounce-Back
on themselves or any spirit-guardian they may see fit to employ.

"Corven Sepius" :
> Is revenge a kind of karma?  If I give them a taste of their 
> own medicine, am I really doing anything more than just being 
> a vehicle for their karma?

it is one thing to speak of 'getting back what you put out' and
quite another, at times, to speak of "karma", because the idea
of karma often comes with a whole cosmology that may or may not
fit with the Cosmic Bouncing Justice Theory at all.

very often karma is integrated into a whole Rebirth schema that
simultaneously keys one's karma points into one's LEVEL OF REBIRTH 
(my language, translating into role-playing game stats ;>) as well
as one's CHANCES AT LIBERATION. if you have positive karma points 
you get to be born into longer and more pleasurable lifetimes (as 
a god, for example, who, contrary to the theologies of many 
Westerners, is NOT immortal). if you have negative karma points 
then you'll be reborn into a very unpleasant and suffering life 
such as that of a hungry ghost, running around trying to fill your 
gaping hole of a mouth with a variety of objects of obsession. 

on the other hand, if you have just the right amount of karma
points (often, and peculiarly -- don't ask them to talk too much
about the logic of this with regard to morality -- NONE), whether
max positive or something transcending the whole system, then you
get OUT OF THE CYCLE OF REBIRTH. taken literally this is comparable
to Gnostic ideas about the world as a Hell from which one tries to
escape. at its best one becomes a liberated being in a world of
suffering sentients (or forestalls one's final liberation, in the
case of the valiant (foolish?) Mahayana Buddhists, by dedicating
oneself to the liberation of all others). 

once I created a character in a role-playing game called Champions
named "Captain Karma(!)", a karma-enforcer in the cosmos. it was
farcical and funny, but it resembles the idea that you've asked
about above. literally what you say makes a great deal of sense,
yet if you asked one of these folks who believe in these cosmologies
with karma whether that's what happens you would likely receive a
batch of responses, from 'yes, that is correct' to 'no, you don't
do anything really, your actions inspire them to suffer but you
are ultimately no more real than a wave on the ocean is real'.

the fear, I think, of accepting this kind of notion is that then
people may become identified with the Force of Karma in the
universe and, from there, begin to think of their actions as
*justified because they are bouncing back upon evildoers*, therefor
as you have correctly surmised, quaintly justifying revenge. those 
who contemplate these karma ideas are so concerned with folks 
having some kind of EFFECT ON OTHERS that they'll try to come up 
with some kind of alternative explanation in order to avoid what 
they might describe as 'your ego trap' and 'the evils of revenge'.

ultimately you have to ask what kind of repercussion you (think
you) are creating through your revenge. largely this can be 
determined based on your preferred cosmology. 

	* purely materialistic cosmology with limited 'spirits'
	  and 'minds' dependent upon human bodies to give them
	  any kind of lasting reality
	------------------------------------------------------
	revenge is just more atoms bashing against one another.
	social repercussions may be forthcoming if the revenge
	is visible for all to see.

	* a fanciful and ambiguous 'recycling' of an immortal
	  self with 'bad' acts rebounding upon the doer 3 times 
	------------------------------------------------------
	revenge would of course be counter-productive for the
	individual should she care about what she created for
	hirself. if not, revenge could be sweet with high price.

	* a cosmic rebirth wheel unendingly spitting one out at
	  death into a new form based on one's moral virtues
	  unless one took it upon oneself to transcend via the
	  mechanism of mysticism.
	----------------------------------------------------- 
	revenge might hurt one's lot in the SHORT term, but
	eventually one could undertake the mysticism and get
	to the presumed endpoint by making up for previous
	aggression.

so if it is worth it, NO cosmology listed above would provide
you with absolute dissuasion from revenge. good luck!

blessed beast!

nagasiva

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