Being Bad

NOTE:  Parts of this article are quoted from or based on Blacksun’s yet-to-be published book, B e ALL! – The book of Pagan Spirituality, © 2007.

Some people have problems with Paganism because we didn’t have anybody come down from a mountain with a couple of stone tablets and tell us what being bad really meant.  The charge is leveled that we don’t have any morality system.  Once that statement is made, it’s an easy jump to thinking we don’t have any morals.  But just because we didn’t have somebody write it on rocks doesn’t mean we don’t have a morality system.  We are, by and large, a very moral group of people.  Of course, the same can be said of most of the people of the world.  Pagans usually aren’t any more or less moral than anybody else.  But we still don’t have a couple of rocks telling us what’s right and what’s wrong.  What we do have is a few guidelines that can help us decide if something is right or wrong, good or bad.  For the most part, these guidelines talk about what it means to be good.  Very little is centered on being bad.

Probably the most powerful of these guidelines is also one of the most subtle.  It’s expressed in a variety of ways but it all comes down to a very simple three-sentence statement:

• 1. Everything we do with intent is magic.
  2. Everything is connected.
  3. All magic produces like-consequences for the magician.

In Wicca, this is usually expressed as The Law of Three-Fold Return.  According to that notion, whatever you ‘put out’ comes back to you three times more powerfully.  It doesn’t take an accounting degree to figure out that this can be either a carrot or a stick.  The Three-Fold ‘Law’ is either somebody telling you that there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or that you’ll get a really bad ‘beating’ when your dad gets home!  Other traditions have similar notions and also express this idea that our magical acts have good or bad consequences dependant on whether the magic is good or bad.  Now we arrive at the issue central to all morality systems:  What is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad?”  When discussing theological issues, ‘good and bad’ usually is phrased ‘good and evil.’ It doesn’t actually change the question but it does make it sound more cosmic.

The western idea of ‘good-and-evil’ is that they are polar opposites and that there is some sort of exacting standard by which we (or some omnipotent deity) can make a judgment call about them.  For anyone who has lived more than a few seconds can tell you, this ain’t always so.  Most of life is way too complicated to know whether some action is all ‘good’ or all ‘evil.’ As mere mortals, we have a hard time knowing what all the ramifications of an action may be.  And, just to make it harder, a lot of what we do is based upon a hastily formulated prediction of what might happen when we put something into action.  They usually call that an accident waiting to happen.

Knowing if something is good or evil depends a lot on the circumstances surrounding the action or thought.  Is swinging the bat good or evil?  It’s good if you hit the ball over the fence.  (Well, it’s good if you’re not on the opposing team.)  But it’s downright evil if you’re taking a swing at your neighbor!  In this example, neither the bat nor the act of swinging it can be called good or evil.  It is only the intent behind the swinging of the bat that can be judged in this way.  Any similarity between this example and the old argument that, ‘guns don’t kill people; people kill people,’ is purely coincidental.

But for us to judge anything ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ we need to have some kind of yardstick.  We need to be able to identify what those two words mean and how we might be able to establish whether some act, thing, or thought is or is not good or evil.  This has been the work of philosophers, theologians, and lawyers since around the time of writing on rocks.  It is also what we mere mortals try to figure out every minute of every day.  Everything we do is somehow connected to our judgment about good and evil.  And if that isn’t reason enough for studying the subject a little more closely, I don’t know what is.

I’m going to give you my thoughts about this subject but I don’t expect you to adopt them for yourself.  I’m sharing my way of judging good and evil in the hope that it will spur you into thinking about your own way of judging these matters.  As I mentioned above, this subject has been worked over by all sorts of people for a long time.  Obviously, nobody has come up with a foolproof way of deciding the whole thing (that’s because fools are so clever!) and this is quite probably another one of those so-called ‘mysteries’ that are entirely a personal matter.  Nevertheless, I’ll attempt to explain my method so you will have some starting point for discovering your own.

I should first tell you this system is built upon my concept of what Spirit is and how it works.  To me, Spirit (with a capital S) is the ultimate template for all existence… including its own existence.  I make a distinction between spirit (all lower case) and Spirit (capitalized).  The all lower case ‘spirit’ is a template for some specific thing’s existence and the capitalized ‘Spirit’ is reserved for what amounts to Deity, the ‘master template’ that serves as the source for all the rest of the spirits of discreet things.  It’s easiest to think of spirit as a kind of information packet that determines all of the characteristics of that thing.  This information packet gets new information by interacting with other spirits (everything is connected).  It also shares some of itself during these interactions.  Thus, the ‘spirit of the party’ can have an influence on the spirit of a person.  This way of defining spirit allows us to use the word in all the ways we do without changing its core meaning.

Everything has a spirit in this system (even stone tablets) and all spirits are part of, and originate from one Great Spirit, denoted by capitalizing the word (‘Spirit’).  Although it might be an oversimplification (the matter is much more complicated than it looks), ‘good’ is defined as any ‘movement’ by a spirit that puts it closer to this so-called Great Spirit and ‘evil’ is any movement away from it.  In other words, to do good one must become closer to this source of spirit, this Spirit.

Of course, knowing what constitutes movement in the right direction is the key element in this system.  How can we know what spiritual influences will put us and our actions ‘closer’ to this divine Spirit?  This question bothered me for several years and prevented me from completing my book on the subject of the fifth Element (Spirit).  The answer that finally satisfied all of the arguments that I had with previous solutions was so simple, I wondered if I wasn’t fooling myself.  But it has withstood the test of lots of discussions with other theologians and I now find its simplicity a sign of its strength.

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is a saying I’ve heard all my life.  A quick explanation of it would be to say that what might appear beautiful to one person may not seem beautiful to another.  Even though we might not agree on what is beautiful, we all have this sense of some things being beautiful and others not.  Trying to describe why we say this-or-that is beautiful always comes down to the fact that we find it so; we’re attracted to it but repulsed by other things, some of which are considered beautiful by others.  We are influenced by our culture or our friends and family to find certain things beautiful.  Our sense of beauty is influenced by everything around us.  But even those who have grown up in the same family and lived in the same culture have different ideas about what is beautiful.

We say our ‘taste’  of beauty is different from another person’s, which goes back to the beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder aphorism.  But the choice of the term, ‘taste,’ is telling in this case.  We know that certain foods will taste better to us one time than they do another (except chocolate, of course… that tastes good all the time!).  And it’s been proven that the reason for that phenomenon is that our bodies need the nutrients in those foods more at one time than another.  We will even say, “I have a taste for (something).” Our taste for beauty is much like our taste for foods.  But instead of our bodies needing something, our taste for beauty is a hunger of our soul, our spirit.  In other words, what we find beautiful nourishes our spirit. We say we are ‘attracted’ to beauty.  That means we will be likely to move closer to it.  Are you beginning to see what this means?

• 1. ‘Good’ is movement closer to Spirit (note the capitalization).
  2. Beauty nourishes our spirit.
  3. We are likely to move closer to that which we find beautiful.

For the moment, consider beauty to be like a radiation sent off by the spirit of a thing.  We might consider this like light or other forms of radiation in that it will be radiated in waves.  All waves have frequency and amplitude.  Some of us are sensitive to certain wavelengths of beauty and some aren’t.  What we find beautiful depends on our sensitivity to the wavelengths sent out by the spirits of the things in our world.  Since our spirit is the defining force of us and is constantly changing (spirits influence spirits), our sensitivity to particular wavelengths will probably change over time.

Of course, this is all metaphorical.  I’m not proposing that we attempt to build a beauty meter to measure the spirits of things.  But in a way, it could be said that is what religion tries to do.  The teachings of any religion try to influence us to move in the general direction of Spirit.  For the most part, religion (ANY religion!) helps us to be ‘good.’  Paganism teaches us to be good through its mysteries.  Many other religions teach morality in the same way (in fact, the largest faith group in the world, Buddhism, is a mystery religion).  For us, these mysteries center on the observable nature of the world around us.  For that reason, we are often called a ‘nature religion’ or sometimes an ‘Earth religion.’ Our holy days are set up to put us in tune with (translate: to be influenced by) the cycles of our physical environment.  This influence is to make us more sensitive to the beauty of Nature and (hopefully) cause us to move closer to the spiritual nourishment available by becoming more harmonious (here we go with the wavelength language again) with our environment.

So how come some people use religion to justify doings bad/evil things?  Simply because they are looking for justification for their ways and find it possible to blame it on a religion.  Religion is not to blame for anyone’s actions.  Even if it’s possible to use its teachings to promote or justify evil deeds, religion does not initiate action; people do.

Knowing good from bad isn’t always easy.  But we each have a sense of what is beautiful to us and we should follow the attraction of the beautiful things in our world to keep us morally healthy.  We might not always be righteously good but we will at least be headed in the right direction.  If we purposely go out each morning with the intent of finding beauty, we will not only nourish our own soul but quite possibly influence others to find their own beauty.

And that’s a good thing.

Great Mother, Great Father, hear my prayer of Love:  Open my heart and my inner vision to the Beauty of your works.  Teach me the wonders and lessons of your Spirit and give me the strength and courage to face you each day with gratitude for the struggles that are presented to me.

Guide me in your ways.  I know not where my Path may lead, but I could not bear it if it were to take me away from you.

Help me keep my spirit whole and growing so that it may light the way others may take.  Keep me from the folly of false pride and vainglory.  Remind my heart of the peace and wonder of being myself… without a mask to impress others.

Take my Spirit quest as my gift to you.  I only wish it to be in harmony with your truths.  Remind me daily of Spirit.  Let me never forget my quest or stray too far from its Path.  For I am sworn to your Priesthood and my hands and heart are dedicated to Perfect Love and Perfect Truth, which are your gifts and promise.