Thoughts on the Rede

The Rede of modern witchcraft, sometimes called the “Wiccan Rede,” is deceptively simple.  As usually stated it goes “An it harm none, do as ye will.”  Every witch knows that ‘an’ is an old word for ‘if’.  The Rede places radical freedom at the very center of the witch’s life – and radical responsibility.  Note that it does not tell the witch what to do with his or her life, merely to refrain from harming anyone.  Let’s look at the “no harm” part first.

Obviously, we cannot live without harming other creatures.  Jainists in western India observe ahimsa, or harmlessness, to such an extent that they watch the ground as they walk to avoid stepping on insects.  Jainists avoid farm work for this reason, and often go into banking instead!

So the injunction to harm none must, I think, be qualified “do not do any unnecessary harm to anyone.”

The second point often raised about “harm none” is that it must apply to oneself as well.  In my opinion there are two difficulties with this point.  The first one is that each individual must decide for him- or herself what constitutes self-harm.  The government right now is full of people who think they can make that decision for the rest of us.  The freedom of the Craft is far removed from such crypto-fascism (to use Gore Vidal’s phrase).  The second point is that every being by definition seeks its own good.  The suicide thinks he or she will be better off dead.  The Christian father Origen thought he would be better off without genitals and acted accordingly.  So this stipulation of not harming oneself, while it sounds sage at first, turns out to be nonsense, and, if applied by others against one’s own freedom, pernicious nonsense as well.

Turning to the other part of the Rede now, if “do as ye will” means something like “live by the caprice of the moment,” no advice would be harder to follow.  A certain amount of self-discipline in moderation is necessary in any life enjoying a degree of stable happiness.  What the Rede is really saying here, I think, is “your own happiness in life is your responsibility; it’s up to you.”  “Do as ye will” then turns out to mean “rely on yourselves.”

It is noteworthy that the religion of witchcraft has no core practice.  By a core practice I mean something that can be done in almost any situation, which organizes all other activities in a meaningful organic structure.  In Hinduism the core practice is probably the repetition of a mantra, which stabilizes the mind and emotions and leads on to meditation and devotional practices.  In Christianity prayer is probably the central practice.  At the center of witchcraft, however, is a space which the witch can fill as he or she pleases with a core practice that feels right.  Without filling that space, witchcraft remains a smorgasbord of hobbies such as divination, spellwork, rituals, herblore, and so on.  The freedom at the heart of witchcraft, granted by the Rede, is the religion’s most attractive feature, but it must be engaged somehow in a fruitful core practice.  The space at the center of the Rede is there to be filled by the self-discipline of the self-reliant witch.