A Question of Ethics

A few months ago, my roommate and her friend asked to interview me about my religious beliefs for a church retreat they were attending. I went along with it, because I thought it would be kind of fun and I like talking about my beliefs (when I feel reasonably safe about not getting stoned). One of the first questions they asked me was: can I put a curse on someone?

*blinks* Okay, then.

I consider myself neo-pagan/Wiccan, and have been since I was fourteen, although the specifics of my beliefs have changed a good bit as I've grown up. I'm neither particularly in the closet or vocal about it; I wear a pentacle, I keep my books right out on my bookshelf, and I'll answer honestly if someone asks. My parents know, and most of my close friends, although my grandma doesn't. But I don't push it in people's face, trying to show off how unusual and special I am, because that's just dumb. I've been practicing magic since I was eleven: the first spell I ever did was a charm for being confident and making new friends when I was scared about starting middle school (my mom helped me with it, because she is awesome).

So the short answer is yes, I can put a curse on someone. But the longer answer is this: I could put a curse on someone, if they annoyed me or pissed me off or I just didn't like them. I could also walk up to them and punch them in the face. But as a rule, I don't go around punching people I know (or don't know) in the face. Why is that? Well, because it's rude, pointless, will just make them dislike me more, and because it is morally wrong. According to my personal beliefs, I do not have the right to physically assault someone just because they think my favorite singer is a talentless hack; if I did it, I would be doing something bad and wrong.

So the longer answer is: I could curse someone, but I don't, because that would be a mean, nasty, morally bad thing to do, and I'm not a mean, nasty, morally bad person. Or at least I'd like to think I'm not.

And the number of times I've told people that I'm a witch and had them ask me this, or similar questions - a boy in one of my high school classes once asked if I could turn him into a toad - makes me wonder if there are just some basically wrong assumptions that some non-pagans make about the nature of magic as practiced in a context like Wicca.

I was explaining to telyanofcelore  this theory, and she suggested that among people who don't really know anything about Wicca - or only know about from their churches and what they pick up from pop culture, there are a few different reactions when you tell them you are Wiccan. The first group of people think of it as something a bit silly, all crystals and herbs and New Age-y nonsense. The second group (also known as ultra-conservative jerks) think devil worship and Satanism and start condemning people to hell (I've met few of these. I don't like them. Who would?).

And then there's the third group, which is I think the group I'm talking about here: the group of people whose idea of magic and witchcraft is mostly, understandably, shaped by popular culture - movies, fairy tales, all the jazz. They think of witches as old ladies with warty noses and cats, of magic as waving a wand and making the chairs dance and the dishes do themselves. Their idea is mainly power-based - magic is something you learn how to do so that you do things easier, or do things ordinary people can't. You use it to get power for yourself, to control other people, or to punish them. Magic is simply something practical, a means to an end, albeit a supernatural means; it is, as much as any craft, divorced from any moral code.

So it's a logical assumption that if I know how to do magic I would put curses on people. After all, why shouldn't I, if it's in my power to do so? What is stopping me, when it's something that would so clearly benefit me?

But magic in the context of Wicca just doesn't work like that. It's not divorced from a moral code; because it functions as part of religious ritual, Wiccan magic is very much tied up in Wiccan morality. I believe, very strongly, that if I were to curse someone there would be severe consequences for it; maybe not something as immediate and dramatic as a rock falling on my head, but sooner or later I would have to pay for my actions. The Threefold Rule is one of the most basic tenets of Wicca: you reap what you sow. You get back what you send out. If you put negativity into the world, the world gives you negativity straight back. At the very least, I would have to deal with the knowledge that I deliberately tried to hurt someone, and I would be a worse person for it. Why would I want to bring that upon myself? Why would I do that?

Just because I can do something doesn't mean I should do it, and it doesn't mean I want to.

Tomorrow Is Creative Writing And CS, Yay

I am...cautiously optimistic about this term thus far. Still two more classes to go to tomorrow, and it's hard to make value judgments based off one day of lessons, BUT.


My English prof seems kind of fantastically cool. Really nice, really enthusiastic, and really Canadian *grins*. The reading load is pretty heavy (I have to read 150 pages of Jane Eyre by Thursday, EW), but the work load's pretty reasonable. Two papers, a 6 page and an 8 page, plus a bunch of non-graded reading responses. I can totally handle that. I think the topic - how contemporary literature functions as an extension of, a reflection of, or a rejection of older literature, has the potential to be facinating. So yay for English class.

I love my Japanese class so much so far! It is really tiny! Only 7 people counting me. And the sensei is extremely nice and easy to understand. The best part, though, is that I feel like the class, both in terms of what we're learning and the other people in the class, is a lot more on my level than my class last term. A lot of what I learn is going to be review, but I'm okay with that since I don't feel I grasped it that well before. And everyone else in the class is at a similar level of flailing around trying to remember words and how to end their verbs, which is such a nice change from last term, when I felt like I spent the whole time apologizing to people who were better than me for sucking so much. And having it only 2 days a week is going to make my life waaay easier. So yeah, good class is good.

Re: that whole thing where LJ laid off some of their staff and everyone is freaking out because this is LJ and what are we here for if not to overreact and blame people - I'm not all that worried, really. But in case LJ does go down in a flaming pile of wreckage and internet memes,  you can find me on insanejournal and journalfen, both under the name masterofmidgets.

There's Nothing To Be Said For Mornings After

Excerpt from the Sons of Don verse: after an eventful night with Captain John, PC Andy heads off to the office for work.

Yeeeah, I don't know, I really don't.




"Well, someone got lucky last night," Ianto says.

"Bugger off," Andy says, because it's far too early in the morning to be dealing with this, but he can feel the pink flush creeping up toward his ears, and he knows it's giving him away.

He is still hung over from last night, and his hair is a knotted mess, and his mouth tastes like he licked a car tire, and there is a psychotic murdering time traveler in his flat right now probably eating all of the week's groceries and mucking up his bathroom, and the last thing he needs on top of all that is Ianto being smug.

He doesn't know why he thought he could hide it from Ianto to begin with. It's like having their own office ninja, except that instead of poisoning and stabbing people, Ianto makes coffee and collects gossip. The scary thing is, Andy doesn't know if Torchwood trained him to do it, or if was always that way and Torchwood just gave him the chance to abuse it horribly.

He suspects the latter. Judging from Jack, Torchwood does not deal well in subtlety.

"Now come on, tell us what happened last night," Ianto says with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

"What us?" Rhys shouts from his desk across the room, not bothering to turn his chair around. "I don't care what he gets into in his spare time. I already hear enough about that sort of thing from you, Mister of course I wasn't shagging my boyfriend in the supply closet, I was just showing him around."

"There's nothing to tell," Andy growls, and that's the god's honest truth.

Well, okay, not so much. There's probably quite a lot to tell in how he went from getting pissed in the pub to chasing a wanted time traveling criminal through the Cardiff club scene to waking up this morning with said criminal in his bed and hickeys in some very awkward places. But he really, really doesn't want to tell it, and that's close enough, right?

"You'd think he'd be more cheerful, considering," Ianto says, and that's damn well enough of that.

"You're a prat, Ianto, and don't we have actual work to be doing? Or have we given up on the alien hunting business in favor of having a go at me?"

Ianto waves a large manila envelope at him. "Funny you should mention it, but Jack dropped this by this morning. Thought it would be more up our alley than theirs."

"Well, give it here," Andy says, pulling up his chair.