Damien Echols: Life After Death. And Me Complaining (Again) About the Wiccan Rede

Reading Sirita d’Este and David Rankine’s Wicca: Magickal Beginnings, recommended as a good source reference on the "do as ye will" Wiccan rede, which makes me so uncomfortable. On August 16, the "Sex, Sin and Sumerian Magic" entry, I wrote:

"... the point was that, in those days, people went to the Sumerian magi to not only get protective spells, but to get love potion spells, zap people with curses, etc. First thing you read in the "girly-girly" books on "How to be A Witch" is "Never use spells on other people without their permission!" And you think, "Well, what’s the frackin’ point, then, you pinhead?" If everyone fell in love with you on their own without even blinking, you wouldn’t need a love spell, now would you? You can get some idea of why Aleister Crowley finally got so fed up with the "girly-girly" version of witchcraft he stomped off in disgust and became known as "The Great Beast". True, a lot of women who knew him personally also thought of him as the "Great Perv", but there’s not much I have to say about that. Same thing with the injunctions against using dream walking to spy on people. WHY NOT? Because it’s rude? If we’re all connected, how much privacy could we each have, to begin with?"

Actually, I was a little backward on that. According to d’Este and Rankine, the wiccan "rede" as it now stands actually did originate with Crowley, but not in the format it now has. Crowley’s was (paraphrased slightly): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under will." I haven’t read his writings yet, but "True Will" was extremely important to Crowley, so perhaps he explains this in that context.

Doreen Valiente is the source of the revised version, "An’ it harm none, do what ye will," which she partially got from Crowley and re-fashioned.

The incorrect belief that it was a traditional tenet of wicca apparently came from Gerald Gardner: "And for long we have obeyed this law, Harm None." Not sure what he meant by "and for long" – he and Doreen Valiente were in the same coven – so, "for long" appeared to mean, "for the last week" or something.

But, ultimately, even d’Este and Rankine concluded, "we cannot definitively state the source of the Rede". They suspect Crowley, but have no proof of it. Their next sentence boggles my mind:

"The need for a practical ethical code has always been paramount in magickal and spiritual systems."

[Stop] [Blink] [Frown] Say what?

Well, THAT was an uncited, unprovoked, "a priori" clump of hoo-hah for you.

WHY was there a need? And who decided there was a need? And who decided that this supposed need was "paramount"? Because of what deficiency? Did something happen to make the adoption of an "ethical code" so vastly important? Who was being unethical? And what is their definition of "unethical"? Not everyone has the exact same code of ethics.

The people who already "went over to the dark side" aren’t going to pay the slightest bit of attention to any "practical ethical code", no matter whose code it happened to be, and those who AREN’T should be able to use their own "practical ethical code". Why should they adopt Valiente’s? Crowley’s? Gardner’s? Anyone else’s but their own?

And then – without anyone even bothering to question it, as far as I can see – it just kept getting passed along as gospel, so to speak.

Sorry, but this sounds to me like christianity and its tight corseted victorian biddies sticking their nose into everybody’s bidness but their own. Or a PC, twinkie "Miss Manners" version of wicca that hadn’t yet encountered modern physics, to wit: a particle and the source of that particle react simultaneously to the same external stimuli. If we all originate from the same source, our reactions are going to reflect that source. Dark matter, light matter. It’s part of our DNA, our gut instincts. There’s the source of our "ethical code", not rules. Regulations. Following the "straight and narrow" or get yourself condemned by the girly-girly white glove wiccan church police.

I’m on the verge of writing to those authors and asking them where they came up with a statement like that, apropos of nothing. This is so NOT traditional, it should be tossed out of wicca altogether. And then stomped into the mud. And then torched. And then salted so it never takes root again.

As for Damien, I’ve been reading, listening to and watching all sorts of media as part of his book selling: Opie and Anthony, Anderson Cooper, CBS This Morning – and his Moth event also became accessible.

His book, Life After Death, arrived, and I dug into it eagerly on the commute to Boston. After a few pages, I frowned, looked at the cover a second time, and asked, "Why am I reading Almost Home again?" Because it did seem that’s what I was doing – in fact, I’d read his first book so many times there were whole passages I could almost recite from memory. And here I was, reading them all over again.

Naturally, in an effort to compare the two books, I came home after work and tried to hunt down Almost Home. You have to understand, if I were ever to be accused of hoarding anything, it would be books. I have 10 bookshelves in my home, divided between the living room, bedroom and study. Not a single shelf contains anything other than books – meaning, I don‘t use the bookshelves to display, say, clocks, small houseplants and ceramics. Nah, they’re all full of books.

Could I find Almost Home? Of course not! Then I wandered around aimlessly, trying to remember where I might have put it. I do remember carrying it around in my backpack, back and forth from the office, for weeks – what the heck had I done with it? Oh, with my luck, I’d accidentally left it on the train, and some other MBTA commuter was happily reading it now.

I did read a review which explained the re-packaging of the first book – can’t remember the exact wording – something about Almost Home sinking into a black hole of publishing oblivion or something. I sulked at that.

"Well, I read it!" As an Almost Home reader and enjoyer, I resented being referred to as a "black hole of oblivion", or whatever they said. And I even read it, like, five times, so that made me a black hole times five. Should I complain? Send rude letters to the editor? Get all prissy and offended? All three?

In any event, until the weekend, when I could find the time to do a good search for Almost Home, I had to work from memory. I eventually figured out that it was a somewhat revised Almost Home. For example, I noticed the mean teacher who liked girls but hated boys was gone – not sure why. The shack in the middle of a field – later captured by an artist - was still there. And in the first book, when he was jogging in place in his cell and bleeding into his socks, he had written a riff on pain being the only path to wisdom, which made me ask, "Is that true?" when I read it the first time.

I have no doubt that HIS pain led to wisdom; I just doubted that was true for everyone. I remember stopping, the first time I read that, and trying to think of exceptions, so even then he was sending me off in thinking directions, even before I nicknamed him "Mr. Signpost".

I thought of the first Greek philosophers and Sophists who awed me when I realized that the majority of their thoughts about spirituality, science and philosophy were never based on anyone else’s thoughts, because there weren’t any "others" who had their thoughts before they did. Original and brilliant. I didn’t remember them going through a lot of pain, except perhaps Socrates, as I’m guessing the hemlock did a major discomfort number on his digestive system, before he croaked. And he wasn’t really considered one of the Sophists anyway.

I did think of the christian Jesus, who was probably pretty wise, but his really intense experience with pain was the tail end of things, not the instigating force – he didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain when he was preaching.

Buddha – I dunno, maybe. He went through self-deprivation, anyway.

Or Paramhansa Yogananda – whose Biography of a Yogi was awesome as well - I don’t recall him being in a lot of pain in order to become wise. Then it occurred to me that, as far as wise people went, I didn’t actually know a lot of ascended masters personally, so I really wasn’t sure if that statement was true or not. Supposedly, if you chanted the name of the ascended master Babaji like a mantra, he would appear and could possibly clarify that point, but the guy’s something like – what? 1000 years old? Older? Can’t remember. In any event, he’d scare the crap out of me if he suddenly did appear, so I’ve never tried chanting his name.

I do remember concluding – at the time – "Well, fuck wisdom, then," because if pain was necessary for it, I much preferred staying really, really stupid – and blissfully pain-free. As I confessed in the flogger entry, I am so not good with pain. Or perhaps Damien meant "wisdom" in the sense that other people meant when they talked about "sub space" – a different level of awareness or reality you achieve through pain. I’d never had that experience, though. And again, wasn’t all that fired up with eagerness for it, either.

Back to hunting for Almost Home!