…The Elusive Balance – Part II…
Posted in Babble and Chatter, Pagan Practice on July 27th, 2010 by liquidquick
a few weeks back, i wrote about the elusive balance and how it relates to the lightness/darkness polarity within pagan practice. the problem with using light and dark as a metaphor for moral behavior is that it doesn’t quite give any concrete guideposts or criteria for what we aught to do vs. what we aught not to do. there really is no way to determine, based on this polarity alone, what constitutes action that is ‘too lights’ or ‘too dark’. the whole notion of lightness and darkness of action is too nebulous to be useful. i have yet to find a terminology that i feel does any justice to the subject of ethical analysis (especially when it comes to magick). white/black is no good. good/evil is also out. dark/light is only marginally better. currently, i’m thinking in somewhat more mathematical terms with additive/subtractive, but i dislike the ‘clinical-ness’ of those words.
many pagan practices, while still employing lightness and darkness as descriptive terminology, have moved past this polarity and seek to base their moral outlook on something more unambiguous and quantifiable. since it is difficult for typical human beings to measure and observe karmic interaction (none of us are buddhas…) we need to look at the directly observable effects of our actions – the most visible being the ‘harm’ that results from them.
on the additive side, how far is person x willing to go to achieve their own goals, and how willing / to what degree will person x sacrifice person y’s goals in order to achieve their own. but on the subtractive side, to what degree will person x sacrifice their own goals in order to achieve person y’s. and when conflict occurs, at what point does the balance between sacrifice and achievement tip the moral scale, so to speak.
for now, all that is still a jumble of words floating around my head at the moment. but going back to the dark/light model, the important question is ‘uninfluenced by any other factors, how much potential harm are you willing to do to others in order to get what you want?’ – regardless of whether you actually act on that potential or not. the risk-tolerance toward others is what delineates dark from light in my mind. and perhaps to a lesser degree, the willingness to either observe or abandon the norms of social etiquette. within any magickal practice, you’re going to have both light and dark elements, so it is more useful to look for overlapping trends, as opposed to mutually exclusive dualistic extremes. going back to the dark/light model, the farther from observing social etiquette your practice takes you the ‘darker’ your practice will be perceived by those observing it. go into a public park and ritually sacrifice a cat… vs. go into a public park and pray. its totally subjective based upon the beliefs of the observer, hence its of lesser importance – yet part of being ‘light’ or ‘dark’ is how one’s actions measure up to the standards of those who are judging them; so there must be some correlation between the action and how the action is perceived.
so how does all of this factor into paganism and what we ‘do’ as pagans? well, on the wiccan side of things there’s that pesky little thing known as the rede that seems to cause quite a bit of controversy… often maligned, misunderstood, and usually taken completely out of context (by wiccans and non-wiccans alike…) i’ll be taking a closer look at it in an upcoming post.
as always, comments and scathing criticism welcome.
-justin
i believe that the one quality which members of all religions and cultures share is our humanness; and that humanness secures us the right to experience and express our relationship with god in whatever way we determine is best for ourselves – even if the experience is similar to the experience from another culture or religious framework. i believe we have the right to adopt practices and beliefs that work for us, and to reject those that do not, regardless of the time period or tradition from which they originate. i believe we have the right to wear or discard the labels of our choosing, or to refuse to label ourselves or accept the labels imposed by others if that is our choice. ultimately, i believe in religious self-determinism… that we are beholden to no one but ourselves and our gods in developing our spiritual relationships.

