Warning: caustic rant ahead.

You have been warned!

I am not much of a believer in the artifice of dogma. I think that if you can't think for yourself and have to rely on dogma to guide your moral system, than I think it is time to go home and rethink your life. With that said, I am sure you can guess where I put the value of the three fold law: the circular file, under complete and utter garbage. The first thing that comes to mind, is that it was created to alleviate the fear of the masses toward witchdom. The fact is, as long as you are breathing regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or economic status there will always be someone who despises you for what you are. Most of the time you can get away with ignoring the haters. However, there are times where you have been left with no other option than to step up and defend the line without remorse or mercy. They don't happen often, but they happen.

The Dalai Lama was asked what the purpose of life was. He responded by saying: to be happy and useful. How can anyone be happy and useful while instead of defending themselves from attack, if and when they are, they are waiting for the hand of karma to come down and make everything better? Why you ask? Because they are afraid to cause harm to their enemies because the rede says harm none. What the rede really says is: 'Lest in thy self dense it be, ever mind the rule of three.' I don't know how the first part of that phrase gets over looked by some, but it does with alarming regularity. Because that first part of the phrase gets deleted from the ' three fold law' it has created an environment where there are those who are so afraid to do anything that looks like harm, including defending themselves, it makes all of us a target for those who think we would be easily trod upon or, even worse, erased.

I think the key phrase here is: 'living in fear.' There are things you definitely should be wary of if you are a witch: the inquisition, zealots, oath breakers, liars, politicians etc. . . However, I find it absolute silliness to be afraid to use your power in your own self defense or that of your family because of peer pressure into obeying a piece of dogma written to make witches appear less threatening to the general populace. We are not here to make everyone 'okay' with our presence. We are here to be happy and useful.

We live in a society where it has been made politically incorrect to specifically identify your enemy. Dangerous times indeed. Times where your enemy hides behind a deceptively benevolent smile and expects to go unpunished by spouting the modern dogma of 'harm none' while slyly slashing their victims and leaving knives in their backs under the guise of kinship. Somehow these individuals still end up looking like the good guy. You know what that's called? It's called killing sheep in passing.

You know what else these folk are famous for? It's called scheming with self inflicted wounds. Heavy emphasis on the self inflicted; they lie, steal, cheat and scheme until they get caught and appropriately dealt with. Then they balk at the top of their lungs about how so and so and whose a whatzit injured and wronged them while covering up the fact that they were the ones who started the ball rolling and are now eating the desserts they ordered up! Some how, nothing is ever their fault.

Identify and name your enemies. Then, for the love of the gods, defend yourself!