spiritual conflicts

mysteria

Does being in the military not break one of the basic tenets of eclectic, recon and traditional Wicca? As well as every form of Paganism I'm familiar with. "An it harm none, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"

Nevyn

There have always been warriors, how defended the people and the land.
Sometimes doing nothing does more harm or not being prepared can be harmful.
There are personal in the army that are noncombatants and do not carry a gun.
They have been trained to use arms but are not deployed in combat.

Yes paganism is about personal choice and the wiccan rede asks those that
are of the wicca or attempting to live our lives by those tenants to question
our actions and take total resposnibily for all consequences of those actions.
This may be hard to do if you are expected to follow orders with out question.
Then again even in the army that is not a recourse if you believe the action
to be immoral or an illegal action.

Rozie

I don't think you should worry about it. If you are having second thoughts about where you are, then deal with those, but if it's based purely on "Is this allowed..." - I wouldn't worry, go with your heart.

Talliesin

mysteria wrote:

Does being in the military not break one of the basic tenets of eclectic, recon and traditional Wicca? As well as every form of Paganism I'm familiar with. "An it harm none, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"

Firstly you have a mixture of two things there. You have the Wiccan Rede, "An it harm none, do what thou will" and the Law of Thelema "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" (continued with "Love is the law, Love under Will").

There is no "an it harm none" caveat to the Law of Thelema - given that the Law of Thelema is talking about the concept of "True Will" where one learns ones True Will through the Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (and perhaps other magical workings, I'm not sure), rather than "will" in the sense of whatever you want to do, such a caveat would make no sense.

In traditional Wicca, the rede is a rede (advice), not a law.

Some non-Wiccan traditions of Pagan Witchcraft (many of the Lewellyn-leaning varieties for a start) do treat the Rede as a law. IMO they seem to tie themselves in knots doing so.

Most other Pagan paths do not have the Rede. Quite a large number of people working outside of the more clearly defined paths have adopted it though.

The rede states merely that you may do those things which are not harmful and as such that the Craft does not have arbitrary prohibitions - we can eat meat on Friday, we can drink wine and eat during daylight in Ramadan, we can have sex with consenting partners if we are hurting no one in doing so, we can eat pork - we aren't prevented from doing something on the basis that "God said so" and nothing else.

The rede does not say anything about the situation where something is harmful. The general Wiccan view of how the world works says that if you do do something harmful you can expect to have to deal with the consequences, and that is the reason for giving the advice the rede gives.

Engaging in military service is something a thinking person would do because they consider doing so to be of more benefit than harm. Of course not engaging in military service despite a legal requirement to do so, actively opposing military action, and so on is also something a thinking person would do becaue they consider doing so to be of more benefit than harm. Really, both courses of action are more fitting to a witch than sitting in front of the tv news and griping.

Frater Marbh

Equally though, the "Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" does not mean do as you please. It refers to your will and your better judgement. In short what do you think?

Equally it could be said by not having an army you are doing more harm by letting people/countries do what they want. For me to be in the Military would be wrong, for someone else it might be wrong not to be in the army.