The Law of the Threefold Return

Any energy you send out, shall return to you three-fold.

There is only one law in witchcraft resembling anything like a commandment. It states that if a witch does harm, it returns to her/him threefold, explains Milla Dietrich.

The Threefold Law is the basic working philosophy of witchcraft. The number three symbolises one of the magical processes involved; that the spell is invoked and thus sent out into the energy of the universe. this energy then comes back into world to manifest in the desired way, before reverberating in the life of the person working the magic to the power of three. thus, what you give out, you’ll get back, only threefold.

This is a natural law, but also an obvious incentive to witches to keep their magic positive, life-affirming and harmful to none. It’s not religious dogma, but a natural and integral fact of Wiccan life.

Wicca is a socially and ecologically responsible religion, and Wiccan eithics are positive rather than prohibitive: ‘Do as you will, and harm ye none’. That is, you must not use magic for anything which will cause harm to anyone on any level for any reason. You do so at your own risk.

If to prevent a greater wrong being done you must inconvenience someone, you must do it in a way which will abate the harm and disarm the person. This involves magical actions being discussed first, and encouraging witches to consider seriously the results of spells and rituals on others. This is a shared ethic which appears in most major world orders, including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, and Hinduism.

You must remember that, by becoming a witch and deliberately setting out to develop your psyhic abilities, you are awakening a faculty through which you can influence other people, with or without their knowledge. This faculty enables you to obtain information in ways that others don’t expect or allow for. By using it you can either enhance their life-energy or sap it. You can help them or harm them.

You are taking a great responsibility upon yourself and this calls for rules – rules which are all the more! importa nt because often it is only you who will know if you are honestly obeying them. The observance, or not, of these rules is what distinguishes white from black magic. All of these rules can be summed up in the pharse, ‘Harm ye none’.

On the surface, negative magic may appear to be an ideal outlet for feelings of vulnerability, because it appeals to the ego, or a sense of lowself-esteem. When a person is feeling so low that they have no sense of any personal power, negative magic seems to offer an enormous source of strength – but it is in fact demonic, or negative, power.

Yet negative magic will only reinforce the negative spellcaster’ s feelings of powerlessness. For, by acknowledging a need for added power from an outside force, to do harm, illconsidered harm, it will only reinforce that original feeling of weakness and lead to more harmful activities. Psychologically, this is a superficial analysis, but in occult terms it is apt and a very dangerous practise.

Here are but three stories of magic performed that did not respect the free will of others.

One inexperienced young witch was happily married to a man she had been involved with for years. they were struggling financially and she was worried about the effect this poverty was having on their relationship.

She performed a ritual which basically stated that she wanted money by any means possible. She did not incorporate the concept ‘for the good of all concerned’ into her spell, nor did she consider how anyone apart from herself may be affected by the spell. She was doing it entirely for her own gain, regardless of what sacrifices we demanded.

It’s unlikely that she thought any sacrifices would be demanded, and that she performed her spell in ignorance and selfishness, rather than with the intent to do harm. But it did so. Her husband was hit by a car and killed, leaving her his life insurance.

Another woman went to a witch wanting a love potion. Sh! e wanted a man she had been in love with for years to marry her. She was convinced he was the only man for her and that they would be very happy together.

The man in question had a good, steady job, he was kind-hearted and honest. He also had a drinking problem, which she wa unaware of until they were married and living together. It took about a year for their relationship to fall apart, in which time he lost his job and ended up costing her a lot more money than she had. It is not known how this affected the witch who handed out the love potion.

One male witch – we’ll call him Jebediah – cast a spell to get a specific promotion within his company. He got the job over a colleague who was more qualified for the position. Soon after, Jebediah was offered a jog with another company, which he turned down.

Approximately six months later is was revealed that his immediate boss had been stealing money from the company for years. When he was caught, he implicated Jebediah, too. The colleague Jebediah had been promoted over had left the company when the promotion went to Jebediah, taking the money. He had been stealing with him.

So does this mean you just have to sit there and watch someone be ill-treated or manipulated? No, it doesn’t, and you dont. Does it mean if someone is attacking you, psychically or physically, that you just have to leave yourself underfended? No, it doesn’t, and you dont.

There is an acceptable way of dealing with these problems. If someone is known to be acting with evil intent and harming others, the method to prevent them doing further harm is known as ‘binding’. The object of this spell is to render their evil actions ineffectul, not to punish the wrongdoer. The spell is against the deed, not the doer. This give the doer the opportunity to change. As for revenge, the universe will take care of the rest.

To bind someone, follow this ritual guide. make an image out of wax, or plasticine. The idea is to ident! ify the symbolic model, as far as is possible, with the person concerned. It should look like him or her, but the similarities dont need to be conventional. For instance, you can simply put a photograph of the person you wish to bind in front of the figure. The image should be naked and unmistakably male or female.

Within a magic circle, place the image on the altar and sprinkle it with consecrated water and salt. With concentrated willpower and visualisation of the intention of the spell, meditate on the person. Hold the image, address it by name, and give it precisely worded orders.

You must speak to it as if it were the person concerned and you were speaking honestly from the centre of the power of your craft. Give it any symbolic treatment necessary; for instance, stitch up the mouth if the person is spreading malice. Bind the figure with cord and wrap it up in black cloth to stop them physically harming others. Keep anger and other negative feelings under control. Be strong and purposeful.

After performing your ritual, take the wrapped image, hide it in a safe place and keep it there for as long as is needed for the spell to take effect. An image which has been identified with a person and used in an image spell should not be left in existence once the aim has been achieved. Take it to natural running water (ocean, river or stream) unwrap and unbind your figure, then break it up and throw in the pieces one by one, all the while visualising white light around yourself to protect against potential harm.

Always, when performing witchcraft, consider the difference between influence and manipulation – healing or helping someone to solve a personal problem is using a legitimate influence. Manipulation, which does not respect free will, is a form of harm. Positive magic is for the good of all, yet remember that good intentions are often not good enough on their own. You must take precautions to respect the laws of the universe, and state within your! ritual that you intend only that the good of all concerned is what you are intending. It is up to the universe to decide what it will help you with.

The foundation of magical beliefs of which witchcraft is a manifestation, is that unseen Powers exist, and that by performing the right sort of ritual these Powers can be contacted and persuaded to assist in some way.

According to Gerald Gardner, namesake of Gardnerian magic, “the meaning of witchcraft is to be found, not in strange religious theories about God and Satan, but in the deepest levels of the human mind, the collective unconscious and in the earliest developments of human society.”

Authenic witchcraft is nat satanic because witches dont even believe in the devil, let alone invoke him. The Old Horned God of the witches is not the Satan of Christianity. He is actually the oldest deity known to humanity, the phallic God of fertility.

People involved in ‘black magic’ or Satanism rarely have knowledge of genuine witch practices. Gardner defined magic as “attempting to cause the physically unusual”. Aleister Crowley defined it as “The Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with the Will”. S.L. MacGregor Mathers (Frater D.D.C.F. of the Order of the Golden Dawn) defined it as “The Science of the control of the secret forces of nature”.

Whoever you prefer to listen to, all agree that magic is the art of getting results. And by obeying the law of the threefold return, you will ensure that your results are those that are serving the laws of the Goddess and of nature, never eroding the integrity of the universe.

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