Wiccan Morality

"An ye harm none, do what ye will."
--Wiccan Rede


Wiccan morality, like Wicca itself in general, can be very ambiguous and unfixed.  This post will consist mostly of a comparison of Wiccan morality to Christian morality in terms of overall frameworks and the specificity of their claims.  To do so I will reference two Wiccan poems: The Charge of the Goddess and the Rede.

The vagueness of Wicca appears in many places, including The Charge of the Goddess, which proclaims that the Goddess' (I think also called the Moon Goddess) law is love [1].  What does love mean here?  Does it refer to some ideal that the individual Wiccan chooses and defines for himself or herself?  One could ask similar things about the Rede!  Does someone have to harm someone physically to harm them?  What about causing emotional or psychological pain?  Is saying something that would offend someone else harmful, even if it's true (aka "Two contrary claims can both be correct")?  If so, is identifying as a Wiccan in the presence of someone who dislikes Wicca wrong according to Wiccan morality?  Is spiritually misleading someone condemned here?  And if I am being abducted, assaulted, or murdered, does an act of self-defense on my part violate this law?  The Rede does not clarify.

Conscience can at most tell me what I think or feel is morally wrong; it can never prove to me either that morality exists--that some things really are right and wrong independent of my feelings of conscience--or that my conscience is rightly informing me of actual specifics about morality if such a thing exists [2].  Anyone who looks to conscience as a moral guide does not base his or her moral beliefs on reason or divine revelation, the first of which leads to moral skepticism and the second of which alone can provide moral knowledge.  Besides, my conscience will not necessarily consist of the same feelings and reactions as the consciences of other people.  Conscience is subjective at best but it is all a Wiccan has to understand the "harm none" rule by.  Wicca does not at all seem to teach outright moral relativism (which is a philosophy that is objectively impossible; either moral realism or moral nihilism is true), but the practices of individual Wiccans will almost inevitably drift into a relativistic stupor in their application.  That is not to say that beyond what is specifically mentioned in the Bible Christians are not permitted total personal freedom to live entirely as they please (Deuteronomy 4:2), as they certainly are, but Christianity has a much more thoroughly defined moral system.

What about justice?  Punishing acts of crime wouldn't actually be punishment if it didn't involve some consequence at least subjectively viewed as undesirable by someone.  What does Wicca say about justice, giving to people what they deserve?  Other than that a vague Karma-type force related to the "Law of Return" may visit those who harm others, nothing at all.  The interesting thing is that if Wicca's version of "Karma" involves humans inflicting harm on those who harmed others, then the very human agents of that Karma violated the Rede's moral principle prohibiting infliction of harm!  If this is the case, not only is Wiccan morality in many ways ambiguous at best, it is downright hypocritical and logically inconsistent!  But it may be that the Law of Return simply has to do with some negative emotional state or "negative energy" that comes to reside in someone.  The Bible, on the other hand, the only legitimate source of Christian moral knowledge, offers many precise details about its own positions on justice.

So is terrestrial justice not a moral obligation on the Wiccan worldview?  I do not think Wiccans would represent their religion this way although that may the logical conclusion of the matter.  Even so, whereas the Bible has very detailed explanations about terrestrial justice, Wicca can offer no illumination on the matter.  The Bible classifies certain sins (murder, rape, battery against one's parents, kidnapping, etc) as capital crimes (Exodus 21:12-14; Deuteronomy 22:25-27; Exodus 21:15; Exodus 21:16); for others (theft, assault and battery with no permanent injuries, etc), it prescribes financial penalties or penalties involving the surrender of property (Exodus 21:1, 3b-4; Exodus 21:18-19); for some, (miscellaneous unidentified crimes) corporal punishment in the form of 1-40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3); for still others (assault and battery causing permanent injury, a woman physically assaulting a man's penis), the amputation of body parts (Exodus 21:23-25; Deuteronomy 25:11-12).  The Bible is extremely specific about what it does and does not condemn and explicitly condemns adding to or subtracting from its moral commands (Deuteronomy 4:2).

It is unclear what the metaphysical basis for the goodness of the "harm none" rule is in Wicca.  In Christianity goodness is a reflection of God's immutable nature (Malachi 3:6) and evil or sin is what deviates from conformity to that character; in Wicca I not only see no particularly clear moral framework, but no obvious ontological basis for what even would make something good if Wicca were true.  The Goddess' charge to humans, if Wiccan morality also is grounded in the character of its deities, would not be a reflection of the nature of the deity who created her and the Horned God (see here for an explanation of the Moon Goddess and the Horned God [3]).  This morality would be a reflection of the nature of a created superhuman being and not the Wiccan uncaused cause, which is a mostly deistic being.

These differences in ethical stances do not prove that Christianity is true and Wicca is not, though.  Remember, the primary point of this post is to explain Wiccan morality and compare it to Christian morality.  It remains true nonetheless that Wiccan morality is vague and largely undefined.  Christian morality offers a specific avenue of moral knowledge and a simple standard by which to judge the morality of something on the Christian worldview.  Anyone making moral claims needs to have far more support for the claim than just "It's my interpretation of a vague rule", for every claim about morality is either true or false, just as every other claim about everything.  And considering that Wiccan morality devolves into subjective application very quickly, it also forfeits objective defensibility when it embraces that subjectivity.


[1].  http://www.doreenvaliente.com/Doreen-Valiente-Doreen_Valiente_Poetry-11.php#sthash.GQamo98E.dpbs

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/an-introduction-to-wicca.html