I am the young scholarly type, and with that comes a lot of re-thinking what Wicca is. Coming from a lost standing tradionally religion that fed me lines about the sin and taboo of questioning religion, I often find that I have a great fire for it.

I have, in the past, blogged about such contenplation in an open forum of sorts, on a personal blog with the hopes of having members of the Pagan Community speak on these topics.

Today, here on CovenSpace I will repost one of those topics, and perhaps, if it does well, I will repost other such blogs. If all of those get enough turn around, perhaps I will then contenue to post them.

With that being said, I give you, "An it Harm None"

I know this is an exhausted topic, so bear with me. NeoWicca holds this more as a Tenet than Traditional Wicca, but NeoWicca is growing to the point that this topic is on the minds of we young in the Craft.
Some extremist (which I realize are the crazies of any religion) use this half of the Rede as a prime excuse to be spectators in the world, fearing to act for the inevitability of causing harm. On occasion they forget the second half, "do what you Will" in which the scholarly claim that it harkens to us from Thelema's law of True Will. (Honestly, I don't know. I've heard that the two are in no way related, which I think is silly to say.) Others have gone on, like the Lycian Tradition in Southwest America, and added further clauses such as "If it harm, do what you must."
Yet still some do not take heed of this at all saying that magic is a tool to be used. If you piss off a witch and she lashes back, it's your own damn fault. That is of course to say that the witch lashes out in defense or retaliation as opposed to being the one that struck first, or if the retribution was even warranted. So, dear contributors, I ask you for your wisdom on this. One thing I love about being Pagan is that my Elders generally don't turn to the old, "Because that is what the Bible says."

I personally prefer to live by another line in the poem, "Live and let live; Fairly take and fairly give." But does this line talk about retribution or only favor?