While I'm reposting stuff from the past...
We totalled our car last Monday and are moderately injured but healing. We're animists, and seeing the torn body of our old friend was pretty traumatic even without my wife's massive bruising and my little head gash and torn cartilage around the ribs.
Since I'm off work, I was going through my captured postings from the late 90's and found this string. Think it's a pretty good summary of the Wiccan way of looking at these things. I'm Myrdrake in these posts, and 9/11 didn't do a thing to change my opinion about acts of terrorism down near the end of this...
#75, aquamarie_65
Hi everyone!
I was attempting a long drawn out question but lost myself in it :) And I feel slightly foolish asking... But here is the short version.
How do you explain trageddies or natural disasters where many lifes are taken at once???
My first thought is that lives are not really taken, just moving on (re: reincarnation.) I also look at the population of our world hovering around 6 billion people... tripled in the last 60 years or so (don't quote me on this.) Figure it is the way it has to be so that we do not over populate to where Mother Earth is not able to contiune sustaining us. But if we all have a purpose for being here and lessons to learn... and 200 lives are lost in a plane wreck at once. Were all those lives ready at the same time to move on???
Or if it is one persons decision to wipe out a bunch of lives with gun fire... Or if Mother Nature flares up with a tornado killing many physical bodies... How does the Wiccan religion explain these types of disasters??? (or is it considered a disaster at all???)
Just currious because I have not come across anything on this sort of subject yet. Hope this is not to crazy of a question that shows lack of comprehension of this religion. But if someone asked me... I am not sure how to respond (never have know how to respond to these questions.)
Would love to hear your insight,
#76, moonrose2c
This is a great topic... not one that is easily reckoned with.
About a year or two ago, I was a participant in a facilitated chat that spent a couple of hour sessions discussing this very subject. Many of the participants were "survivors" of Nature's raw power. I personally have never lived through a natural "disaster," so my perspective may very well change should I ever have such an "opportunity."
I do, however, view the raw power of Mother Nature as a part of the natural balance that challenges us every day. There are many goddess aspects that are known primarily for that raw, physical power and, depending on any tradition followed, that may be a source for coming to terms with this phenomena of nature. Nature/Deity exercises all aspects of their being, including those less than comforting to us. We, too, go through life with sometimes uncomfortable and violent aspects to work though. Similar to many Native American spiritual beliefs, I look for the lessons and the messages in all such things, rather than try to judge them as good or not ~ they just are ~ and what you can learn from those occurrences is the gift from Deity.
And sometimes those lessons are very hard to take and can be very bitter pills, but are gifts, nonetheless.
Goddess, I hope this makes sense.
I'd love to hear from more folks on this topic ~ it really is a good one. Thanks, Aquamarie, for the opportunity to reflect on this...
#77, hippiewitch2
I have my own mini theories on this.
I feel that maybe everyone that is on a plane that goes down has finshed the mission that he/she was to have done or lessons that they were suppose to have learned. The survivors are people whose time/mission/lessons learned was not over yet.
Natural disasters, gunfire, and the like when lives are lost, I feel, is that person's karma and the three-fold law kicking in.
Examples: about 21 years ago, when I was in college (wow that's old :>) there was a terrible plane crash in South America. There were no surivors. One of my professors and her husband was suppose to have been on that flight, but their daughter had an appenditicits attack and was rushed to the hospital for surgery. My feeling is that their mission/lessons learned was not over yet.
About two months ago when the storm Floyd hit New York (it wasn't a hurricane when it came to us) My county got hit the hardest. I had 27 inches of rain in my basement, and that was with 3 pumps going! The worst thing that happened to me was I lost my washer and dryer. My furance, so far, is working well though that too was half under water. I guess the protection candle worked :>
Anyway, where I live if the woman works full-time then people assume that you must be terribly poor. It doesn't matter what type of job the woman has. These families would starve before the wife works full-time (part-time is acceptable). They also look down upon you for working full-time. I feel that karma and the three-fold law kicked in for those people because those were the people whose homes got hit the hardest from the storm.
Those homes who had two people working full-time got little or no damage from Floyd.
These are just my feelings on the subject.
#78, myrdrake
I've got my own theories too ;-)
So far I have not run into any 'orthodox wiccan' (whatever that means) explanations for why bad things happen to good people (that's my own interpetation of the question, if I'm way off base let me know).
In my way of looking at things there is both "cause and effect" and "accident".
Hippiewitch did a wonderful job of showing how the force of cause and effect works as explained by wiccan spiritual terms. Using the venerable theory: "If it ain't broke don't fix it.", I shall refrain from adding my own semantics to hers.
Accident however, now there's something that should be considered.
There are many levels of cause and effect, some so subtle that they would appear to be accidents.
This is why the more wisdom you develop, the fewer problems you have. However, (I've always got a however to spare) Chaos is a perceptable force in creation, and it causes a variety of things to occur.
Accidents are not all bad. It could be very nice to win a lottery, for example. Random occurances range across the emotional scale, most being in the 'oh well' to 'that's nice' range. Some of them (thankfully few) are far into the 'disaster' or 'miraculous' ends of the scale (I've got to draw this scale up, it sounds great).
My understanding of Wicca is that it teaches to accept the reality of the occurance and use it for the best (accepting responsibility for your actions falls into the cause and effect portion).
Acceptance of tragedy is not easy (note: this was an understatement). The knowledge that the soul continues is small compensation for the amount you will miss someone, but it will have to do.
Large scale mass transit accidents, Natural Disasters, and the like are something to deal with and learn from. One of my favorite concepts is in Walton's translation of the Mabinogian, and attributed to Manawyddan: "To Learn and to Grow are the reasons we are put on this earth."
Finding ways to prevent similar mass transit accidents through investigation and learning how to prepare for disasters are both very Wiccan ways of dealing wiht these things.
Acts of terrorism succeed only if you allow them to frighten you, don't make that mistake, it will cause more problems than you can imagine. Also, in my opinion, if you give in to fear, you are dishonoring the victims by allowing them to be tools in the hands of the terrorist (a bit convoluted there, if the terrorist doesn't succeed in scaring you, the victims=tools concept doesn't hold up).
The bottom line is that most of what happens is for a reason (like hippiewitch showed in her post), even if you don't know what it is. On the other hand, sometimes stuff just happens and we have to deal with it. Doesn't sound very spiritual/magical when you put it that way, but it is when you start looking deeper.
