The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Let's see if a quick summary of common things people get confused about might help? Because you're right, it can be really confusing. (Many of these have been mentioned earlier in this thread, but I hope laying it out like this might help.)

1) It's advice, not a law.

A lot of people are used to religious giving them laws they must follow: things you're supposed to do and not do. These are common in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and many other religions. (As well as all those religions also having guidance for things that aren't hard and fast rules.)

Wicca doesn't work like that: the shared things in traditional initiatory Wicca are shared practices and ritual experiences. While there are certainly some common ethical guidelines, they're much more "Hey, think about this thing and the implications" than "Don't do that."

Beyond that, two lines of text, written in a way that is grammatically unclear to a lot of people, is not the most helpful thing ever. (As others in the conversation have said, the grammatical construction is very clearly "If it does not cause harm, then..." and does not discuss what to do if it causes harm. You need other parts of your ethical code to deal with that.)

2) Even if you have rules, people interpret them differently.

You can see this with the question of abortion (or euthanasia, or the death penalty, or dozens of other situations) : there are people of good will of a number of different individual religions who come down on different sides of a given issue, and have good reasons for doing so.

3) Wicca, as a religion, has no single identifiable head.

In traditional initiatory Wicca, all initiates are responsible for their own religious choices: there may be a high priestess or high priest in a coven setting, but those roles should be much more about facilitating certain kinds of ritual experiences and training, not telling people what to do.

(There are of course abusive people out there, and also just people who don't realise they're pushing a particular thing heavily. But that's true of all religious groups.)

Anyway, this means that you basically can't get a standard Wiccan teaching on anything: at best you have general agreement about shared practices like lineage and initiations and shared material, but individual covens or people may make different choices. This may have consequences for them, but it's more "I don't agree with you and I'm going over here and doing this" than "there is one Wiccan law."

(About the only firm things I can think of that are pretty close to absolutes are some requirements around confidentiality and privacy, and even those have a fair number of variations.)

4) Back to the Rede: it has a known history, it was written (and then expanded in various ways) by specific people, for specific reasons.

Those reasons were to provide advice (and a framework for that advice) that they felt was useful and meaningful, but they're still just people. Use it if you find it useful. Don't if you don't. If you do want to identify as Wiccan, understanding the history and some of the different approaches is helpful in having better conversations with people, but you are going to want other things in your ethical code as well.

I have an essay on my website that lays out more of the background of Wiccan and related ethics approaches, and it includes a link to much more background. (I really need to rewrite and expand this, but am still in the post-move and new job mode that means it won't happen soon.)

That link also describes what's much more of my own approach (it's the cast-iron cauldron metaphor): that our choices add up over time, and make some kinds of choices and opportunities more accessible to us, and others less so, and it's our job to think through the implications of our choices on a variety of levels.

6) There are some other really good approaches out there. The one I like best is Robin Wood's book "When, Why... If" which looks at a variety of ethical core concepts, gives some examepls, and has some questions to think about at the end of each chapter.

But honestly, for building an ethical code, there's a lot of other good resources out there that aren't explicitly Wiccan or Pagan, but still very useful.

Maybe my question should have been "What exactly is the rede" because it seems like my understanding of it was flawed. I'm sorry. I'm still very new to all of this. I'm here to learn and I guess this is one way of learning; screwing up and having people set you back on track. c:

The Goddess grants women the ability to create, but it goes so much farther than pregnancy. If giving birth would make it so that woman would lose her feminine desire to create; whether that be art, buisness, or another child that she could have cared for better at another time [...]

I believe there is a specific call to women to create. Not that men can't, shouldn't, or aren't also amazing creators. I believe that women are called to create and we're tricked into thinking "create" means bear a child.

I believe creating is done with feminine energy, but both genders have both energies. Feminine energy is curved and fluid, masculine energy is straight and directed. Though males can have more feminine energy than masculine energy and females can have more masculine than feminine.
 
I don't know if any of what I said makes sense. I tried my best.

I believe there is a specific call to women to create. Not that men can't, shouldn't, or aren't also amazing creators. I believe that women are called to create and we're tricked into thinking "create" means bear a child.

I believe creating is done with feminine energy, but both genders have both energies. Feminine energy is curved and fluid, masculine energy is straight and directed. Though males can have more feminine energy than masculine energy and females can have more masculine than feminine.
 
I don't know if any of what I said makes sense. I tried my best.

I've got a lot of issues with this post, but what jumps out at me most of all is the idea that people are "tricked" into having children.

I'm interested in where you think this call to create comes from? Also if men are not called primarily to create what do you think they are primarily called to do?

My conception of energy is that it doesn't have a shape or a purpose until one gives it one, so can be used and shaped in many different ways.

Also how does this work for people who do not identify as either male or female?