3 fold law & wiccans

[David19]

I was just wondering, does every wiccan believe in the 3 fold law like do you all believe everyone will get a 3 fold return of either good or bad. Also was it always a part of wiccan belief like did Gardner and his coven believe in it or was it added later. It's just that i've read various things, some say it's a true cosmic law, others say it's just advice, and other people seem to say it had nothing to do with Gardner's version.

Thanks for any help.

[kal]

its only my opinion i am not wiccan i never really took the three fold law literally
i thought that was just in tv and movies than folklore

[Elderbush]

Others will chip in with their opinions but I think that it was added in the 1960s I believe, well after Gardner began Wicca. The "3 fold" part is from a poem and I personally do not believe that the gods follow the writer's poetics. I believe in the Law of Return which is that their are consequences for every action.

I'm hoping that someone who believes that the 3 part/fold is on 3 levels will add their beliefs or what they were taught about the poem. Their are many Wiccans for whom the poem is core to their beliefs.

[cartweel]

I've always thought that the Threefold Law was a little simplistic: how do you quantify this cosmic debt? is it karma, or something else? Not even the Law of Return ever 'felt right', though I've been awake too long to be able to explain exactly why. So, as a Wiccan, I can say that not all Wiccans rely on those laws.

Now, I think that if you stab someone in the face something will come to nip you in the butt... I just don't think that's on a strictly divine or spiritual level.

[Elderbush]

I think that the gods dole out some of it, but I also think that the universe itself does too and so do other humans.

If you believe that there are consequences for your actions, that is the Law of Return.

[Lunacie]

Yep, that's pretty much what The Threefold Law means... there are consequences for your actions. This isn't something the gods DO to us or for us, it's like the Law of Gravity, it's the way the Universe actually works.

But it's not all that simple really, mostly because we humans aren't all that simple. The Threefold Law reflects that the consequences affect us on more than just the physical level. If you kick a dog, the dog may turn and bite you. That's the physical return for your action. There is also the mental return where you have hopefully learned that kicking a dog may have unpleasant results. Or what if the dog should die because of the kick you gave it? Then you certainly would have a spiritual return for your action.

I don't know how well I've expressed my thoughts on this, there are an awful lot of distractions here where I live this morning. :awilly:

[aislin_ryann]

Yep, that's pretty much what The Threefold Law means... there are consequences for your actions. This isn't something the gods DO to us or for us, it's like the Law of Gravity, it's the way the Universe actually works.

But it's not all that simple really, mostly because we humans aren't all that simple. The Threefold Law reflects that the consequences affect us on more than just the physical level. If you kick a dog, the dog may turn and bite you. That's the physical return for your action. There is also the mental return where you have hopefully learned that kicking a dog may have unpleasant results. Or what if the dog should die because of the kick you gave it? Then you certainly would have a spiritual return for your action.



I agree with Lunacie on this. I think of the Three Fold Law as it may not come back to you three times as bad, but it will effect you physically, mentally and spiritually. There is always a reaction. You do something, and it is going to effect you, as well as those around you. I can't say I stay on a straight and narrow path of goodness, but I try to be a good person. :) I'm not perfect, and I shouldn't be expected to be perfect, but I should be responsible for my actions.

[Kudzu]

I'm not yet Wiccan, but I always imagined that three-fold meant body, mind and soul.

[Ben Gruagach]

There is a reference to the Threefold Return in the second-degree initiation ceremony in Gardner's Book of Shadows. Janet and Stewart Farrar talk about it a bit in their book "A Witches Bible" in the chapter that explains the second degree initiation. My understanding is that this was in place in Gardner's Book of Shadows before he initiated Doreen Valiente in 1953. However, I don't know if he got this from Dorothy Clutterbuck's group or if it was something Gardner introduced before he met Valiente.

You can read the public domain version of Gardner's Book of Shadows on the web at Sacred-texts.com (http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gbos/index.htm). I recommend the Farrar's book though for its thorough explanations as well as the historical context that they provide to the material.

[Lunacie]

So Ben... are ya going to tell us whether the body-mind-soul explaination is what Gardner had in mind and what the Farrar's wrote about in their book? Or are you gonna make us do our own research? :lol:

[Ben Gruagach]

So Ben... are ya going to tell us whether the body-mind-soul explaination is what Gardner had in mind and what the Farrar's wrote about in their book? Or are you gonna make us do our own research? :lol:

I'm not sure where the body-mind-soul thing originated. The Celts loved the number three (sky-earth-sea, three Brigids, etc.) so it might just have been a handy magickal number to tack onto the Return without any explanation for why three.

The brief discussion of the threefold return in the Farrar's book, in the chapter about the second-degree initiation, just says that it means magical effort, bad or good, will inevitably return to the sender threefold. No mention of body-mind-soul. But they might have used that in one of their other books or elsewhere in The Witches Bible. I'm not sure.

[Lunacie]

Thanks Ben. Maybe it's one of those things that authors think everyone else already knows.

[Kodi]

i think you get what you send out.
you cheat you'll be cheated.
i dont think that it will come back three times
it just simply comes back.

:shift:

[Lunacie]

Heh heh, there's still life left in the old thread.

Hello Kodi, and welcome to the Wiccan Path forum. :wave:

[Twilight84]

I believe the 3 fold law has always existed, it's just my way of seeing things but I noticed that if you're nice nice things happen to you and if you're bad bad things happen to you. I don't think it's necessarily a pagan thing, every religion has some way of stating this really. But that's just my way of thinking.

[Lunacie]

Yep, I think most religions have their own way of saying "What goes around, comes back around."

Hello Twilight, welcome to the Wicca Path forum. :wave:

[Dawa Lhamo]

Two quotes that might be of interest regarding the Farrar's take on the Threefold Law:
On p33 of What Witches Do, Stewart writes: "The witch does not simplify reality into mind and matter like the agnostic, nor even into spirit, mind and matter like most religions. His spectrum is more finely subdivided."

And on p. 37 of the same: "The 'white' witch, however, maintains that 'black' working, while it may be intially successful, carries the seeds of its own retribution. Not only does the power misused corrupt the user; it can have a boomerang effect. it is a well-established occult principle that a psychic attack which comes up against a stronger defence rebounds threefold upon the attacker. Like the hi-fi amplifier again [earlier reference to amplification of power of a coven within the Circle], feed-back can build into a scream of self-torment which overloads the whole system."

The way it's written, the threefold seems to refer to the amplification of will that happens within a Circle... Three-fold seems like a conventional way of saying "multiple times over"... It doesn't say anything about non-magical acts. In fact, the amplification of power thing is said many times, but the words "threefold" seems to only be mentioned in this one place (unless I missed something?). And, the way it's written, it seems that "three levels" of return is not what Stewart Farrar, in any case, had in mind when he wrote "threefold".

I suppose if you consider the circle projecting magic like a person with a microphone, a defense acts to reflect it back, like turning the speaker back on the microphone, so any sound will feedback. Hmmm.... I'll have to think more on this.

I've never really given the "threefold law" any much thought. Law of Return, sure, but the "threefold" thing, I never could reconcile with my experience of reality. I'll have to think about it...

[Lunacie]

Interesting. I hadn't ever thought about it in those terms... that the Circle contains and enhances the magic so if it rebounds on the caster that could be rather nasty. Hm.

[RainInanna]

Interesting. I hadn't ever thought about it in those terms... that the Circle contains and enhances the magic so if it rebounds on the caster that could be rather nasty. Hm.

I've tended to think being within the circle with the negative energy you've raised means you get a high dose of it. Even if you, say, raise it within a separate circle, psychically I feel a link is created between self and energy.

That said, I think of the "three" as simply a magical number that came from Celtic beliefs, meaning "multiple" rather than being literal, as Dawa said.