Magic and Responsibility

[Merrie]

Alright.I'm a bit confused about something, and would like some input of one sort or another.
I've been hearing a lot in my studies about personal responsiblity, that you are in control of your own life, and so is everyone else. You can't control their lives, they cant control yours, all our lives are our own responsibility.
Then, I'm also hearing a lot about being careful what you ask for: specifically a case where if you ask for money, a loved one can die and leave it to you. Therefore, you'd have your $, but you would essentially have killed that person by asking for it. So then you would have ended, have controled and destroyed another's life by asking for something to improve yours.They lost control of their life, and were made victims by your inadvertant control...you took away thier personal responsibility with a request...am i making a bit of sense?
I dunno. I'm confused....

[Emy]

Well, hmmm I guess we are all responsible for our lives, however I do think that in some way we can, and sometimes do, control others, what I mean is that we effect others, they effect us, we often mix our karma, wheter we like to or not, this of course does not automatically make it right in any way...

As for money, say you make a little ritual in which you ask for money, if you do, make sure that the things you say can not be misunderstood or misinterpeted in any way, the energies in the universe does not understand what we think is implied, that of course we don't want any harm done, so therefor be careful with what you wish for I guess. However if you are asking for money in some sort of spell you can easily add a phrase where you ask that no harm will be done from what you wish for... :) and by doing that you don't risk any harm coming to anyone.

Blessings

[Merrie]

(thank you for the answer, Emy!)
I agree that everything effects everything, ripple effect and all.
But,the thing is-you can kill someone by wishing for something? It kind of belittles the value of that person's life, than they can be disposed of so easily just because you asked for a bit of something or other. That's the idea that's confuzzling me...

[Emy]

Well, as a witch you work with energies, we ask the energies to move in a desired direction. When you do this you should always be careful in how you work with the energies, making sure that they can't misunderstand you, that there can be no backlash from what you are asking.

The energies will work in your way, and if you are not careful to how you express yourself then maybe, maybe the energies will work in a different way than you had in mind, and causing a nasty backlash for you, or side effect if you prefer to call it that.

I don't think that it has anything to do with lives not being valuable to the universe, surely every life is valuable, but when you work with energies, you are setting them off in the direction, you are sort of controlling them, they only do what you've asked...
So always be careful with what you wish for, always make sure that you express your need excact, and make sure that you leave no room for misunderstandings or misinterpets, and that way you don't have to worry about unwanted effects from your workings. :)

Blessings

[Mariposa De La Luna]

An example that was given to me in a spellworking class of what not to do:

Person A needed money so they decided to do a spell for it. They needed $10,000 by the end of the week so that is what they asked for. They ended up getting into a car accident, that week, and getting that much for thier settlement, probably at a later date.

Be careful. I personally wouldn't do a spell unless it was very important. Healing is about the only type of spell I've done, with the person's permission of course.

I don't really think someone would die because of a money spell unless they were already about to. There are many more ways of money coming to you than that. If you only want your bills paid off its better to visualize just that specific than to ask for money in general. Getting specific about what you want also helps in addition to asking that no harm comes from gaining your need.

[Mythrel]

I think people control others all the time...there are tons of sheep in the world. I think the main thing is that paganism teaches that you should not be one of the controllers... try to let others lead there own lives...try not to force them to do things they don't want to do...I don't know but it sounded good when I first wrote it....
just my 2 cents worth
Mythrel

[Myst]

A simple thing to do is append this to the end of your spell

"An it harm none, so mote it be"

or

"With harm to none, so mote it be"

[talamh]

i think it's too simplistic to think "i did a spell asking for money and that person died and left me money so therefore i essentially killed that person". Maybe the cause and effect were the other way around - perhaps the impending death of that person caused you unknowingly to ask for money. Who knows the intricate connections in the tapestry of our lives.

imo that's why faith and trust are the other side of personal responsibility - sometimes things happen that don't seem to make any sense, yet many good things can come from what at first seems like a disaster. We always have the possibility to learn and grow from every experience. To give a personal example - when my son was 15 he was diagnosed with cancer. You can imagine how devastating and scary that was at first, yet he and i helped each other through it and some very wonderful things happened and together we concluded that whatever happened, we would always know how much we love each other. Fortunately, he got completely better, but that very real closeness remained and he and i never had any real problems or fights through the turbulant teen years because we had forged that basic love and understanding and deep respect for each other. So much good came from something that at first seemed very negative.

In terms of personal responsibility, it is important to be very careful when you start directing energies - it's like firing a bullet into a room with metal walls (remember what happened when someone fired off shots in the StarWars garbage compactor) - there is a lot of unpredictable ricochet, so it's important to account for that and ask that no harm be done by it. But also, when something happens to you that seems very negative and makes no sense, it's also important to look at what you can learn from the experience and how you can grow. That's also part of taking personal responsibility. bb talamh