(^222) A Wiccan Bible
time he relaxed and went about his normal routine of escorting his family to the water-
fall and then back down the stream into the river that it feeds.
I hadn’t dressed like a duck, walked like a duck, or quacked like a duck, but I had
heard Duck speak even more clearly than some of the married men that I know. He
said,“This is my wife and family. There is nothing else that is as important.”
Note the period at the end of what Duck said. One of the reasons animals can so
easily communicate their message is because their message is simple—not simple in
the way one might call a person of low intellect, but simple in an uncluttered way. They
say what they mean and mean what they say, period. Humans seem overly fond of
saying that no sometimes means yes and wet sometimes means dry. Ask people about
the movie Gone with the Wind and they will probably tell you how romantic it was when
Ret whisked Scarlet off her feet, up the stairs, and into their bed. Ask an animal and
you are likely to be told it was rape. You see without the clutter that fills our minds, no
means no.
Animals also speak to us of purity in duty. Many Wiccans reject Aleister Crowley’s
law of Thelema, which reads “Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” because
they do not understand the nature of what Aleister Crowley called “will.” In the Middle
to Far East, this principle is called “duty” or “dharma.” It is that which is your true will.
Animals remind us of this purity. When Fox kills Rabbit, the action is not sinful. There
are no karmic reactions in the order of punishment because the action was of duty.
This reflects on the Pagan principle that for Life there must be Death and explains how
one’s kith familiar can even be the creatures that we hunt or harvest. This is the very
nature of the Pagan god of the hunt being that which is hunted, the sacrificial god. As a
result of this way of thinking, we see that although death is necessary for life, that which
we kill is also sacred, thus should a Wiccan find it necessary to kill, he or she insists that
the death be as painless as possible.
Although I am a vegetarian, I know that many of my readers are not. So I tell you
that these kith familiars are also the animals raised or hunted for food. Considering any
source of food to be anything short of sacred is a great mistake. Not only does it lead to
the abuse of the food source, it leads to a spirituality that is deprived in many other
aspects as well. But in taking animals for food, they must remain kith familiar and never
kin. There is a custom among many who raise livestock that one does not kill an animal
if that animal has been given a name. That same custom is alive and well in families that
hunt. Should they befriend a deer and give it a name, the hunting of that deer is off
limits. When a just hunter takes deer for food, that hunter takes Deer, not Bambi.
When a just farmer takes a pig for food, that farmer takes Pig, not Wilbur. Keeping
that distance clear is what allows humanity to conduct itself as just predator. Like Fox
who takes Rabbit, when we perform a just killing for a just reason such as food, that
death is just.
I have even seen this principle shared among some of the old-timers with whom I
used to fish with. Our local fishing hole had a legendary white catfish named Walt.
Reportedly, Walt was 6 feet long if he was an inch. One night, one of the old timer’s
told us that Walt wasn’t a legend, that he knew because he caught him just a couple
t WB Chap 12.p65 222 7/11/2003, 5:55 PM
barré
(Barré)
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