What is the Pagan view on. . .

E V I L ?

Pagans do not believe in an evil entity such as Satan who tempts people into wrong-doing and who is in constant battle with the forces of good.

On the other hand, despite our easy-going ways in many matters, we don’t believe that Anything Goes. We recognize that there is evil in the world. Generally we regard harm as the result of imbalance, and evil that of terrible imbalance.

For instance, it is essential for us to have a sense of family, community, tribe and nation. But carrying it as far as xenophobia and racism is harmful, to the victimizers as well as the victims. And genocide is unspeakably evil.

To envy other people’s possessions is probably natural, but to obsess about keeping up with the Joneses might well be harmful, and ripping them off is certainly evil.

We humans are beginning to recognize environmental evil, whereby doing what we must do to stay alive, healthy, safe and reasonably comfortable is a biological imperative — however, whether as individuals, corporations or cultures, we can do great harm to each other, and to future generations, through unbounded greed.

On the whole Pagans probably pretty much adhere to situational ethics, whereby you can’t say any given act is intrinsically good or bad — it all depends. Even with killing, where at the very least war-service and self-defence may make it virtually unavoidable sometimes.

Wiccans have a motto, If if harms none, do what you will. The dictum is open to interpretation, of course, and oftentimes entails deciding which course of action represents the least harm (or the lesser evil). There are no easy answers to the question of good and evil. Instead, we can only strive for mindfulness and love with which to live our lives, and hope that in so doing we can avoid too many and too great mistakes.

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