Wicca and the Left-Hand Path

It astonishes me that Wiccans this modern world can continue to prattle about polarities and balances, and yet continue to reject out of hand, with no consideration, what they call the Left Hand Path.

I am at a loss to explain it completely. Is it fear? Is it lack of understanding? Is it laziness? Or an olio of all the above? Ask one and it is likely that he or she has no real definition of the Left Hand Path, let alone a good reason for rejecting it.

Witchcraft is the art of getting in touch with all the undocumented abilities of the human creature, all those pre-intellectual instincts, emotions and abilities which enabled us to survive over the millenia long enough to evolve to the stage of rational thought.

This constellation of abilities includes the instinct of species preservation which we know of as the sex drive, yet so many modern witches try to eliminate sex and gender from their work. It includes the instinct of self-preservation, which includes the emotions of fear and hate, yet they say those emotions are 'bad' and will have nothing to do with them.

In fact, the Wiccans promote good and condemn evil, but one cannot exist without the other, any more than light can exist without darkness to compare it to, hard cannot exist without soft, or left can exist without right.

It is my opinion that by rejecting half of all that has made humankind what we are, we are rejecting half of ourselves. If we believe in the usefulness of polarities in the work of witchcraft, then fully to explore ourselves and our abilities we must also explore those negative traits so glibly rejected by Wicca. We must explore our ability to hate as well as to love, to fear as well as to encompass, to do harm as well as to do good. Left and right, good and evil, dark and light, all are perceptions based in the mind. By refusing to examine and to understand one half of any polarity we cannot understand the other half.

Do not think that I am defending the late Anton Lavey or any of the other Satanic practitioners. To me their rejection of the good is as mistaken as the Wiccan rejection of evil. I am instead calling for a full exploration of all that is human, for therein lies the success of the Craft.

Last modified on: Tuesay, August 11, 1998.