by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
When Gardner and the other occultists in the late 19th and early 20th century tried to explain the Law of Return, they were in a position of trying to explain a concept that was totally alien to a people indoctrinated into basic xian theology. I.e. god rewards good and punishes evil after death with heaven or hell (unless you use the escape clause of jesus in which case you can be totally evil and still be rewarded with heaven). In desperation, they tried to use the Eastern word “Karma” to explain the law of Return, some with better success than others according to their writing abilities.
The bad part of this is that many Eclectic and some Traditional Witches who never thought deeply about this tended to believe that Witches followed the “Law of Karma” which isn’t exactly true.
One must understand that Karma is an Eastern concept and Witchcraft is a Western religion so it is difficult for the two to co-exist as it is difficult for a family from India to retain their cultural identity when living in New York City.
So what does Karma really mean? In it’s simplest form, Karma means “action” and refers to the universe reacting to your actions. You perform an act and the universe reacts to that act. Like Newton’s laws of Motion. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” So if you stand and throw a ball at someone, not only is the ball moving away from you towards your target, but you are also moving away from the target at an equal force. If you are standing on the ground, you don’t notice this but throw the ball while standing in a wagon and you will notice the difference immediately.
Karma has no time limit. It is usually accepted to mean that if you live a good life and you die, then your next life (not this one) will be better than this one. You are deferring rewards for your deeds to a future life and so your acts are tainted by selfishness. Karma doesn’t care about motives, only deeds. And many modern neo-pagans believe that this means that if you do good, karma will reward you with more good in this life. Not so.
As I mentioned before, explaining the Law of Return (called by Gardnerians “the Three-Fold Law”) to others is equally difficult. There is nothing in western religion that adequately explains this concept. Karma comes close but still misses. Explaining the Three-Fold Law is like explaining music to someone who has never heard music. And trying to explain this on paper is like trying to teach someone who has never heard music how to sing the scales.
So be aware that what I am going to attempt isn’t completely accurate but it is the closest I can come to explaining an alien concept.
Consider the following: You are in a store and you see a mother telling a child that she cannot afford to buy him a toy because she barely has enough money to buy food. So you, for no other reason than because it is the right thing to do, buy that toy and you wait. When the mother and her child leaves the store, you ask the manager to give the toy to the child saying “Everyone needs a present sometime” and you walk away.
You have no desire for thanks or reward, you are simply doing something nice because it’s the right thing to do.
Now your body/soul/aura/whatever sends out a wave of ‘good’. This is similar to dropping a pebble into a pond. The pebble sends out ripples which continue for some distance.
Eventually, these ripples of ‘good’ will strike another person who is sympathetic and bounce back. The water ripples from your stone will strike the edge of the pond and be reflected back to the pebble.
As those waves of ‘good’ are reflected back to you, that person for reasons unknown to him sees you and does something ‘good’ for you. Maybe he stops his car and allows you to enter traffic, maybe he sees you carrying a heavy box and stops to help, maybe he … you get the idea. The waves of ‘good’ that you have sent out have influenced another person to do good and you reap the benefit.
But because the ripples in the pond bounce back to the pebble, continue on to the other edge of the pond and are bounced back to the pebble again, so are the waves of ‘good’ returned to you as they strike other sympathetic people. You have reaped a Three-Fold return for your action: once in kind, once in spirit and once in need!
So what happens when you think “If I buy this child a toy, I’ll be rewarded?”
Unfortunatly, that’s xian thinking there. The waves that you have sent out are tainted with greed. Instead of sending out waves of ‘good’, you send out waves of ‘greed’ and when they reach a sympathetic person, that person helps you but for a selfish reason. He helps you carry that heavy package but insists that you have dinner with him regardless of your marital status. He returns to you your dropped wallet but he checks your driver’s license for your address and phone number first or removes some of the cash… you get the idea. You will receive a good return but with a price.
To keep the Three-Fold Return pure, it is important that you act out of a positive ethical position untainted by greed or such.
And how does this relate to the world?
Those waves of ‘good’ you send out don’t strike one person, they strike a dozen. Not all will be in a position to ‘repay’ your kindness so they respond to these sudden waves of ‘good’ by being inspired to assist others. The term is ‘pay it forward’ and the world slowly becomes a better place as each person receives these waves of ‘good’ and reacts by doing good deeds which in turn send out more waves of ‘good’ to affect others until… you get the idea.
This is why it is important to do good deeds not because you worry about reward and punishment (xian concepts) but because for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
