You know...

[badstar]

The popular neopagan (mis)conception of what karma is annoys me to no end, and some people's views of it just makes me sick.

Karma is not the fucking "three-fold law"- and really, don't try to tell me that whatever I do just multiplies exactly three times and bounces back at me. That particular interpretation is just laughable.

People going on and on about how they hope someone's karma "catches up with them" or wanting to do spells to speed up people's karma is irritating. But then you have people saying things like "Maybe their karma is already biting them- maybe their parents abuse them or someone they love is dying of cancer!" makes me want to hurl.

No one deserves to be abused, and the idea that someone else is dying of a horrible disease as a punishment for one's actions...it's disgusting.

Karma is the results of your actions throughout your lifetimes. It's not having abusive parents because you're a snotty bitch.

(Yes, this example is taken directly from an actual forum post.)

(And don't get me started on the "everything happens for a reason" and "people choose to reincarnate into their lifetime and choose what's going to happen to them because they need to learn a lesson schools of thought...)

Comments

[ursus-of-unrv.livejournal.com]

Oh, Amen. I dated a neopagan and this is all she prattled on about. And what was really amsuing is that "bad karma" never happened to her, it only happened to people she didn't like.

[acousticdryad.livejournal.com]

Hey did you know the boiler went up at the Grove because of our karma for banning Kelly? TRUE STORY. I READ IT FROM A COMMENT FROM HER ON FACEBOOK.

[chironcentaur.livejournal.com]

And how does Kelly explain the state of her own life? :-P

[acousticdryad.livejournal.com]

Clearly mis-directed karma.

[nofate301.livejournal.com]

Wait, i thought the three fold law thing was wiccan and not pagan.

Confuse me if I"m wrong, but doesn't pagan not equal wiccan

[fuego.livejournal.com]

I never said anything was universal pagan- only that it was a popular idea amongst many neopagans. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. The threefold law, I do believe originated with Wicca, but it is not confined therein.

And yeah, pagan=/=Wiccan- Wicca is a pagan religion.

[nofate301.livejournal.com]

ah, ok

Just wasn't sure.

Probably just me.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

No worries :-)

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Wicca is a pagan religion

I don't know about that. I've met a lot of Wiccans who would claim that it's definitely NOT a pagan religion. All depends on how one defines "pagan." Like how people will also go through great pains to differentiate Wicca from Neo-Wicca. As though anyone not involved in the religions would know the difference, right?

BTW, I would also call it a pagan religion only because I have yet to find a better term than "pagan" as an umbrella term for Wicca, Reconstructionists, etc etc etc. :)

[fuego.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that. I've met a lot of Wiccans who would claim that it's definitely NOT a pagan religion.

I've known of plenty of Wiccans saying that Wicca isn't really earth-based, I've never heard it called not pagan.

I don't really have a good working definition for "pagan", though I don't believe, as a lot of people will call it that all non-Abrahamic religions are pagan. I don't really have anyhting to base it on besides a feeling that it makes sense somehow, but I tend to think of pagan religions as those which are non-Abrahamic and of European origin- whether cultural reconstructions or otherwise. Then again, I don't actively call myself pagan either so maybe I'm smoking crack.

The word, I think is really too too nebulous.

Like how people will also go through great pains to differentiate Wicca from Neo-Wicca. As though anyone not involved in the religions would know the difference, right?

Well, some don't- a glance around the internet makes that quickly and abundantly clear :-P. I often refer to Neo-Wicca as "popular" Wicca- that which is published in the books that you can find in any book store.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

I've never heard it called not pagan.

I have, more than once. It broke my brain at first, until I realised they had a very specific definition of what "pagan" meant.

but I tend to think of pagan religions as those which are non-Abrahamic and of European origin- whether cultural reconstructions or otherwise

More or less, but I would also refer to the indigenous religions of North America and Australia as "pagan," too. But then, I tend to treat it more as an umbrella term for either indigenous beliefs, or those which resemble an indigenous-like belief system (which in some cases isn't very helpful, because who is to say that Judaism is thus not an indigenous belief system?). While this means sometimes the beliefs are more naturalist, others are more humanist.

Also, the people I've found who are sticklers about Wicca vs Neo Wicca tends to be those who are part of a Traditional Wicca or BTW. Trad Wicca is Wicca and anything else is Neo-Wicca (which basically goes along with your definition). There's more than one community on LJ which actually requires you to make this distinction in any posts (which is how I learned of it).

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Finally, re karma - karma isn't even a Wiccan thing, it is Eastern philosophy that most Westerners do not understand.

Oh yeah...and then there's the idea of karmic debt *headdeskfacepalmeyefork*

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

who has walked the face of Middle-Earth

Like the Hobbits? ;)

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

I've never heard the term "Midgard" or heard Earth referred to as Middle Earth previously. I was just being facetious. :P

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

And they'd get along great with anyone who also smokes "pipeweed." :X

[chironcentaur.livejournal.com]

3. Sometimes bad things do happen to good people and sometimes evil prevails and we will never understand the reason in this or any other lifetime. Re #1, everything does not happen for a reason, some things happen by chance with no reason at all. That is the way it is.

Agreed. And maybe I'm strange but I find that thought a lot more comforting than to think that everything has already been mapped out and we're all little more than pawns on some divinity's chess board.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

ITA about the karma stuff, and especially the thinking disease is a punishment stuff. That leads straight into some very nasty abilism, a sense that anyone who is ill must have done something at some point to "deserve" it. (And therefore don't need rights, accommodations, or health care.)

I'm of two minds about "everything happens for a reason" and "people choose what's going to happen to them". I think it's a different thing when people say this about *themselves* vs. when they say it about other people. It's completely obnoxious to say this to someone else, especially if they're undergoing a hardship that you aren't undergoing. It reeks of "yeah, too bad you're sick/divorcing/disabled/unemployed, but everything happens for a reason, and before you were born, you chose this life". Quite honestly, if someone said this to me the desire to sock them in the mouth would be almost too strong to resist. OTOH, people saying it about themselves is a coping method, because yeah, it's a heck of a lot better sometimes to believe that there's something good in the awful thing that's happening to you, that you're getting some important lesson out of it, than to simply believe that you got the short end of life's lottery YET AGAIN. If that's what folks need to tell themselves to keep themselves functioning, it's cruel and unnecessary for me to gainsay it.

[chironcentaur.livejournal.com]

ITA about the karma stuff, and especially the thinking disease is a punishment stuff. That leads straight into some very nasty abilism, a sense that anyone who is ill must have done something at some point to "deserve" it.

Yep. And the only thing worse than that blame the victim mentality is telling someone the reason why whatever person you care about is going through whatever horrible thing is because the universe hates you and thinks you're a jerk. Its your fault they're sick.

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

don't try to tell me that whatever I do just multiplies exactly three times and bounces back at me.M

Yeah, I buy people beers all the time, and I get NOTHING in return let alone 3 beers! ;-)

[laria-a.livejournal.com]

It's always funny how if you do something 'wrong', karma's going to get you, but if they do something equally bad or worse, then karma never comes into it. ;) I find that in daily conversations and such with certain people, as well as in pagan fora.

[bluedolfyn.livejournal.com]

Funny how these things come up all together. Right now, my head space is deep in compassion and how that's misunderstood as a way of being a doormat and a way of non-action, with musing on right-anger and right-violence on the mind. No, it's not exactly the same thing, but the watering-down, misunderstanding, totally not getting it bits correspond, and so, I feel your frustration.

I'm actually a "thing happen for a reason," person. Sort of. I use that as a guide, as a tool, to encourage myself, to challenge myself into letting situations shape me for the better. I half-wonder if some things that happen to me have happened because I decided between lives that it should be something to tackle. I think it's possible. I think, too, that it doesn't explain everything, and believe a thousand percent that it's not my place to tell other people that shit happens to them for a reason and that it's a learning experience and they should seek to find the good in it. I only apply that to myself, and honestly? I don't apply it across the board, in all the shit I've gone through, and I accept completely that it may just be (is very likely) a mind-tool that helps me continue to challenge myself to grow. I don't think there's anything wrong with such tools, if they work. But I also think it's important to aknowledge such tools as, you know, tools, and not Sacred Holy Universal Truths that everyone should adhere to and thus be Enlightened.

But I'm never going to tell other people that they were beaten or held up or raped or otherwise abused for a reason. People are shit; that's all the reason we can be sure of. People get sick and die young or die old or die horribly because shit happens, and I don't believe that such things are punishments.

I've totally digressed at this point, and I don't mean to. I'm just chatty this morning. :)

[fuego.livejournal.com]

I think that a lot of things do happen for a reason....but also a lot of things just happen because that's just what happens. It's the people that recite "Rememeber everything happens for a reason" whenever someone mentions something bad happening to them- thankfully, no one's done that to me in a good long time- and the last time I remember it happening, I think I still actually thought that myself. If I were to hear it now, whoever said that would probably wind up getting an earful back from me.

I don't have so much of a problem with people believing it for themselves- I really don't get it, and I think the level of micro-managing on the part of the universe or the gods or whatever that would be required to make it true is just brain-shattering, but if someone wants to believe that and use it for their own comfort, self-bettering or whatever...have at it, as long as they're not lecturing it at other people.

But I'm never going to tell other people that they were beaten or held up or raped or otherwise abused for a reason. People are shit; that's all the reason we can be sure of. People get sick and die young or die old or die horribly because shit happens, and I don't believe that such things are punishments.

Yeah. This is what I have the Real Big Problem with.

I've totally digressed at this point, and I don't mean to. I'm just chatty this morning. :

*shrug* No worries....there aren't enough interesting discussions taking place on my LJ comments, so feel free to digress at will :-P

[bluedolfyn.livejournal.com]

For the record, I don't think the universe gives a shit one way or the other, and I don't expect micromanaging from the gods or spirits. Hell, I don't expect mircomanaging from my own spirit. My buying into the idea isn't really all that deep -- it's more of a remnant from earlier in my life when I really needed it. I think that if anything decides, it's our own consciousness or spirit, and I think it goes for the big broad things -- like, I'll get myself to a more compassionate/effective/willful/whatever place sort of things. Over-arching goals? One has to assume that reincarnation happens, and even that a specific type of reincarnation happens, wherein Higher Consciousness is achieved and retained between lives. I'm not even sure that I believe *that* happens, necessarily. So, I guess my remaining belief is more of an, 'IF that happens, and IF we get to decide to have specific things happen, than I think it's possible, and I think it's more likely to be ourselves than the gods or spirits or whatever, because why would they care that much about that much detail?" but I don't think it's everything, not even everything big. More thematic than the finite details.

But once it gets into the realm of punishment/reward . . . Sorry. I don't think the universe works that way. It's way too human-centric of a set-up, and we're the only ones who are going to care about our species to that degree.

[verginiamus.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was filtered throught the New Age Movement along with reiencarnation - mixing Western and Eastern thoughts. I think of it as getting rust (Eastern) on your robots (Western).

The whole karma thing then gets filtered through everyone's exposure to Christianity. There is a lot in Wiccan and in odd corners of Paganism that is either a reaction to Christianity or unconsciously ccarries the Christian mime. The three fold law is is one of those that does both.

Since most of us were exposed to Christianity, it pops up in Paganism in odd ways. Consider piety - which is confused with Church ladies.

As Pagans, and a Roman one, what misfortunes or fortunes happen to me in part to the Gods and my Patronage of them. Some Gods just are not very mindful of humans, some are. There is no reason unless some one decided to put a curse on me by asking a God. In short, stuff happens. It is how we react to it that determines our Romanitas.