Conduct is defined by that which is the Wiccan Way of Life. Conduct, by definition, is the manner by which a person presents themselves to others.
It doesn’t matter if you are still inside or out of the ‘broom closet’. Your conduct is directly related to your religion. Also, as a physical representative of the Goddess and God, your conduct is a reflection of them.
But the most wonderful thing that I have found in all of the hundreds of students that I have had over my lifetime is one overwhelming commonality, a student who follows and lives by the Wiccan Rede conveys exemplary conduct. To understand the laws, not to read into them anything other than what they say, is to have a lifestyle pure and content.
One item of conduct, for the neophyte, that is most difficult to undo is in the matter of telling an untruth, a lie. To tell a lie, even to save the feelings of a friend is wrong. We do not have any such creature as the ‘white lie’. For to tell an untruth is to harm one’s self as well as another. Besides, the truth is much easier to remember!
Another facet of conduct is in regard to stealing, we do not steal from anyone. Not even a major corporation, although we know that they will never miss it. You’re not hurting the corporation, you’re hurting yourself. Besides, if you were caught, it would be known that you didn’t have the ambition to find the means to acquire that which you stole. And the world would know that you, as a Wiccan, are untrustworthy.
To steal takes from us the dignity that we prize and quantitatively diminishes the power of our lives and totally nullifies the effectiveness of what we stole.
Lets take an example, this time not a true story but I’m sure it happens all too often, of a young Wiccan just beginning her life on the Path…
One day, Suzi, was talking to her friend who had introduced her to the ways of the Wicca. Well, Suzi’s friend wasn’t all that knowledgeable herself and told Suzi that without the basic tools, she couldn’t go any farther in her learning. Needless to say, Suzi was in a state of panic.
The next day Suzi went to a Flea Market and saw a beautiful double edged knife, and remembering what her friend had said, waited until the shopkeeper wasn’t looking, and took the knife. When Suzi got home and took the knife to her altar, the knife got very cold and felt negative. It didn’t belong there. Why? When Suzi stole the knife, with the intention of it being used as a tool in her worship of the Goddess and God, the knife itself took on a negative aura, or energy. It could never be used for the purpose that she had intended, ever.
What about the shopkeeper? Consider that he had put a price of fifteen dollars on the knife. Now consider that his daughter was very sick and he needed only another fifteen dollars to buy the medicine to make her well. When Suzi stole the knife, it deprived the shopkeeper of the sale that would have saved the life of his daughter. In essence, Suzi killed the little girl.
This was very dramatic, but illustrates the chain of events when you do something that you know that you are not supposed to. Unlike the psychics of Hollywood fame, we are unable to know the consequences of our actions. So our conduct must reflect the purity of our thoughts and intentions.
This brings me to another facet of conduct. That which is obvious to everyone that we come in contact with, that which makes us so obvious to each other. This is the altruistic passivity that veritably glows from the Wiccan. But still, The Wiccan seems to be like any other person, it is a paradox that I truly enjoy and call it the ‘confusing of the straights!’ It is the prime example of what my grand mother told me when I was very young. She said, “Sylvia, if one perceives one’s self as powerful, then others will concede to one’s power.” You may remember the eyes of the witches and wizards in the movies, how they seemed to glow with menacing stares? Well it’s not like that! It’s more like a confidence that comes from within and looks at the world as if to say: “ I’m great and powerful!”, but all the time as gentle as a lamb. Suffice it to say that it is our conduct and attitude that makes us what we are, and sets forth the image that we wish to project.