feotakahari

Pictured: also a fluffy bunny.

(Source.)

The term is often used to refer to Wiccans who’re doing Wicca “wrong” for whatever reason, especially ones whose interpretation of Wicca is too idealistic. The implication is that true Wicca acknowledges all of existence, and Wiccans who don’t do that aren’t really Wiccans. There are loads of ways to argue this from an inside perspective, and since I’m not a Wiccan, I’m not going to wade into that. But from the outside, there’s one thing I can say: I like fluffy bunnies.

The serious Wiccan, as quite a few Wiccan thinkers will tell you in excruciating detail, believes that “light” and “dark” are both natural parts of the universe, to the extent they can be considered separate at all. Problems arise when imbalance is created, but too little suffering is just as much of an imbalance as too much. Scott Cunningham, for instance: “From a ravaging flood comes rich soil in which new plants thrive.  Death brings a deeper appreciation of life to the living and rest for the transcended one.  ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are often identical in nature, depending on one’s viewpoint.”

The fluffy Wiccan believes that suffering is bad, because suffering is bad.

This is not unique to Wicca. The more concerned you are with following every precept of the Bible, the more disconnected you are from the values Jesus espoused, and some of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever interacted with have been Buddhists who got way too into living their lives by Buddhist standards. For that matter, the dedicated Utilitarian will argue for hours over whether a particular action results in more or less utility, while the casual Utilitarian can often see immediately that it’s the wrong thing to do.

So if you ever run into a knotty problem that you can’t fit into your beliefs, cut the knot. The rules you’ve been following can guide you, but you shouldn’t let them blind you to what’s actually in front of you and what your instincts are telling you to do.

(I say this, knowing full well that a normal human being would not agree to some of the moral principles I espouse. What can I say? When you’re as far into Blue as I am, everyone else is Orange.)