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Things you might think you know about Wicca that aren’t strictly true: The Rule of Three
Or How a Modern Idea Became a ‘Magical Law’ (and the reasons we need to leave it behind)
I have been polishing a talk that I am presenting this weekend, which is titled, Bound by Words: A History of Cursing. It’s a talk I’ve given before, but each time I give it, it makes me re-evaluate how I feel about cursing. What’s really changed over time is my own personal response to it. When I say ‘it’, what I mean is the act of cursing, and wider perceptions of Wiccan ethics.
I may be stating the obvious, but there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet, and while sometimes I am able to let that glide on by, other times – like today – it just gets on my goat a little bit too much, hence this post. We have to talk about the ‘Rule of Three’.
In this post I am going to dig down into what we think we know about the Three-fold Law, what it means, and where it comes from, to dispel some of the mist that surrounds it. However, this means we must also talk about a couple of elephants in the room. The first is the rift that exists between initiatory Wicca and its very popular niece, eclectic, or self-defining wicca. For the sake of clarity, in this article if I use ‘wiccan’ I mean the non-initiatory, self-defining witchcraft community. When I use ‘Wiccan’, I am referring to initiates – i.e. those who have undergone the deep study with a coven that leads to initiation. There’s a lot of Wicca-bashing that happens on the Internet and social media, but if you are going to tell me that you don’t need to be part of the initiatory strand, because you don’t want someone telling you what to do, then you at least need to find a way of fact-checking the information you are repeating and absorbing as lore. Unfortunately, this is one of the dangers of non-initiatory paths – you don’t have someone telling you what to do, but you also don’t have someone telling you what is real or not. But perhaps that’s a post for another day.
Now to my second of two elephants, which is that Wicca is a mystery tradition. Although you may think you’ve read all about it online, not everything is talked about in a public forum. Mysteries aren’t mysteries anymore if you reveal their secrets, and they lose some of their magic that way. Often, those of us from the initiatory tradition don’t talk about what is true, and what isn’t, because we are bound by oaths, and we don’t want to step over the line. Rest assured, in this article, I won’t be referring to what is included in oath-bound materials, but I will say when something isn’t a feature.
It’s not surprising, then, that there are so many half-truths about the so-called Three-fold Law that have evolved. There’s a lot of rubbish out there. I have undergone that level of study, and I have been part of the initiatory tradition for over twenty years now, and I still had to have a good dig around looking for clues about what the three-fold law is in order to be able to step out of the broom closet for a moment to write this.
Now we have our terminology straight, let me explain a little further…
Do Witches Curse? (and the fear of witchcraft)
If you had asked me twenty-five years ago, as a fairly newly initiated Wiccan, what my attitude to cursing was, I would probably have reeled off the usual patter of, ‘oh no, we don’t curse, we are bound by strict rules about what we can and can’t do with magic’. But are we, though?
This need to reassure people that there is an ethical framework around magic is, I think, borne of a need to reassure the outside world that witches aren’t to be feared. A long history of the fear of witches has, after all, led to the awful acts of oppression to many innocent people, not just in the more obvious case of the murderous Witch trials in early modern history, but also more recently. In the 1980s we also had the ‘satanic panic’, a name which doesn’t really capture the hysteria of the time, and how devastating it was. It is estimated that over 12,000 unsubstantiated accusations of satanic ritual abuse took place in the 1980s, leading to many families losing their children, and this, quite rightly, left its scars on those of us who remember what happened. If you want to know why may practicing pagans and witches remain in the Broom Closet today, it’s probably not the fear of being hanged or burned at the stake - you can look to the Satanic Abuse scare for the answer. It was the last time (before now) that the right-wing politics of the Reagan / Thatcher years caused wide-spread damage to lots of groups, and the Pagan community was one of them. Those who didn’t lose their children lived in fear of losing their livelihoods, and that is still an issue today.
Fast forwarding to now, my writing career means I am out of the broom closet (and thankfully my employer is ok about that). But the other thing I have to engage with as a writer is social media, so I spend a fair amount of time connecting with what is out there. I can’t name a single interview I have given where I haven’t been asked about the topic of #witchesofinstagram and WitchTok. Has an interest in Witchcraft increased? Are there more of us now? What draws more people to witchcraft as a path?
I see the films that are out there on TikTok, and the discussions amongst the eclectic witchcraft community about what you must do in order to call yourself a ‘proper’ witch, and what rules you need to follow. I am not saying this as I am looking down my nose at the non-initiatory path, but because there are a lot of ideas that are talked about as being ‘Wiccan’ by folk who aren’t on the inside. And there is a lot of ‘Wicca-bashing’ that goes on in those communities. If it sounds like a bad case of teenage angst (‘you can’t tell me what to do!’ and ‘you don’t understand me!’) then it’s probably because it is just that.
I don’t know if its because I have reached menopause, and my formerly oestrogen-induced softness is gradually being whittled away to something harder edged, but I sometimes find myself despairing over some of the utter rubbish that gets touted as being Wiccan online.
I understand that in terms of the use of language, the word ‘Wicca’ has already bolted from the stable, and cantered off into the distance, leaving trails of steaming dung in its wake. It has morphed beyond what it meant at its inception in the 1940s or 1950s into something that very few of us are able to discern as still being a horse at all. I realise that amongst the initiatory community, the use of the word Wicca (and sometimes even the term ‘witch’) is hotly contested as only applying to the initiatory community. I think that debate is one for another day and another blog post, but for today, the horse-sh*t I want us to address is that of the Three-fold Law.
Will no one rid me of this troublesome law?
If you wonder what the purpose of this blog post is, it’s to call ‘bullshit’. I read on a very authoritative website today, that,
The Rule of Three, also known as the Law of Return or the Threefold Law, is a fundamental concept in modern Paganism, particularly within Wicca. It teaches that the energy, intentions, and actions we put into the world will return to us threefold—whether positive or negative.
But here’s the thing. It’s not fundamental to Modern Paganism, and the three-fold law isn’t really Wiccan at all. I get really frustrated when this gets touted as being ours, and all over Instagram and TikTok, witches speak very authoritatively about this being a central tenet of Wiccan Theology. A month or two ago, one very well-meaning and well-known eclectic witch I follow, even wrote a whole piece of existential angst about the place of the Three-fold law in her own private practice, and whether she could continue to follow it. I really had to stop myself commenting to say, ‘please don’t worry about it, it’s not even properly a thing in Wicca’, but sometimes when we speak out, the initiatory community get accused of sneering.
Perhaps I should explain further.
What the Three-fold law is
By now you may have gathered from my tone what I think what the so-called Wiccan Rule of Three is, and it is not what most people think it is. It’s often treated like some sacred, unbreakable law in modern witchcraft circles, but the truth is far messier. For those of you who may be scratching your heads, wondering what all the fuss is about, it’s this idea that whatever you send out into the world comes back to you threefold. But it’s a later invention, and not a core part of Wiccan theology. Nowhere in our Book of Shadows (or certainly not in my tradition’s Book of Shadows) does it say the law of three. If we accept the fact that Gerald Brouseau Gardner is the ‘father of modern witchcraft’ and that the whole thing started with the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951 and Gerald’s book, Witchcraft Today (1954), then surely Gerald would have something to say about the Three-fold Law, but he doesn’t. Sadly, he has been misquoted.
Where the Rule of Three Came From
The earliest hint of the Rule of Three appears in Gerald Gardner’s (terrible) novel High Magic’s Aid (1949). In chapter XVII – cunningly entitled ‘The Witch Cult’, there’s a line that says,
“But mark well, when thou receivest good, so equally art bound to return good threefold.”
Notice the wording carefully — it’s about returning good, not bad, threefold.
This is important because it shows the idea was originally about positive actions and their consequences, not a universal law applying to everything you do magically.
Much later, Doreen Valiente, one of Gardner’s high priestesses and a key figure in shaping Wiccan liturgy later admitted that Gardner had mentioned it in passing during a ritual, and people took it far more seriously than intended.
So, the Rule of Three wasn’t a formal doctrine or theology. It was more like a poetic or ritualistic phrase that was uttered that caught on.
How the Rule of Three Became a “Law”
For this bit, you need to understand some of the differences in the different strands of Wicca. In the British Isles, where Wicca first emerged, Modern Pagan paths were chugging along following the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951. However, when trying to trace the idea of who first introduced the ‘Three-fold Law’, all fingers seem to pint to Ray Buckland, who was introduced to Wicca by Monique Wilson (a.k.a. Lady Olwen) who was one of Gerald’s High Priestesses, and a pretty controversial Wiccan priestess (not least because of the ‘Lady’ part). Once this happened, a number of events took place that meant the horse was firmly out of the stable and off the reins. Uncle Bucky then took what he had learned from Monique over the Atlantic to the United States, where he published what he had brought with him. This led to all sorts of changes in the Craft, that meant some of the American lines are unrecognisable to those of us practicing in the UK. And one of the things that became a thing over there was the Threefold Rule, which by now was being interpreted it as a law. It was presented it as a kind of ethical guideline for witches: whatever you send out, good or bad, will return to you three times over.
It’s a bit like Celtic Samhain with its carved turnips being completely unrecognisable in the American versions of Hallowe’en, and European ideas about St Nicholas becoming the red-suited Father Christmas. Both things began in Europe as one thing, and then became changed and then amplified when they came back from the states. Raymond Buckland, then, who helped popularise Gardnerian Wicca in the United States, further spread this interpretation, and Buckland’s books and teachings made the Rule of Three a staple in American Wicca, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. Back in the UK, this idea also got mentioned by Stewart Farrar, sometime around 1971.
But here’s the catch: this was an interpretation, not a traditional Wiccan belief. It was a modern addition, shaped by cultural and social pressures, and has never been a part of ancient theology. Some branches of Wicca will tell you it is absolutely a thing, if they come from Monique or Stewart’s line. But to others, like mine, that come from an earlier branch of Gerald’s, don’t really think it’s a thing at all.
There may well be things that Gerald wrote, back in the early 1950s that we like to hold on to. Other bits, that may have been added later are not really ‘traditional’ at all. The point about Modern Wicca is that it’s modern. It has to adapt to suit modern life, or it just becomes one more set of dogmatic rules designed to control people, and lord knows, we have enough of them in the world, without creating another one.
The Reagan Era and the Need to Appear Harmless
Tim Landry, an anthropologist and commentator of modern witchcraft, points out that the Rule of Three became especially popular in the United States during the Reagan era. This was a time when the Satanic Abuse trials were happening in both the UK and the US. Witches were under intense scrutiny and often accused of harmful magic.
In this climate, witches needed to present themselves as harmless, even benevolent. The Rule of Three served as a kind of PR tool: it reassured outsiders that witches wouldn’t harm others because any harm would bounce back threefold.
This political and social context shaped how the Rule of Three was embraced and promoted. It wasn’t about theology or spiritual truth; it was about survival and image management.
Why the Rule of Three Is Not Part of Wiccan Theology
If you look at the core texts and teachings of Gardnerian Wicca and other early traditions, you won’t find the Rule of Three as a formal law. Wicca’s ethical framework is more nuanced and less rigid.
The Rede, for example, says “An it harm none, do what ye will.” This is a guideline encouraging witches to avoid harm, but it doesn’t promise a magical boomerang effect.
The Rule of Three simplifies complex ethical questions into a catchy phrase. It ignores the reality that magic, intention, and consequences are not always so neat or predictable.
The Problem with Misinformation in Modern Witchcraft
One of the biggest issues today is how misinformation spreads online. People who identify as wiccan without connection to the initiatory tradition often repeat the Rule of Three as if it is gospel truth. This creates confusion and limits understanding.
For example, many believe “Mabon” is an ancient Wiccan festival, but it’s actually a modern invention, named after a Welsh mythological figure and popularised by a particularly unhelpful American practitioner in the 1980s who felt the festivals should all have more ‘Celtic’ sounding names, even if they were not Celtic in origin. The Rule of Three is similar — a modern creation mistaken for ancient wisdom, that then grew legs and ran away from us all.
This doesn’t mean these ideas have no value. They can be useful ethical tools or poetic reminders. But they shouldn’t be mistaken for historical or theological facts. And this also doesn’t mean that modern Wicca can’t evolve from the practice that Gerald Gardner initially envisaged. It’s essential that it does change and grow in order to stay relevant to the modern era, and to make it the rich practice that it is. However, we need to do this without tying ourselves up in unhelpful, karmic-sounding dogma that just takes us back to the problem we initially evolved to counter – that of out-dated and unhelpful dogmatic visions from people who have no relevance to modern practice.
What This Means for Modern Witches
Of course, if you have come from self-defining witchcraft, or from Lady Olwen’s initiatory line, you might swear blind that the Three-fold Law is in fact Wiccan, in which case, go and fill your boots. But leave the rest of us to understand that the point of Modern Pagan Witchcraft – or Initiatory Wicca – is that we are all adult enough to make ethical choices about our magical workings. Understanding the true origins of the Rule of Three frees us from feeling bound by it. It opens space for honest conversations about ethics, magic, and responsibility.
If on the other hand you are speaking publicly with some level of authority about Wiccan ethics and morality, please do check your sources before instilling unnecessary angst in the lives of people who have enough challenges to think about without getting tangled up in unnecessary doctrine.
Wrapping It Up
The Rule of Three is an interesting idea, but it’s not a long-standing or even central Wiccan law. It’s a modern invention shaped by social pressures and misunderstandings. Knowing this helps us approach witchcraft with more honesty and flexibility.
Magic is complex. Ethics are personal. Instead of relying on catchy slogans, let’s engage with the real history and the rich, varied traditions that make witchcraft meaningful.
If you want to explore witchcraft beyond myths and misinformation, start with trusted sources and open your mind to the many ways magic can connect us to the natural world.
If you want to read other writers who have written about this, then go and check out Yvonne Arburrow’s article, written in 2021: The Threefold Law – Dowsing for Divinity
