What is the threefold? Or rule of three? Is a question I have been asked and seen asked all the time. and being the nice pagan lady I am I thought I would try and clear that question up for the people who don’t know. I am also often asked what I believe in relation to the ‘law’, but I will leave that for roughly half way through.
The three fold law is a belief that is prominently Wicca based, although some pagans and witches (who are not Wiccan) believe this too, and not all wiccans believe in the three fold…im not sure that made it any clearer…
Essentially it’s a rule that says ‘whatever you put out into the world, it will come back to you times by three!’ so if do good deeds, in theory you will have good come back to you, if you do bad deeds, you will have bad coming back to you, only it will be three times as bad or good. So why is it called the three fold? The simple definition of threefold I believe is having three parts, hence the belief that it comes back to you in threes.
I just want to mention here, I do not believe in the rule of three. I have no problem with others believing in it (Cal, my husband does) I just have a few problems with the thought process, and while poking around on YouTube and Tumblr I feel that my beliefs are actually not much different from other witches/wiccans/pagans who do not subscribe to the rule. One of my biggest problems, where does the extra energy come from?
In life people suffer, and it can’t always be put down to the three fold, families living in poverty? Rape victims, people being assaulted, and death, it would be extremely harsh to say that any of the above were due to the three fold. If someone just told you they were raped, would you look at them and say ‘oh what did you do? It must be the three fold law!’ if your answer is yes, then wtf!  Just as there is suffering there is unjustified suffering, there are amazing things too, good things can happen to people without them doing anything to deserve them. I think maybe it’s a way to remind ourselves to be good and do good things as well as deterring humanity from doing bad?
I DO believe though that our mind set and our actions do have a lot to do with what we get back out of life, in the sense of people and our relationships anyway. I mean if we are happy, positive and helpful I believe we will get further and more out of people because as humans we are more open and happy to be around people who like that. And that if we are negative or nasty towards people and life that is what we will get back. But to me that is nothing to do with the three fold, even If it was to do with spell work and curses.
I hope this has helped someone....and wasn’t too rambley…..