Meditation on "I Did Something Bad": Karma, Will, and the Sacred Transgression
"They say I did something bad / Then why's it feel so good?"
-Saint Taylor, Our Lady of Reputation
This lyric strikes like a bell in the dark; not merely a statement of defiance, but a confrontation with the moral architecture of the universe. The question beneath the question is thus: "what if the feeling of goodness is not proof of virtue, nor the accusation of badness proof of sin?" What if karma itself is not a simple ledger of reward and punishment, but something more subtle. Something rooted not in action, but in intention, attachment, and awareness?
Karma Beyond Punishment: The Weight of Intention
In popular imagination, karma is often understood as cosmic revenge: do bad, receive bad; do good, receive good. At best, it's assurance that our enemies will get their just desserts, and at worst, a Sword of Damocles dangling by a thread thinned by actions in long-forgotten lifetimes. But in classical Buddhist thought, karma is not punishment. It is causation shaped by intention (cetana). The Buddha taught:
"It is intention, monks, that I call karma. Having intended, one acts through body, speech, or mind."
-Anguttara Nikaya
This is a vital idea, and it upends the common understanding of karmic debt. The moral weight of an action lies not in how it is judged by others, but in the state of consciousness from which it arose.
In "I Did Something Bad," Our Lady challenges our moral assumptions. The "bad" thing is never fully defined. The accusation itself becomes suspect. What matters is not whether she broke a rule, but whether the act aligned with her inner truth.
If an action frees us from illusion, from manipulation, from a false self, is it karmically harmful, or liberating? Saint Tay here suggests that sometimes what the world calls "bad" is simply a refusal to be bound.
Desire, Attachment, and the Karmic Knot
Desire itself is not the enemy in Buddhist philosophy attachment to desire is. Sufffering comes not from wanting, but from clinging, from believing that fulfillment or identity depends on possessing or preserving something external.
Our Lady's persona in the song is not clinging. She is cutting cords with ruthless clarity, and a willingness to disrupt false equilibrium. This echoes the tantric insight that liberation does not always come from gentle renunciation. Sometimes it comes from seeing through the illusion so completely that one ceases to obey its rules.
The karmic burden is not in the act itself, but in the delusion that binds the actor to the act.
When there is no attachment, karma loses its teeth.
Aleister Crowley and the Law of True Will
Aleister Crowley, the occult philosopher and founder of Thelema, wrote:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
This is often misunderstood as license for selfishness. But Crowley's "Will" does not refer to mere impulse or ego. It refers to the True Will, the deepest alignment between the individual and the unfolding of reality itself.
To act in accordance with True Will is to act without internal contradiction, without fragmentation. Such action, Crowley taught, produces no karmic residue, because it arises from unity, not division.
Saint Taylor's defiance can be read in this light. She is no longer acting to please, to conform, or to maintain illusion. She acts in reclaimed sovereignty; her own True Will. This is why it "feels so good." Not because harm is pleasurable, but because alignment is.
Karmic Debt and the Breaking of False Contracts
There is another interpretation of karmic debt found in occult and esoteric traditions. Karma is not just individual, but relational. It is formed through agreements, conscious and unconscious, between beings.
Sometimes, what feels like wrongdoing is actually the dissolution of an unhealthy karmic contract.
To break free from manipulation, to refuse exploitation, to reject false narratives imposed upon you; these may appear destructive from the outside Spiritually, however, they represent the clearing of karmic entanglement. The pain of breaking such a bond may be real, but the bond itself was a prison.
In this sense, Our Lady's "bad" act is not the creation of karma, but the completion of it, and release from its bonds.
The Sacred Role of the Trickster
Our Lady's narrator in "I Did Something Bad" also evokes the archetype of the trickster, the figure who disrupts order to reveal deeper truth. In myth and occult symbolism, the trickster is neither good nor evil, but necessary. They expose hypocrisy. They shatter illusions. Figures like Loki, Set, Hermes, and Lucifer are embraced by occultists, including Crowley, not as embodiments of evil, but as bearers of forbidden knowledge.
The trickster's function is to remind us that moral systems are often human constructions, not cosmic absolutes. Sometimes the "bad" act is the one that restores balance.
The Karmic Paradox: Freedom and Responsibility
To act freely is not to escape karma; it is to see karma clearly. Every action shapes consciousness. Every intention plants a seed. But when one acts with awareness, without attachment, without self-deception, the karmic cycle releases its grip. The deepest spiritual freedom comes not from avoiding action, but from acting without illusion.
"I Did Something Bad" is not a rejection of morality, but of unquestioned morality. It asks the listener to examine the difference between imposed guilt and one's own known inner truth.
Perhaps, then, the truly dangerous act is not doing "something bad," but not questioning what "bad" means. Karma is like gravity, not a judge. It is a mirror, not a prison guard. Karmic liberation empowers us to be the architects of our future, not the victims of our past.
In the name of the old you who can't come to the phone right now, may you walk forward fearless and free.
Amen.
Rev. Odessa Cathode Ray, Tortured Pope
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