Pagan Witch Quotes

The first time I called myself a 'Witch' was the most magical moment of my life.

How long have you been a Wiccan?' 'A what?' 'A pagan. A witch.' 'I'm not a witch,' I said, glancing out the door. 'I'm a wizard.' Sanya frowned. 'What is the difference?' 'Wizard has a Z' He looked at me blankly. 'No one appreciates me.' I muttered.

Well, let's see, I found out Pagan has low blood sugar and becomes a complete b--witch if she doesn't eat a candy bar during a stressful moment.

As a girl, I used to believe that I could see and taste the air. I was TOLD that was impossible and forgot how to do so.

It was deliciously pagan.

When a person assumes that his or her revelation is the only true one, it only says that this person has had very few religious revelations and hasn't realized how many there are.

I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor.

When you’re outnumbered by trees your perspective shifts.

Witchcraft promotes the advantages of learning and applying new symbolism into one's psyche, this is the witches code.

If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a Witch. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You

What we do internally affects the world around us and the world around us affects our inner world. With this notion, nothing is separate, and our inner and outer worlds are intricately tied to one another.

The Neo-Pagan Ten “Commandments” 1. Thou art God/dess. 2. As above, so below; as within so without. 3. Spirit abides in all things; words & names have power. 4. Maintain an attitude of gratitude (walk the talk). 5. Honor the ancestors, teachers, elders, and leaders. 6. All life is sacred. 7. All acts of love and pleasure are sacred. 8. Whatever you send out returns threefold. 9. Love is the law, love under will. 10. For the greatest good, an’ it harm none.

Fear and superstition were not the tools of witches but rather the tools of those who persecuted them.

Ancient moon priestesses were called virgins. ‘Virgin’ meant not married, not belong to a man - a woman who was ‘one-in-herself’. The very word derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to men: virle. Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, Isis were all all called virgin, which did not refer to sexual chasity, but sexual independence. And all great culture heroes of the past…, mythic or historic, were said to be born of virgin mothers: Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Osiris, Dionysus, Genghis Khan, Jesus - they were all affirmed as sons of the Great Mother, of the Original One, their worldly power deriving from her. When the Hebrews used the word, and in the original Aramaic, it meant ‘maiden’ or ‘young woman’, with no connotations to sexual chasity. But later Christian translators could not conceive of the ‘Virgin Mary’ as a woman of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched. When Joan of Arc, with her witch coven associations, was called La Pucelle - ‘the Maiden,’ ‘the Virgin’ - the word retained some of its original pagan sense of a strong and independent woman. The Moon Goddess was worshipped in orgiastic rites, being the divinity of matriarchal women free to take as many lovers as they choose. Women could ‘surrender’ themselves to the Goddess by making love to a stranger in her temple.

The psychic witch lives in a state of enchantment, seeing all things as magickal and understanding that the universe is composed of endless possibilities and potential. The psychic witch sees a door where others see a wall.

The witch who claims to forbear her magick for fear of causing the next Indian tsunami is really saying that she is powerful enough to kill thousands of innocent strangers when all she meant to do was water her mugwort. She can't be challenged to produce evidence of this, because doing could provoke earthquakes and Africanized bee attacks.

We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe encompasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret. —SYMMACHUS, 384 C.E.

Nature is also God's way of communicating with us. Jesus himself used nature to teach us about God. He used birds and flowers, the weather, precious stones...Looking at nature, we can come to understand God himself.

Still, his question, “If there is only one model of individuation, can there be true individuality?

Witchcraft is never cookie-cutter. Like recipes from a book, the recipes are often tailored to individual tastes as long as the general formula and steps are understood.

Salem has become this... Mecca for Wiccans, but no witches died here. Aside from Tituba, no one practiced anything like witchcraft near here in colonial times. It was a bunch of bored Puritans who thought killing their neighbors at the behest of teenage girls was a fine, Christian form of entertainment and land acquisition.

Body of Earth, body of woman call unto the stars Carry – as the river which carries the touch of the forest – carry Earth unto sky Enliven within my body of woman union with Earth, union with sky I am daughter of stars a clear river of light My soul, it is flowing unto body of woman, body of Earth woven with light

I have the idea that we grandmothers are meant to play the part of protective witches; we must watch over younger women, children, community, and also, why not?, this mistreated planet, the victim of such unrelenting desecration. I would like to fly on a broomstick and dance in the moonlight with other pagan witches in the forest, invoking earth forces and howling demons; I want to become a wise old crone, to learn ancient spells and healers' secrets. It is no small thing, this design of mine. Witches, like saints, are solitary stars that shine with a light of their own; they depend on nothing and no one, which is why they have no fear and can plunge blindly into the abyss with the assurance that instead of crashing to earth, they will fly back out. They can change into birds and see the world from above, or worms to see it from within, they can inhabit other dimensions and travel to other galaxies, they are navigators on an infinite ocean of consciousness and cognition.

Understanding the physiological and neurological features of spiritual experiences should not be interpreted as an attempt to discredit their reality or explain them away. Rather, it demonstrates their physical existence as a fundamental, shared part of human nature. Spiritual experiences cannot be considered irrational, since we have seen that, given their physiological basis, experiencers' descriptions of them are perfectly rational... All human perceptions of material reality can ultimately be documented as chemical reactions in our neurobiology; all our sensations, thoughts, and memories are ultimately reducible to chemistry, yet we feel no need to deny the existence of the material world; it is not less real because our perceptions of it are biologically based... It is not rational to assume that the spiritual reality of core experiences is any less real than the more scientifically documentable material reality.

If we think of our body as a building, we can choose to treat it like a haunted house with unknown aspects of ourselves roaming around freely and creating chaos, or we can treat it as a divine temple, honoring and having a personal relationship with the aspects of ourselves that dwell there.

Any divinity that can't see me as a good witch in street clothes has no business hanging up a shingle as a god.

Sometimes my pagan background was a serious professional liability.

When every part of ourselves is in alignment with our magick, we become our magick and it is almost impossible for that magick to not become a reality.

Bitter and Frail, young and weak. Smiles are useless, talk is cheap, Give thou venom, fangs like slime, Ugly freak for all of time. An empty gift just from me, Give it now, so mote it be!

It is my firm belief that magick can be utilized at almost any time if performed through one’s psychic faculties and willpower, as long as one has a firm understanding of the elements necessary.

The world is holy. Nature is holy. The body is holy. Sexuality is holy. The imagination is holy. Divinity is immanent in nature; it is within you as well as without. Most spiritual paths ultimately lead people to the understanding of their own connection to the divine. While human beings are often cut off from experiencing the deep and ever-present connection between themselves and the universe, that connection can often be regained through ceremony and community. The energy you put out into the world comes back.

Witchcraft is not inherently a religion, thought it can be for some. Witchcraft is more of a spirituality, or rather how one relates to the world of spirit, and that’s going to be unique and individual for each witch.

With any spiritual or metaphysical practice, you reap what you sow. In other words, the more time, energy, and dedication that you invest in developing and maintaining these practices, the greater your results will be.

Many philosophers and theologians have grappled with the question of whether reality is a dream, or whether we are the dreamer or the dreamed. In Hermetic philosophy, the answer is both. We are but the dreams and thoughts of the Infinite Mind, but as microcosms of the Infinite Mind, we are also the dreamers.

As all things come from and are imbued with the quintessence of Spirit, all things are holy and alive in their own right—and anything that has a physical existence contains within it a unique personality, energy, and expression of Spirit.

Magic is a convenient word for a whole collection of techniques, all of which involve the mind. In this case, we might conceive of these techniques as including the mobilization of confidence, will, and emotion brought about by the recognition of necessity; the use of imaginative faculties, particularly the ability to visualize, in order to begin to understand how other beings function in nature so we can use this knowledge to achieve necessary ends.

So, um, where's your broomstick?" he countered, his face turning pink from his effort at not laughing. "Broomsticks are *sooo* 1695," I replied, rolling my eye. "Modern witches use vibrators and drop acid just like everyone else." "What?" He frowned, looking confused. "Yeah, *flying on broomsticks* equals a big-ass euphemism for pagan women getting their freak on with broom handles greased up with morning glory butter," I said. "Sometimes strychnine. Not a good idea, but hey, back in the day they used to think a wolf's testicle wrapped in a greasy rag was a good barrier contraceptive. So, yeah, no broomsticks for me. But thanks *ever* so much for asking about my sex life when we've only just met.

Ye gods and fishes, lad, every town has its resident witch. Every town hides some old Greek pagan priest, some Roman worshipper of tiny gods who ran up the roads, hid in culverts, sank in caves to escape the Christians! In every tiny village, boy, in every scrubby farm the old religions hide out . . . all the little lollygaggin' cults, all flavors and types, scramble to survive. See how they run, boys!

Today, there are very few unicorns left, and not many witches or wizards. But there is always magic—the power to create sufficient conditions for spirits to manifest, to bring consciousness from the realms of potential into the world of action.

Witches the Church simply burned at the stake, but something more interesting happened to the witches’ magic plants. The plants were too precious to banish from human society, so in the decades after Pope Innocent’s fiat against witchcraft, cannabis, opium, belladonna, and the rest were simply transferred from the realm of sorcery to medicine, thanks largely to the work of a sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist and physician named Paracelsus. Sometimes called the “Father of Medicine,” Paracelsus established a legitimate pharmacology largely on the basis of the ingredients found in flying ointments. (Among his many accomplishments was the invention of laudanum, the tincture of opium that was perhaps the most important drug in the pharmacopoeia until the twentieth century.) Paracelsus often said that he had learned everything he knew about medicine from the sorceresses. Working under the rational sign of Apollo, he domesticated their forbidden Dionysian knowledge, turning the pagan potions into healing tinctures, bottling the magic plants and calling them medicines.

Magick ability and psychic perception may seem like two completely different things at first. Just as the Roman god Janus is depicted with two faces on a singular being, the psychic and magickal are two sides of one coin. At the core, they’re aspects of how we are engaging and interacting with subtle energies.

Whoever believes that any creature can be changed for the better or the worse, or transformed into another kind or likeness, except by the Creator of all things, is worse than a pagan and a heretic. And so when they report such things are done by witches it is not Catholic, but plainly heretical, to maintain this opinion.

I have learned a great deal from other Witches, Wiccans, Odinists, Voodoo and Hoodou practitioners, Druids and many others who consider themselves Pagan. The one common thread is that every single person has been nonjudgmental. Isn't this what it's all about, acceptance? Are we not here to design our own spiritual path? --Icinia

Sarah Pomeroy, in her careful study, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves,

I cook this food with love and affection, for those I serve, I ask protection.

Most spiritual paths ultimately lead people to the understanding of their own connection to the divine.

Fate is waiting. She can heal. She is unpredictable but not unkind.

In a society of painkillers, people seem to forget that pain has a purpose. It is there to tell us when we’re ailing so we can pinpoint the issue and potentially alleviate it.

strive to be comfortable in chaos and complexity. Be as a shaman who walks in many worlds.

Just because something is basic or simple does not mean that it isn’t immensely powerful.

Sovereignty is also about rising in your personal power and using it to help others come into their power as well.

It’s important to understand that all initiations are beginnings and not endings.

The most potent, most effective magick you can indeed cast is upon yourself to awaken yourself, heal, and grow in wisdom.

Howl my little wolf, howl/For you should never separate sensuality and soul.

Throughout the years, I have found people are confused about my love for both Christianity and Paganism. I tell them what was revealed to me while I lay sleeping in the hospital. The All, whether perceived as a God, or a Goddess, or as one being, or even as an energy field, cares only about one thing: Love. Absolute and unconditional love. --High Priestess Enoch

Thus the writing of ethnography becomes a magical act, no less than the creation of a ritual, the making of a spell, or the manufacture of a sacred object: the ethnographer is by definition a magician.

They might add that monotheism is a political and psychological ideology as well as a religious one, and that the old economic lesson that one-crop economies generally fare poorly also applies to the spiritual realm.

A long time ago I lived in Lisbon,' she said, in softly slurred Portuguese that made the name of the city Leesh-boa. 'But before that, meus neto, my tribe was in the mountains where there are only old things, like the trees and the rocks and the streams. There are truths to be learned from the old things -' She hesitated, and her brown, shrunken claw closed over Pete's hand. 'Do you know the truth, Pedrinho?' ("Before I Wake...")

Symbols are important. The Christians followed the pagans there, carving and painting their one God as the old ones carved and painted the many. Neither understand that the one is part of the many, the many part of the one.

The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing. But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so. Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with every cell of our being, or lie in the grass watching stars and bats and dreams wander by. We can live inspired, stirring the darkness of the cauldron within our souls, the source, the womb temple of our true creativity, brilliant, untamed

In the seventeenth century, John Locke spoke of tolerance. Asking, ‘Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all he holds?’ he asserted that nobody could ever be sure of what is true. How do we have the right, then, to proclaim our own infallible truth or judge others’ ideas as right or wrong? Once again Locke’s words support a fundamental concept within modern *Pagan thought, and one here that allows a circle of Pagans to gather together to share prayers of reverence and respect in ceremony, a Wiccan devotee of Demeter who sees her as one aspect of the Great Goddess she calls Isis, beside a Druid polytheist who lives in the service of his god Gwyn ap Nydd, a Witch who is a priestess of the horse goddess Epona, an animist honouring a power she calls Darkness, a Heathen who has struck a good deal with Odin, and a chaos magician who thinks they’re all completely mad, himself honouring the power that seethes within the patterns of all life. The harmony that allows them to stand in ceremony together comes from that acknowledgement that there is no one truth that can be shared. Each individual has questioned, studied, explored, experienced life and made choices of belief that are uniquely personal.

We’ve all had those nights where drunken sex with a witch in a blood pentagram under a full moon on the roof of your favourite Johannesburg nightclub summons a hard-drinking demon who changes the fate of the human race forever. Right? No? Just me, then?

To make this sign, the first and little fingers are upraised and the other fingers folded in towards the palm. This was a secret sign used for recognition purposes by followers of the medieval witch cult who were traditionally worshippers of the pagan Horned God.

My thesis is not that we anchor the witch in history, but that we understand that witchcraft is a set of relationships whose rhythm is that of the moon, stars, sun and earth. A witchcraft which adapts to the state of the world as it is, not backing into an imagined past.

Whatever you touch will touch you back. The simplest way that I can try to explain it is that when you spend time touching the core of the earth, soaking in the stars, communing with the moon, aligning with the elements, working with the gods and spirits—it changes a person.

Witchcraft offers us the connection we need to be more than desperately criss-crossing the wasteland and perilously low on gas. In a real sense we have become severed from connections, overwritten, cut-up, lost in a globalised symbol set that provides no meaning beyond a message to consume.

I saw the sea-gods come, moving with an irresistible momentum, not rising into the air as the riders rose, but deep in their own element, unhasting, unresting; for the power of the sea is in the weight of the waters and not in the wind-blown crests. These Great Ones rose with the tide, and like the tide, nothing might withstand them.

Although the medieval witch-cult of Western Europe derived from a primitive, non-selfconscious nature-religion, with sophistication it had become corrupt (as had paganism in ancient Greece) and developed into a pathological cult in which the doctrine and rites of the Christian Church were deliberately parodied, and evil instincts and desires were sanctioned and encouraged.

Witchcraft can be seen as an art accomplished through the action of a set of three simple principles, namely: orientation, presence and imperative. These are the three phases which together create a mythic topography of witchcraft. Without these we have only the broken spars of folklore, misreadings of Christian apocrypha, and blind impulse. This is my narrow path into the dark wood.

The main thing these books have in common is their intent to help you live your best possible magickal and mundane life. We all walk very different paths as Pagans and Witches, and what is right for one person won't be right for the next. But my aim is to make it easier for you to find and follow the path that is right for you, integrating spirit and magick and heart into your everyday tasks as you walk it.

New Year’s Eve at the Witches’ Ball, with all the wiccans, druids, and pagans in their incredible costumes, was the best time of the year. Easily Zin’s favorite holiday, because the night was for everyone of all traditions, religions, and countries. Celebrated by anyone, anywhere, on that hour. It represented the boundary between years, this in-between time. Plus, that evening was about the moment. It was here now. Indisputably immediate.

Witchcraft is part of a living web of species and relationships, a world which we have forgotten to observe, understand or inhabit. Many people reading this paragraph will not know even the current phase of the moon, and if asked for it will not instinctively look up to the current quarter of the sky, but down to their computers. Neither will they be able to name the plants, birds or animals within a metre or mile radius of their door. Witchcraft asks that we do these first things, this is presence. Animism is not embedded in the natural world, it is the natural world. Our witchcraft is that spirit of place, which is made from a convergence of elements and inhabitants. Here I include animals, both living and dead, human and inhuman. Our helpers are mammals, reptiles, fish, birds and insects. Some can be counted allies, others are more ambivalent. Predator and prey are interdependent. These all have the same origin and ancestry, they from from plants, from copper green life. Bones become soil. The plants have been nourished on the minerals drawn up from the bowels of the earth. These are the living tools of the witch's craft. The cycle of the elements and seasons is read in this way. Flux, life and death are part of this, as are extinctions, catastrophe, fire and flood. We avail ourselves of these, and ultimately a balance is sought. Our ritual space is written in starlight, watched over by sun and moon. So this leaves us with a simple question. How can there be any Witchcraft if this is all destroyed? It is not a rhetorical question. Our land, our trees, animals and elements hold spirit. Will we let our familiars, literally our family be destroyed? If we hold any real belief and experience of spirit, then it does not ask, it demands us to fight for it.

From the very beginning, "witch" has been a synonym for "the Other." Witches are women when the cultural norm is male; they are pagan when the cultural norm is Christian; they are spiritual when the cultural norm is materialist; they become a religion as the cultural norm turns secular; they are healers when anxiety about the medical establishment is an issue; they are environmentalists when big business has bought the government; they are magic in the world of science.

Specter of all evils, his terrible hand extends a vengeance. A great beast, the Devil's apprentice - ruler of evil and good. Enemy of God, an outcast of Heaven - emperor of all torments. A ritual figure, a pagan idol - occult leader for all Witches & Satanists. Philosophy of Good, an exile in Holy Pages - his blackness is his reign. Preist dreads him, pagans worship him - for he is God in the universe of unclean. A victor king in the kingdom of sinners, known as the all-powerful Baphomet.

Donnaz and kept him there a whole summer adorning the banqueting-room. "But I advise you, little master," Bruno added, "not to talk too loudly of your discovery; for we live in changed days, do you see, and it seems those are pagan sorcerers and witches painted on the wall, and because of that, and their nakedness, the chaplain has forbidden all the young boys and wenches about the place to set foot there; and the Marchioness herself, I'm told, doesn't enter without leave." This was the more puzzling to Odo that he had

By labeling the different gods and spirits as the Devil, it created a catchall that coalesced their unique essences in a workable archetype that survived in the popular folklore. Author Gemma Gary captures this idea beautifully when she writes, “Ironically, it may perhaps be the Church, in its keenness to eradicate adherence to pagan divinity by grafting and projecting it onto the diabolical, that has, unwittingly, most thoroughly preserved the potency, liberation and illumination of the ‘Old One’ and handed him back to the Witches as the ‘Devil.

Wiccan" means femininity, a soul of power, she who knows the magic words, she who heals, she who knows her power and uses it. Wiccans are free-spirited and strong women without age. Wiccan is someone who can change consciousness at will... someone who creates what is not apparently in stories but truly arises from them-- from all the hardships she faced as she wandered around the earth. Wicca is the unsung songs within us, the secrets of our soul which otherwise may be left unspoken. Of all the arts forms, Wicca is the most personal. With love, from a wiccan.

she came out—dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric—asking for a wood saw and spackle, he’d been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn’t look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he’d designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms.

Perhaps it's time to name the Unnamed God, even feebly and in our own wicked image, that we may at least survive under the illusion of an authority that could care for us. For whittle away from the Unnamed God anything approximating character, and what have you got? A big hollow wind. And wind may have gale force but it may not have moral force; and a voice in a whirlwind is a carnival barker's trick. More appealing - she no saw, for once - the old-timers' notions of paganism. Lurlina in her fairy chariot, hovering just out of sight in the clouds, ready to swoop down some millennium or other and remember who we are. The Unnamed God, by virtue of its anonymity, can't ever be suspected of a surprise visit. And would we recognize the Unnamed God if it knocked on our doors?

I have noticed that many intellectuals turn themselves off the instant they are confronted with the words witchcraft, magic, occultism, and religion, as if such ideas exert a dangerous power that might weaken their rational faculties. Yet many of these people maintain a generous openness about visionaries, poets, and artists, some of whom may be quite mad according to “rational” standards. They are fascinated by people of diverse professions and lifestyles who have historical ties with, let us say, the Transcendentalists or the Surrealists, as long as the word occult is not mentioned. If Neo-Paganism were presented as an intellectual and artistic movement whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of sexuality, and the meaning of community, academics would flock to study it. Political philosophers would write articles on the Neo-Pagans’ sense of wonder and the minority vision they represent. Literary critics would compare the poetic images in the small magazines published and distributed by the groups with images in the writings of Blake and Whitman. Jungian psychologists would rush to study the Neo-Pagans’ use of ancient archetypes and their love of the classics and ancient lore. But words like witch and pagan do not rest easily in the mind or on the tongue. Although reporting on Paganism and Wicca has improved in the last decade, pop journalists often still present a Neo-Paganism composed of strange characters and weird rites.

While earlier folklorists would have dismissed Neo-Paganism as an example of folklorismus, “invented tradition,” or fakelore, folklorists today are more likely to understand it as part of the process through which traditions are shaped, selected, and reinterpreted by individuals and groups to serve larger social, political, and ideological ends.

The central teaching of the Neoplatonists was the fundamental oneness of everything in the universe. “The One” was imagined as a divine unity that was infinite, perfect, and fundamentally unknowable by humans, given their limitations. From the One emanated a hierarchical set of realities that included the nous, or mind; the world soul; human souls; and the physical world of matter. Each emanation was thought to be a reflection of its predecessor in the hierarchy, so that all emanations existed as aspects of the One.

Although some have called this “the lesbian religion,” Dianics as a group, like the women in our circle this evening, are a mix of straight, lesbian, and bi. (Ruth herself divorced her husband and is now in a long-term partnership with a fellow Dianic, but she says that most Dianics are not gay.) Its rituals may be separatist, but the movement is not anti-men—it’s simply not about men.7 And so, even in the midst of this back-to-nature Pagan gathering, the Dianics feel a need to guard their space apart. Not out of physical fear—not in this setting—but in fear of having their territory taken away from them, of losing the right to gather separately, speak freely and privately, find ways to become stronger independent of the other sex. This is what women fought for in the seventies, and what we pretend we no longer need today.

Above all, we new pagans must learn to know and honor the Many as they manifest in our own time and place. While the ways of the ancestors—the Received Tradition—must always inform our thought and action, we are truest to our heritage when we think and act as natives of here and now. Our mandate is to be the pagans for our own time, our own place, our own post-modern, science-driven Western culture. This is the only kind of pagan that we can honestly be; anything else is pretense." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism

While the ethnic paganisms have important things to teach us concerning the necessity of cultural authenticity, at their worst they become purist ghettos of nostalgia-driven re-enactors. We must never forget our Received Tradition or fail to learn from it; without it, we have no solid basis by which to evaluate our own experience. But ultimately the ways of our ancestors cannot teach us what we most need to know: how to be honestly pagan for our own time and place. That understand-ing can come only from our own encounter with the very sources that inspired these ethnic traditions in the first place. We must drink from the original wellspring itself." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism

the resurgence of the elder gods breaks down the wall of separation between religion and science that has partitioned Western thought since the Enlightenment. The rise of science has taught us things about the Earth, Sun, and Storm that the ancients would have marveled to know. We are in the enviable, irresistible, position of being able to learn, through science, about the very gods themselves." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism

It is on those mist-filled nights, when the wind is strong and curious, when the air is alive with something unseen but felt, that you finally believe...oh, yes, you finally believe what your heart has always known: magic is real and it is everywhere.” —Diary of a Pagan

Wycombe” (pronounced “wickam”) a possible source for the name of Gardner’s group, the Brotherhood of the Wica [sic].

Wrong. This was wrong. A list of words raced through his head. Apostate, heretic, pagan. Witch.

Mona wasn’t innocent, except in the most serious sense of the word. That is, she didn’t think she was bad, and she didn’t mean to do bad. She was just sort of a … pagan

A group of women in a feminist Witchcraft coven once told me that, to them, spiritual meant, “the power within oneself to create artistically and change one’s life.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of the Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2015 Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Vermilion, 2014 Clare Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home, Hays, 2007 Tisha Morris, Mind, Body, Home: Transform Your Life One Room at a Time, Llewellyn, 2014 Mandy Paradise, Witches, Pagans, and Cultural Appropriation: Considerations & Applications for a Magical Practice, Anchor and Star, 2017 Kristin Petrovich, Elemental Energy: Crystal and Gemstone Rituals for a Beautiful Life, HarperElixir, 2016 Robert Simmons, The Pocket Book of Stones: Who They Are and What They Teach, North Atlantic Books, 2015 Jan Spiller and Karen McCoy, Spiritual Astrology: A Path to Divine Awakening, Touchstone, 2010 Esther M. Sternberg, MD, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being, Harvard University Press, 2010

You use the forces of magic, I take it.” I folded my arms and leaned against the wall. “What gave it away?” He bared his teeth, white against his dark skin. “How long have you been a Wiccan?” “A what?” “A pagan. A witch.” “I’m not a witch,” I said, glancing out the door. “I’m a wizard.” Sanya frowned. “What is the difference?” “Wizard has a Z.” He looked at me blankly. “No one appreciates me,” I muttered.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Often the question of which books were used for research in the Merry series is asked. So, here is a list (in no particular order). While not comprehensive, it contains the major sources. An Encyclopedia of Faeries by Katharine Briggs Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend by Miranda J. Green Celtic Goddesses by Miranda J. Green Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis Goddesses in World Mythology by Martha Ann and Dorothy Myers Imel A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross The Ancient British Goddesses by Kathy Jones Fairy Tradition in Britain by Lewis Spense One Hundred Old Roses for the American Garden by Clair G. Martin Taylor’s Guide to Roses Pendragon by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd Kings and Queens from Collins Gem Butterflies of Europe: A Princeton Guide by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington Butterflies and Moths of Missouri by J. Richard and Joan E. Heitzman Dorling Kindersly Handbook: Butterflies and Moths by David Carter The Natural World of Bugs and Insects by Ken and Rod Preston Mafham Big Cats: Kingdom of Might by Tom Brakefield Just Cats by Karen Anderson Wild Cats of the World by Art Wolfe and Barbara Sleeper Beauty and the Beast translated by Jack Zipes The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old by Ralph Manheim Complete Guide to Cats by the ASPCA Field Guide to Insects and Spiders from the National Audubon Society Mammals of Europe by David W. MacDonald Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham Northern Mysteries and Magick by Freya Aswym Cabbages and Kings by Jonathan Roberts Gaelic: A Complete Guide for Beginners The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley Holland The Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

After writing an Our Father backward on a page in blood, "you should carve runes on a staff and go to the cemetery at midnight with these two things, and go to whatever tomb strikes your fancy. However, it would be more prudent to attack the smaller graves. You should then place the staff on top of the grave and roll it back and forth while reciting the Our Father backward at the same time, following how it is written on the page, as well as some magic spells that few people know, except for witches. During this time, the revenant will slowly rise from the tomb, because this is not something that takes place quickly, and revenants will be praying greatly and saying: "Let me (rest) in peace. -Jón Árnason

I'd marry him everyday if I could.

Life is always living.

I believe in the possibility of everything.

Visualization is the main ingredient of magic, inner peace: power.

Victoria Woodhull was a free love and reproductive rights advocate who once made her living as a psychic and Spiritualist medium. In 1872 she also became the first woman to run for president of the United States, running on a ticket that included abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass as her vice president. A sex worker and equal opportunity slut, Woodhull is said to have saucily proclaimed: “I am a very promiscuous free lover. I want the love of you all, promiscuously. It makes no difference who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian, I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love.” Her legacy is carried on today by the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, which works to “affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right.