Paganism Quotes

...What you're calling evil, is part of human nature.

The Judeo-Christian heritage has left us with the view of a universe composed of warring opposites, which are valued as either good or evil. They cannot coexist. A valuable insight of Witchcraft, shared by many earth-based religions, is that polarities are in balance, not at war.

Starhawk

Mythology didn't cease to exist and be useful to Pagans when we gained digital watch technology.

Thomm Quackenbush

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos. - Muzwot

Muzwot

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos.

Muzwot

I don’t know how to talk because I’m feeling.I’m listening to my voice as if it were someone else’s,And my voice is speaking about her as if she were speaking.She has hair as blond as yellow wheat in the sun,And when she speaks her mouth says things that aren’t words.She laughs, and her teeth are as clean as stones in a river.

Alberto Caeiro

Having spent all of my decision-making years as a Pagan of one stripe or another, I have long found it condescending at best to assume one cannot worship the old gods or believe in magick without breaking out the leather bracers, wings, or Ye Broken Olde English.

Thomm Quackenbush

And if the earth Gods wreak vengeance on the sinless and the sinful alike, then this further destruction cannot be punishment for sins, but is in the way of all nature.

Marion Zimmer Bradley

It is the distinction between transpersonal and interpersonal relationships with deities which sets naturalistic polytheism apart from neopolytheism. Interpersonal relationships are between two or more persons and are focused upon individual perspectives. A transpersonal relationship extends beyond the individual perspective, transcending the distinctions of ego and personality. For example:A neopolytheist has a close personal relationship with a modernized personification of Thor, to whom she prays to daily.A naturalistic polytheist practices breathing as a sacrament which allows her to focus on life’s connection to the atmosphere, altering her perception of separateness, resulting in viewing the at-mosphere as a deity." - Glen Gordon, "Naturalism and the Gods

John Halstead

My gods are not tame. They do not always come when they are called.This is not a failure of ritual or a weakness of belief. It is the nature of my gods. I would no more expect a god to “show up” in my ritual space than I would expect to be able to call a mountain into my living room. That is simply not the nature of mountains. If I want to meet a mountain, I am the one who must move." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Gods Like Mountains, Gods Like Mist

John Halstead

My gods are not always like human beings. Sometimes my gods are like mountains, sometimes they are like mist. Sometimes I seek my gods in the forests, sometimes in ritual space or the beat of the drum. Some-times my gods are inscrutable or apophatic, and my relationship with them is one of longing and seeking rather than invocation and offering. And sometimes it is the mountains themselves who are gods, and the rivers and trees who speak." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Gods Like Mountains, Gods Like Mist

John Halstead

Natural polytheism embraces the science of ecology as a basic metaphor for theological inquiry. In other words, natural polytheism seeks to understand our relationship with the gods as an aspect of interrelated systems of being, consciousness and meaning. Its focus is, first and foremost, on the wildernesses that defy our carefully mapped boundary lines, that penetrate even the most civilized cultural centers and underlie our most cherished notions of what it means to be human." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Natural Theology: Polytheism Beyond the Pale

John Halstead

Water’s water and that’s why it’s beautiful.

Alberto Caeiro

That lady has a piano.It’s nice, but it’s not the running of riversOr the murmuring trees make ..Who needs a piano?It’s better to have earsAnd love Nature.

Alberto Caeiro

I don’t bother with rhyme. RarelyAre two trees the same, one beside the other.I think and write like flowers have colorBut with less perfection in my way of expressing myselfBecause I lack the divine simplicityOf wholly being only my exterior.I see and I’m moved,Moved the way water runs when the ground is slopingAnd what I write is as natural as the rising wind...

Alberto Caeiro

She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like before,I go on like before, alone in the field.It’s like my head had been lowered,And if I think this, and raise my headAnd the golden sun dries the need to cry I can’t stop having.How vast the field and interior love... !I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was water and trees losing their leaves.

Alberto Caeiro

In art and mythology, the Goddess appears in three forms. White represents the virgin, red the mother, and black, the crone, or the death-goddess.

Erin O'Riordan

Legend tells us that the High King of Tara, who ruled supreme over all the Kings of Ireland, looked out from his castle one day during the festival of Eostre and saw a fire blazing away on a far hillside. Furious with this obvious disregard for the law, for which the penalty was death, he sent out soldiers to arrest the guilty party. When the soldiers arrived at the hillside they found St Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland, piling wood onto his fire and immediately seized him. Standing before the King he was asked why he disobeyed the law, and he explained that his fire was a sign that Christ had risen from the dead and was the light of the world. The King so admired Patrick’s courage that he forgave him and became a convert to Christianity!

Carole Carlton

By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel’s being set exclusively apart for God.

William Lane Craig

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.

Justin Martyr

That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.

Seamus Heaney

He possesses the minimum sensibility necessary for his intelligence not to be merely mathematical, the minimum a human being needs so that it can be proven with a thermometer that he's not dead.

Álvaro de Campos

Other times when I hear the wind blowI feel that just hearing the wind blow makes it worth being born.

Alberto Caeiro

I’m in no hurry. What for?The sun and moon aren’t in a hurry: they’re right.Hurrying is believing people can get past their legs,Or that, jumping, they can land past their shadow.No; I don’t know how to hurry.

Alberto Caeiro

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

Arin Murphy-Hiscock

The Tejo runs down from SpainAnd the Tejo goes into the sea in Portugal.Everybody knows that.But not many people know the river of my villageAnd where it comes fromAnd where it’s going.And so, because it belongs to less people,The river of my village is freer and greater.

Alberto Caeiro

There is one element in Christianity which was not borrowed from Paganism -- religious intolerance. Referring to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, a writer on China says: 'Between the followers of the three national religions there is not only a total absence of persecution and bitter feeling, but a very great indifference as to which of them a man may belong.... Among the politer classes, when strangers meet, the question is asked: 'To what sublime religion do you belong,' and each one pronounces a eulogium, not on his own religion, but on that professed by the others, and concludes with the oft-repeated formula 'Religions are many; reason is one; we are all brothers.

John E. Remsburg

(Marlowe's) Faustus stubbornly reverts to his atheistic beliefs and continues his elementary pagan re-education ~ the inferno to him is a 'place' invented by men.

E.A. Bucchianeri

When I lay down on my deathbed, I want to know that I have done all I could to be a first rate human, not a third rate pawn of the gods.

Thomm Quackenbush

Chabrias, ever preoccupied to offer the gods the worship due them, was disturbed by the progress of sects of this kind among the populace of large cities; he feared for the welfare of our ancient religions, which yoke men to no dogma whatsoever, but lend themselves, on the contrary, to interpretations as varied as nature itself; they allow austere spirits who desire to do so to invent for themselves a higher morality, but they do not bind the masses to precepts so strict as to engender immediate constraint and hypocrisy.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.

John Stuart Mill

Lightly, lightly, very lightly,A wind passes very lightlyAnd goes away, always very lightly.And I don’t know what I thinkAnd I don’t want to know.

Alberto Caeiro

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!

Keisha Keenleyside

WINTER'S GHOST:Autumn moonincautious in the dark riverWinter’s ghost walkswith a covered faceand silver bones wait in all animalsto be bone cloth upon her shoulderwait for her happiness in that they are silver

Tamara Rendell

Would you teach me, Seth?’Seth smiled and leaned back in his seat. ‘You do realise, of course, that you have no idea what you ask of me?’ Seth replied after a moment.‘Of course,’ Christopher replied quietly. ‘Could you tell me?’‘No. That is the problem you see,’ Seth said. ‘Magic is something you can never prepare someone for. Magic will make you, Christopher. It will find all the secret empty places of longing in you and fill them more surely than any other love. And magic will break your heart.’ A slight, rather sad smile crossed Christopher’s face for a moment. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You think your heart is already broken, you think that this crooked and winding way is the only path left for you now. But you’re wrong. The heart breaks like every wave on the beach and there’s a darkness you’ll have to pass through that you can’t even see from where you are now.

Lee Morgan

Yes, this is what my senses alone have learned:—Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

Alberto Caeiro

Sometimes in the evening on Summer days,Even when there’s not a breeze at all, it seemsLike there’s a light breeze blowing for a minuteBut the trees are unmovingIn every leaf of their leavesAnd our feelings have had an illusion,An illusion of what would please them...

Alberto Caeiro

I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, “Are you at peace with yourself?” and he answered, “No, I’m at peace.” It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one.

Álvaro de Campos

If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it.I’m a mystic, but only in my body,My soul is simple and doesn’t think.

Alberto Caeiro

Quit Believing in Lies and Always Search For the Truth!

Charleston Parker

I Only Believe What I See But I Question Everything I Hear

Charleston Parker

Last summer we had eight people in the [Christian] congregation who danced four different sun dances. Of course the missionaries have said all along that those ceremonies are pagan and we can't do that. Our people insist that they are free in the gospel, free in Christ Jesus, to participate in Indian religious forms and ceremonies. - George Tinker

Jim Wallis (Author)

The nature of Paganism is that of exploring, evolution, and opening up.

Gede Parma

Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose.

Geerhardus Vos

If you are drawn to the left hand path, it's usually because you've had some kind of life experience that has shocked you, awakened you.

Nikolas Schreck

Nature never remembers, that’s why she’s beautiful.

Alberto Caeiro

Let’s be simple and calm,Like brooks and trees,And God will love us by makingBeautiful things like the trees and brooks for us,And give us greenness in his spring,And a river for us to go to when we end...

Alberto Caeiro

One day when God fell asleepAnd the Holy Ghost went off flying,He got into a box of miracles and stole three.With the first he made it so that no one would know he had run away.With the second he made himself a human boy forever.With the third he created a Christ eternally crucifiedAnd left him nailed to the cross that there is in HeavenWhere he’s used as a model for other crosses.Then he ran away to the sunAnd came down on the first ray he caught.

Alberto Caeiro

I’m a keeper of flocks.The flock is my thoughtsAnd my thoughts are all sensations.I think with my eyes and with my earsAnd with my hands and feetAnd with my nose and mouth.Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling itAnd eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning.That’s why when on a hot dayI feel sad from liking it so much,And I throw myself lengthwise on the grassAnd shut my hot eyes,And feeling my whole body lying on reality,I know the truth and I’m happy.

Alberto Caeiro

And sometimes if I wantTo imagine I’m a lamb(Or a whole flockSpreading out all over the hillsideSo I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),It’s only because I feel what I write at sunset,Or when a cloud passes its hand over the lightAnd silence runs over the grass outside.When I sit and write poemsOr, walking along the roads or pathways,I write poems on the paper in my thoughts,I feel a staff in my handAnd see my silhouetteOn top of a knoll,Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas,Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock,With a silly smile like someone who doesn’t understand what somebody’s sayingBut tries to pretend they do.

Alberto Caeiro

Nothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given.

Álvaro de Campos

But if God is the flowers and the treesAnd the hills and the sun and the moonlight,Then I believe in him,Then I believe in him all the time,And my whole life is an oration and a mass,And a communion with my eyes and through my ears.

Alberto Caeiro

Let’s only care about the place where we are.There’s beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else.If there’s someone beyond the curve in the road,Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the road,That’s what the road is to them.

Alberto Caeiro

There is a theory that men do not need Paganism because they have endless avenues of societal power available. Why use spells when one can get a bank loan with little trouble? The world already bends over backward to accommodate men, so why perfect the art of magickally shaping it?

Thomm Quackenbush

Paganism is the default of most children, since they excel at magical thinking.

Thomm Quackenbush

Pagans earn their reputations for relaxed sexual mores, often in rebellion from the repression of their religions during adolescence. At a Pagan festival, one need only lower one's guard to be offered sex under the cloaking of the sacred.

Thomm Quackenbush

That thing over there was more there than it’s there!Yes, sometimes I cry about the perfect body that doesn’t exist.But the perfect body is the bodiest body there can be,And the rest are the dreams men have,The myopia of someone who doesn’t look very much,

Alberto Caeiro

the Great Vaccination — the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia.

Álvaro de Campos

and the idea of nothingness — the most terrifying of all ideas, when thought of with feeling — has, in my dear master’s work and in my memories of him, something as high and luminous as sunlight upon snowy, unscalable peaks.

Álvaro de Campos

in exceptional circumstances — exceptional in that all circumstances in life are exceptional, especially those which are nothing in themselves and come to be everything in their results.

Álvaro de Campos

1 2 3 Next

Paganism Quotes

Related Topics