More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It’s about the most sacred, serious, and unfunny obsession we all harbor: a desire to feel safe, to feel sure about our identity and purpose, to have power.
This is a decentralized folk spirituality after all, whose foundational belief is that you should be empowered to connect with the divine yourself—no intermediaries. It is an autodidact’s dream religion, practically designed for the autobahn of free information that is the internet.
Witchcraft is the process by which empowered individuals shape reality with their will.
my curiosity got the better of me and I did what every modern woman does when she feels the urge to discover herself: I mailed my spit to strangers.
Witchcraft is truly the religion of crafters.
To hear yourself promise to take your own dreams of spiritual fulfillment seriously carries an unexpected weight.
“It starts as a form of escapism. But then maybe you find something there in the fantasy world that actually resonates with your spiritual side, and so you take it back with you into reality.”
“We are creatures of story. Storytelling was one of our earliest magics. These stories became myths and legends… and science fiction is also mythology. It’s the mythology of the future, in which we’re telling stories of what might be: both positive and cautionary tales.”
practicing Witchcraft—or any “alternative religion”—more or less requires you to become the benevolent genius CEO of your own spirituality. This necessitates a “fuck you” attitude toward mainstream society and a deep surety of your own internal compass. I think for some people this idea is liberating.
you have to stop working from a place that is about making some invisible teacher happy.
Scott Cunningham informs me that “every goddess is resident within the concept of the Goddess; every god in the God.”
Yes, I’m aware there’s probably a metaphor here. But sometimes just living your life one day at a time is enough.
wonder how often our lives are the results of someone else’s prayers.
just because someone looks like you, doesn’t mean that they’re safe for you.
Basically, my practice honors who I am in every facet. It’s not in a box. It reflects me and I reflect it. It’s a lot of different things.”
“That is something I’ve learned is a trademark of Witchcraft,”
Then I remember I am a Witch now. I have power in situations I was previously asked to simply accept.
The ways of the old country were lost to me. —LORRAINE MONTEAGUT
They are here all the time. I can’t summon something that’s always here.
It occurs to me that the energy in my body is the same as the energy in the red power lights, just a different current. What’s inside the office lights is inside me. It’s also what’s in the stars a million miles away. The water in my blood is the same stuff rushing in the creek next to me. The wind that is outside of me is also inside of me. I pull it in and push it out; it is the same breath being used by the frogs, the birds, the people breaking into cars downtown, pumping through the HVAC systems of the condos down the road. I pick up my hand and stare at it, thick, heavy, cold. I am earth.
...more
The purpose of ritual is to change the mind of the human being. It’s a sacred drama in which you are the audience as well as the participant, and the purpose of it is to activate parts of the mind that are not activated by everyday activity. —SHARON DEVLIN AS QUOTED BY MARGOT ADLER
I don’t know how to describe the realization that I am a star, and also a river, and shit, and a light bulb and a kitten, without sounding like I am either in need of or have been abusing some powerful medication.
The stones at Stonehenge feel like hugs. I don’t know how else to describe it. You step inside, and you feel like you are being watched. No. Protected.
When you perform a magical act in accordance with your true will, you are in harmony with deity. —THEA SABIN
Neil Gaiman once wrote in American Gods that the deities we believe in grow strong from our faith, and the ones we ignore grow weak. The book is fiction, but the metaphor is real.
But now I understand there are more benefits to working with a group than just intimacy exposure therapy. A coven can get you out of the worst fights with your own head.
Most skydivers close their eyes right before they jump out of the plane. You have to trick yourself into big things sometimes.
I discovered that “honest placebos” can still be effective; theoretically I could not believe in magic, but my spell could still very well have the desired effect. But this is hardly a common idea in modern Witchcraft—most people still agree magical success hinges on belief.
My little thought bubble that’s infused with whatever this material is that touches everything at once—it scales out and out and out and reverberates, like rings in the surface of water, throughout the universe.
