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“What I want to show is that because of the very nature of the historical disciplines, historians cannot show whether or not miracles ever happened. Anyone who disagrees with me—who thinks historians can demonstrate that miracles happen—needs to be even-handed about it, across the board. In Jesus’ day there were lots of people who allegedly performed miracles. There were Jewish holy men such as Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the circle drawer. There were pagan holy men such as Apollonius of Tyana, a philosopher who could allegedly heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. He was allegedly supernaturally born and at the end of his life he allegedly ascended to heaven. Sound familiar? There were pagan demigods, such as Hercules, who could also bring back the dead. Anyone who is willing to believe in the miracles of Jesus needs to concede the possibility of other people performing miracles, in Jesus’ day and in all eras down to the present day and in other religions such as Islam and indigenous religions of Africa and Asia.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“I am much worse than a heretic – I am a pagan”
― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs

“I was struck by the ancient, pagan feel of the place. New Orleans doesn't feel like any other American city I've been to. It has an atmosphere like Rome or Istanbul, a sense of the veil being very thin between this world and the world of the fictional and the dead. It is an eerie, haunted, and beautiful place - as any port should be.”
― Craig Ferguson, Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations

“You don’t have to wander around in silk robes burning sage with crystals tied to your head to find the power within.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, Walk Your Path: A Magical Awakening

“The great lesson of pagan and Christian texts can be spelled out in a few words: "Help the dead; they will return the favor.”
― Claude Lecouteux, The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind

“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.”
― Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation

“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.”
― Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation

“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.”
― Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation

“Drink in the heat of an ancient sun
held in the cold fire of water rising
from earth and rock
Spilling over your cupped hands
and drawn to lips and tongue
Pouring water’s memory
of the azure mist it fell from
into the chalice of your flesh
Turning your eyes skywards
with desire
for the freedom it was born of”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides

“There is death in the city when the understanding of the human being about himself is no longer related to an actually existing God. For then human beings inhabit an impersonal world of their own shifting values and their own power plays. Without a knowable God in heaven, man is left without real meaning and morals on earth. He will think and act just like pagans, whose integration is with land, earth, and nature (Latin: pagus).”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City

“The last, and neo-Platonic, wave of Paganism which had gathered up into itself much from the preceding waves, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and what not, came far inland and made brackish lakes which have, perhaps, never been drained. Not all Christians at all times have detected them or admitted their existence: and among those who have done so there have always been two attitudes. There was then, and is still, a Christian ‘left’, eager to detect and anxious to banish every Pagan element; but also a Christian ‘right’ who, like St Augustine, could find the doctrine of the Trinity foreshadowed in the Platonici,2 or could claim triumphantly, like Justin Martyr, ‘Whatever things have been well said by all men belong to us Christians’.3”
― C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

“Any religion can give you answers to these questions. The fact that different religions give different answers—sometimes radically different answers—is proof of how hard they are. A good religion will help you explore the questions, contemplate possible answers, and find the ones that best fit your values, beliefs, and experience of the world. Good religion will give you tools for living when there are no answers.”
― John Beckett, The Path of Paganism: An Experience-Based Guide to Modern Pagan Practice

“All their religious conceptions are outward and material. They say that God is of a bodily nature, and has a body in form like that of a man. Material, too, is their conception of eternal life. Ask to what place they are departing, or what hope they have, and they answer — “To another land better than this.” Divine men of old told of a happy life for happy souls, to be passed in the “isles of the blest,” or in the Elysian plains of which Homer speaks. Plato taught that the soul was immortal, and expressly calls the place where it is sent “earth." …They expect to see God with the bodily eye, to hear His voice with their ears, and to touch Him with sensible hands…If a race so craven and carnal can understand anything, let them give ear. Give up your outward vision and look upwards with your mind ; turn aside from the eye of the flesh and raise the eye of the soul : only so will you see God. And if you seek a guide, you must shun vagabonds and jugglers who recommend their phantoms ; you must not blaspheme as idols those who prove themselves to be gods, while you worship one who is not even an idol, but truly a dead man, and seek out a father like unto Him.”
― Celsus, The Fragments of Celsus

“Above me, sister moon and her union of stars.”
― Earthschool Harmony, Back to Grace

“He: "I mean, are you happy and are you fully alive?"
I laughed: ''As you can see, you wove witty jokes into the lecture to please your listeners. You heaped up learned expressions to impress them. You were restless and hasty, as if still compelled to snatch up all knowledge. You are not in yourself"
Although these words at first seemed laughable to me, they still made an impression on me, and reluctantly I had to / credit the old man, since he was right.
Then he said: "Dear Ammonius, I have delightful tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has brought us all salvation." ""What are you saying," I called, "you probably mean Osiris, who shall appear in the mortal body?"
"No," he replied, "this man lived in Judea and was born from a virgin."
I laughed and answered: "I already know about this; a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen to Judea, whose image appears on the walls of one of our temples, and reported it as a fairy tale."
"No," the old man insisted, "he was the Son of God."
"Then you mean Horus the son of Osiris, don't you?" I answered.
"No,hewasnotHorus,butarealman,andhewashung from a cross."
"Oh, but this must be Seth, surely; whose punishments our old ones have often described."
But the old man stood by his conviction and said: "He died and rose up on the third day."
"Well, then he must be Osiris," I replied impatiently. "No," he cried, "he is called Jesus the anointed one." ''Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the poor
honor at the harbor, and whose unclean mysteries they celebrate in cellars."
"He was a man and yet the Son of God," said the old man staring at me intently.
"That's nonsense, dear old man," I said, and showed him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces the words returned to me: a man and yet the Son of God. It seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought me to Christianity.
I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a
transformation ofyour Egyptian teachings?"
A: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate
expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." I: "Yes, but do you then assume that the history of religions is
aimed at a final goal?"
A: "My father once bought a black slave at the market from the
region of the source of the Nile. He came from a country that had heard ofneither Osiris nor the other Gods; he told me many things in a more simple language that said the same as we believed about Osiris and the other Gods. I learned to understand that those uneducated Negroes unknowingly already possessed most of what the religions of the cultured peoples had developed into complete doctrines. Those able to read that language correctly could thus recognize in it not only the pagan doctrines but also the doctrine of Jesus. And it's with this that I now occupy myself I read the gospels and seek their meaning which is yet to come.We know their meaning as it lies before us, but not their hidden meaning which points to the future. It's erroneous to believe that religions differ in their innermost essence. Strictly speaking, it's always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form of religion is the meaning of the antecedent."
I: "Have you found out the meaning which is yet to come?" A: "No, not yet; it's very difficult, but I hope I'll succeed. Sometimes it seems to me that I need the stimulation of others,
but I realize that those are temptations of Satan."
I: "Don't you believe that you'd succeed ifyou were nearer men?"
A: "maybeyoureright."
He looks at me suddenly as if doubtful and suspicious. "But, I love the desert, do you understand? This yellow, sun-glowing desert. Here you can see the countenance of the sun every day; you are alone, you can see glorious Helios-no, that is
- pagan-what's wrong with me? I'm confused-you are Satan- I recognize you-give way; adversary!" He jumps up incensed and wants to lunge at me. But I am far away in the twentieth century.”
― carl jung

“From an ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history. Monotheism did little to improve the moral standards of humans—do you really think Muslims are inherently more ethical than Hindus just because Muslims believe in a single god while Hindus believe in many gods? Were Christian conquistadores more ethical than pagan Native American tribes? What monotheism undoubtedly did was to make many people far more intolerant than before, thereby contributing to the spread of religious persecutions and holy wars. Polytheists found it perfectly acceptable that different people worshipped different gods and performed diverse rites and rituals. They rarely if ever fought, persecuted, or killed people just because of their religious beliefs. Monotheists, in contrast, believed that their God was the only god, and that He demanded universal obedience. Consequently, as Christianity and Islam spread around the world, so did the incidence of crusades, jihads, inquisitions, and religious discrimination.11”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“As is Man to the Universe, so was the mind of Mr. Wilcox to the minds of some men — a concentrated light upon a tiny spot, a little Ten Minutes moving self-contained through its appointed years. No Pagan he, who lives for the Now, and may be wiser than all philosophers. He lived for the five minutes that have past, and the five to come; he had the business mind.”
― E.M. Forster, The Works of E. M. Forster

“We see the same stars, the sky is shared by all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek for the truth? —the “pagan” author Symmachus That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims! —St. Augustine”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“A soldier: "I know where heaven is and it's Lithuania ... The women are beautiful, pagan, with a practical view towards sex. Who says communism was bad? You're working three levels of advantages: you're a foreign male, you're a rich, exotic American, and their men are a bunch of drunken, criminal slobs.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground