Witches Quotes

“As long as women are denied the priesthood, we will try to make our own rituals at our own kitchen altars and we will sew our own magical capes at our own sewing machines”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“The sort of reasoning that would try a woman for murder if she sought an abortion could well lead to renewed witch-hunts.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“She is the witch.
You wish you were she.
Except when the time comes for burning.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“It is less important whether we worship the holy spirit in the form of a tree, a woman, a man, or an animal than that we do worship and honor it. At the same time, we must accord each other the right to atheism or agnosticism - for religion becomes little more than fascism if it is compelled rather than self-motivated.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“It is vital that we try to see religious myths not as immutable go- (or goddess-) given truths, but as reflections of human society and fear.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“Though most of the punished "witches" were neither propertied nor powerful, the constant reminder of what patriarchal power could do to uppity, solitary, or rebellious women must have gone a long way toward keeping the mass of women in their place.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“I am sick of haunting myself
from within
like an old house.
I would be happier
as a hunted witch.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“The familiars also had the most fanciful of names. Various British witch trials record a gray cat called Tittey, a black toad called Pigin, a black lamb called Tyffin, a black dog called Suckin, and a "red lion" called Lyerd. There were also assorted imps called Great Dick, Little Dick, Willet, Pluck, Catch, Holt, Jamara, Vinegar Tom, Pyewackett, Grizzel, and Greedigut.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“I wished for you
to be born a daughter
though we know
that daughters
cannot but be
born for burning
like the fatal tree.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“But when we remember that this book was used for centuries as a how-to book for witch-hunters, we can only despair that the printing press has often been a tool of oppression as of liberation.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“You did not pick up this book because you were interested in "the neo-pagan revival." You picked it up because, from earliest childhood, you, like the author and the artist, have been haunted by - at times possessed by - the figure of the witch. Les us turn now to her. We will find her inside ourselves.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“Perhaps the need to believe in demons is, in itself, the last resort of a mind desperate to project its evils outward.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“The Church is seen as a secular organization - a real-estate conglomerate, a powerful lobby for the oppression of women - which has little or nothing to do with spiritual transcendence. It will doubtless seek to ban this book. Less than two hundred and fifty years ago, it would have burned the author.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“The witch is not dead; she is merely hibernating. And witch-hunting itself is hardly dead; it is merely waiting to be born again under a different name.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“Again we are re-minded of the fate of women in patriarchal society. How can we find the truth about their lives when most of the books were written by men?”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“She explains that in the evolution of religions, the god of the old religion always becomes the devil of the new.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“It may well be that since women in patriarchal society have had so few positive images of self, so few positive images of femaleness, they have identified their creativity - the thing that set s them apart from other people, other women - with destructiveness. Often, indeed, they have fulfilled their own prophecy of destruction by committing suicide. They have killed themselves in the hopes of extinguishing their tragic otherness. But, alas, they have killed not otherness, but only their future poems.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“Not only is the archaeological record incomplete, but it has been sifted largely by male archaeologists, wearing the blinkers of patriarchy, assuming that monotheism represented an advance over polytheism and paganism, and seeking to justify the holy books upon which their patriarchal civilization was based.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“Maybe she will make our wishes come true before we burn her.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“What is the witch's heritage?
Her great, great, great, great, great ancestress is Ishtar-Diana-Demeter.
Her father is man. Her midwife, his fears. Her torturer, his fears. Her executioner, his fears. Her malignant power, his fears.
Her healing power, her own.”
― Erica Jong, Witches

“Few of us realize the extent to which our notions of the deity are informed by patriarchal assumptions. We claim that God is raceless and genderless, yet we visualize God as white and male to such a degree that the very notion of a black, female God is enough to raise guffaws in response to a hardy, perennial joke.”
― Erica Jong, Witches