Paths of Wisdom Quotes

“The attitude that psychologists call inflation and the traditional lore of Cabalistic magic, borrowing a term from religion, calls spiritual pride is one of the most serious dangers of this work.

Those who enter the path of magic with too great an appetite for flattery or too strong a need for ego reinforcement will very likely find these things, but they are also rather too likely to find fanaticism, megalomania and mental breakdown along the same route. The thing has happened far too often in the history of magic in the West.”
― John Michael Greer, Paths of Wisdom

“There are two common and complementary mistakes, which have been made over and over again concerning spirits by people in the Western world. The first of these is the orthodox Christian habit of assuming that all spirits are malevolent, dishonest and evil; the second is the corresponding habit, common in many New Age circles nowadays, of assuming that all spirits are loving, wise and good. Both of these attitudes are as foolish when applied to spirits as they would be if applied to human beings.”
― John Michael Greer, Paths of Wisdom

“Like the small boy who was given a hammer for his birthday and decided that everything in the world needed hammering, or like the proponents of modern science who try to fit all human experience to a model developed to make sense of physics, it’s all too easy to mistake a metaphors usefulness in one area for evidence that the metaphor should be applied everywhere—or, worse yet, for proof that the metaphor is somehow “true.” Just as with the boy—or the scientists—the result of this sort of approach is usually a mess.”
― John Michael Greer, Paths of Wisdom

“To persist, despite boredom, frustration, the attraction of other activities, and the fear of change and growth, is to win.”
― John Michael Greer, Paths of Wisdom: Cabala in the Golden Dawn Tradition