The Occult Book Quotes

“After his break with Freud, Jung pursued
the connection between the unconscious and
the occult and found example after example
of ancient mystical and occult symbols in
the dreams of people who had never encountered those symbols in waking life. He came to believe that below the repressed memories of individual life, there exists a collective unconscious full of archaic images that appear in myths, legends, and the traditions of occultism. By bringing those images into consciousness, it is possible to achieve individuation: a state of psychological balance and wholeness as far above ordinary sanity as neurotic conditions are below it.”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“I know that I hung
on the windy tree
Nine full nights,
Pierced by a spear
offered to Odin
Myself to myself
of which none knows
Upon that tree
Where its roots run...”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“Alchemy was (and is) considerably more
than the attempt to turn base metals into gold. To an alchemist, all material things ripen toward perfection unless something gets in the way. The alchemist's mission is to remove the obstacles that keep material things from attaining their perfection. For metals, that perfection is gold; for the human body, health; for the human spirit, union with
the divine-and all these and many more are
appropriate goals for alchemical work.”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“Ironically, once he was safely dead, Bruno
was redefined as a martyr for science. For
centuries, historians quietly ignored the vast amount of occultism in his writing and insisted that he had been burned at the stake
for his belief that the earth circled the sun and there were an infinite number of habitable worlds in space. Only in the middle
years of the twentieth century, when scholarly prejudices against occultism had begun to fade, did the scope and depth of his occult involvements become clear.”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences- let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth."
-H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891)”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“With those teachings, though, von List blended popular notions about the superiority of the white race and of Germanic
peoples in particular. From his work sprang a movement that called itself Ariosophy-
"the wisdom of the Aryans"-that borrowed
heavily from Theosophy but reworked it to
support an agenda of pan-German racism.
In the years before his death in 1919, von List proclaimed that a mighty leader, "the Strong One from Above," would soon arise and unite the Germanic peoples. He was, of course, quite correct; the year he died, an Austrian veteran named Adolf Hitler, who was strongly influenced by Ariosophy, began his political career.”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“If God is benevolent and almighty, why should there be so much suffering in the world? Luria's answer was that the forces that cause suffering and evil in the world are remnants of the universe before ours- a primal cosmos of unbalanced forces- and the mission of human beings, and Jews in particular, is to redeem the powers of evil through religious observance and Cabalistic disciplines.”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca

“For two thousand years, maybe more,
the ceremonies had been celebrated every autumn in the small town of Eleusis near Athens, becoming more famous and elaborate with the passing years. By Roman times, the mystery temple at Eleusis was a huge building half the size of a foot- ball field, and people came there from the far corners of the ancient world.

All new initiates had to go through preliminary ceremonies at the river Ilissos in the month of Anthesterion, our February, in which they offered sacrifices, cleansed them-
selves in the water, and listened to instruction. A year and a half later, in Boedromion (our September), they marched to Eleusis, arriving at dusk. They entered the temple, and the ceremony of initiation was enacted. No one today knows what it was, but ancient writers agreed that those who passed through it had no fear of death afterward.”
― John Michael Greer, The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca