The primary principle of magic is connection.

Starhawk, witch

A spell is a ritual for raising psychic power and directing it to a specific and practical purpose.

Janet and Stuart Farrar, witches

…the basis of all that is distinctly religious in human thought is animism, the belief that humans share the world with a population of extraordinary, extracoporeal, and mostly invisible beings, ranging from souls and ghosts to saints and fairies, angels, and cherubin, demons, jinni, devils, and gods… animistic beliefs [are] to be found in every society, and a century of ethnological research has yet to turn up a single exception.

Marvin Harris, anthropologist

Magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct… Men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature.

Sir James George Frazer, folklorist

Magic-- I hate the word because of what it has come to mean, but anyway-- magic in the big sense can only happen where there is very strong feeling. You can't set it going with a skeptical mind-- with your fingers crossed, so to speak. You must desire, and you must believe. Have you any idea how hard that is for a man of my time and a man of my training and temperament?

Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist

The fundamental principle was in the exercise of a certain occult force resident in the magus, and strenuously exerted for the establishment of such a correspondence between two planes of nature as would effect his desired end. This exertion was termed the evocation, conjuration, or calling of the spirit, but that which in reality was raised was the energy of the inner man; tremendously developed and exalted by combined will and aspiration, this energy germinated by sheer force a new intellectual faculty of sensible psychological perception. To assist and stimulate this energy into the most powerful possible operation, artificial means were almost invariably used… The synthesis of these methods and processes was called Ceremonial Magic, which in effect was a tremendous forcing-house of the latent faculties of man's spiritual nature.

A.E. Waite, Irish mystic

If all things are connected, then by examining any part of the Web of Wyrd, we can gain insights into the whole… each fragment of the universe contains the key to the greater whole.

Vivianne Crowley, British witch

For there are three great events in the life of man: Love, Death, and Resurrection in the new body; and Magic controls them all. For to fulfill love you must return again at the same time and place as the loved one, and you must remember and love them again. But to be reborn you must die and be ready for a new body; and to die you must be born; and without love you may not be born; and this is all the Magics.

The Legend of the Descent of the Goddess

It is thus that when Hindu philosophy states that everything is fundamentally Shabda, or sound, it is talking about the basic pulse of energy which is differentiated, as light by a prism, through all our modes of perception. Upon this eternal harp, loom, or spectrum is played, woven, or seen-- by the contrasts of sound and silence, warp and woof, light and darkness-- the whole transient Maya of our cosmos. But its desired delights and dreaded terrors are all of one sound, one cloth, and one vision.

Alan Watts, American scholar

[The Dream] is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend. For all ego-consciousness is isolated: it separates and discriminates, knows only particulars, and sees only what can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, though it reaches t the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates: but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood.

It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. So flowerlike is it in its candor and veracity that it makes us blush for the deceitfulness of our lives.

C.G. Jung, psychologist

And all my life, I've been wandering
Looking for teachers with the keys
Nothing found, still searching for sounds
Underground.

The Tea Party, Canadian musicians

The myths lead us into a world that cannot be described but only "narrated", for it consists in the history of acts freely undertaken, of unforeseeable decisions, of fabulous transformations, and the like. It is, in short, the history of everything significant that has happened since the Creation of the world, of all the events that contributed to making man as he is today. The novice whom initiation introduces to the mythological traditions of the tribe is introduced to the sacred history of the world and humanity.

Mircea Eliade, anthropologist

Ritual's original purpose was to make the world safe, to appease the forces of nature and prevent the feared destruction of the universe.

Nicholas Campion, historian

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man… The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world. The miracle of this flow may be represented in physical terms as a circulation of food substance, dynamically as a streaming of energy, or spiritually as a manifestation of grace. Such varieties of image alternate easily, representing three degrees of condensation of the one life force.

Joseph Campbell, scholar

Earth revealed itself to me as a living being, and rock and clay were made transparent so that I saw lovelier and lordlier beings than I had known before, and was made partner in memory of mighty things, happenings in ages long sunken behind time…

A.E. Waite

Rather than jingle like the jade,
Rumble like the rocks.

Lao Tzu, Taoist sage

He, O Arjuna, who sees with equality everything, in the image of his own self, whether in pleasure or in pain-- he is considered a perfect yogi.

The Bhagavad Gita (6:32)

My love is my rock in the long low weary land.

Mike Scott, Scottish folk-rock musician

There is nothing more metaphysical and spiritual than the symbolism of sexuality.

Alan Watts

For it is only the experience of the sacred that is truly transforming.

Judith Thompson, Canadian playwirght

I love him who chastens his god because he loves his god: for he must perish of the wrath of his god.

Freidrich Nietzsche, philosopher

Art demands of us that we do not stand still.

Ludwig van Beethoven, composer

Magick is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.

Alistair Crowley, occultist

But the word will, which, like a magic word, is to reveal to us the innermost essence of everything in nature, by no means expresses an unknown quantity… but something known absolutely and immediately, and that so well that we know and understand what will is better than anything else, be it what it may. Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will.

Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher

He doesn't think like you and me, because he can see what you and I can't see.

The Moody Blues, musicians

Ye shall dance, sing, feast, make music and love, all in my praise.

The Charge of the Goddess

"Is Eris true?"
"All things are true"
"Even false things?"
"Yes, even false things are true."
"How can this be?"
"I don't know, man, I didn't do it."

Malaclypse the Elder, lunatic

In medieval times the pentacles were seals or metal discs inscribed with various magic formulae. In the suit of Pentacles they are inscribed with pentagrams, the five-pointed star. This figure is the time-honoured symbol of the magical arts and also the five senses of man, the five elements of nature and the five extremities of the human body.

Eden Gray, occultist

Each word originally was a focus of energies, in which the transformation of reality into the vibrations of the human voice-- the vital expression of the human soul-- took place. Through these vocal creations man took possession of the world-- and more than that: he discovered a new dimension, a world within himself, opening upon the vista of a higher form of life… Here, if anywhere, words are deeds, acting immediately. It is the peculiarity of the true poet that his word creates actuality, calls forth and unveils something real. His word does not talk-- it acts!

Lama Anagarika Govinda

I believe the fading hold the heavens have over the world is due to the neglect of the economic basis of spiritual life. What profound spiritual life can there be when the social order almost forces men to battle with each other for the means of existence?

A.E.’s open letter to Kipling.