quotations about witches & witchcraft
Maybe witchcraft, as so many of my traditional witch fellows insist, is in the blood, and the initiatory and training process only forces its development. Maybe we just have to trust that time will weed out those who really should have just remained outsiders. Maybe those of us in established witch traditions need to have tighter standards and higher expectations, particularly if we understand our tradition to be a priesthood and a calling rather than just one more feel-good, self-indulgent road on the map to personal self-discovery.
THORN MOONEY
"All Wiccans are witches, but some of us are bad at it", Patheos, January 21, 2016
Anything that you do not understand, you deem witchcraft!
ANDREA ZUVICH
The Stuart Vampire
When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? my Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather (to speak my Thoughts freely) I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 117
Is it still witchcraft if we're not the ones actually doing the circle casting, the purifying, the invoking? If we're only occupying the space while the leading high priestess and priest do their thing? What if our only experience of witchcraft is that coven meeting and we never do anything on our own time? What if we do attempt to call the gods and speak to spirits and perform acts of magic ... and it just doesn't work? What if the gods don't hear us (or simply don't answer)? What if we fail to fulfill our obligations as priests or priestesses in a coven?
THORN MOONEY
"All Wiccans are witches, but some of us are bad at it", Patheos, January 21, 2016
Witchcraft, like any science or philosophical system, must be approached from a liberal point of view. When looked at objectively, we see that Witchcraft is just another theoretical body of knowledge. It is a process, not a person. Therefore it is neutral, incapable of being either good or evil. Like all belief systems, Witchcraft is only as good or evil as the people using it.
LADY SABRINA
Secrets of Modern Witchcraft Revealed
Unlike the Abrahamic traditions, Witchcraft is not based upon a strict division of what is good and what is evil. Witches use nature to fuel their concept of the divine and in the world of nature there is no battle between good and evil. A lion is not "evil" because it kills the gazelle, and a deer is not "good" because it eats only plants. Nature is both cruel and beautiful at the same time.
SCARLET RAVENSWOOD
"Do Witches Believe in the Devil?", Arcane Alchemy, May 25, 2018
The important thing is that as this is a modern religion, born in a modern Western country, it has the values of modern Westerners. The values of modern Westerners are individualism, freedom to practice as you choose, no authority above you, no official doctrine that forces you to stick to a certain way and very, very few moral mandates. The only moral mandate is harm nobody. Do what you want, but harm nobody.
KAINE FINI
"Wicca thrives in Orange County", Coast Report Online, April 4, 2017
In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
THOMAS SZASZ
introduction, The Manufacture of Madness
Witches are moon-birds, Witches are the women of the false, beautiful moon.
AMY LOWELL
"Witch-Woman"
My witchcraft speaks to connections between beings.
My witchcraft curls within the wild of my own heart.
LAURA TEMPEST ZAKROFF
"My Witchcraft Is..."
Magic, and witchcraft in particular, is a way to exercise and recognize your agency in the world. The reason I'm doing this work is so people can feel that agency. So they don't feel they are at the mercy of the world and the choices that other people are making for them.
AMANDA YATES GARCIA
"Witches Explain How To Take On Political Power With Occult Magic", Huffington Post, April 4, 2017
In recent weeks alone, we've seen the devil pressing hard to bring witchcraft deeper into our schools, our homes and our entertainment venues. We reported on how a new witchcraft-inspired challenge is luring kids into summoning demons. It's called Charlie Charlie and it's sweeping the nation and the world under the guise of a carefree fortune-telling game. Faith leaders are sounding the alarm.
JENNIFER LECLAIRE
"A Revival of the Devil's Witchcraft Is Rising", Charisma News, June 15, 2015
There is a sort of Witchcrafts in those things, whereto the Temptations of the Devil would inveigle us. To worship the Devil is Witchcraft, and under that notion was our Lord urged unto sin. We are told in 1 Samuel 15:23, "Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft." When the Devil would have us to sin, he would have us to do the things which the forlorn Witches use to do. Perhaps there are few persons, ever allured by the Devil unto an Explicit Covenant with himself. If any among ourselves be so, my counsel is, that you hunt the Devil from you, with such words as the Psalmist had, "Be gone, Depart from me, ye evil doers, for I will keep the commandments of my God."
COTTON MATHER
On Witchcraft
Another theme unique to traditional witchcraft is the lore of the Witch Mark. This mysterious concept may have come from coerced testimony. However, a closer look reveals a deeper mythology with connections back to antiquity coming to be known as the Mark of Cain. The idea of an initiatory experience transforming one into something different, something other, is not new to human consciousness. In witch mythology the mark is transmitted from Cain, the first sorcerer, who was marked as other by God. It is seen as a spiritual fire that connects those of the Witchblood across time and space. The Mark is something that crosses the boundaries of all traditions, uniting those who seek a deeper truth. Individual spiritual growth is paramount to the witch, forging their own spiritual relationships while discovering for themselves the secrets of the Universe.
COBY MICHAEL SMITH
"A Traditional Witch's Love Affair With History", Patheos, March 22, 2017
In all of New England, it would have been difficult to find more than a few souls to whom the supernatural was not eminently real, part and parcel of the culture, as was the devil himself. Most had a story to tell you, as many of us do today. We have all observed the occult in action, even if we do not quite subscribe to it. A year after the witchcraft crisis had passed, Cotton Mather, among the best?read men in America, visited Salem. He lost his sermon notes, which turned up a month later, scattered through the streets of a neighboring town. He concluded that diabolical agents had stolen them. One no more doubted the reality of sorcery than the literal truth of the Bible; to do so was to question the sun shining at noon. Faith aside, witchcraft served an eminently useful purpose. The aggravating, the confounding, the humiliating all dissolved in its cauldron. It made sense of the unfortunate and the eerie, the sick child and the rancid butter along with the killer cat. What else, shrugged one husband, could have caused the black and blue marks on his wife's arm?
STACY SCHIFF
The Witches: Salem, 1692
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Witchcraft is seeing a resurgence among queer-identified young people seeking a powerful identity that celebrates the freedom to choose who you are.
MOIRA DONOVAN
"How Witchcraft Is Empowering Queer and Trans Young People", Vice, August 14, 2015
Early this year, the witch camp in Bonyase was disbanded in an attempt by the government to erase what it considers as a stain on its human rights records.... The pervasive belief in Ghana that people can harm others through witchcraft is the elephant in the room that has to be called out, not the safe places which alleged witches flee to. The government of Ghana needs to retrace its steps and focus its energy and resources on addressing the phenomenon of witchcraft allegation. Witch camps are the consequences, not the cause of the problem. They are symptoms not the disease. The government of Ghana is correct in saying that witchcraft accusation leads to various human rights abuses. Now how is shutting down the witch camp the solution to these abuses? Most people living in these shelters did not just take up residency there without any reason. People in these camps are accused persons who were convicted at shrines or banished by families and would have been killed if they had stayed back in their communities, if they had not taken refuge at these shelters.
LEO IGWE
"Ghana: Witchcraft Accusation -- Is Disbanding 'Witches Camps' the Solution?", The Chronicle, November 17, 2015
People come into [witchcraft] because of ... dissatisfaction with the status quo of faith practice. They're seeking information that is not being fulfilled by traditional religions. People are tired of being sheep.
NICK KATSIKIS
"Contemporary witchcraft", The Temple News, October 27, 2015
The accusation of witchcraft had rid many men of an ugly wife and yet more women of an attractive rival.
JOSS ALEXANDER
Tainted Innocence