Occult:Featured Quotes

This page serves as a curated list of quotes that have been featured as the Occult Encyclopedia's Featured Quote section on the main page.

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Occultists

Aleister Crowley

• "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

• "Intolerance is evidence of impotence."

• "Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life."

• "In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless."

• "Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people."

• "I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner."

• "The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript."

• "Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another."

• "I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman."

• "Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness."

John Dee

• "Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent."

• "The message is that all things are connected."

Damien Echols

• "Without books, I would have gone insane long ago."

• "Ignorance breeds superstition."

• "Sooner or later a person's physical appearance comes to resemble whatever is in their heart."

• "You have to experience something for yourself or you never really comprehend it."

Dion Fortune

• "Magick is the art of causing changes in consciousness to occur in accordance with the will."

• "What you contemplate, you touch. What you enter into in imagination, you make yourself one with."

• "We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive."

• "A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism."

Anton Szandor LaVey

• "Don't waste your time with people who will ultimately destroy you."

• "Up is down, pleasure is pain, darkness is light, slavery is freedom, madness is sanity."

• "The Atheist complains about the wind. The Christian prays for it to change. The Satanist adjusts his sails."

• "If you're going to be a sinner, be the best sinner on the block."

Éliphas Lévi

• "He who affirms the devil creates or makes the devil."

• "An idle man will never become a magician. Magic is an exercise of all hours and all moments."

• "To preserve ourselves against evil influences, the first condition is to forbid excitement to the imagination."

• "Men think God has made them in His image because they have made Him in theirs."

• "Of all oracles, the Tarot is the most astounding in its answers."

Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers

• "For the opinion of the ordinary literary critic who neither understands nor believes in Occultism, I care nothing."

Jack Parsons

• "Only in the irrational and unknown direction can we come to wisdom again."

• "Remember that the Tarot is a great and sacred arcanum. Its abuse is an obscenity in the inner and a follow in the outer."

• "Freedom is a dangerous thing, but it is hardly possible that we are all cowards."

Israel Regardie

• "Within every man and woman is a force that directs and controls the entire course of life."

• "Mysticism is the means to a new universal life, richer, greater, and more full of resource than ever before."

• "I know of nothing within the Order documentary that even hints at the kind of visionary and spiritual experience that Crowley managed to get out of it."

Arthur Edward Waite

• "The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs."

• "Behind man is the Tree of Life, beating twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman."

• "Out of evil comes good."

• "We have now seen that there is no particle of evidence for the Egyptian origin of Tarot cards."

Etteilla

• "If Heaven governs the Earth, God governs Heaven."

• "If you veil the truth, let it never be with the curtain of lies, but with the veil required by a truth that can offend or cause bitterness."

Witches

Sybil Leek

• "None of us consider ourselves witches. We ARE witches."

• "It would be immodest of me to say I am one of the world's greatest astrologers, but why shouldn't I say I am."

• "No one wants a witch's body."

• "I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-hypocrisy."

• "If you're a witch, be a good witch."

Rebecca Nurse

• "I am innocent as the child unborn."

• "I have got nobody to look to but God."

Frederick Santee

• "No good witch fails to have a familiar."

• "The concept of sacrifice is probably present in witchcraft, but mainly in the manner of living one's life."

• "There is no distinction between the occult and the scientific: they are both sciences."

• "Every complete language is an intricate maze of overlapping symbols."

• "Religion as a spiritual force is not dead, but keeps cropping up outside the traditional pale."

Gerald Gardner

• "Witches are firm believers in reincarnation, and they say that 'once a witch, always a witch.'"

• "Witchcraft is, and was not, for everyone."

Saints

Joan of Arc

• "Alas! that my body, clean and whole, never been corrupted, today must be consumed and burnt to ashes!"

• "Go forward bravely. Fear nothing. Trust in God; all will be well."

• "All battles are first won or lost, in the mind."

Constantine I

• "Thinking is the great enemy of perfection."

• "Let love bind us together, for it is the greatest force in the world."

Eva Perón

• "Shadows cannot see themselves in the mirror of the sun."

• "Time is my greatest enemy."

• "I have one thing that counts, and that is my heart; it burns in my soul, it aches in my flesh, and it ignites my nerves."

Others

L. Ron Hubbard

• "Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow."

• "When a culture has fallen totally away from spiritual pursuits into materialism, one must begin by demonstrating they are each a soul."

Marie Laveau

• "Here is the day, we must welcome it with a song."

• "Witch hunters is white women's worry."

• "Voodoo doll belong in the house of voodoo."

Mary I of England

• "This natural life of ours is but a pilgrimage from this wandering world, and exile from our own country."

George. L. Kittredge

• "Witch-hunting never flourishes unless the common people are eager for it."