quotations about witches & witchcraft
Witchcraft is practiced by a growing number of lapsed Christians seeking easy gratification for life's most pressing needs: sex, hot clothes, relief from rotten marriages. The Christian Post reported in 2013 that multiple conservative scholars have concluded that there were more than 200,000 people who have declared themselves witches in the United States, and as many as 8 million undeclared practitioners of "the craft." This makes sorcery the second-fastest-growing religion in the US, after Islam.
SELAH ALLY TOWER
"I was spiritually deceived by witchcraft", New York Post, October 11, 2015
What happens when people start falling sick without any apparent cause for sickness? You kill a woman. Yes, you read that right. A sixty-three year-old woman, Purni Orang, living in Sonitpur district in Assam was stripped naked and beheaded by villagers because she was practicing witchcraft, which was spreading sickness. A local police officer, Samad Hussain, told a leading intentional news network channel that people in the district, 'blamed Purni Orang for their condition.' Seven people have been arrested over the death of Purni Orang, a mother of five children, who was accused of casting spells.... Belief in witchcraft remains widespread in tribal-dominated areas of India, where it is considered normal to kill the accused. The practice continues despite certain government efforts to enforce laws against killing people accused of witchcraft. This incident adds to the list of crimes against women, prevalent in the rural areas of the country, throwing light on the pressing need of equality for women and education for all.
AINEE NIZAMI
"A Woman Was Beheaded Yesterday For 'Witchcraft'. Is This Still the 21st Century?", iDIVA, July 22, 2015
Witchcraft is all about living to the heights and depths of life as a way of worship.
LY DE ANGELES
Witchcraft: Theory and Practice
Witchcraft was hung, in History,
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, every Day
EMILY DICKINSON
The Poems of Emily Dickinson
Some witches practice wicca, which is a narrow subset of witchcraft with more specific gods, goddesses, symbols, and holidays. But many more practice a broader, indefinable brand of witchcraft based on intuition. The edges of this group also bleed into other more mainstream arenas such as yoga and meditation, mindfulness, new-age spirituality, and even sex positivity.
ALDEN WICKER
"Witchcraft is the perfect religion for liberal millennials", Quartz, October 27, 2016
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
The major misconception about Witchcraft today is that Witches worship Satan, which is just not so. We do not believe in Satan. That is a Christian creation. We don't worship evil. Indeed, to give evil a name is not a real intelligent thing to do, because then you give it power.
SILVER RAVENWOLF
interview, The Edge, November 1, 1997
Witchcraft is the action by which you maximize what happens for your good and minimize what happens for your ill. The role of a witch is to always do the best they can in anything they do and emphasize the energy around them.
NICK KATSIKIS
"Contemporary witchcraft", The Temple News, October 27, 2015
Witches are moon-birds, Witches are the women of the false, beautiful moon.
AMY LOWELL
"Witch-Woman"
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
Just because you can't turn your ex into a toad doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the Craft; the problem is having unrealistic expectations of what the Craft is about.
MACKENZIE SAGE WRIGHT
"5 Common Mistakes Made by Beginning Witches", Exemplore, August 10, 2017
It is an accurate statement that the followers of Witchcraft do not usually proselytize, which means you aren't going to find us standing on your local street corner thumping our Books of Shadows. Nor do you have to worry about jumping out of the shower to answer our serene and smiling faces at the door with your clothes stuck to various uncomfortable places on your wet body. But just because we (hopefully) aren't the forcible type doesn't mean we don't exist.
SILVER RAVENWOLF
To Ride a Silver Broomstick: New Generation Witchcraft
Witchcraft is a way to spiritually support those around you ... and that includes women of color, poor women, sex workers, disabled women, and anyone else who needs help. Although being a witch may be "in style" right now, witches have historically always been persecuted and continue to carry that legacy. We must use our privilege of being able to practice freely to empower each other and ourselves. Here's to making magick together.
GABRIELA HERSTIK
"Ask A Witch: How Do Politics Inform Your Practice?", Nylon, March 24, 2017
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
Salem has become this ... Mecca for Wiccans, but no witches died here. Aside from Tituba, no one practiced anything like witchcraft near here in colonial times. It was a bunch of bored Puritans who thought killing their neighbors at the behest of teenage girls was a fine, Christian form of entertainment and land acquisition.
THOMM QUACKENBUSH
Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
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
I think witchcraft is making this unique resurgence in this sort of doomsday world we're currently living in.
PETER MERCURY
"A Night Among the Witches Fighting the Trump Administration", Slate, March 22, 2017
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Portable Nietzsche
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 reason why so many people say, "I tried Witchcraft, it doesn't work!" This is because dabbling gets you nowhere. It's a little like someone who has never played a musical instrument before coming into your house, banging on your piano for 30 minutes and proclaiming pianos don't work because it didn't play a song. The problem is not the instrument; the problem is you have to learn how to play it.
MACKENZIE SAGE WRIGHT
"5 Common Mistakes Made by Beginning Witches", Exemplore, August 10, 2017