Starhawk Quotations

The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world. She is the world. Manifest in each of us, She can be known internally by every indivdual, in all her magnificent diversity.

The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control

The word "Witch" carries so many negative connotations that many people wonder why we use the word at all. Yet to reclaim the word "Witch" is to reclaim our right, as women, to be powerful; as men, to know the feminine within as divine.

Love for life in all its forms is the basic ethic of Witchcraft.

My spirituality has always been linked to my feminism. Feminism is about challenging unequal power structures.

At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this: ‘Here in the face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which you do count.’

Sexual integrity means honestly recognizing our own impulses and desires and honoring them, whether or not we choose to act on them. If we value integrity, we must also value diversity in sexual expression and orientation, recognizing that there is no one truth, or one way, that fits everyone.Sexuality is sacred because through it we make a connection with another self - but it is misused and perverted when it becomes an arena of power-over, a means of treating another - or oneself - as an object.

The witches, the wise women, and the healers were also always the counselors. It's a whole other tradition of knowledge and learning that has been suppressed because it had political implications.

What affects one thing affects, in some way, all things: All is interwoven into the continuous fabric of being. Its warp and weft are energy, which is the essence of magic.

Magic has often been thought of us the art of making dreams come true; the art of realizing visions. Yet before we can bring birth to the vision we have to see it.

Panic is not an effective long-term organizing strategy.

a lot of people have been telling me how brave I am. I've always thought it was a mistake to get a reputation for courage, on the grounds that if you acted bravely once, people would expect you to act courageously again, and you might be having an off day.

If we are to reclaim our culture, we cannot afford narrow definitions.

In Witchcraft, each of us must reveal our own truth.

Any creative work that is truly alive is influenced by a thousand chance factors in its generation.

Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.

The Goddess is not separate from the world – She IS the world, and all things in it: moon, sun, earth, star, stone, seed, flowing river, wind, wave, leaf and branch, bud and blossom, fang and claw, woman and man.

Our goal is not to get out of the world or to get out of life, but to integrate it, to celebrate it, to embrace it fully, and to embrace all the different cycles within it.

Love is the glue that holds the world together.

We need the discipline of magic, of consciousness-change, in order to hear and understand what the earth is saying to us. And listening to the earth, doing the rituals the land asks us for, giving back what we are asked for, will also bring us healing, expanded awareness and intensified life.

The Goddess does not rule the world; She is the world.

Those who would practice magic must be scrupulously honest in their personal lives. In one sense, magic works on the principle that 'it is so because I say it is so.' For words to take on such force, you must be deeply and completely convinced that it is identified with truth as you know it. To a person who practices honesty and keeps commitments, 'As I will, so mote it be' is not just a pretty phrase; it is a statement of fact.

On some deep cosmic level, we are all one, and within us we each contain the potential for good and for destruction, for compassion and hate, for generosity and greed...

For great as the powers of destruction may be, greater still, are the powers of healing.

Amory Lovins says the primary design criteria he uses is the question How do we love all the children? Not just our children, not just the ones who look like us or who have resources, not just the human children but the young of birds and salmon and redwood trees. When we love all the children, when that love is truly sacred to us in the sense of being most important, then we have to take action in the world to enact that love. We are called to make the earth a place where all the children can thrive.

Despair breeds fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. A world of truly shared abundance would be a safer world.

Only by transforming our own economy to one of peace can we make possible economic democracy in the Third World or our own country. The present economy generates wars to protect its profits and its short-term interests, while squandering the future. Unless we transform the economy, we cannot end war.

Spirituality promotes passivity when the domain of spirit is defined as outside the world. When this world is the terrain of spirit, we ourselves become actors in the story, and this world becomes the realm in which the sacred must be honored and freedom created.

All began in love, all seeks to return in love. Love is the law, the teacher of wisdom, and the great revealer of mysteries.

The Goddess is the Encircler, the Ground of Being; the God is That-Which-Is-Brought-Forth, her mirror image, her other pole. She is the earth; He is the grain. She is the all encompassing sky; He is the sun, her fireball. She is the Wheel; He is the traveler. He is the sacrifice of life to death that life may go on. She is the Mother and Destroyer; He is all that is born and is destroyed.

From a magical point of view, the term 'nonviolence' doesn't work well. Every beginning Witch learns that you can't cast a spell for what you don't want - that the deep aspects of our minds are unclear on the concept of 'no.' If you tell your dog, 'Rover, I can't take you for a walk,' Rover hears 'Walk!' and runs for the door. If we say 'nonviolence,' we are still thinking in terms of violence.

There are two kinds of power. One is power over, which is always destructive, and the other is power from within, which is a transcendent and creative power.

Life demands honesty, the ability to face, admit, and express oneself.

Sexuality is a sacrament.

Insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different results.

Patriarchy values the hard over the soft; the tough over the tender; punishment, vengeance, and vindictiveness over compassion, negotiation, and reconciliation. The 'hard' qualities are linked to power, success, and masculinity - and exalted. The 'soft' qualities are identified with weakness, powerlessness, and femininity - and denigrated.

What we name must answer to us; we can shape it if not control it.

Ritual and myth are like seed crystals of new patterns that can eventually reshape culture around them.

The healing of our relationship with place begins with the preservation of the natural environment. We cannot go to the wild for renewal if no wilderness is left.

To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.

Where there's fear, there is power.

Only poetry can address grief.

Fascination with the psychic - or the psychological - can be a dangerous sidetrack on any spiritual path.

Magic is the craft of shaping, the craft of the wise, exhilarating, dangerous - the ultimate adventure. The power of magic should not be underestimated. It works, often in ways that are unexpected and difficult to control.

The Crone, the Reaper... She is the Dark Moon, what you don't see coming at you, what you don't get away with, the wind that whips the spark across the fire line. Chance, you could say, or, what's scarier still: the intersection of chance with choices and actions made before. The brush that is tinder dry from decades of drought, the warming of the earth's climate that sends the storms away north, the hole in the ozone layer. Not punishment, not even justice, but consequence.

Force, punishment, and violence are patriarchy's answer to conflicts and social problems. Patriarchy finds its ultimate expression in war.

Each being is sacred -- meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being.

Unless I have enough personal power to keep commitments in my daily life, I will be unable to wield magical power. To work magic, I need a basic belief in my ability to do things and cause things to happen. That belief is generated and sustained by my daily actions.

The test of a true myth is that each time you return to it, new insights and interpretations arise.

[On 9/11:] ... those towers represented human triumph over nature. Larger than life, built to be unburnable, they were the Titanic of our day. For them to burn and fall so quickly means that the whole superstructure we depend upon to mitigate nature and assure our comfort and safety could fall.

Without a vision human beings are nasty creatures.

The Goddess falls in love with Herself, drawing forth her own emanation, which takes on a life of its own. Love of self for self is the creative force of the universe. Desire is the primal energy, and that energy is erotic: the attraction of lover to beloved, of planet to star, the lust of electron for proton. Love is the glue that holds the world together.

I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the earth is sacred, and that women and women's bodies are one expression of that sacred being.

Our physical senses and our embodied brains allow us to perceive only a small fraction of reality. We cannot see microbes or untraviolet light, for example. We can hear only a small range of sounds. When we try to describe the otherworld of energies and spirits, we are limited not only by our bodily constraints but by the expectations, assumptions, and language patterns ingrained in us by the culture we were raised in.

At this moment in history, we are called to act as if we truly believe that . . . liberty and justice for all is a desirable thing

Solidarity is based on the principle that we are willing to put ourselves at risk to protect each other.

If Goddess religion is not to become mindless idiocy, we must win clear of tendency of magic to become supertition. Magic - and among its branches I include psychology as its purpose to describe and change consciousness - is an art.

Now, on the longest day, light triumphs, and yet begins the decline into dark. We turn the Wheel for we have planted the seeds of our own changes, and to grow we must accept even the passing of the sun Set Sail See with clear eyes See how we shine!

Creations, whether they are children, poems, or organizations, take on a life of their own.

Systems don't change easily. Systems try to maintain themselves, and seek equilibrium. To change a system, you need to shake it up, disrupt the equilibrium. That often requires conflict.

In a culture where profit has become the true God, self-sacrifice can seem incomprehensible rather than noble.

Wisdom and knowledge can best be understood together. Knowledge is learning, the power of the mind to understand and describe the universe. Wisdom is knowing how to apply knowledge and how not to apply it. Knowledge is knowing what to say; wisdom is knowing whether or not to say it. Knowledge gives answers; wisdom asks questions. Knowledge can be taught, wisdom grows from experience.

Another world is possible!' ... Another world is also necessary, for this one is unjust, unsustainable, and unsafe. It's up to us to envision, fight for, and create that world, a world of freedom, real justice, balance, and shared abundance, a world woven in a new design.

Fear doesn't go away but you walk toward fear naked and the gate opens.

The antidote to climate change is community.

To Witches, the cosmos is the living body of the Goddess, in whose being we all partake, who encompasses us and is immanent within us. We call her Goddess not to narrowly define her gender, but as a continual reminder that what we value is life brought into the world ... She has infinite names and guises, many of them male.

Magic has always been an element of Witchcraft, but in the Craft its techniques were practiced within a context of community and connection.

In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control.

Energy moves in cycles, circles, spirals, vortexes, whirls, pulsations, waves, and rhythms—rarely if ever in simple straight lines.

The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.

In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess ~~ we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all

It happens over and over again—a group of people come together, fired up with passion to create change. They begin with huge inspiration and enthusiasm—and a year later, it’s all foundered in the mire of conflict. We could have changed the world ten times over—if we didn’t have to do it together with other people, those irritating, self-righteous, controlling, fluff-brained, clueless idiots who are our friends and allies.

Identifying as a Pagan, feminist, Witch, and anarchist is possibly a way to alarm great segments of the general public, but at least it keeps me from sinking into a boring and respectable middle age.

Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing.

The Goddess does not rule the world; She is the world. Manifest in each of us, She can be known internally by every individual, in all her magnificent diversity.

To choose is also to begin.

A spiritual organization with a hierarchical structure can convey only the consciousness of estrangement, regardless of what teachings or deep inspirations are at its root.The structure itself reinforces the idea that some people are inherently more worthy than others.

Any action, like any act of magic, is in some sense an act of faith ... I've seen the desert bloom, the flower that emerges from the barest hint of water, and I know the power of life will rise, stubborn and persistent to be renewed. May our actions be the wind that brings the rain.

To practice magic is to bear the responsibility for having a vision.

We cannot change the world alone. To heal ourselves, to restore the earth to life, to create the situations in which freedom can flourish, we must work together in groups.

Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.

On every full moon, rituals ... take place on hilltops, beaches, in open fields and in ordinary houses. Writers, teachers, nurses, computer programmers, artists, lawyers, poets, plumbers, and auto mechanics -- women and men from many backgrounds come together to celebrate the mysteries of the Triple Goddess of the Dance of Life. The religion they practice is called Witchcraft.

Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable.

Our way out involves both resistance and renewal: saying no to what is, so that we can reshape and recreate the world. Our challenge is communal, but to face it we must be empowered as individuals and create structures of support and celebration that can teach us freedom. Creation is the ultimate resistance, the ultimate refusal to accept things as they are. For it is in creation that we encounter Mystery...

Magic is another word that makes people uneasy, so I use it deliberately, because words they are comfortable with, the words that sound acceptable, rational, scientific, and intellectually sound, are comfortable precisely because they are the language of estrangement.

Only those who must bear the consequences of a decision have the right to make it.

The terrain of the mysteries is the ordinary. To seek out mystery, we don't have to go anywhere. We must simply change our preception, our description, our consciousness of where we are.

Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

Earth Mother, you who are called by a thousand names. May all remember we are cells in your body and dance together.

The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life. Through the Goddess we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. We can move beyond narrow, constricting roles and become whole.

Ritual affirms the common patterns, the values, the shared joys, risks, sorrows, and changes that bind a community together. Ritual links together our ancestors and descendants, those who went before with those will come after us.

She changes everything she touches. And everything she touches changes.

Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it.

What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it.

It is not easy to be a Witch, a bender, a shaper, one of the Wise; nor is it safe, comfortable, laid back, mellow, uplifting, or a guarantee of Peace of mind. It requires openness, vulnerability, courage and work. It gives no answers, only tasks to be done and questions to consider....It functions in those deeper ways of knowing which our culture has denied and for which we hunger.

Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions.

The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts - Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be.

A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance.

Beware of organizations that proclaim their devotion to the light without embracing, bowing to the dark; for when they idealize half the world they must devalue the rest.