Цитаты из книги Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology

Contemporary writings on identity focus on the issue of personal meaninglessness. They tend to view the world in an apocaliptic light as a result of the risk of massive destruction by nuclear warfare, ecological catastrophe, the collapse of global economic mechanisms and the rise of totalitarian superstates. Personal…

This idea of connection [to the nature] is formed through its antithesis — the alienation from nature, developed from the Enlightenment idea that the self is essentially rational, disembodied and solitary, and given emotional weight by Christianity. Contemporary witchcraft practices are, in many ways, a continuation of…

Most magicians, except chaos magicians, say their magical practice is a spiritual path, a route to wholeness. Magic is often viewed by practitioners as a way of healing the individual from the effects of a fragmented rationalist and materialist world — it's a re-enchantment of the self. The practice of magic is also in…

(...) the communication with otherwordly reality is a healing process, a psycho-spiritual path leading to spiritual transformation. Initially the magician has to heal her or himself by 'balancing' the microcosm to become a receptacle, a 'form', for the forces of the otherworld; the human microcosm must be balanced as a…

According to the witchcraft lore, the seasonal rituals draw a close parallel with the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. (...) in the pre-Christian pagan times the aim of rituals was to ensure fertility of the crops and herds; but today their object is to restore empathy with nature among city dwellers alienated from it…

The Old Religion is a pantheistic affirmation of the unity and divine nature of all Life, in its material and spiritual, physical and metaphysical, mortal and eternal aspects. 'As above, so below'. From the neutrons revolving around the core of the atoms in the cells of our bodies, to the planets revolving around the…

[in Hermetic natural magic] the focus is more on internal rather than external nature; more emphasis on the often intense and emotional relationships within the coven than on spiritual relationship with the natural world. The idea of feeling connected to nature, feeling energy 'pulsating through blood and body' as a…