6 Quotes by John Halstead

We can name this river, here and now—but we cannot name the water itself. We can name our gods and we can name ourselves, but we cannot name the essence of sacred identity that flows through both, that connects us and sanctifies us." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Naming the Water: Human and Deity Identity from an Earth-Centered Perspective

My gods are not tame. They do not always come when they are called.This is not a failure of ritual or a weakness of belief. It is the nature of my gods. I would no more expect a god to “show up” in my ritual space than I would expect to be able to call a mountain into my living room. That is simply not the nature of mountains. If I want to meet a mountain, I am the one who must move." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Gods Like Mountains, Gods Like Mist

For the natural polytheist, whose gods arise in and from the natural material world ... Our gods not only have transcendent eyes and metaphysical hands. They have antlers and feathers, hooves and scales, fangs and horns and wings and fins and claws. They are in the lands we strip for veins of precious ore. They are in the waters we poison. - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Anatomy of a God

For the natural polytheist who finds her gods in the rivers and mountains, in the deep-rooted giants looming above the canopy and in the tiny creatures that move beneath them, ecology gives us a glimpse into a kind of living anatomy of the divine, a theology of physical as well as spiritual life. - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Anatomy of a God

So yes, I worship nature. I worship a blind Goddess. For me, she is the only worthy object of worship. She will never care that I worship her. She will never answer a single prayer. But she is always with me… shaping me as I shape her. I will struggle with her to the last gasp of my life. And in the end, in my final act of devotion, I will yield to her. - John Halstead, "I Worship the Blind Goddess

the resurgence of the elder gods breaks down the wall of separation between religion and science that has partitioned Western thought since the Enlightenment. The rise of science has taught us things about the Earth, Sun, and Storm that the ancients would have marveled to know. We are in the enviable, irresistible, position of being able to learn, through science, about the very gods themselves." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism