16 Quotes by Peter Grey

Our aim is to become as receptive as the moon, in order that we contain all the reflected solar fire and pour it out as libation, or curses. We listen. We observe. We absorb. We master silence and stillness, stealth. We are able to become ceaseless and undiminished in our giving. It is we who light, tend and extinguish the hearth fires. Fire flows through us and it is we who endure.

Yet above all these hangs the moon as our proof, between our legs runs honey and blood. She teaches us in dreams.

Why is this full moon so important? She is named for her moment of maximum potency. The full moon is the quintessence. She has not been eclipsed into malefic but is in a state of exultation. The full moon is not merely the culmination of the cycle, it is a gate which opens up into a path outside of time.

It is not the myth that falls out of date, it is the way of wording it. New voices are endlessly needed to swell their throats with song. Poetry is the unbroken lineage.

Here is my prophecy. Witchcraft is going to get both aroused and angrier. Nature will rise. We are not only coming for your children, we are your children and all those who will inherit the ruins of the world. Welcome to the Apocalypse. This is the moment when we realise that the climate is broken. It's all blood and roses from here on in. As witches we should prepare to fly on the wings of the storm.

Though as Jack Parsons says, witchcraft is the oldest religion, that it lifts us out of ourselves and switches our bristling skin, the fact is, that witchcraft arises from the world. It comes from the land, the people, the plants, the animals, the whole web of life. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. Witchcraft is here in the present time.

Witchcraft offers us the connection we need to be more than desperately criss-crossing the wasteland and perilously low on gas. In a real sense we have become severed from connections, overwritten, cut-up, lost in a globalised symbol set that provides no meaning beyond a message to consume.

Witchcraft can be seen as an art accomplished through the action of a set of three simple principles, namely: orientation, presence and imperative. These are the three phases which together create a mythic topography of witchcraft. Without these we have only the broken spars of folklore, misreadings of Christian apocrypha, and blind impulse. This is my narrow path into the dark wood.

My thesis is not that we anchor the witch in history, but that we understand that witchcraft is a set of relationships whose rhythm is that of the moon, stars, sun and earth. A witchcraft which adapts to the state of the world as it is, not backing into an imagined past.