11 Quotes & Sayings By Starhawk

Starhawk was born in 1962 in Northern California. She grew up on a small farm, reading books on White Goddess religion, witchcraft, the occult, and nature. She was raised by her father, who was very much into the occult. At the age of 14 she began to hear voices that told her she was a witch Read more

These voices were part of an ongoing experience that would continue throughout her life. By the age of 15 Starhawk had dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles where she found work as a waitress, lived in a fleabag motel with her boyfriend, and wrote poems. At age 17 she married a man who abused her physically and emotionally. She left him at once but soon ran into him again. This time he murdered her. The police were convinced that she had killed herself because she had written about being abused by men before. Starhawk eventually found work as a screenwriter for films produced by Disney and made friends with many creative people including photographers Cindy Sherman and Richard Avedon , poet Allen Ginsberg , film director Steven Soderbergh , artist Keith Haring , author Susan Taylor . She has traveled widely around the world giving lectures on witchcraft, ecology , politics , art (including modern dance), feminism , indigenous cultures, alternative medicine , psychic phenomena .

Her writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Spin Magazine , The Nation , Rolling Stone . Starhawk has been featured on television programs including The Today Show . She has written books including The Spiral Dance (Bantam) (1979) (with Starhawk) ; The Fifth Sacred Thing (Bantam 1988) (with Peter Staudenmaier ) ; Dreaming the Dark (Bantam 1989) (with Starhawk) ; Witchcraft Today (Berkley 1987; revised edition Berkley 1992) ; Audubon's Mythology (Berkley 1989 ; revised edition Berkley 1991) ; Ceremony: An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary Witchcraft (Harper & Row 1989; revised edition HarperSanFrancisco 1993).

1
The God is wild, but his is the wildness of connection, not of domination and violence. Wildness is not the same as violence. Gentleness and tenderness do no translate into wimpiness. When men -- or women, for that matter -- begin to unleash what is untamed in us, we need to remember that the first images and impulses we encounter will often be the stereotyped paths of power we have learned in a culture of domination. To become truly wild, we must not be sidetracked by the dramas of power-over, the seduction of addictions, or the thrill of control. We must go deeper. Starhawk
2
The practice of magic also demands the development of what is called the magical will. Will is very much akin to what Victorian schoolmasters called "character": honesty, self-discipline, commitment, and conviction. 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." A bag of herbs acquires the power to heal because I say it does. For my word to take on such force, I must be deeply and completely convinced that it is identified with truth as I know it. If I habitually lie to my lovers, steal from my boss, pilfer from supermarkets, or simply renege on my promises, I cannot have that conviction. 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. If I say I will finish a report by Thursday and I do so, I have strengthened my knowledge that I am a person who can do what I say I will do. If I let the report go until a week from next Monday, I have undermined that belief. If course, life is full of mistakes and miscalculations. But 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. . Starhawk
3
In fact they were looking for weapons eager to find something they could justify the millions of dollars and massive deployment of personnel, the collection of stun-guns, tear-gas guns, pepper-spray guns, M16’s, horses, clubs, and armored personnel carriers with which they intended to protect the city from our hordes of puppet carriers and potentially illegal gardeners Starhawk
4
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. Starhawk
5
Witchcraft is fun. It offers us a chance to play, to act silly, to let the inner child come out. Out of foolishness and play, creativity is born. Starhawk
6
The Judeo-Christian heritage has left us with the view of a universe composed of warring opposites, which are valued as either good or evil. They cannot coexist. A valuable insight of Witchcraft, shared by many earth-based religions, is that polarities are in balance, not at war. Starhawk
7
Panic is not an effective long-term organizing strategy. Starhawk
8
Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow because science must always test and measure and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable. Starhawk
9
To choose is also to begin. Starhawk
10
Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. Starhawk