100 Quotes About Paganism

Paganism is a way of life, not just a religion. It’s about honoring the divine through all things, not just the churches and temples of the world. There are no gods or goddesses in Paganism, just nature, earth, and the universe. Paganism has no one single definition, but there are certain key ideas that define it for most Pagans Read more

Here are some of the best Pagan quotes to help you understand this ancient philosophy better.

1
I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses... If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is, But because I love it, and that’s why I love it, Because when you love you never know what you love, Or why you love, or what love is. Loving is eternal innocence, And the only innocence is not thinking. Alberto Caeiro
2
I consider a dream like I consider a shadow, ” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a rock. A dream is real – if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a dream – but less real than a thing. That’s what being real is like. Unknown
3
It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the vital spirituality of hope and increase that exist in the body and soul of nescient childhood. Caeiro’s work is a dawn that wakes us up and quickens us; a more that material, more than anti-spiritual dawn. It’s an abstract effect, pure vacuum, nothingness. . Unknown
4
She’s a manner of speaking. Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves. There are new flowers, new green leaves. There are other beautiful days. Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real. Alberto Caeiro
What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.
5
What comes, when it comes, will be what it is. Alberto Caeiro
6
If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, And Spring came the day after tomorrow, I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow. If that’s its time, when else should it come? I like it that everything is real and everything is right; And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it. And so, if I die now, I die peacefully Because everything is real and everything is right. Alberto Caeiro
7
I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read. Alberto Caeiro
I'm one of my sensations.
8
I'm one of my sensations. Alberto Caeiro
Accept the universe As the gods gave it to you....
9
Accept the universe As the gods gave it to you. If the gods wanted to give you something else They’d have done it. If there are other matters and other worlds There are. Alberto Caeiro
10
And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything. Who knows if I’ll be dead the day after tomorrow? If I’m dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrow Will be another thunderstorm than if I hadn’t died. Of course I know thunderstorms don’t fall because I see them, But if I weren’t in the world, The world would be different –There would be me the less –And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm. No matter what happens, what’s falling is what’ll be falling when it falls.(7/10/1930). Alberto Caeiro
11
It’s stranger than every strangeness And the dreams of all the poets And the thoughts of all the philosophers, That things are really what they seem to be And there’s nothing to understand. Alberto Caeiro
12
The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset. But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset? Alberto Caeiro
13
I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing, And I look at flowers and I smile.. I don’t know if they understand me Or if I understand them, But I know the truth is in them and in me And in our common divinity Of letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleep And not have dreams in our sleep. Alberto Caeiro
14
Live, you say, in the present; Live only in the present. But I don’t want the present, I want reality; I want things that exist, not time that measures them. What is the present? It’s something relative to the past and the future. It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing. I only want reality, things without the present. I don’t want to include time in my scheme. I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things. I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present. I shouldn’t even treat them as real. I should treat them as nothing. I should see them, only see them; See them till I can’t think about them. See them without time, without space, To see, dispensing with everything but what you see. And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science. . Alberto Caeiro
15
He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others! He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs, And isn’t cured from the outside, Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink, Or a trunk not having iron bands! There being injustice is like there being death. Alberto Caeiro
16
I don’t always feel what I know I should feel. My thought crosses the river I swim very slowly Because the suit men made it wear weighs it down. Alberto Caeiro
17
A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on; And the road didn’t become more beautiful or even more ugly. That’s human action on the outside world. We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And the sun is always punctual every day.(5/7/14) Alberto Caeiro
Also at times, on the surface of streams, Water?bubbles form...
18
Also at times, on the surface of streams, Water?bubbles form And grow and burst And have no meaning at all Except that they’re water?bubbles Growing and bursting. Alberto Caeiro
19
There are no roses in my yard: what wind brought you? But I suddenly come from far away. I was sick for a moment. No wind whatsoever brought you now. Now you’re here. What you were isn’t you, or else the whole rose would be here. Alberto Caeiro
20
I saw that there is no Nature, That Nature doesn’t exist, That there are hills, valleys, plains, That there are trees, flowers, weeds, That there are rivers and stones, But there is not a whole these belong to, That a real and true wholeness Is a sickness of our ideas. Alberto Caeiro
21
I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.(6/20/1919) Alberto Caeiro
I pass and I stay, like the Universe.
22
I pass and I stay, like the Universe. Alberto Caeiro
23
Everything’s different from us. That’s why everything exists. Alberto Caeiro
A row of trees far away, there on the hillside....
24
A row of trees far away, there on the hillside. But what is it, a row of trees? It’s just trees. Row and the plural trees aren’t things, they’re names. Alberto Caeiro
25
If science wants to be truthful, What science is more truthful than the science of things without science? I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lying Has a reality so real even my back feels it. I don’t need reason – I have shoulderblades. Alberto Caeiro
26
I was born subject like others to errors and defects, But never to the error of wanting to understand too much, Never to the error of wanting to understand only with the intellect.. Never to the defect of demanding of the WorldThat it be anything that’s not the World. Alberto Caeiro
27
Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field There passes for a moment the figure of a man. His steps go with “him” in the same reality, But I look at him and them, and they’re two things: The “man” goes walking with his ideas, false and foreign, And his steps go with the ancient system that makes legs walk. I see him from a distance without any opinion at all. How perfect that he is in him what he is – his body, His true reality which doesn’t have desires or hopes, But muscles and the sure and impersonal way of using them. . Alberto Caeiro
28
The amorous shepherd has lost his staff, And his sheep are straying on the hillside, And he didn’t even play the flute he brought to play because he was thinking so much. No one came to him or went away. He never found his staff again. Others, cursing at him, gathered his sheep for him. No one had loved him, in the end. When he got up from the hillside and the false truth, he saw everything: The great valleys full of the same green as always, The great distant mountains, more real than any feeling, All reality, with the sky and the air and the fields that exist, is present.( And once again the air, that he’d missed for so long, entered coolly into his lungs) And he felt that the air was opening again, but with pain, a liberty in his chest.(7/10/1930) . Alberto Caeiro
29
All the evil in the world comes from us bothering with each other, Wanting to do good, wanting to do evil. Our soul and the sky and the earth are enough for us. To want more is to lose this, and be unhappy. Alberto Caeiro
30
The Amorous Shepherd is a fruitless interlude, but those few poems are among the world’s greatest love poems, because they’re love poems about love, not about being poems. The poet loves because he loves, not because love exists. Unknown
31
Something changed in part of reality – my knees and my hands. What science has knowledge for this? The blind man goes on his way and I don’t make any more gestures. It’s already not the same time, or the same people, or anything the same. This is being real. Alberto Caeiro
32
We are not on this planet to ask forgiveness of our deities Scott Cunningham
33
Even so, I’m somebody. I’m the Discoverer of Nature.I’m the Argonaut of true sensations. I bring a new Universe to the UniverseBecause I bring the Universe to itself. Alberto Caeiro
34
..I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that. James Lovegrove
35
If I could take a bite of the whole world And feel it on my palate I’d be more happy for a minute or so.. But I don’t always want to be happy. Sometimes you have to be Unhappy to be natural.. Not every day is sunny. When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come. So I take unhappiness with happiness Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange That there are mountains and plains And that there are cliffs and grass.. What you need is to be natural and calm In happiness and in unhappiness, To feel like someone seeing, To think like someone walking, And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies, And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful.. That’s how it is and that’s how it should be.. Alberto Caeiro
Those of us who embrace the feminine know its strength.
36
Those of us who embrace the feminine know its strength. Betsy Cornwell
37
Night doesn’t fall for my eyes But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes. Beyond my thinking and having any thoughts The night falls concretely And the shining of stars exists like it had weight. Alberto Caeiro
38
All beings exist and nothing else And that’s why they’re called beings Alberto Caeiro
39
There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything. Alberto Caeiro
40
And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting –In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural. Alberto Caeiro
41
Things don’t have significance: they only have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things. Alberto Caeiro
42
When I’m depressed, I read Caeiro – he’s my fresh air. I become very calm, content, faithful – yes, I find faith in God, and in the soul’s transcendent living smallness, after reading the poems by that ungodly anti-humanist who goes unsurpassed on earth. Unknown
43
A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales Acts like a sick god, but like a god. Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists, He knows things exist, that he exists, He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself, And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist. He knows being is the point. All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point.(10/1/1917). Alberto Caeiro
44
If I die very young, hear this: I was never anything but a kid playing. I was a heathen like the sun and the water, I had the universal religion only people don’t have. I was happy because I didn’t ask for anything at all, Or tried to find anything, And I didn’t find any more explanation Than the word explanation having no meaning at all. Alberto Caeiro
45
What does this think about that? Nothing thinks about anything. Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants? If it did, it would be people.Why am I worrying about this? If I think about these things, I’ll stop seeing trees and plants And stop seeing the EarthFor only seeing my thoughts.. I’ll get unhappy and stay in the dark. And so, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky. Alberto Caeiro
46
Praise be to God I’m not good, And have the natural egotism of flowers And rivers following their bed Preoccupied without knowing it Only with blooming and flowing. This is the only mission in the World, This–to exist clearly, And to know how to do it without thinking about it.) Alberto Caeiro
47
The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow. W.b. Yeats
48
Yes: I exist inside my body. I’m not carrying the sun and the moon in my pocket. I don’t want to conquer worlds because I slept badly, And I don’t want to eat the world for breakfast because I have a stomach. Indifferent? No: a son of the earth, who, if he jumps, it’s wrong, A moment in the air that’s not for us, And only happy when his feet hit the ground again, Pow! In reality where nothing’s missing! (6/20/1919). Alberto Caeiro
49
There is no difference between ancient and modern paganism. Christianity has five gods: three that band together against one who apparently has managed to stand his ground for millennia, and a mother of god who is worshiped at the same level as the other members of the quadrinity Bangambiki Habyarimana
If I talk about her like she’s a being It’s...
50
If I talk about her like she’s a being It’s because talking about her I need to use the language of men Which gives personality to things, And imposes a name on things. Alberto Caeiro
51
On the conversion of the European tribes to Christianity the ancient pagan worship was by no means incontinently abandoned. So wholesale had been the conversion of many peoples, whose chiefs or rulers had accepted the new faith on their behalf in a summary manner, that it would be absurd to suppose that any, general acquiescence in the new gospel immediately took place. Indeed, the old beliefs lurked in many neighbourhoods, and even a renaissance of some of them occurred in more than one area. Little by little, however, the Church succeeded in rooting out the public worship of the old pagan deities, but it found it quite impossible to effect an entire reversion of pagan ways, and in the end compromised by exalting the ancient deities to the position of saints in its calendar, either officially, or by usage. In the popular mind, however, these remained as the fairies of woodland and stream, whose worship in a broken-down form still flourished at wayside wells and forest shrines. The Matres, or Mother gods, particularly those of Celtic France and Ireland, the former of which had come to be Romanized, became the bonnes dames of folklore, while the dusii and pilosi, or hairy house-sprites, were so commonly paid tribute that the Church introduced a special question concerning them into its catechism of persons suspected of pagan practice. Nevertheless, the Roman Church, at a somewhat later era, reversed its older and more catholic policy, and sternly set its face against the cultus of paganism in Europe, stigmatizing the several kinds of spirits and derelict gods who were the objects of its worship as demons and devils, whom mankind must eschew with the most pious care if it were to avoid damnation. . Lewis Spence
52
It is often said by the critics of Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in a pilgrimage or a ballet. What can really be maintained, so as to carry not a little conviction, is this: that where such a Church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances; not only the cathedral but the carnival. One of the chief claims of Christian civilisation is to have preserved things of pagan origin. G.k. Chesterton
53
Either paganish unbelief of the truth of that eternal blessedness, and of the truth of the Scripture which doth promise it to us; or, at least, a doubting of our own interest; or most usually most sensible of the latter, and therefore complain most against it, yet I am apt to suspect the former to be the main, radical master-sin, and of greatest force in this business. Oh! If we did but verily believe that the promise of the glory is the word of God, and that God doth truly mean as he speaks, and is fully resolved to make it good; if we did verily believe that there is, indeed, such blessedness prepared for believers as the scripture mentioneth ; sure we should be as impatient of living as we are now fearful of dying, and should think every day a year till our last day should come. We should as hardly refrain from laying violent hands on ourselves, or from the neglecting of the means of our health and life, as we do now from over-much carefulness and seeking of life by unlawful means. Is it possible that we can truly believe that death will remove us fro misery to such glory, and yet be loth to die(465-6)? It appears we are little weary of sinning, when we are so unwilling to be freed by dying(467). Richard Baxter
Where once I prayed for forgiveness from a father God...
54
Where once I prayed for forgiveness from a father God who held up huge palms and said “Thou shalt not, ” now I find peace with a sister god who takes my open hands in hers and says, “You will. Betsy Cornwell
55
To those Romans December twenty-fifth was the birthday of the sun. They wrote that in gold letters in their calendar. Every year about that time, the middle of winter, the sun was born once more and it was going to put an end to the darkness and misery of winter. So they had a great feast, with presents and dolls for everybody, and the best day of all was December twenty-fifth. That feast, they would tell you, was thousands of years old- before Christ was ever heard of. John G. Jackson
56
I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am. I only regret not having loved you. Put your hands in mine And let’s be quiet, surrounded by life. Alberto Caeiro
57
The sky is an enormous man. Emanuel Swedenborg
58
The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything. When you’re at its bank you’re only at its bank. Alberto Caeiro
59
I don’t know what understanding myself is. I don’t look inside. I don’t believe I exist behind myself. Alberto Caeiro
60
Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing. I know they smell just as well as I know I existed. They’re things known from the outside. But now I know with my breathing from the back of my head. Alberto Caeiro
61
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 John Halstead
62
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 John Halstead
63
I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding. I sing to you of the god of the dust that flies off the ice-burned comet, and the god of the spaces in between. I sing to you of the god that twists like a serpent at the center of every sun and is found again coiled within every electron, shared by both and worshiped by each in its own way. I sing to you of the god that collects asteroids together in mockeries of his sister’s solar systems, jealous of his elder sibling’s power. I sing to you of all these, and many, many more." - Lupa, "The Forgotten Gods of Nature . John Halstead
64
I sing to you of the deities of the Dictyostelidal slime molds, sexless and strange, at once a thousand voices and one song united. I sing to you of hard times when the wood has rotted away and the sun bakes the earth, and while as individuals we die, together we thrive. The divinities ask for sacrifice, the thousand voices demand it. Those who die to give life to the others, who raise up the new generation so that they may spread far and wide–these become a part of that sacred host, their voices immortalized not in cells but in spirit." - Lupa, "The Forgotten Gods of Nature. John Halstead
65
The heron must be used to people, and yet it never lets you get too close. Draw parallel to it with the width of one of the marsh’s holding ponds between you, and it will duck its head, eyeing you with suspicion, then fly. I cannot approach the heron, certainly could never touch it; I can only look for it, entranced. This is how I understand the divine, and why I continue to seek it in the resolutely non-human world, with which we nonetheless recognize a numinous kinship. Sometimes, it will turn and lock eyes with you, lifting you out of yourself, changing everything. Other times, it will give you the side-eye and swoop away, leaving you longing for retreating beauty. You might not see it every single time you go looking, or where you expect to find it. No matter how common the experience, every time you stumble across mystery, or independent wild being, it is a surprise and a miracle. And every day, you can look." - Sara Amis, "A Daily Heron . John Halstead
66
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 . John Halstead
67
Olympus is still a patriarchy. Zeus heads his royal household as jealously as Jehovah rules his harem of dull, harp-playing angels. Both are templates for order on earth, don’t you think? Cliff James
68
I’d like to have enough time and quiet To think about absolutely nothing, To not ever feel myself living, To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected. Alberto Caeiro
69
On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid, And I begin to meditate about problems I make up. Alberto Caeiro
70
Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it. Each thing only reminds us of what it is And it’s only what nothing else is. The fact that it’s it separates it from every other thing.( Everything’s nothing without another thing that’s not it). Alberto Caeiro
71
Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel. Unknown
72
It’s stupid, but it’s human, and that’s how it is. Unknown
73
Do I believe a thing has limits! ? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn’t have limits. Existence means there’s always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn’t always being some other thing that’s beyond it?” At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.“ Look, Caeiro.. think about numbers.. Where do they end? Take any number – say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 – there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger..““ But that’s just numbers, ” protested my master Caeiro.And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:“ What is 34 in Reality, anyway? . Unknown
74
But what you’re calling poetry is what everything is. It’s not even poetry – it’s seeing. These materialists are blind. You told me they say space is infinite. Where do they see that in space?” And I, disconcerted: “But don’t you think of space as infinite? Can’t you conceive of space as infinite?”“ I don’t conceive of anything as being infinite. How could I conceive of anything as being infinite?”“ But, man, ” I said, “Imagine space. Beyond that space is more space, and beyond that more, and then more, and more.. It never ends..““ Why?” asked my master Caeiro. Unknown
75
The Great Vaccination – the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia. Unknown
76
And the idea of nothingness – the most terrifying of all ideas, when thought of with feeling – has, in my dear master’s work and in my memories of him, something as high and luminous as sunlight upon snowy, unscalable peaks. Unknown
77
In exceptional circumstances – exceptional in that all circumstances in life are exceptional, especially those which are nothing in themselves and come to be everything in their results. Unknown
78
I love flowers for being flowers, directly. And I love trees for being trees without my thought. Alberto Caeiro
79
That thing over there was more there than it’s there! Yes, sometimes I cry about the perfect body that doesn’t exist. But the perfect body is the bodiest body there can be, And the rest are the dreams men have, The myopia of someone who doesn’t look very much, Alberto Caeiro
80
Pagans earn their reputations for relaxed sexual mores, often in rebellion from the repression of their religions during adolescence. At a Pagan festival, one need only lower one's guard to be offered sex under the cloaking of the sacred. Thomm Quackenbush
81
Paganism is the default of most children, since they excel at magical thinking. Thomm Quackenbush
82
There is a theory that men do not need Paganism because they have endless avenues of societal power available. Why use spells when one can get a bank loan with little trouble? The world already bends over backward to accommodate men, so why perfect the art of magickally shaping it? Thomm Quackenbush
83
Let’s only care about the place where we are. There’s beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else. If there’s someone beyond the curve in the road, Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the road, That’s what the road is to them. Alberto Caeiro
84
But if God is the flowers and the trees And the hills and the sun and the moonlight, Then I believe in him, Then I believe in him all the time, And my whole life is an oration and a mass, And a communion with my eyes and through my ears. Alberto Caeiro
85
An Atheopagan Prayer by Mark GreenPraise to the wide spinning world Unfolding each of all the destined tales compressed In the moment of your catastrophic birth Wide to the fluid expanse, blowing outward Kindling in stars and galaxies, in bright pools Of Christmas-colored gas; cohering in marbles hot And cold, ringed, round, gray and red and gold and dun And blue Pure blue, the eye of a child, spinning in a veil of air, Warm island, home to us, kind beyond measure: the stones And trees, the round river flowing sky to deepest chasm, salt And sweet. Praise to Time, enormous and precious, And we with so little, seeing our world go as it will Ruing, cheering, the treasured fading, precious arriving, Fear and wonder, Fear and wonder always. Praise O black expanse of mostly nothing Though you do not hear, you have no ear nor mind to hear Praise O inevitable, O mysterious, praise Praise and thanks be a wave Expanding from this tiny temporary mouth this tiny dot Of world a bubble Going out forever meeting everything as it goes All the great and infinitesimal Gracious and terrible All the works of blessed Being.May it be so. May it be so. May our hearts sing to say it is so. John Halstead
86
Nothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given. Unknown
87
I’m a keeper of flocks. The flock is my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. I think with my eyes and with my ears And with my hands and feet And with my nose and mouth. Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling it And eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning. That’s why when on a hot day I feel sad from liking it so much, And I throw myself lengthwise on the grass And shut my hot eyes, And feeling my whole body lying on reality, I know the truth and I’m happy. Alberto Caeiro
88
And sometimes if I want To imagine I’m a lamb( Or a whole flock Spreading out all over the hillside So I can be a lot of happy things at the same time), It’s only because I feel what I write at sunset, Or when a cloud passes its hand over the light And silence runs over the grass outside. When I sit and write poems Or, walking along the roads or pathways, I write poems on the paper in my thoughts, I feel a staff in my hand And see my silhouette On top of a knoll, Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas, Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock, With a silly smile like someone who doesn’t understand what somebody’s saying But tries to pretend they do. Alberto Caeiro
89
Let’s be simple and calm, Like brooks and trees, And God will love us by making Beautiful things like the trees and brooks for us, And give us greenness in his spring, And a river for us to go to when we end... Alberto Caeiro
90
One day when God fell asleep And the Holy Ghost went off flying, He got into a box of miracles and stole three. With the first he made it so that no one would know he had run away. With the second he made himself a human boy forever. With the third he created a Christ eternally crucified And left him nailed to the cross that there is in HeavenWhere he’s used as a model for other crosses. Then he ran away to the sun And came down on the first ray he caught. Alberto Caeiro
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Nature never remembers, that’s why she’s beautiful. Alberto Caeiro
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If you are drawn to the left hand path, it's usually because you've had some kind of life experience that has shocked you, awakened you. Nikolas Schreck
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Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose. Geerhardus Vos
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The nature of Paganism is that of exploring, evolution, and opening up. Gede Parma
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Last summer we had eight people in the [Christian] congregation who danced four different sun dances. Of course the missionaries have said all along that those ceremonies are pagan and we can't do that. Our people insist that they are free in the gospel, free in Christ Jesus, to participate in Indian religious forms and ceremonies. - George Tinker Jim Wallis (Author)
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I Only Believe What I See But I Question Everything I Hear Charleston Parker
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Quit Believing in Lies and Always Search For the Truth! Charleston Parker
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I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant. Alberto Caeiro
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If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it. I’m a mystic, but only in my body, My soul is simple and doesn’t think. Alberto Caeiro
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I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, “Are you at peace with yourself?” and he answered, “No, I’m at peace.” It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one. Unknown