Who May Know Their Complete Likeness, When So Much Is Being Hidden. The Astrals, Elementals, Mind, And

“Who may know their complete likeness, when so much is being hidden. The Astrals, Elementals, Mind, and Soul. We realise something of the body’s mechanism and of the affectiveness of the whole; at its interrelations we may only guess. Every fact gleaned shows us merely greater ignorance of ourselves. Therefore, speak not of God, speak for yourself alone, for when you know yourself you will know your Gods.”

—

Austin Osman Spare 1886-1956

There is so much magic to be found in cities. In mine, there are many vacant lots and desolate spaces where plants grow through the concrete and vines wind up the walls of empty buildings - and there is magic there. But there is also magic in busy cities, in the telephone wires that string across the rooftops and in the window-lights of skyscrapers in the early hours. There is magic in looking down on the morning traffic rush, at dawn, and watching cars speed by. I firmly believe there is magic and energy in anything and everything, if you choose to look for it, and have a heart open enough to find it.

From The Black Toad by Gemma Gary.

“A witch is, actually, a successful (in the sense of surviving) deviant. You have a cultural, ideological, social, what-not pattern which is, for that society in question, normal (and, importantly, this is understood as a synonym for natural). Most people survive because they conform to these patterns, because they behave normally. […] But then suddenly you get a deviant which survives, and since it does not draw its support from the normal pattern, […] that deviant is understood as drawing its support from “unknown,” “supernatural” sources. […] If we cannot survive without our order, how can she [the witch] survive in solitude? Hers must be indeed a very powerful order to exist so independently, without all the inter cooperation and individual compromise which we have to go through to survive. And if it is so powerful, then it could destroy us. We must try to destroy it first.”

— Maya Deren, “From the Notebook of Maya Deren”, c.October 1947, vol. 14: pages 21–45. (via maddiviner)

the necrozma line