Timothy Roderick > Quotes

“there isn't shame in having shadows - we all have them to varying degrees. it's simply a part of being human”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: A Year and a Day: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“People who avoid their fears also avoid their power.”
― Timothy Roderick

“Power is a natural state of being that comes from uniting with the vast flow of nature and operating from an experience of accord with that flow.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Love, tenderness, and compassion are universal human emotions that have long quickened the heart and informed the spirit.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Eastern styles of meditation do not require that you create mental stillness by blocking out your thoughts. Instead, they suggest that you observe your thought processes in a detached way.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“The word “occult,” derived from the Latin occultusanum, literally means “secret.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Wiccans therefore first come to accept that words are only valuable as signposts and guides that point toward mystic experience.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“A guided imagery meditation is something like a controlled, planned dream through which someone else leads you.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Since Wicca is a nature religion, one important goal of the path is to experience the life force of nature, the animating energy, as it flows within you.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“many of us presume nature has no value beyond our ability to exploit it.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“In contemporary practice, a pagan is someone who follows a polytheistic/pantheistic spiritual system.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Like our Eastern counterpart’s, the goal of the Western style of meditation is that of bypassing the critical thinking mind and its processes. But instead of doing so with stillness, it accomplishes the same task with activity and imagery.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Wicca is a shamanic spiritual path.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“To Wiccans, a word is not reality itself. For example, the word “apple” is not itself an apple.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“In the West we have television timing. We like action—and lots of it.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“The contemporary spiritual practice of Witchcraft is based on many of the old customs and folk wisdom of old Europe. Because of this, practitioners have reclaimed the word “Witch.” Contemporary practitioners view the word as one of power and they reclaim it in an effort to be mindful of the cost of religious intolerance, to release negative associations and to forge a new future.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Wicca is not an “ancient” religion. It has practices that contemporary practitioners have derived from (and interpreted from) the ancient past, but it is a religion of recent development. The contemporary Craft traces much of its known lineage to approximately the 1950s in England.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Throughout the Middle Ages and particularly during the Renaissance period, the word “Witchcraft” was liberally applied by the Christian church and its authorities to the native religious practices and customs that existed for thousands of years before Christianity.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Meditation techniques that come to us from the East—in particular from China, Japan, and India—lead the practitioner toward physical and mental stillness.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Rather, the path chooses the individual. The consensus of anthropological literature confirms that the “call” to the magical path often emerges from an individual’s deeply transformative experiences of consciousness.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“A symbol is a form that represents something else.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“The earth is our birthplace, yet for millions of us, it feels strangely foreign.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Pagan comes from the Latin paganus, a peasant or country dweller. Formerly people used the word in reference to a non-Christian. The word then expanded over time to pejoratively mean anyone who was not “of The Book,” namely a person who was not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. It gained negative connotations over time and came to mean someone who was an uncivilized “idolater.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“A year and a day of study and spiritual practice offers students the chance to move at this natural pace in their learning. It gives them the opportunity to learn, just as the ancients did, through personal experience, trial and error—which are all guided by the experienced hand of a trained elder.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“In Europe’s Neolithic past, long, long ago when human communities were mostly tribes, in the ancient days of our ancestors well before the introduction of any spiritual path we know—or could possibly imagine—earth-centered spiritual practices were customary.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Spirituality had little to do with lofty philosophical notions—the things that emerge from thinking—it centered on the hard facts of life.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Wiccans understand magic as a natural process. It is the ability to change one’s consciousness—one’s frame of mind.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Aside from the fact that regular meditation can lead to profound insights and life-changing understanding, it also has its more mundane uses. It helps you to relax; it promotes good sleep, better concentration, and improved overall health.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Take a deep breath. Don’t hold back. Go ahead; fill your lungs and feel them expand.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise

“Success in many martial arts, such as akido, tai chi and qui gong, depends on the practitioner tapping into his or her spiritual energy, also known as chi or ki, through specialized breath control techniques.”
― Timothy Roderick, Wicca: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise