Janet Farrar > Quotes

“At the human level, in Jungian terms – the Goddess whispers to a man’s anima, his buried feminine aspect, and the God speaks out loud to his male emphasis; while the God whispers to a woman’s buried male animus, and the Goddess speaks out loud to her female emphasis.”
― Janet Farrar, The Witches' God

“Everything is energy—this book you are reading, the ink on its pages, even the thoughts that are going through your mind while you read these words.”
― Janet Farrar, Lifting the Veil: A Witches' Guide to Trance-Prophesy, Drawing Down the Moon, and Ecstatic Ritual

“This [personification of deities] is also one of the reasons why the faceless concept of duotheism, which existed in early Wiccan practice, will ultimately fail to fulfill the needs of the new generation of Witches. It is human nature to anthropomorphize the world around us. When we paint and draw as children, we put smiley faces on flowers, the sun, and the moon. As we grow up, we give inanimate objects names and personalities—cars and boats for example. This is the inherited mode of psychic functioning at its most basic level. What Jung doesn’t cover is the result of this personification, the creation of supercharged thought-forms that we call gods and goddesses, which have developed personalities as real as our own.”
― Janet Farrar, Progressive Witchcraft: Spirituality, Mysteries, and Training in Modern Wicca

“The gods and goddesses of any culture cannot change the world around us directly. They have to work through us, through the priestesses and priests who freely give over their bodies and mouths to allow them to speak. The purpose of the oracle, seer, or the high priestess who has the moon drawn down upon herself is to serve the gods, to be the conduit for the message they give. The gods are here to guide us; which divinity it is, is really unimportant, as it is only the message that is important, not the messenger, and we ignore this message at our peril.”
― Janet Farrar, Lifting the Veil: A Witches' Guide to Trance-Prophesy, Drawing Down the Moon, and Ecstatic Ritual

“The most important magical tool that you have is your mind. Without the skills and knowledge of their use, your other magical tools are useless props.”
― Janet Farrar, The Inner Mysteries: Progressive Witchcraft and Connection to the Divine

“As we mentioned, the ritual of Drawing Down the Moon is the defining rite that separates Wicca from Druidism and ceremonial ritual magic. Unlike the other traditions, Wicca introduced the idea of deity assumption, or possession by a god or goddess, into modern Witchcraft.”
― Janet Farrar, Lifting the Veil: A Witches' Guide to Trance-Prophesy, Drawing Down the Moon, and Ecstatic Ritual

“The inclusion of the Oak King/Holly King cycle into Wicca is really quite modern, with Robert Grave’s The White Goddess and Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough as the major sources.”
― Janet Farrar, The Inner Mysteries: Progressive Witchcraft and Connection to the Divine

“One big problem for modern Pagans is that the old gods and goddesses have been asleep. Devoid of worship and recognition for so long, they have become psychically dormant…We see it is as the role of modern Witches and Pagans to “wake the gods” just as Tim Robbins’ character “Erik” did in the film Erik the Viking.”
― Janet Farrar, The Inner Mysteries: Progressive Witchcraft and Connection to the Divine

“Magical forces will seek any means to realize the objective, even if it is not in the best interests of the person concerned. Unless, of course, you are clever enough to make sure you only ask for what you really want, rather than for what you think you want.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“One of the most obvious things that stick out in this short history is the importance and influence of books in the growth of modern Wicca; Gardner would never have got the new movement off the ground without them.”
― Janet Farrar, The Inner Mysteries: Progressive Witchcraft and Connection to the Divine

“Sex magic without love is black magic.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“The two most important doctrines that have kept Wicca from degenerating and losing cohesion as a spiritual path is its system of ethical principles—the Wiccan Rede—and its system of training. If these systems didn’t exist within Wicca, someone would end up creating them—regardless of whether tradition or lineage continues as a prevalent factor.”
― Janet Farrar, The Inner Mysteries: Progressive Witchcraft and Connection to the Divine

“Jewish tradition, by the way, also included image spells, but only for one purpose – the recovery of stolen property.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“The Boomerang Effect is expressed in the traditional occult maxim: ‘Any psychic attack which comes up against a stronger defence rebounds threefold on the attacker.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“Changes occurred again by the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s when feminist and Dionysian influences began to rise. We have attended at least one ritual by a well-known high priestess of that time period; she performed a Dionysian-style ritual using drumming and dancing without any structure. The result was a total inability to control or direct any raised magical energy whatsoever.”
― Janet Farrar, Lifting the Veil: A Witches' Guide to Trance-Prophesy, Drawing Down the Moon, and Ecstatic Ritual

“Change one person’s direction in their life for the best, and you change the world—an act of universal healing. This is not separate from the evolution of man but part of it. These words come from the forces of evolution, personified as divinity. To be a seer is, therefore, not a path of ego, but a path of service to mankind, divinity, and evolution.”
― Janet Farrar, Lifting the Veil: A Witches' Guide to Trance-Prophesy, Drawing Down the Moon and Ecstatic Ritual

“Not training or gaining knowledge breaks the Wiccan Rede itself, the very core ethic of Wicca.”
― Janet Farrar, The Inner Mysteries: Progressive Witchcraft and Connection to the Divine

“Braid suggested that hypnosis was “a condition resulting from the mind being possessed by dominant ideas,” that it was caused by suggestion. This remains the main theory of hypnosis even today…It relies on the individual’s willingness and desire to enter into that state and the belief of the possibility of it happening.”
― Janet Farrar, Lifting the Veil: A Witches' Guide to Trance-Prophesy, Drawing Down the Moon, and Ecstatic Ritual

“The witches’ Circle has, in fact, two functions: protective and amplifying. It keeps out unwanted influences, and it prevents the power that is built up from dissipating until the moment for its purposeful release.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“By far the best, and most widely accepted, compendium of correspondences is Aleister Crowley’s book 777.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“When someone interested in Witchcraft comes to us, we have a simple test. We get them to close their eyes and, with their palms up, ask them to put their hands out in front of them. We then ask them if they wish to see some magic. How they react to what happens next is important. When they open their eyes, they discover that we have placed a simple houseplant in its pot on their outstretched hands. We look for the recognition in their eyes, that magic is not separate or supernatural, but is life itself.”
― Janet Farrar, Progressive Witchcraft: Spirituality, Mysteries, and Training in Modern Wicca

“Some individuals are pathological vampires, drawing energy unhealthily off others which they should be drawing healthily from the universal Source and from its manifestation in surrounding Nature.”
― Janet Farrar, Spells and How They Work

“This is one of the reasons we no longer use the terms high priest and high priestess to describe ourselves: we feel the terms encourage ego inflation. We still use the terms priest and priestess, but we use them as a job description rather than a statement of status.”
― Janet Farrar, Progressive Witchcraft: Spirituality, Mysteries, and Training in Modern Wicca