Bruja Ha

“(Doesn't this sound like all our lives on Zoom during Covid?) -- "...no one knew how to free the man from the mirror; the curse was too strong. Seeing the man I loved every day through a layer of glass, unable to touch him, or kiss him, or hold him was unbearable. I was more than heartbroken. The pain was so deep I could barely breathe" (p.377).”
― Chris Colfer, The Wishing Spell

“Whenever I was in the woods, on my own, I would have one ear pricked for the sound of approaching footsteps. I would always make sure that I knew what time sundown was, how to find the path back. I started to carry a pepper spray. I was full of impotent rage. When I saw men jogging through the trees I envied them their freedom, and this is in the full knowledge that men, too, can be attacked in quiet places. But the men I saw seemed to think they were invulnerable, just as I had on that summer day; the women, on the other hand, were more like me, all too aware of how “the great outdoors” can be a dangerous place for a lone female, even in broad daylight.”
― Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted: A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging

“We can possess all the fine goods that our civilisation has to offer us; we can have important jobs, and social status, and tone our bodies on all the latest machines – but without a sense of belonging to the world, we feel empty and our lives lack meaning.”
― Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted: A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging

“In 1962, the French philosopher René Guénon suggested that we live in ‘degenerate times’, at the end of a long age during which important spiritual truths have been forgotten, the ancient centres of wisdom have been destroyed and the guardians of that wisdom have been dispersed. At such times, he said, a safe repository for spiritual truth can be found in folklore. He suggested that knowledge which is in danger of being lost passes into the symbolic code of a folk tale, and then is passed on to the people. They will perhaps only be concerned with the stories’ surface meanings – but they will at least preserve them, and pass them down to their children. Then, in better times, people might once again appear who understand the code, and who will penetrate the symbolic disguise to the wider meaning behind.59”
― Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday