Jess

“Like Jean, I always like to put my hand to stone, except that I am more of a collector than a maker. Wherever I go, pebbles seem to find their way into my pockets and bags. When autumn comes, I discover the long-forgotten relics of last year's walks in my coats, each one of them a memento of a place, a time, a thought process. They scatter every surface in my house, too, sometimes requiring a grand clear out, when I gather them all up and tip them into the garden. Still, they find their way back in. I could almost believe that they reproduce.

I can think of no greater pleasure than a stone in the hand, the right one of just the right size. Stones have a pure kind of weight to them, like small concentrations of gravity. They seem to always crave contact with the earth, pulling down towards the soil that matches their serene chill. I reach for one now as I write this, and measure it against my palm. There is a definite coupling between the two of us, a communication of density, a heat exchange. For a moment, I am anchored again.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Any spiritual practice that draws our energy and attention "up" - without equally focusing downward - is inherently ungrounding and will make us out of balance.”
― Jessica Moore

“Well, ours have old souls,” her eyes glint again in the candlelight. “The cats here really do have nine lives, but not in the way you might think. Our cats come back to live again in different bodies, nine full lifetimes for our little ones. Our familiars. It means they can stay with a witch throughout her entire life, living side by side. Because a witch and her familiar is a bond for eternity. A witch’s cat won’t die until she does.”
― Kassandra Cross, Black Magic

“Many spiritual disciplines, especially those oriented toward ascendance, advise us to give up the self, to surrender all to a master, guru, or a particular concept of God. While it is important to give up attachments to the lower egos, what is really called for is to become one with the divine. There is no we without an I. To become one with the divine is not to abandon the Self (as archetype of wholeness) but to realize that divine consciousness of who that Self really is.”
― Anodea Judith, Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self