Starhawk Quotes

Clarity of intention is the key to creating a powerful skill or ritual.

In a culture where profit has become the true God, self-sacrifice can seem incomprehensible rather than noble.

The essence of nonviolence is choice: acknowledging that we always do have a choice about whether or not to use violence, and posing an expanded range of choices to those in power. (p64)

In covens as in families, we tend to play different roles and manifest each other’s fears.

And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire.

Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

When we cast a circle, we create an energy form, a boundary that limits and contains the movements of subtle forces.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion about a ritual, and to their own aesthetics. There's generally at least one invocation in every ritual that I could personally do without.

But a windbreak is also a great teacher, for me, about nonviolence. How do we respond to strong forces — anger, rage, even physical attack — without becoming violent in return? How do we respond to what might be well-meant but harsh criticism (whether well intentioned or intentionally hurtful)? If we become a wall, shutting out the energies coming at us, we may actually strengthen the anger of the opposition. On the other hand, if we simply brush off or bat away criticism, the opposition may expand its criticism to include our reactions. But there’s a third alternative: if we can learn from the trees, we can take in and transform the energy coming at us. We do this by staying calm and grounded and centered, by listening rather than responding, by swaying with the wind and letting it blow itself out.

You don’t have to be a black-flag-waving anarchist to be outraged by this shortsightedness. Anyone who loves capitalism should be especially maddened — -because solutions and alternative sources of energy do exist that could enable us to transition swiftly from our fossil-fuel-based economy to one that runs on clean, renewable energy sources that don’t contribute to global warming.

If thoughts and emotions alone could cause things to happen, thousands of my contemporaries would have married the Beatles in 1964.

This is how it works: Someone has a vision that arises from a fierce and passionate love. To make it real, we must love every moment of what we do. Impermanent spirals embed themselves in asphalt, concrete, dust. Slowly, slowly, they eat into the foundations of the structures of power. Deep transformations take time. Regeneration arises from decay. Si, se puede! It can be done. (p26)

We need images that move us beyond language, law, and custom; that hurl us beyond the boundaries of our lives to the space between worlds, where we can see clear.

What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it.

Both trance and fiction can bring through insights and spark personal growth and change. But they are always colored by subjectivity.