Witchcraft is fun. It offers us a chance to play, to act silly, to let the inner child come out. Out of foolishness and play, creativity is born. - Starhawk

The Mysteries are teachings that cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, but only by the deep mind made accessible in trance. They may be conveyed by an object — a shaft of wheat, as in the Eleusinian Mysteries — by a key phrase, or symbol. The secret itself may be meaningless when out of context: only within the framework of the ritual does it take on its illuminating power.

An initiation is a symbolic death and rebirth, a rite of passage that transforms each person who experiences it.

In a culture where profit has become the true God, self-sacrifice can seem incomprehensible rather than noble. (p215)