{"quotes":[{"text":"Again burst out that chant McKay had heard as he had floated through the mists upon the lake. Now, as then, despite his opened ears, he could distinguish no words, but clearly he understood its mingled themes - the joy of Spring's awakening, rebirth, with the green life streaming singing up through every bough, swelling the buds, burgeoning with tender leaves the branches; the dance of the trees in the scented winds of Spring; the drums of the jubilant rain on leafy hoods; passion of Summer sun pouring its golden flood down upon the trees; the moon passing with stately step and slow and green hands stretching up to her and drawing from her breast milk of silver fire; riot of wild gay winds with their mad pipings and strummings; - soft interlacing of boughs, the kiss of amorous leaves - all these and more, much more that McKay could not understand for it dealt with hidden, secret things for which man has no images.('The Women Of The Woods').","author":"Abraham Grace Merritt","tags":["bird","moon","natural","nature","pagan","spring","tree","trees"],"id":1513,"author_id":"Abraham+Grace+Merritt"},{"text":"He closed the pages and stuffed them back into his jacket. Keeping his eyes cast downwards as he sipped his wine, he pulled out and lit a cigarette – almost a post-coital gesture. From The Willow Lake Group by Kelly Proudfoot.","author":"Kelly Proudfoot","tags":["food","friendships","lgbt","literature-about-literature","pagan","quotes","romance","wicca"],"id":2629,"author_id":"Kelly+Proudfoot"},{"text":"Having ascended to some spiritual strength by focusing on the power of the feminine, it is no doubt tempting to wield this strength against that which triggers memories of having once been weaker.","author":"Thomm Quackenbush","tags":["feminine","feminism","pagan","spiritual","strength","weakness","wicca"],"id":16011,"author_id":"Thomm+Quackenbush"},{"text":"The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.","author":"W.B. Yeats","tags":["books","christianity","dante","death","god","gods","milton","pagan","paganism","shakespeare"],"id":16551,"author_id":"W.B.+Yeats"},{"text":"Whenever He answers prayers, God usually prioritizes those by people who, instead of their mouths, have prayed with their hands and/or feet.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["act","action","aphorism","aphorisms","aphorist","aphorists","arm","arms","atheism","atheist","atheists","believer","believers","church","churches","churchgoer","churchgoers","congregation","congregations","daydream","daydreamer","daydreamers","do","doer","doers","fate","feet","foot","funny","god","gods","hand","hands","hilarious","humor","humorous","humour","joke","jokes","karma","leg","legs","nonbeliever","nonbelievers","pagan","pray","prayed","prayer","prayers","praying","praying-man","praying-men","praying-woman","praying-women","prioritize","priority","quotations","quotes","religion","religions","satire","synagogue","synagogues","wish","wishful-thinking","worship","worshiper","worshipers","worshipper","worshippers"],"id":30707,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"},{"text":"In her fantastic mood she stretched her soft, clasped hands upward toward the moon. 'Sweet moon,' she said in a kind of mock prayer, 'make your white light come down in music into my dancing-room here, and I will dance most deliciously for you to see'. She flung her head backward and let her hands fall; her eyes were half closed, and her mouth was a kissing mouth. 'Ah! Sweet moon,' she whispered, 'do this for me, and I will be your slave; I will be what you will.'Quite suddenly the air was filled with the sound of a grand invisible orchestra. Viola did not stop to wonder. To the music of a slow saraband she swayed and postured. In the music there was the regular beat of small drums and a perpetual drone. The air seemed to be filled with the perfume of some bitter spice. Viola could fancy almost that she saw a smoldering campfire and heard far off the roar of some desolate wild beast. She let her long hair fall, raising the heavy strands of it in either hand as she moved slowly to the laden music. Slowly her body swayed with drowsy grace, slowly her satin shoes slid over the silver sand.The music ceased with a clash of cymbals. Viola rubbed her eyes. She fastened her hair up carefully again. Suddenly she looked up, almost imperiously.'Music! More music!' she cried.Once more the music came. This time it was a dance of caprice, pelting along over the violin-strings, leaping, laughing, wanton. Again an illusion seemed to cross her eyes. An old king was watching her, a king with the sordid history of the exhaustion of pleasure written on his flaccid face. A hook-nosed courtier by his side settled the ruffles at his wrists and mumbled, 'Ravissant! Quel malheur que la vieillesse!' It was a strange illusion. Faster and faster she sped to the music, stepping, spinning, pirouetting; the dance was light as thistle-down, fierce as fire, smooth as a rapid stream. The moment that the music ceased Viola became horribly afraid. She turned and fled away from the moonlit space, through the trees, down the dark alleys of the maze, not heeding in the least which turn she took, and yet she found herself soon at the outside iron gate. ('The Moon Slave').","author":"Barry Pain","tags":["dance","moon","pagan","pagan-gods","pan"],"id":38696,"author_id":"Barry+Pain"},{"text":"I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion. . . . I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste.","author":"Georges Bizet","tags":["artistic","egoism","intolerance","mass","pagan","pleasure","taste"],"id":55803,"author_id":"Georges+Bizet"},{"text":"I have heard that Paganism is for broken people, but life cracks everyone in some way. We are a religion of healing people.","author":"Thomm Quackenbush","tags":["broken","healing","life","pagan","paganism","religion"],"id":59945,"author_id":"Thomm+Quackenbush"},{"text":"I had fallen into a profound dream-like reverie in which I heard him speaking as at a distance. 'And yet there is no one who communes with only one god,' he was saying, 'and the more a man lives in imagination and in a refined understanding, the more gods does he meet with and talk with, and the more does he come under the power of Roland, who sounded in the Valley of Roncesvalles the last trumpet of the body's will and pleasure; and of Hamlet, who saw them perishing away, and sighed; and of Faust, who looked for them up and down the world and could not find them; and under the power of all those countless divinities who have taken upon themselves spiritual bodies in the minds of the modern poets and romance writers, and under the power of the old divinities, who since the Renaissance have won everything of their ancient worship except the sacrifice of birds and fishes, the fragrance of garlands and the smoke of incense. The many think humanity made these divinities, and that it can unmake them again; but we who have seen them pass in rattling harness, and in soft robes, and heard them speak with articulate voices while we lay in deathlike trance, know that they are always making and unmaking humanity, which is indeed but the trembling of their lips.","author":"W.B. Yeats","tags":["creativity","gods","pagan"],"id":61643,"author_id":"W.B.+Yeats"},{"text":"We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self.These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, and springs,—the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.","author":"Robert G. Ingersoll","tags":["absurd","autumn","beautiful","birth","brave","death","delight","deny","doubt","dreams","effort","eternity","fable","fairy","fear","gods","grief","hateful","haunted","hope","joy","king-lear","lake","life","love","mountains","music","mystery","nature","pagan","passion","past","perfection","philosophies","pleasure","poetic","punishment","questions","religion-myths","sacred-books","scorn","shakespeare","smiles","spring","summer","tears","tender","thought","throne","true","truth","william-shakespeare","winter","woods"],"id":64681,"author_id":"Robert+G.+Ingersoll"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":52,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}