Paul Harris Quotes

In primitive society, where uniformity of occupation is the rule, and the distribution of the community into various classes of workers has hardly begun, every man is more or less his own magician; he practices charms and incantations for his own good and the injury of his enemies.

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit.

In America, magic has never been an important part of peoples' lives.

In the cold, shivering twilight, preceding the daybreak of civilization, the dominating emotion of man was fear.

Witchcraft was hung, in History, But History and I Find all the Witchcraft that we need Around us, every Day -

We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense. The primitive man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits or gods

If any thing can be predicated as universally true of uncultivated man, it is that he will not labour beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain his existence.

By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.

This is the same notion - Catholic exorcism, psychotherapy, shamanistic practices - getting to the moment when whatever it was gained access. And also to the name of the spirit. Just to know that it's the Ugly Spirit. That's a great step. Because the spirit doesn't want its name to be known.

May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times?

By all odds, earliest man, so naked to the elements and to deadly enemies, should have existed in a state of constant shock. We find him instead the only lighthearted being in a deadly serious universe.... He alone, with childish carelessness, tinkered and played, and exerted himself more in the pursuit of superfluities than of necessities. Yet the tinkering and playing, and the fascination with the nonessential, were a chief source of the inventiveness which enabled man to prevail over better-equipped and more-purposeful animals.

I do not doubt that if the Paradisal man could now appear among us, we should regard him as an utter savage, a creature to be exploited or, at best, patronised. Only one or two, and those the holiest among us, would glance a second time at the naked, shaggy-bearded, slow spoken creature: but they, after a few minutes, would fall at his feet.

The good man has his enemies. He would not be like His Lord if he had not. If we were without enemies we might fear that we were not the friends of God, for friendship of the world is enmity to God.

God puts Christ's enemies as a footstool beneath His feet, for their salvation as well as their destruction.

When we're threatened, it's very easy to appeal to our basic natures.

I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer

The first man . . . ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

We're hard-wired by 200,000 years of evolution to be sensitive to the idea that someone might be watching us. They might be predators, after all. An uneasy feeling is perfectly natural if you suspect that someone has you in their ocular sights, whether it's a ghost or just some guy at the bus stop.

There can be no doubt ... of our dependence upon forces beyond our control. Primitive man was so impotent in the face of these forces that g , especially in an unfavorable natural environment, fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the old saying goes, fear created gods.

What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.

I saw finally the futility of all these gestures, that witchcraft is but a matter of focus-that one cann apply one's fierce and immeasurable energies to an act of choice.

The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.

All fear violence, all are afraid of death.

Seducers are more dangerous enemies to the church than persecutors.