Mystical Practices Quotes

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.

If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails.

Religious mysticism is intellectual garbage. It’s a vestige of the old superstitious Dark Ages when nobody knew anything...It is one of those delusions that isn’t called insane only because there are so many people involved.

I had my palm read. I wrote something on it first to see if she would read that too.

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.

Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway," the priest added cynically, "which is why the church locks them all up in mental hospitals and euphemistically calls these institutions monasteries.

I myself delve into very arcane things.

We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.

In my research, I learned that the Boxers' kung fu wasn't all that formalized. The vast majority of them didn't belong to some age-old martial arts tradition. They were basically poor, starving teenagers doing the best they could to figure out how to fight, relying more on their mystical beliefs than formal training.

The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and parishoners.

I thought you said scrying was a bad idea.” “It's like vodka,” Calla said. “It really depends on who's doing it.

I was a new devotee of Eastern mysticism and even though I did not join that particular group, I could well have done. They seemed a bit extreme but I regarded myself as not quite ready.

When I first started reading about the kabbalists, I would hear about them being seen in strange places. It would turn out that they were doing some kind of spiritual work to elevate the sparks. In my life and career, I've had the opportunity to find myself where I could make some spiritual moves, to do some work that is spiritually important.

There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things ways that work but often we don't know why.

A lot of science started off as magic, where people were burned at the stake for doing science basically.

...the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means ‘hidden’ or ‘obscured.’ In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdoctrinal had to be kept hidden or ‘occult,’ and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything ‘occult’ as evil, and the prejudice survived.

I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble." "But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.

Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.

Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.

The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.

The occult powers may be possessed by soul, but if they are not used in the right way it is a loss rather than a gain.

Around 1974, I graduated into the occult, and spent a sold six or seven years immersed in the Kabala and the Chaldean, Celtic, and Druidic traditions I also became fascinated with Aleister Crowley, the nineteenth-century magician who shared these beliefs.

Magicians can do more by means of faith than physicians by the truth.

The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.