Quotes from Philip Carr-Gomm

The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children

Ultimately, the purpose of magic is to free our potential, not bind us to ideas.

The risks involved in the pursuit of magic are--put simply--either getting frightened by unpleasant perceptions or becoming deluded. Unfortunately it is possible to suffer from both symptoms at the same time.

Whenever ye have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, then ye shall assemble in some secret place and adore the spirit of Me who am Queen of all Witcheries . . . And as the sign that ye are truly free, Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men And women and ye shall dance, sing, feast, make music, and love, all in my praise. —The Charge of the Goddess

Dzogchen Tantra when it suggests: 'As a bee seeks nectar from all kinds of flowers, seek teachings everywhere. Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze, seek seclusion to digest all that you have gathered. Like a mad one beyond all limits, go where you please and live like a lion, completely free of all fear.

It is as if there is another world just waiting to be discovered if only we can learn to see in a new way. Up until the seventeenth century most people in England took little notice of the prehistoric monuments that littered the land. Viewing them as a nuisance, they often dismantled them to clear fields or to provide building materials. Even so, folklore and stories lingered around many of them

Stukeley was fascinated by Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, and the Egyptian Mysteries, as well as Druidism. His friends called him 'The Druid', and after he had met Augusta, Princess of Wales, the mother of the future George III, he wrote to her as 'Veleda, Archdruidess of Kew'.

George Watson MacGregor Reid was a highly eccentric character, prone to exaggeration and passionate enthusiasms. An ardent socialist all his life, he campaigned for dockers' rights in New York, before returning to England to promote the ideas of natural health, fairer distribution of wealth and the freedom to worship at Stonehenge.

While he was at Oxford University his fascination for the Anglo-Saxon period intensified. It was a couplet from Cynewulf's poem 'Crist', which ran: 'Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men', that inspired his creation of the imaginary world that would form the setting for most of his writing.

And as Anglo-Saxon scholar Stephen Pollington says: 'All our hardiest words – mother, father, land, earth, tree, field, sky, love, hate, live, die, eat, drink, sleep, wake – are Anglo-Saxon words.

Treadwell's stocks plenty of second-hand books, which Virginia Woolf called 'Wild Books, Homeless Books', because, explains Christina, 'they have already had a journey, so they have extra energy in them from where they have been before, and they're looking for a home'.

In the seventeenth century Sir Walter Raleigh wrote that 'The art of magic is the art of worshipping God'.

Modern humanity's sense of alienation lies in the fact that we have cut ourselves adrift from both the natural world and from the roots of our past.

When we let go of believing we are superior, we open ourselves to the experience of living in the community of Nature.

When we know about our ancestors, when we sense them as living and as supporting us, then we feel connected to the genetic life-stream, and we draw strength and nourishment from this.