Quotes from Patricia Monaghan

I did not have to believe. I only had to wonder.

Nothing grows well without space and air.

This is the monkey mind of which Zen speaks: the mind that worries, doubts, frets about the past, makes lists, all the time chattering like a monkey.

Ela é tudo, é todas as coisas. Está à nossa volta, e está dentro de nós. Sem ela nada somos, e nunca poderemos contê-la na totalidade.

Grief is a strange journey. Each time we embark upon it, it is as though we have never taken its roads before. No, I have that wrong: each grief brings us through a familiar landscape carved into unrecognizable contours. For we do not only lose another person; we lose the person we were with the one we lost.

I awaken myself to the greatest lesson Ireland offers: that I must wake up to whatever place I find myself, wake up to its seasons and weather, its heritage and special beauties, its ultimate and indisputable holiness. I have news for you: spring comes everywhere with sweetness and hope. Summer's fullness becomes harvest, then the world sleeps through a dark time. This is the only truth: that just as Ireland is sacred, so all land is sacred, as we are all sacred. This is my news.

The American definition of paganism is especially suspect among the Irish, too, when it seems to imply adherence to some British cult. The fact that most of the self-proclaimed witches in Ireland are English does not escape comment, and notice is also given to the number of American tourists who traipse through on pilgrimages to these minor celebrities and make no inquires about local beliefs.

Egyptians built pyramids; Americans, skyscrapers; the megalithic Irish, mountain cairns. And while I admit it is impossible to be certain what Danu's people believed, the obsessive topping of Munster Hills with navel and nipples suggest they saw the land as a woman's body, the earth as feminine. And if so, what then? Did they imagine the earth acting like a woman, laughing, singing, weeping, taking a lover, nursing a child?

Born to be Wild. She is the Wild Girl. We call her that because, like our natural wilderness, she follows her own laws. She is part of all of us, no matter what our age or sex. She is freedom and joy, love of the quest and of movement. She is creativity and serenity. She is springtime, full of potential and energy. She is the seed and the sprout, bursting with life. She is the path through the forest, and she is the forest itself.

There has never been only one religion of the goddess. Every continent, every culture, had its own vision of the way that divine feminine should be pictured. Each culture pictured her as one of their own. She was black in Africa, blonde in Scandinavia, round-faced in Japan, dark-eyed in India. For the goddess was the essence of woman's strength and beauty to each one of her daughters, so she had to look like them. When ancient women looked at their goddess, they saw themselves.

Rather than being a bleeding image of female disempowerment, Medusa may be read as... one of the most ancient European symbols of women's spiritual abilities... [and] an empowering image of feminine potential.

The Goddess has never been lost. It is just that some of us have forgotten how to find her.

How to Think Like Athena 1. Remove shoes. Stand on earth. 2. Find your center. Find your balance. 3. Lift chest. Drop shoulders. Let palms fall open at sides. 4. Open lips. Breathe. Feel air pass into self. 5. Open eyes wide. Look to the horizon. 6. Ask, what says the foot? Ask, what says the leg? 7. Ask, what says the sex? Ask, what says the heart? 8. Ask, what sees the eye? Ask, what hears the ear? 9. The mind is the body. Think everywhere at once.

I'm a bit uncomfortable, truth be told, with being seen as an expert, because there is always so much more to learn. I see myself as a perpetual student of the goddess

The goddess path is within you. To walk it, you must develop your inner resources and strengths. Information and insights will come to you from others. Evaluate them in light of the truths of your own heart. For that is where she lives, even when you forget to look for her. She is always there, providing the love and strength and power you need. Look for her there, and you will always find her.

The immanent goddess did not create the rose; she is the rose. She does not take care of you; she is you.

She is all, she is everything. She is around us, and she is within us. We cannot be without her, and we can never encompass all of her.

Altar of the East in a clear vase, one bud a thin and dawn-pink ribbon a cone of dark incense from the farthest desert a white candle the picture of a child a single feather a flute carved of reed . . . a scroll, inscribed by hand a stoppered silver bottle containing just your breath