Sorcery Quotes

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Buying loyalty can be as effective as fear when one’s rival is poorer than oneself.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Whither be the heart of Justice?
            Lo, in stone, child. Lo, in stone.
            Whither be the heart of Justice?
            Lo, tis fast in stone.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The early women rise before I do. Their lamps splinter the gloom of the kitchens. They chatter in whispers as they brew tea for the cooks. Windows are open to counter the heat of the ovens. Outside, the sky is as black as my soul.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“This world would be a pleasant place if people didn’t inhabit it.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Then...there was no sorcery?" Lannister snorted. "Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“There are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are!”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”
― Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

“Follow your heart, Ithilnin," Albirich repeated. "Time is precious. Don't waste it living someone else's life.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Darker Side of Life

“I did not know I was to be outdone by a little magic boy and his tricks,” he said. “I salute you, magician.” He swept her a bow from horseback.

Vasya did not return the bow. “To small minds,” she told him, spine very straight, “any skill must look like sorcery.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“If a dream can tell the future it can also thwart that future. For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come. He is bound to no one that the world unfold just so upon its course and those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“The core practice of magic is: The execution of a willed intent to create change in the material world, which either defies, hastens or purifies the consequences of natural cause and effect.”
― Zeena Schreck

“I'm not interested in whether I'm better than you; only whether I'm better than yesterday.”
― Mike Ormsby, Child Witch Kinshasa

“Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.”
― Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien

“They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. But they are not. And when they die, they (...) become dust and bone, and their ghosts whine on the wind a little while till the wind blows them away. They do not have immortal souls.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“Violence always leads to pain" Trendal Malian- Ishtaria: Prince of Blades”
― Keith Collier

“Now, sorcery rules the world. Of course, most don't call it sorcery; indeed, many would be horrified by such a notion. Instead, they use words like ideology, politics, defence, security, patriotism, commerce, industry, marketing, consumerism and belief. But where there is power-seeking, especially power over others or for oneself, though also over oneself, and be it wittingly or unwittingly conjured up, make no mistake: there is sorcery afoot. It just comes in different shades and colours, that's all.”
― H.M. Forester, Game of Aeons

“We are energy, all of us, everything on this planet is made up of pure energy.

Ancient religions and metaphysical schools of thought have been telling us this for millennia, and physics has been echoing this energetic reality for over a hundred years now.

As these ancient teachings tell us, and as physics now echoes; energy vibrates, it is all connected, it has nonlocal properties (meaning that it can exist in multiple places at once, and as such there is the possibility of instant communication and travel across great distances). This energetic essence can change its structure but it can never be destroyed (which can seem like a paradox). Like tends to attract like, and this energy conglomeration, which is us, has a great drive towards greater complexity and expansion of that very essence.”
― John Kreiter, The Magnum Opus, A Step by Step Course

“Sitting on top of a burning cottage was a huge gold and green scaled dragon. Its massive wings closed around its body. Its spiked tail flicked, sending large parts of the roof crashing to the square below. In its right claw, it held Andorria. It rotated its head from right to left, spewing out large streams of flames.
"Nice of you to join us, Aiden!" the dragon bellowed.
Aiden took a step back. In great confusion, he recognized the voice.”
― Michael E. Coones, Commander Courage: and the Forgotten Books of Darkness

“See, even the great Commander Courage can be brought down with ease with the element of surprise in your favor!" As she proudly looked into the group of smiling faces, Aiden sat up and locked his legs around hers. Losing her balance, she also fell to the dirt. Laughter rang through the air as she sat up and brushed the hair from her eyes.
Aiden stood and offered her his hand. Smiling, he said to the crowd, "But no matter how good you think you are, stay humble!”
― Michael E. Coones, Commander Courage: and the Forgotten Books of Darkness

“Your physical senses, which you may rationally believe pick up energy (electromagnetic energy) from the environment, actually project energy first; they project energy through attention because the physical senses are really attention focusing and modulation organs. And it is this attention that creates your personal world. The energy projected through this attention gives the world substance, thickness, and it is this thickness that you then classify as sight, sound, feeling, etc.

Attention then is an actual force in the world, a type of very specific and powerful energy that is used consciously and subconsciously by all human beings.”
― John Kreiter, The Magnum Opus, A Step by Step Course

“...all projections of consciousness are indeed movements by the self from one place to another, from one dimension to another, and even though the physical body may not seem to move, it is nevertheless deeply affected by these journeys. Moreover, these journeys are not only powerful inner actions that can allow a person to escape the physical dimension and work through a great deal of repression and personal dis-balance, these real journeys provide access to a pool of knowledge and power that is staggering in its magnitude.
Indeed, the most staggering of these possibilities is the energetic fact that we are indeed far more than the physical body, and that thanks to the non-physical aspects of our whole being, we have the possibility of surviving physical death!”
― John Kreiter, The Way of the Projectionist: Alchemy’s Secret Formula to Altered States and Breaking the Prison of the Flesh

“Every person on this earth struggles to one degree or
another, and the fate of each one of those people has been written by forces beyond your imagination. And yet, and this is the odd part to me, we are and have always been fully responsible for our entire lives. What a marvel, what a great conundrum.”
― John Kreiter, The Art of Transmutation

“People like to talk a big game. They may talk about religion or magic and superstition but in the end, this is merely a way for them to feel the possibility of power without having to ever see it or touch it. As I told you, a part of them knows that the unfathomable is around them and yet another part of them denies this to keep the stability of their lives. One belief is pitted against another and in the end, people are stuck, stationary.”
― John Kreiter, The Art of Transmutation

“Shazoom, baby.”
― Charles Soule, Curse Words: The Whole Damned Thing Omnibus

“This world wants magic. Desperately.”
― Charles Soule, Curse Words: The Whole Damned Thing Omnibus

“In Greek myth, Circe was a sorceress and a goddess born of the sun god Helios and the ocean nymph Perse. And a powerful sorceress she was, so adept at incantations that she could morph men into animals to keep them enslaved to her on her island.”
― The Editors of National Geographic, National Geographic The History of Witchcraft