Nature Deities

"Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle. The craft is only one path among the many opening up for women, and many of us will blaze new trails as we explore the uncharted country of our own interiors. The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts—Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be."

"Birds and butterflies Rivers and mountains she creates But you'll never know The next move she'll make You can try But it is useless to ask why Cannot control her She goes her own wayShe rules Until the end of time She gives and she takes She rules Until the end of time She goes her own way"

"Mother Nature Go on and take your course And a-take me with you Hey, I wanna leave here, ohMother Nature Take the chains off me, me As long as I'm livin', livin' Hey, I wanna be free, hey"

"Let me stand naked in the sun Hiding from no one"

"Mother Mother Nature Come on and do your thing Mother I want to start feeling, yeah All those good things you can bring"

"Mother Earth, voice of universe Mother Earth, oasis of life Mother Earth, the flame of universe Mother Earth, your tears of pain rain down on the world"

"And though You're struggling to get on track It pales somewhat to the fact That Mother Nature goes to heaven"

"In the shadow of Mother Nature We find it hard to live our lives But we never chose the life She gave us And we don't need Her to survive"

"Archimedes was a brilliant inventor and a mathematician. He says to the people around him, "Don't just live in the lap of the gods. Don't be dominated by Mother Nature. You, as a man, can take control of your own destiny.""

"Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds?— To its own impulse every creature stirs; Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers!"

"To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language."

"What Nature has writ with her lusty wit Is worded so wisely and kindly That whoever has dipped in her manuscript Must up and follow her blindly. Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme In the being and the seeming, And they that have heard the overword Know life's a dream worth dreaming."

"Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrit."

"Nunquam aliud Natura aliud Sapientia dicit."

"And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee.Come, wander with me, she said, Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God."

"Nature with folded hands seemed there, Kneeling at her evening prayer!"

"O maternal earth which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep!"

"But on and up, where Nature's heart Beats strong amid the hills."

"Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks, Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, But all to please and sate the curious taste?"

"At sea on a ship in a thunderstorm on the very night the Christ was born a sailor heard from overhead a mighty voice cry "Pan is Dead!" So follow Christ as best you can Pan is dead — Long live Pan!"

"Some say the Gods are just a myth but guess Who I've been dancing with... The Great God Pan is alive!"

"In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long."

"O evanescent temples built of man To deities he honoured and dethroned! Earth shoots a trail of her eternal vine To crown the head that men have ceased to honour. Beneath the coronal of leaf and lichen The mocking smile upon the lips derides Pan's lost dominion; but the pointed ears Are keen and prick'd with old remember'd sounds. All my breast aches with longing for the past! Thou God of stone, I have a craving in me For knowledge of thee as thou wert in old Enchanted twilights in Arcadia."

"In Arcady there lies a crystal spring Ring'd all about with green melodious reeds Swaying seal'd music up and down the wind. Here on its time-defaced pedestal The image of a half-forgotten God Crumbles to its complete oblivion."

"You will not find him dead easily. If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun." "Clashing his hoofs," said the Professor. "The colts do, and so did Pan." "Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is everything." "So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything." "Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also means Panic."

"He's like a man you'd meet any place until you recognize that ancient Face The Great God Pan is alive!"

"Come with me on a journey beneath the skin We will look together for the Pan within."

"Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world."

"We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish, silly tale."

"You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things — yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet — I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."

"In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so. I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions."

""And now let us play our reeds together." And they played together. And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things. I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not. I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey. And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together. All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard."