Invocation Quotes

• When the invocation descends into the heart, if there is darkness within, it illuminates it; and if there is already light, the invocation increases the light and intensifies it.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Heart, Light, Darkness Within

  56 Copy quote

• There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.

  Aleister Crowley

  Angel, Magic, Uniting

  Aleister Crowley (2014). “Magick in Theory and Practice”, p.14, Lulu Press, Inc

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.

  Charles Baudelaire

  God, Men, Two

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.73, Courier Corporation

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• Magick may be no more than the willful invocation of awe.

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  May, Awe

  Caitlín R. Kiernan's blog entry (greygirlbeast.livejournal.com), December 11, 2006.

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.

  David Harvey

  Political, Economy, Social

  "The Limits To Capital". Book by David Harvey, 1982.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us.

  George Eliot

  Prayer, Powerful, Feelings

  George Eliot (2016). “Daniel Deronda: Top Novelist Focus”, p.318, 谷月社

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• By means of Invocation, the being awakens, and awakening becomes fullness. By means of balancing, fullness becomes internal wholeness. By virtue of exteriorized attention, internal wholeness becomes Communion. By virtue of self-forgetfulness, Communion becomes Union.

  David Truman

  Life, Mean, Self

  18 Copy quote

• I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Song, Prayer, Believe

  Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”, p.149, Vintage

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Magic and art tend to share a lot of the same language. They both talk about evocation, invocation, and conjuring.

  Alan Moore

  Art, Magic, Language

  "'Hey, You Can Just Make Stuff Up.' Differences Between Magic And Art: None" by Peter Bebergal, "The Believer", 2013.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.

  Lewis Hyde

  Artist, Creating, Essentials

  Lewis Hyde (2009). “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World”, p.186, Vintage

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

  J. K. Rowling

  Love, Spiritual, Heart

  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ch. 37 (2000)

  77 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Art, Dreamer, Tools

  "Fictional character: Elric". TV Series "Babylon 5" ("The Geometry of Shadows", 1994), www.imdb.com. 1994–1998.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reality of the invocation is when the Invoked takes possession of the heart, and He is One. Separation and multiplicity exist before that for as long as the invoker is in the station of invoking with the tongue or with the heart.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Heart, Reality, Long

  13 Copy quote

• The invocation of science, of its ground rules, of the exclusive validity of the methods that science has now completely become, now constitutes a surveillance authority punishing free, uncoddled, undisciplined thought and tolerating nothing of mental activity other than what has been methodologically sanctioned. Science and scholarship, the medium of autonomy, has degenerated into an instrument of heteronomy.

  Theodor Adorno

  Surveillance, Authority, Undisciplined

  "Wozu noch Philosophie? (Why still philosophy?)". Paper by Theodor Adorno, 1963.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The unlettered man who prayed to his maker would be heard; the pedant reciting a faultless invocation would be ignored.

  Israel Shenker

  Prayer, Men, Would Be

  Israel Shenker (1985). “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life”, Doubleday Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• An essential portion of any artist's labor is not creation so much as invocation

  Lewis Hyde

  Artist, Essentials, Creation

  Lewis Hyde (2009). “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World”, p.186, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• . . . persist in that invocation until the unity of the world is subsumed for you in a single sphere, so that with the eye of your heart you will see naught in the two worlds save the One.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Eye, Heart, Two Worlds

  11 Copy quote

• O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! Then with passion would I shake the world, And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice, Which scorns a modern invocation.

  William Shakespeare

  Passion, Sleep, Voice

  William Shakespeare (2013). “Histories of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)”, p.89, BookCaps Study Guides

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Naaman] dipped himself," it says, "seven times in Jordan." It was not for nothing that Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy, was purified upon his being baptized, but as an indication to us. For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord from our old transgressions, being spiritually regenerated as new-born babes, even as the Lord has declared: "Except a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Mean, Men, Baptized In

  71 Copy quote

• Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.

  Alan Watts

  Order, Names, Knowing

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us not lose the Bible, but with diligence, in fear and invocation of God, read and preach it. While that remains and flourishes, all prospers with the state; 'tis head and empress of all arts and faculties. Let but divinity fall, and I would not give a straw for the rest.

  Martin Luther

  Art, Fall, Giving

  Martin Luther, Alexander Chalmers (1857). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.3

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let your invocation be the all-embracing Name, which is Allah, Allah, Allah, or if you so wish, Huwa, Huwa, Huwa; and do not violate this remembrance. Be careful lest your tongue pronounce it while other-than-He is in your heart. Let your heart be the one who utters, and your ear the one who is attentive to this invocation until the 'speaker' emanates from your Self (sirr). When you feel the emergence of the Speaker within you through the invocation, do not abandon the spiritual condition wherein you find yourself.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Spiritual, Heart, Names

  14 Copy quote

• ...Nixon's subversion [of the consititution] consisted of: One presidental lie; one invocation of presidental privilege, and zero criminal offences.

  William J. Clinton

  Zero, Lying, Criminals

  8 Copy quote

• Power is the engine of the world, and sex and money its oil and lubricants. God is at best the invocation before you start the engine-meaningless if you have no engine to start! God is a goli, a multi-flavoured pill, invented by those who have power, money and sex, to give to those who have none! Love is another great goli. Some days we too swallow these golis. They feel good, like a joint, a temporary high! But they are not the reality. The reality is power, money, sex! And yes, there's another goli-morality!

  Tarun J. Tejpal

  Sex, Reality, Love Is

  "The Story of My Assassins: A Novel".

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?

  Steven Weinberg

  Tired, Europe, America

  "The Atheism Tapes". Documentary, 2004.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source