``Today the temple of Kali at the Kalighat in Calcutta is famous for its daily blood sacrifices; it is no doubt the bloodiest temple on earth."
--Heinrich Zimmer, The Indian World Mother

The Hag    The meat eaters are recommended to worship the goddess Kali, the ghastly form of material nature, and before the goddess the sacrifice of animals is recommended. --A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita     The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was her feast day. --Grimm's Fairy Tales, "Hansel and Gretel"

Never mind... one day, quite suddenly, when you're not expecting it, I'll take a hammer from the folds of my dark cloak and crack your little skull like an egg-shell. Crack it will go, the egg-shell; out they will stream, the blood, the brains. One day, one day... One day the fierce wolf that walks by my side will spring on you and rip your abominable guts out. One day, one day...
--Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight as quoted by Linda Leonard, Meeting the Madwoman

But there was no lamb in the hills that day. The sheep gave birth to an afterbirth only. And in her form as scald crow, Badhbh, the war hag, ate it. Badhbh had come back. She had darkened my doorway. Red-mouthed Badhbh had screeched in my doorway. I was in trouble. Cut down to a stump of a head on a stump of a pillow, I was having bad dreams. The deepest lobes, the most clenched lobes, were opening.
--John Moriarity, Dreamtime

The hero that fights a hag is nearer the truth than he to whom the truth is glossed over by calling it a dragon, thus giving the fight a certain air of external nobility. The first class hero's fight is not noble. Or if the cave itself is her in her protective aspect, the hag within it is the last remnant of her destructive side, so dreadfully appealing to pity that it would seem terrible to murder her. But in these matters of the soul murder has to be done.
--John Layard, Celtic Quest

...and from the entrance he took aim at the hag with Carnwennan his knife, and struck her across the middle until she was as two tubs. And Cadw of Prydain took the witch's blood and kept it with him.
--Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, "Culhwch and Olwen" in The Mabinogion

Hag Dreams

The witch burnings were portrayed as an instance of the patriarchal Sado-Ritual Syndrome, a pattern of the abuse of women that Daly locates cross-culturally and trans-historically. For Daly and those who followed her, words like witch, hag, crone and spinster, became titles of honor, capturing the proud spirit of those women who remained true to themselves and their sisters even in the face of persecution.
--Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess

Among the Yukatek-speaking Maya of Quintana Roo, the ancient concept of way -- the spirit companion of gods, ancestors, kings, and queens -- connontes an evil, transforming witch, a person to be feared rather than admired.
--Linda Schele, et. al. Maya Cosmos

Muse	Dreaming
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