Quotes About Ritual

It frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,And dines on the following day.

Our chief reason for over-rating the importance of tools and machines is that man's most significant early inventions, in ritual, social organization, morals, and language, left no material remains, while stone tools can be associated with recognizable hominid bones for at least half a million years.

Since ritual order has now largely passed into mechanical order, the present revolt of the younger generation against the machine has made a practice of promoting disorder and randomness: but that, too, has turned into a ritual, just as compulsive and as 'meaningless' as the routine it seeks to assault.

Just as ritual, if I have correctly interpreted it , was the first step toward effective expression and communication through language, so taboo was the first step toward moral discipline. Without both, man's career might have ended long ago, as so many powerful rulers and nations have ended their lives, in psychotic outbreaks and life-depressing perversions.

But the grinding of even soft stones is a tedious and laborious process; granite or diorite, both extremely hard, demand a willingness to endure drudgery that no human group had ever imposed in itself before. Our very word to express ennui, 'boring,' derives from-boring. Here was ritual repetition pushed almost beyond endurance.

What an old-fashioned rationalist would regard as 'meaning-less ritual' was rather, on this interpretation, the ancient foundation layer of all modes of order and significance.

The word which denotes the act of baptizing, according to the usage of Greek writers, uniformly signifies or implies immersion.

There are several forms of oppari, but cinema largely uses only one format.

Standing near the door, we dipped our fingers in the holy water, crossed and blessed ourselves, and proceeded up to the sleeping-room, in the usual order, two by two.

I am not a theologian or a historian, and I feel no call to become a defender of the faith, so in my case, the search for what remains valuable focuses on language itself: Catholic prayer, ritual, the naming of things.

The highlight is on Saturday, when the thousands gather to watch a bonfire consume the Burning Man, a ten-story-high wooden effigy packed with gasoline.

these we killed, and others we killed—but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom.

Elk jaar organiseerde men in Orongo een wedstrijd waarbij mannen de koude, anderhalve kilometer brede zeestraat tussen Paaseiland en de kleine eilandjes, waarin het wemelde van de haaien, moesten overzwemmen om het eerste ei van de bonte stern te zoeken, vervolgens moest terugzwemmen naar Paaseiland zonder dat het ei brak, waarna de gelukkige werd gezalfd tot 'vogelman' van het jaar.

She had drawn circles around her eyes, which were joined by a line across the bridge of her nose. It was a traditional mark of her calling, but no one knew why.

In order to understand the intensity of ritual forms, one must rid oneself of the idea that all happiness derives from nature, and all pleasure from the satisfaction of a desire. On the contrary, games, the sphere of play, reveal a passion for rules, a giddiness born of rules, and a force that comes from ceremony, and not desire.

When all was over, they buried the dead ancestor under piles of dirt, grass, leaves, or snow. Mammoths were even known to bury other dead animals, including humans.

Mog-ur has been spending all day and half the night in the place of the spirits. It must be a ceremony. While Ayla was gone, he wouldn't go near it; now he hardly ever comes out. When he does, he's so absentminded he forgets to eat. Sometimes he forgets to eat while he's eating.

I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the sevice. I'm never tempted by God, but I like his trappings.

Would there were a festival for my fears, a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me. Let the light in before it is too late.

I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the service. I'm never tempted by God, but I like his trappings.

Dans les églises, à la clarté des cierges, un homme boit du vin devant des femmes à genoux.

I felt that the success of the enterprise was in my hands: the moment had an obscure meaning which had to be trimmed and perfected ; certain motions had to be made, certain words spoken : I staggered under the weight of my responsibility. I started and saw nothing, I struggled in the midst of rites which were invented on the spot and tore them to shreds with my strong arms. At those times she hated me.

When he is forced to perform the same task several times, the Warrior uses this tactic and transforms work into prayer.

Water is the most purifying element. It's always involved in baptisms, healings, that kind of work.