Quotes About Ritual

The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.

Shamanism is a great metal and emotional adventure, one in which the patient as well as the shaman-healer are involved

The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.

She demanded payment for it, in advance, in kind. Cows were not enough. A virgin priestess was required, human blood for human blood; the leader's eldest daughter would be best.

The bull has been killed, sweating the last of its blood into dust and dark bronze bowls. It went quietly to its death, a good omen for the games to come.

All that smoke and savour rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.

We struggled to understand how a contract with the so-called secular state could mandate some kind of spiritual ritual.

Coffee should not be drunk in a hurry. It is the sister of time, and should be sipped slowly, slowly. Coffee is the sound of taste, a sound for the aroma. It is a meditation and a plunge into memories and the soul.

This education we're giving them is the tool of destruction, of course; that's what makes it so painful. We're showing them how to accomplish the ritual murder of ourselves.

The focus here is not on ritual itself, but on opening up something in hearts and spirits that has been locked away so long that individuals can barely remember the source.

We need ritual because it is an expression of the fact that we recognize the difficulty of creating a different and special kind of community. A community that doesn't have a ritual cannot exist. A corporate community is not a community. It's a conglomeration of individuals in the service of an insatiable soulless entity.

ritual is called for because our soul communicates things to us that the body translates as need, or want, or absence. So we enter into ritual in order to respond to the call of the soul.

In the surface world our ability to make things happen is very limited. This limitation is a reflection of the incompleteness of a world without the spirit realm. So Spirit is our channel through which every gap in life can be filled. But the spirit realm will not take care of these gaps without our conscious participation. Thus our collaboration makes us central to the actual happening of a ritual.

People in touch with this archetype are in search of caring, for their spirit seeks to transcend the stress placed on the body and the mind by the rapid motion of everyday life around them. Such people would not be ashamed to express their hunger for transcendence — these are the kind of people in need of ritual. Ritual:

Ritual is not compatible with the rapid rhythm that industrialism has injected into life. So whenever ritual happens in a place commanded by or dominated by a machine, ritual becomes a statement against the very rhythm that feeds the needs of that machine. It makes no difference whether it is a political machine or otherwise. I

The problem with Western culture is that it is a show-off culture that intimidates. This is why it is generating so much death, loss and displacement. To perform ritual for show is to generate some kind of death or loss. Concealment of ritual is an act of life preservation because it is only in its concealment that needs are met that cannot be met in any other way. If

If our goal is to repair all the damage done by the powers of progress, it becomes important to make sure that we focus on how to stay underground while attempting to reconnect with true ritual and true spirits.

The mystery of the evergreen marking the grave of the dead sun god is also perpetuated in the Christmas tree.

a relationship with time that removes all relevance from the distinction between memory and forgetting, something like a rediscovery or, as in the case of the ritual when it is successful, a renewal.

Writing plays the role of ritual when ritual is effective and manages to give those participating or attending the feeling that it reopens time.

In the morning you used to come to me and [10]ask me if I had raised my heart to God, and then you dressed me. While dressing me you spoke about Him and afterward we knelt down and said our prayers together.

their sacred tree, Irminsul,

immersing people from the surrounding countryside in the River Glen every day from sunrise until sunset.

It is not simply to show power...that a man...throws coppers into the sea...In doing this he is also sacrificing to the gods and spirits...