Quotes About Ritual

After a little time they all began to smoke, the Pearl included, though she threw away much more of her cigar than she consumed

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, 'I believe ' three times.

Nothing is stronger than habit.

In most societies, organized religion provides a culturally acceptable framework for rationalizing the continuance of magical thinking.

Wine, like food, is so emotional. If you think about it, so much of the courting ritual is surrounded by wine and food. There's a built-in romance to wine.

She'd thought binding would enslave her. Instead, for the first time in her life, she felt whole. Tighe watched her with moisture in his own eyes. He kissed her, and the sweetness, the passion, exploded inside her a hundred times more brilliant than before as if she'd been living life in two dimensions, two black-and-white dimensions, and through this ritual, he'd lifted her into a stunning new existence.

I learned without her saying a word that there are truly many ways to pray, and lighting a candle is one of them.

Art is my spiritual path.... Art is my prayer, my ritual, my remembrance of the Divine. Art is the way I knit together the beliefs and practices that guide my life.

Coffee was a food in that house, not a drink.

This is also the season when the women drink the blue-black juice of the marking nut tree to do away with the babies in their wombs—the ones who would be born only to be buried next season.

Maple. Maypole Catch and carry. Ash and Ember. Elderberry. Woolen. Woman. Moon at night. Willow. Window. Candlelight. Fallow farrow. Ash and oak. Bide and borrow. Chimney smoke. Barrel. Barley. Stone and stave. Wind and water. Misbehave.

Maple. Maypole Catch and carry. Ash and Ember. Elderberry. Woolen. Woman. Moon at night. Willow. Window. Candlelight. Fallow farrow. Ash and oak. Bide and borrow. Chimney smoke. Barrel. Barley. Stone and stave. Wind and water. Misbehave.Maple. Maypole Catch and carry. Ash and Ember. Elderberry. Woolen. Woman. Moon at night. Willow. Window. Candlelight. Fallow farrow. Ash and oak. Bide and borrow. Chimney smoke. Barrel. Barley. Stone and stave. Wind and water. Misbehave.

Tradition, my boy, and superstition. They are one and the same, anyway.

Pero los humanos somos animales de costumbres. Tendemos a caminar por los surcos que nos vamos labrando.

Los humanos somos animales de costumbres. Tendemos a caminar por los surcos que nos vamos labrando.

Spanish pilgrims travel on Camino de Santiago from monastery to monastery, collecting small medals to attach to their rosary as proof of their steps. I have stacks of Polaroids, each marking my own, that I sometimes spread out like tarots or baseball cards of an imagined celestial team.

God had them offer sacrifices where the High Priest would pass-on the sins of the people by laying both his of hands on the head of a scapegoat, and then through the death of this unblemished sacrificial offering instead of these sinful people, atoned for their sins.

In the Old Testament when a sinner passed-on his sins onto a goat through the laying on of hands, those sins were passed over onto the goat, and the goat had to suffer death in order to atone for those sins instead of the sinner.

She went to Ed's body, and kneeled, dipped her finger in the sticky blood around his feet. With it, she drew a crude circle on her chest - it took several attempts - and a capital R inside the circle.

Drinking during such an occasion was not simply comforting. More essentially, it proved liberating, as it freed the individual from mundane duties and returned him or her to a primeval state of spiritual solace.

What is more important than the meal? Doesn't the least observant man-about-town look upon the implementation and ritual progress of a meal as a liturgical prescription? Isn't all of civilization apparent in these careful preparations, which consecrate the spirit's triumph over a raging appetite?

The farther we've gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we've come to need Halloween. October Dreams: A celebration of Halloween

Monday: Cover Your Mirrors for a Whole Morning

There was to be a ngoma that night, as there always was for full moons—a tribal dance of the young Kikuyu men and women, up the high embankment at the far edge of the forest.