Quotes About Ritual

When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled.

Therefore, a person should first be changed by a teacher's instructions, and guided by principles of ritual. Only then can he observe the rules of courtesy and humility, obey the conventions and rules of society, and achieve order.

The white clippings of hair fell in clumps on the cape and then scattered to the floor.

In Jerusalem, people are very cautious in the morning, out of superstition: The first words and deeds at dawn, it's said, usually shape the rest of the day.

If my boyfriend offered me up for a voodoo ritual sacrifice, I'd have some serious questions about the future of the relationship.

Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.

Alice doesn't seem to mind because she's laughing too, and biting her lip, all doe-eyed, and tossing her freshly washed hair, and Norton tosses his lovely, glossy hair back, and she tosses her hair in return, and he tosses his, and she tosses hers, and it;s like some mating ritual on a wildlife program.

I can't believe it's actually happening. This is independent adulthood, this is what it feels like. Shouldn't there be some sort of ritual? In certain remote African tribes there'd be some incredible four day rites of passage ceremony involving tattooing and potent hallucinogenic drugs extracted from tree-frogs, and village elders smearing my body with monkey blood, but here,rites of passage is all about three new pairs of pants and stuffing your duvet in a bin-liner.

Much that passes for education ... is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least.

His report described a typical beka initiation, complete with slaughtered sheep and chickens, the neck of a tortoise (because it resembles a penis), and "virgin lasses" in attendance through a long prelude that culminates at four in the morning.

At dawn the boy bathes, then stays awake until late afternoon, pacing and expectant, at which point the circumciser comes at him with a homemade knife. "I nursed my wound for 45 days after," one initiate said.

It is believed that during the coronation of a new Pharaoh, he would be required to masturbate in front of the crowd, to demonstrate that he himself possessed the fertility powers of Min. If you have watched a State of the Union address, you will find that the ritual has not changed much.

To make it a habit, do it again and again until it becomes a ritual.

Tradi?ia nu este numai amintire, ea este ?i obi?nuin?? ?i repetare, la urma urmelor a rutinei. De aceea, este o for?? ?i, în acela?i timp, o sl?biciune.

With his arms swinging he stretches twice. Spade work has bent his stocky frame. At the end of the second stretch, he farts. It's his ritual.

Drummond appreciated his guest's initial silence, his respect for the ancient, sacred act of imbibing. Drink first, talk later.

On Sundays when she had extra time, she'd steam milk for froth, or brew the grounds with cane sugar and cinnamon for café de olla.

She can't even imagine how this loss will shape the person Luca becomes. They need to do a funeral ceremony as soon as they're safe. Luca will need a ritual, a method of fashioning his grief into a thing he can exert some small control over.

And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret.

I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

I made cranberry sauce, and when it was done put it into a dark blue bowl for the beautiful contrast. I was thinking, doing this, about the old ways of gratitude: Indians thanking the deer they'd slain, grace before supper, kneeling before bed. I was thinking that gratitude is too much absent in our lives now, and we need it back, even if it only takes the form of acknowledging the blue of a bowl against the red of cranberries.

ceremony is essential to humans: It's a circle that we draw around important events to separate the momentous from the ordinary. And ritual is a sort of magical safety harness that guides us from one stage of our lives into the next, making sure we don't stumble or lose ourselves along the way. Ceremony and ritual march us carefully right through the center of our deepest fears about change…

There's something about a white gown - setting aside the obnoxious question of virginity - that signals to a man that this day is not like any other day. It shows him that he's been chosen. It means a lot to men, I have learned over the years, to see their brides walking toward them in white. Helps to quiet their insecurities. And you'd be surprised how insecure the men can be.

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping.