Quotes About Ritual

God's people should be baptized because God commanded it, not because some church requires it.

There are numerous historical reports as well as visual images that link mushroom consumption to the ritual of sacrifice. These include bloodletting, penis perforation, and even the improbable act of self-decapitation.

They that are against superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black.

This came to be a ritual, more and more meaningless as it was repeated, but a ritual which nevertheless gave his life the only shape it now had.

Notah's wife, who wears the traditional excessive mascara of her people

Ritual regulation of production and belligerence means that domestication has become the decisive factor. "The emergence of systematic warfare, fortifications, and weapons of destruction," says Hassan, "follows the path of agriculture.

Would you like a cup of tea?" asked Julia, who had enough breeding to know that at all emergencies—birth, death or defeat—cups of tea must at once be offered.

Eating The Bones by Ellen Bass The women in my family strip the succulent flesh from broiled chicken, scrape the drumstick clean; bite off the cartilage chew the gristle, crush the porous swellings at the ends of each slender baton. With strong molars they split the tibia, sucking out the dense marrow. They use up love, they swallow every dark grain, so at the end there's nothing left, a scant pile of splinters on the empty white plate.

After a hard day in the fields, his men would strip naked and plunge into the bitterly cold loch, he among them. Even at eighteen, he could see his ancestors had bequeathed him more than a castle.

An element of the burial custom which today seems particularly macabre was the possibility of being buried with a companion, a male or female follower, presumably usually a slave, killed for the burial.

Art is not simply an external ornament donned by the cult to conceal its excessively harsh and austere side; rather the cult has an aesthetic aspect in itself.

A converted cannibal is one who, on Friday, eats only fishermen.

The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.

As well as the way he always said Itadakimasu, quietly, before he started eating.

Only ceremony and the love of fate distinguish us from the beasts.

Most of us do not live especially holy lives, after all. We spend most of our time sitting in traffic, paying bills, and being irritated with one another. Yet every week we are invited to stop all of that for one hour at least. We are invited to participate in a great drama that has been going on without us for thousands of years, and one that will go on as long as there is a single player left standing.

It was the dumbest thing I had ever seen, but it's a family thing, and I guess it's clean.

Ceremony-the wine of human existence" - Morris R. Cohen

If you cut off the pointed end of a slice of pie and save it for last, you can make a wish when you eat it.

One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning.

Yes, life has to go on, and I suppose a cup of tea does make it seem to be doing that more than anything.

Well, then, we may as well find somewhere to have tea. After spiritual comes bodily refreshment.

Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime.

The underlying logic of sacrifice was always the same: In order to gain the god's goodwill, destroy what you value most.