Quotes About Rituals

They always knew the phase of the moon, but seldom the day of the week.

It wasn't only the boosted experiences that bothered Rant. It was dipshit kids done up as soldiers and princesses and witches. Eating cake flavored with artificial vanilla. Celebrating a harvest that didn't occur anymore. Fruit punch that came from a factory. A ritual to placate ghosts, or whatever bullshit Halloween does, practiced by people who had no awareness of that. What bothered Rant was the fake, bullshit nature of everything.

She had witnessed in nauseating detail how the human world worked: its rituals of comfort (television, food, religion); its appetite for poison (television, food, religion); and for the monstrous edifices of desire (television, food, religion): she understood them all.

Here was a place sacred to the dead, who were not the living ceased, but almost another species, requiring rites and prayers that belonged uniquely to them.

Mothers of Latium! Hey! Hear me, each one of you, wherever you may be! If you still have any sympathy for poor Amata in your faithful hearts, or any prick of conscience for a mother's claims, untie the bands around your hair and take to the wild rites with me!

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.

The tell-tale mark of religion is easy to spot. It's a one-size-fits-all approach to spirituality: "Follow our rules, fulfill our rituals, and God (or the gods) will be pleased and placated.

Jesus is central in NT references to early Christian ritual/devotional practices.

She kept the solstices and the equinoxes, both vernal and autumnal, the first of May, All Saints, all summers, kept them, but not out of reverence for the past.

How we treat our dead is central to our humanity.

These men are accustomed to bore holes in their lips and cheeks, and in these holes they place bones and stones;

More troubling, the Indians practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice in the course of their battles

One of the best means by which change occurs is through repeating an act or experiencing a spiritual feeling: for example, repeating certain religious prayers, creeds, or rituals.

Orthodox religion poses a great danger to humanity, and that is why the magickian never allows him or her self to become trapped in this stagnant water. The great religions, the rituals of these religions, are only hints that once there stood on these banks one who flowed like water with the cosmos.

The great religions, the rituals of these religions, are only hints that once there stood on these banks one who flowed like water with the cosmos. That once a true system of awakening existed in some time and place, now there exists only mechanistic imitation, a monument carved out of rock, to this expression of fluidity.

Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.

After that, he drank all the rest of the sherry, and Mr. Hubble drank the port, and the two talked (which I have since observed to be customary in such cases) as if they were of quite another race from the deceased, and were notoriously immortal.

Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices.

In Westphalia, Germany, little girls set a lady-bird on the end of their forefinger and ask it in rhyme when they will be married; in one year? two years? three years? etc.; and they grow very impatient if the insect lets them count too high before it flies away.

Biblical signs were given corporately to families in the Old Testament. Has that changed? This is a question of continuity. Baptism is similar to other faith rites in the Old Testament. Rituals which involve a symbolic act, such as baptism, are connected to Biblical covenants. Biblical covenants include signs to visibly represent the realities behind the covenant promises.

The ice-cold ritual baths of the Jews and Brahmins; the vigils of Buddha's disciples and of the Christian ascetics; the torments of Indian fakirs to keep from falling asleep—these are all nothing but external, crystallized rituals, which like broken columns bear witness to the seeker: "Here, very long ago, stood a mysterious temple dedicated to awakening.

In India there is a sect of Jainist monks called the Shvetambara, who always carry a broom and sweep the ground before them as they walk, lest they accidentally tread on some insects and squash them.

As the Talmud says, Customs are more powerful than laws.

Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over.