religious-rituals

"It is not within the power of a Buddha to wash away the impurities of others. One could neither purify nor defile another. The Buddha, as Teacher, instructs us, but we ourselves are directly responsible for our purification."

"The Buddhas point out the path, and it is left for us to follow that path to obtain our purification."

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and had better come first. Purity means singleness. God is one. The Wand is not a Wand if it has something sticking to it which is not an essential part of itself. If you wish to invoke Venus, you do not succeed if there are traces of Saturn mixed up with it."

"Enki, [...] the master of purification rites."

"Enki purifies the dwelling for you, he makes the dwelling shine for you. He consecrates the heavens for you, he makes the earth shine for you. He makes the E-kic-nu-jal, the house of the cedar forests, tower straight upward for you. He makes your majestic residence into a sacred place for you, the foundation of heaven and earth. He puts your ritual plans and majestic lustration rituals in order for you. [...] He makes the offering table resplendent for you in the sacred place. [...] He puts in order for you [...] your evening meals and morning meals. [...] He consecrates the lustration rituals and makes them shine for you. [...] Enki sets up for you the lustration rituals created in his abzu; Kusu establishes the lustration rituals created in their specific house -- the oven for oxen, sheep and bread beside the interior of the bathing chamber, those sacred lustration rituals beside the shrine! Kusu purifies the oil for the house. It is placed in readiness [...] to ensure the sacred lustration rituals are not neglected, from the majestic marshes, the vast, sacred bathing chamber, this destiny emerges: the E-kic-nu-jal, with its majestic, sacred dais, perfects the great, majestic divine powers of heaven and earth. You bathe on the majestic banks by the sacred bathing chamber; you put mountain oil on your sacred body; O Nanna, you are placed upon your majestic dais -- wrapped in majestic linen, with raised head, shining horns and the pectoral of lordship! With the majestic oil of the sacred body, the oil of lordship, oil from your great treasury, lord Ningublaga consecrates the hands on his lapis-lazuli quay, the majestic quay, the sacred quay. But from g the stag of the abzu Enki purifies the oil for those hands. So that you should place sacred hands upon your offering table in the banqueting hall, the great place, your steward Kusu -- she who purifies hands and cleanses hands -- consecrates the hands. But from Eridug the stag of the abzu purifies the oil for those hands."

"O angry great butting bull! O torch! O great bull of Enki, standing aggressively, coming forth from the abzu, the pure place! O Gibil the god of fire, [...] bringing forth the great torch from the abzu, lifting his head with the noble divine powers! [...] Destiny, prosperity -- the wood of destiny, wood of prosperity, and the reeds of destiny, reeds of prosperity, adorn the holy cattle-pen. Through the wool from a fair lamb and the wool from a fair kid, Gibil, the foremost, the right arm, lifting his head to heaven receives water from the holy teats of heaven. This water consecrates the heavens, it purifies the earth. It purifies the cattle in their pen. It purifies the sheep in their fold. It purifies Utu at the horizon. It purifies Nanna at the zenith of heaven. Thus may it cleanse."

"At new year, on the day of rites, the lady libates water on the holy."

"Alexander sacrificed to the gods to whom it was his custom to sacrifice, and gave a public banquet, seated all the Persians, and then any persons from the other peoples who took precedence for rank or any other high quality, and he himself and those around him drank from the same bowl and poured the same libations, with the Greek soothsayers and Magi initiating the ceremony. Alexander prayed for various blessings and especially that the Macedonians and Persians should enjoy harmony as partners in government. The story prevails that those who shared the banquet were nine thousand and that they all poured the same libation and gave the one victory cry as they did."

"Now Neptune's sullen month appears, The angry night cloud swells with tears, And savage storms infuriate driven, Fly howling in the face of heaven! Now, now, my friends, the gathering gloom With roseate rays of wine illume: And while our wreaths of parsley spread Their fadeless foliage round our head, We'll hymn th' almighty power of wine, And shed libations on his shrine!"

"A man who does not value his god is thrown out in the desert; his body is not buried and his heir does not provide his ghost with drinking water through a libation pipe."

"If a man does not treasure his god, that man will not be buried. His heir will not provide him with water libations."

"וְנִסְכּוֹ֙ רְבִיעִ֣ת הַהִ֔ין לַכֶּ֖בֶשׂ הָאֶחָ֑ד בַּקֹּ֗דֶשׁ הַסֵּ֛ךְ נֶ֥סֶךְ שֵׁכָ֖ר לַיהוָֽה׃"

"וַיַּ֥עַל מֵעָלָ֖יו אֱלֹהִ֑ים בַּמָּקֹ֖ום אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר אִתֹּֽו׃ וַיַּצֵּ֨ב יַעֲקֹ֜ב מַצֵּבָ֗ה בַּמָּקֹ֛ום אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר אִתֹּ֖ו מַצֶּ֣בֶת אָ֑בֶן וַיַּסֵּ֤ךְ עָלֶ֙יהָ֙ נֶ֔סֶךְ וַיִּצֹ֥ק עָלֶ֖יהָ שָֽׁמֶן׃ וַיִּקְרָ֨א יַעֲקֹ֜ב אֶת־שֵׁ֣ם הַמָּקֹ֗ום אֲשֶׁר֩ דִּבֶּ֨ר אִתֹּ֥ו שָׁ֛ם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בֵּֽית־אֵֽל׃"

"Ye Furies, and dreadful Styx, ye sufferings of the damned, and Chaos for ever eager to destroy the fair harmony of words, and thou, Pluto, condemned to an eternity of ungrateful existence, Hell and Elysium, of which no Thessalian witch shall partake, Prosperine, for ever cut off from thy health-giving mother, and horrid Hecate, Cerberus, cursed with incessant hunger, ye Destinies, and Charon, endlessly murmuring at the task I impose of bringing back the dead again to the land of the living, hear me! -if I call on you with a voice sufficiently impious and abominable, if I have never sung this chant unsated with human gore, if I have frequently laid on your altars the fruit of the pregnant mother, bathing its contents with the reeking brain if I have placed on a dish before you the head and entrails of an infant on the point to be born- I ask not of you a ghost, already a tenant of the Tartarian abodes, and long familiarized to the shades below, but one who has recently quitted the light of day, and who yet hovers over the mouth of hell: let him hear these incantations, and immediately after descent to his destined place! Let him articulate suitable omens to the son of his general, having so late been himself a soldier of the great Pompey! Do this, as you love the very sound and rumour of a civil war!"

"The Jews of our days believe that after the body of a man is interred, his spirit goes and comes, and departs from the spot where it is destined to visit his body, and to know what passes around him; that it is wandering during a whole year after the death of the body, and that it was during that year of delay that the Pythoness of Endor evoked the soul of Samuel, after which time the evocation would have had no power over his spirit."

"First came up the ghost of my comrade Elpenor, for he had not yet been buried under the earth of broad roads. We had left him unwept and unburied in Circe’s palace, since other concerns were pressing upon us. I wept on seeing him and felt pity in my heart. I gave voice and spoke to him: “Elpenor, how did you come under the dark of the west? You beat me on foot, while I came with my black ship.”"

"“O Rivers, Earth and you who punish whoever of the dead is forsworn, be wit nesses and accomplish this spell for us. I have come to inquire how I may come to the land of Telemachus, whom I left on the bosom of his nurse, my child.” Such was his outstanding spell."

"She lifted her veil slowly. What a sight presented itself to my startled eyes! I beheld before me an animated corpse."

"Take you up when you feeling down When you're sick he will come around Takes his cures from out the ground He's the one who can hypnotize And you'll never believe your eyes He can cause the dead to rise."

"Oh glory of Haemonia, that hast the power to divulge the fates of men, or canst turn aside fate itself from its prescribed course, I pray thee to exercise thy gift in disclosing events to come. Not the meanest of the Roman race am I, the offspring of an illustrious chieftain, lord of the world in the one case, or in the other, the destined heir to my father's calamity. I stand on a tremendous and giffy height; snatch me from this posture of doubt; let me not blindly rush on, and blindly fall; exort this secret from the gods, or force the dead to confess what they know."

"He asked the boy who he was. He replied “I am the demon of your son.” And thus he offered him a small written tablet. He unrolled it and saw these three lines written on it:Indeed the minds of men wander in folly. Euthynous lies in his destined death. It was not good for him himself to live, nor was it good for his parents."

"The cemuc barley is reserved for the necromancer."

"[I]t is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way – otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contray the Christian danger."

"It is quite certain that the surpassing of the past toward the future always demands sacrifices."

"He carries on His task without intermission through the apostles and their successors; by their ministry men are brought to the knowledge of God, to the end that the name of God may be held in benediction and honor throughout the entire world, as was foretold in Malachi 1:11: "From the rising of the sun even to the going down, My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean oblation.""

"The went into the sacristy and made glittering silver ecde cups ready for her. The temple cook [...] and prepared hot and cold food for her. [...] After the meat had arrived in large bowls and cool water had been brought from the -canal, after the festival trappings had arrived from Lagac and wine had been brought from the countryside, her great oven which vies with the great dining hall, Nance's shrine of food offerings, was humming."

"The preparation for the temple's permanent first-fruit festival should not stop. Let there be a fat carrier who delivers fat to the house, let there be a milk carrier who delivers milk to the house and let there be a fish courier, a person of daily assignment. After the firewood carrier has brought his delivery from the open country into his lady's house, it should be deposited in its corners and sides."

"If the grain does not suffice for these rites and the the vessels are empty and do not pour water, the person in charge of the regular offerings does not receive extra. After what was distributed from the foods and what was distributed from the drinks, after what was left over from the regular offerings and was not used by the house, after what was expended from the taxed fish, [...] and after what was received in nuts and green plants from within the garden has entered, no mouth may touch them. No one should carry the bread of the shrines in the district as bread allotment."

"What millions died—that Cæsar might be great!"

"Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?"

"If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."

"Offerings create life."

"Offerings are the glory of the gods."

"Sacrifice to the Graces."

"He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter."

"Sacrifice to the Muses."

"Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces.""

"The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil."

"Modern people have a hard time understanding what sacrifice means, because they think, for example, of a burnt offering on an altar, which is an archaic way of acting out the idea. But we have no problem at all when we conceptualize sacrifice psychologically, because we all know you must forgo gratification in the present to keep the wolf from the door in the future. So, you offer something to the negative goddess, so that the positive one shows up."

"In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities."

"Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists."