Cults Sentence Examples

A metropolis demanded tribute and military support from its subject cities but left their local cults and customs unaffected.

We learn much as to these magistrates from the large number of inscriptions that have been found (over 2000 in Ostia and Portus taken together) and also as to the cults.

The belief in human immortality in some form is almost universal; even in early animistic cults the germ of the idea is present, and in all the higher religions it is an important feature.

Like Cleisthenes of Sicyon and Periander of Corinth, he realized that one great source of strength to the nobles had been their presidency over the local cults.

That in early pre-Mosaic times parallel cults existed among the various Hebrew tribes is by no means improbable.

Just as we have in Assyria an Ishtar of Arbela and an Ishtar of Nineveh (treated in Assur-bani-pal's (Rassam) cylinder 2 like two distinct deities), as we have local Madonnas in Roman Catholic countries, so must it have been with the cults of Yahweh in the regal period carried on in the numerous high places, Bethel, Shechem, Shiloh (till its destruction in the days of Eli) and Jerusalem.

Times of peace meant national disintegration and the lapse of Israel into the Canaanite local cults, which is interpreted by the redactor as the prophets of the 8th century would have interpreted it, viz.

But the prevalence of the worship of " other gods " and of graven images in these " high places," and the moral debasement of life which accompanied these cults, made it clear that the " high places " were sources of grave injury to Israel's social life.

Her victim was a porca, as in the cults of other deities of fertility, and was called damium, and we are told that the goddess herself was known as Damia and her priestess as damiatrix.

This age, with its regular maritime intercourse between the Aegean settlements, Phoenicia and the Delta, and with lines of caravans connecting Babylonia, North Syria, Arabia and Egypt, presents a remarkable picture of life and activity, in the centre of which lies Palestine, with here and there Egyptian colonies and some traces of Egyptian cults.

Hebrew religious institutions can be understood from the biblical evidence studied in the light of comparative religion; and without going afield to Babylonia, Assyria or Egypt, valuable data are furnished by the cults of Phoenicia, Syria and Arabia, and these in turn can be illustrated from excavation and from modern custom.

The earlier Persian kings acknowledged the various religions of the petty peoples; they were also patrons of their temples and would take care to preserve an ancient right of asylum or the privileges of long-established cults.'

The thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that ' Farnell, Cults, iii.

The dead, who returned to the Great Mother, were objects of a sort of heroworship. This early nature-cult explains many anomalous features of Hellenic religion, especially in the cults of Artemis and Aphrodite.

The two deities were, no doubt, of common origin, but their cults are historically distinct.

Native cults the Hellenistic kings thought it good policy to patronize.

This god, whose worship was introduced into Athens at a later date by the Ionian immigrants, was identified with ErechtheusErichthonius (for whose birth Athena was in a certain sense responsible), and thus was brought into connexion with the goddess, in order to effect a reconciliation of the two cults.

While the Roman cults were amply protected by taboos, there was no comprehensive term in Roman law for religious violations and profanations in general.

This was partly due to the influence of Christianity, which sought to include as objects of sacrilege all forms of church property, rather than merely those things consecrated in pagan cults, partly to the efforts of the later emperors to surround themselves and everything emanating from them with highest sanctions.

The worship of these heroes is in reality an ancestor worship, which existed in pre-Homeric times, and was preserved in local cults.

The common calendar and cycle of festivals, observed by all Dorians (of which the Carneia was chief), and the distribution in Greece of the worships of Apollo and Heracles, which attained pre-eminence mainly in or near districts historically " Dorian," suggest that these cults, or an important element in them, were introduced comparatively late, and represent the beliefs of a fresh ethnic superstratum.

Certainly the Spartans adopted, together with the political traditions of the Heracleids, many old Laconian cults and observances such as those connected with the Tyndaridae.

By the time when Latin literature begins, the genuine Roman religion had already been overlaid by foreign cults and modes of thought, by the classical period it was - except in formal observance - practically buried and to a large extent fossilized.

No doubt the later indigitamenta (" bidding-prayers") which give us detailed lists of the spirits which preside over the various actions of the infant, or the stages in the marriage ceremony, or the agricultural operations of the farmer, are due in a large measure to deliberate pontifical elaboration, but they are a true indication of the Roman attitude of mind, which reveals itself continually in the analysis of the cults of the household or the festivals of the agricultural year.

We find then two prominent notes of the state influence, firstly, the adaptation of the old ideas of the household and agricultural cults to the broader needs of the community, especially to the new necessities of internal justice between citizens and war against external enemies, and secondly the organization of more or less casual worship into something like a consistent system.

The later stages represent not the spontaneous development of the genuine Roman religion, but its alteration and supersession by new cults and ideas introduced from foreign sources.

Other Italian cults introduced at this period were those of Juno Sospes and Juno Regina, Venus and Fortuna Primigenia, a goddess of childbirth who came from Praeneste.

In this period, then, we find first a legitimate extension of cults corresponding to the needs of the growing community, and secondly a religious restlessness and a consequent tendency to more dramatic forms of worship.

Some of the old cults passed away altogether, others survived in name and form, but were so wholly devoid of inner meaning that even the learning of a Varro could not tell their intention or the character of the deity with whom they were concerned.

His new palace on the Palatine he intended to be primarily the seat of the Julian family and the cults associated with it, and secondarily the centre of the new popular religion.

As the palace cults became national, the worship of the Genius was bound to spread, and ultimately Augustus sanctioned its celebration at the compita together with the worship of the old Lares.

For, though the form of the old cults was long preserved and even Antoninus Pius was honoured in an inscription for his care of the ancient rites of religion, the vital spirit was almost gone.

In the popular mind the hosts of exciting oriental cults, which in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Empire filled Rome with the rites of mysticism and initiation, held undisputed sway; and with the more educated a revived philosophy, less accurate perhaps in thought, but more satisfying to the religious conscience, gave men a clearer monotheistic conception, and a notion of individual relations with the divine in prayer and even of consecration.

Idolatrous cults repose so largely on make-believe and credulity that the priests who administered them, perhaps oftener than we know, fell into the kind of imposture and trickery of which the legend of Bel and the dragon represents a classical example.

Such petitions as the above are common in the more ancient of the Christian cults, and are all alike inspired by the idea that a spirit or divine virtue can be confined in material objects which are to be brought into contact with or swallowed by men and animals.

The former was their creeds, the latter their cults or worships.

There is no trace of its having continued into imperial times, but the cults of Lavinium were kept up, largely by the imperial appointment of honorary non-resident citizens to hold the priesthoods.

Under the empire we find Eastern cults taking root here sooner than in Rome.

The honour paid by them to the serpent is connected with the old mythologies of Babylon and Egypt as well as with the popular cults of Greece and the Orient.

It was a time of great religious interest, when old cults were being revived and new ones were finding acceptance on all sides.

Moreover, in the earlier times we find the prince of the nome acting as the High Priest of the local god, but in course of time the state, represented by the king, began to an ever-increasing degree to take oversight over the more important local cults.

The duties of the priests were not restricted to the services of the temple, but they also took part in the household cults.

It is probable that the first of these forms is the primary one and the second in most cases a development from it due to (i.) the influence of other individual cults, (ii.) anthropomorphic tendencies, (iii.) the influence of chieftainship, hereditary and otherwise, (iv.) annual sacrifice of the sacred animal and mystical ideas connected therewith, (v.) syncretism, due either to unity of function or to a philosophic unification, (vi.) the desire to do honour to the species in the person of one of its members, and possibly other less easily traceable causes.

Conspicuous among Egyptian animal cults was that of the bull, Apis.

Serpent cults were well known in ancient Europe; there does not, it is true, appear to be much ground for supposing that Aesculapius was a serpent-god in spite of his connexion with serpents.

Just as a process of syncretism has given rise to cults of animal gods, tree spirits tend to become detached from the trees, which are thenceforward only their abodes; and here again animism has begun to pass into polytheism.

Here again, though to a less extent than in tree cults, the theriomorphic aspect recurs; in the north of Europe, in ancient Greece, in China, the water or river spirit is horse or bull-shaped; the water monster in serpent shape is even more widely found, but it is less strictly the spirit of the water.

Ancestor-worship has its parallels in Christian cults of the dead and of the saints; it must be remembered, however, that a saint is not as a rule an ancestor, and that his cult is not based upon family feeling and love of kinsmen, nor tends to stimulate and encourage the same.

Such cults have never prevented those who participated in them from fighting one another.

The question has often been raised, what is the relation of private cults of ancestors to public religion?

The doctrine of the incarnation of God, which was especially objectionable to those who were going over to the new universal religion from the old cults, was not proclaimed by Manichaeism.

In the systematized pantheon, Ninib survives the tendency towards centralizing all sun cults in Shamash by being made the symbol of a certain phase of the sun.

The worship of Serapis along with Isis, Horus and Anubis spread far and wide, reached Rome, and ultimately became one of the leading cults of the west.

Thus the downfall of the monarchy and of the ancient cults have been nearly fatal to some of the more beautiful birds; feather ornaments, formerly worn only by nobles, came to be a common decoration; and many species (for example the Hawaiian gallinule, Gallinula sandwicensis, which, because of its crimson frontal plate and bill, was said by the natives to have played the part of Prometheus, burning its head with fire stolen from the gods and bestowed on mortals) have been nearly destroyed by the mongoose, or have been driven from their lowland homes to the mountains, such being the fate of the mamo, mentioned above, and of the Sandwich Island goose (Bernicla sandwicensis), which is here a remarkable example of adaptation, as its present habitat is quite arid.

Farnell, Cults of the Greek States; also article Athena and works quoted.

The grant to other cults amounted to 118,000 francs, but small as this sum may appear it is in due proportion to the relative numbers of each creed.

Although the cults of the old Greek deities in the new cities, with their splendid apparatus of festivals and sacrifice might still hold the multitude, men turned ever in large numbers to alien Art religions, felt as more potent because strange, and the various gods of Egypt and the East began to find larger entrance in the Greek world.

The old cults naturally went on, and at Carrhae (Harran) even survived the establishment of Christianity.

A few years after the reformer's death, the old cults were re-established and the monuments of Aton studiously defaced.

There are no signs of Oriental influence in her cults, except at Corinth, where she seems to have been identified with Astarte.

For a true appreciation of the chaotic polytheism that reveals itself even in the earliesttexts it would be necessary to be able to trace its development, stage by stage, out of a number of naive primitive cults; but the period of growth lies behind recorded history, and we are here reduced to hypotheses and a posleriori reconstructions.

The era of peace thus inaugurated brought with it a rapid progress in all branches of civilization; and there soon emerged not only a national art and a condition of material prosperity shared by the entire land in common, but also a state religion, which gathered up the ancient tribal cults and floating cosmical conceptions, and combining them as best it could, imposed them on the people as a whole.

Written records were few at the time when the pantheon was built up, so that the process of construction cannot be followed historically from stage to stage; but it is possible by arguing backwards from the later facts to discern the main tendencies at work, and the principal elementary cults that served as the materials.

The development of the poll-tax imposed on members of tolerated cults seems to be due to various causes, chief of them the acquisition of land by Moslems, who were not at first allowed to possess any, the conversion of Coptic landowners to Islam, and the enforcement (towards the end of the 1st century of Islam) of the poll-tax on monks.

This would bring a greater coherence of worship among the chaos of local cults.

The local centres will survive political and historical vicissitudes and the changes of national cults and sects, and may outlive the national deities.

As these emphasized their supremacy by grouping around them a court of loyal attendants dependent in rank and ready to do their master's bidding, so the gods of the chief centres and those of the minor local cults formed a group around Marduk; and the larger the group the greater was the reflected glory of the chief figure.

As already indicated, the local cults in the important centres of the south and north maintained themselves despite the tendency towards centralization, and while the cults themselves varied according to the character of the gods worshipped in each centre, the general principles were the same and the rites differed in minor details rather than in essential variations.

Among the Nayars of Malabar, the family-serpent is capable of almost unlimited powers for good or evil; it is part of the household property, but does not seem to be connected with ancestral cults.'4 In Greece, however, " the dead man became a chthonic daemon, potent for good or evil; his natural symbol as such, often figured on tombs, was the snake."

While Dahomey furnishes this elaborate example of the modern worship of a god in the embodiment of a serpent, elsewhere we find either less organic types, or the persistence and survival of cults whose original form can only be reconstructed by inference.

For the retention of older cults under a new name, Mahommedanism supplies several examples, as when a forest-serpent of India receives a Mahommedan name (Oldham 128).

In its ancient stories were remnants of primitive religion, of tabu, of anthropomorphic gods, of native forms of worship, of magic and divination, of local and tribal cults.

Thus in this single act of devotion both objects of all cults are attained.

No age has been so responsive to the needs of man as our own; whatever doubts men have as to the doctrines or the cults there is an agreement wider than in the past in the good works whose inspiration is a divine love.

Besides reforming the city's constitution to the advantage of the Ionians and replacing Dorian cults by the worship of Dionysus, Cleisthenes gained renown as the chief instigator and general of the First Sacred War (5go) in the interests of the Delphians.

But the Greek cities retained monarchical government throughout, and both the domestic art and the principal religious cults remained almost unaltered.

With the aid of inscriptions the cults of Greece and Rome have been largely reconstructed.

But behind Homer stretches the dim scene of pre-Hellenic religion, and the conflict of elements " Pelasgic, and Hellenic, out of which the Homeric religion emerged; and beneath the Homeric religion how many features of the' religion of ghosts and nature-spirits survived in popular usage and the lower cults!

But they always played a leading part in the propaganda of the Persian cults in the West.

This propagandism, however, was void of all national character, and ran on precisely the same lines as the propagandism of the Syrian, Jewish and Egyptian cults.

But in all these cults the Persian gods are perfectly tolerant of other native or foreign divinities; vigorous as was their propagandism, it was yet equally far removed from an attack on other creeds.

Heathenish cults and forbidden manners and customs are a pollution to the land and a deep insult to the true God.

But to maintain therefore that he originated in Thessaly as the special deity of a single tribe, who were able to impose him upon the whole of Hellas, is against the analogies offered by the study of the special cults of Greek polytheism.

We may indeed with Mr Andrew Lang explain the many myths of the bestial transformations of Zeus on the theory that the God was the tribal ancestor and assumed the shape of the animal-totem in order to engender the tribal patriarch; 7 but on the actual cults of Zeus theriomorphism has left less trace than on those.

Her cult became centralized in Phrygia, had found its way into Greece, where it never flourished greatly, as early as the latter 6th century B.e., and was introduced at Rome in 204 B.C. Under the Empire it attained to great importance, and was one of the last pagan cults to die.

These maritime cults of Apollo are probably due to his importance as the god of colonization, who accompanied emigrants on their voyage.

They for the most part originated among the believers, and not improbably the outside cults borrowed as much from the church as it from them.

More recent is the explanation of anthropologists that Medusa, whose virtue is really in her head, is derived from the ritual mask common to primitive cults.

It is evident from the material at our disposal that the Shamash cults at Sippara and Larsa so overshadowed local sun-deities elsewhere as to lead to an absorption of the minor deities by the predominating one.

After bringing about the success of the Asiatic cults of Mithra and Cybele, these same factors now assured the triumph over exhausted paganism of yet another oriental religionChristianity after a duel which had lasted two centuries.

Similarly while the exploration of the Egyptian colonies south of the First Cataract has added many details to our knowledge of political history, of local cults and provincial organization, yet with one exception it has not affected the known outlines of the history of civilization.

In that early age of culture known as the "nomadic" stage, which under normal conditions precedes the "agricultural" stage, the moon cult is even more prominent than sun worship, and with the moon and sun cults thus furnished by the "popular" faith it was a natural step for the priests, who correspond to the "scientists" of a later day, to perfect a theory of a complete accord between phenomena observed in the heavens and occurrences on earth.

It proved the most successful of the pagan cults in maintaining itself against Christianity, with which it had not -a little in common, both in doctrine and in emblems. But the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in A.D.

Such cults have been studied by anthropologists in many contemporary societies too.

To begin, Alan Alford explains that the religions of the Near East were exploded planet cults.

An industry of books, conferences and experts appeared to uncover an epidemic of sexual abuse, incest and satanic cults.

On top of this doom and gloom are the millennial cults about which Bowker stated, " There is nothing too weird " .

Their own musical personality cults preclude any free exchange.

Dr. Jane Cartwright is a specialist on welsh hagiography and saints ' cults.

They remind us today of various cults or religious racketeers, of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Many are now cut off from the supernatural and seek it in spurious ways through things like new age spirituality or new religious cults.

Cult objects found in Dor included clay statuettes of both local and Greek styles pertaining to the Phoenician cults of Baal and Astarte.

A critical analysis of the narrative seems to reveal little else than a series of aetiological traditions, explanatory of cults and customs, e.g.

As closely connected with religious life, he was an augur and seer; practised magical arts, especially astrology; founded or rendered accessible many important cults, such as those of Apollo and Dionysus; instituted mystic rites, both public and private; prescribed initiatory and purificatory ritual.

There can be no doubt that at this time the true form of Zoroastrianism and the sacred writings were preserved only in Persis, whereas everywhere else (in Parthia, in the Indo-Scythian kingdoms of the east and in the great propagandist movement in Armenia, Syria and Asia Minor, where it developed into Mithraism) it degenerated and was mixed with other cults and ideas.

In primitive cults the distinction between sacred and unclean is far from complete or well defined (see Taboo); consequently we find two types of cathartic sacrifice - (i.) one to cleanse of impurity and make fit for common use, (ii.) the other to rid of sanctity and in like manner render suitable for human use or intercourse.

These Ionian newcomers are almost certainly responsible for the absorption of the numerous independent communities of Attica into a central state of Athens under a powerful monarchy (see Theseus), for the introduction of new cults, and for the division of the people into four tribes whose names - Geleontes, Hopletes, Argadeis and Aegicoreis - recur in several true Ionian towns.

Farnell (Cults, p. 275) points out that at the same time she is certainly looked upon as in some way connected with the health-divinities, since in her temple she is grouped with Asclepius and Hygieia (see Hygieia).

Whatever may be their origin - and they came from Cumae - they were placed in the Capitoline temple under the care of a special commission of two (duoviri sacris faciundis, later decemviri and quindecimviri), and their "oracles," which were referred to in times of great national stress, recommended the introduction of foreign cults.

Political, commercial and matrimonial alliances inevitably left their mark upon national religion, and the introduction of foreign cults which ensued is characteristically viewed as an apostasy from Yahweh of which he was guilty in his old age.

Although ancestor-worship, or, more broadly, the cult of the dead, has in many cases overshadowed other cults or even extinguished them, we have no warrant, even in these cases, for asserting its priority, but rather the reverse; not only so, but in the majority of cases the pantheon is made up by a multitude of spirits in human, sometimes in animal form, which bear no signs of ever having been incarnate; sun gods and moon goddesses, gods of fire, wind and water, gods of the sea, and above all gods of the sky, show no signs of having been ghost gods at any period in their history.

Apart from the religious cult suggested in the name Mount Nebo, there were local cults of the Baal of Peor and the Baal of Meon, and Mesha's allusion to `Ashtar-Chemosh, a compound deity, has been taken to point to a corresponding consort whose existence might naturally be expected upon other grounds (see Astarte).

So too the bull of Apis frol dack animal with white spots) was during its lifetime regarded tra(reincarnation of Ptah, the local god of Memphis, and similarly not Mnevis and Bacis bulls were accounted to be the living in s Es of Etom of Heliopolis and of Re of Hermonthis respec- cen ly; these latter cults are certainly secondary, for Ptah of 1 iself was never, either early or late, depicted otherwise than 0th iuman form, as a mummy or as a dwarf; and Etom and Re Hoi but different names of the sun-god.

They remind us today of various cults or religious racketeers, of the Jehovah 's Witnesses.

This behavior can be particularly destructive when these feelings of dependence are transferred to involvement with gangs or cults.

In her book on the subject published in 2003, Tina Hobin suggests that it evolved out of "fertility cults, religious rituals, magic and secular dances" designed to worship matriarchal deities.

Stay away from chat rooms that are associated with cults or groups that do dangerous things.

The inverted pentagram and Horned God combination has long been associated with devil cults.

Amongst his scientific, theological and grammatical works mention may be made of De diis, containing an examination of various cults and ceremonials; treatises on divination and the interpretation of dreams; on the sphere, the winds and animals.