Ritual Sentence Examples

It had an absurd ritual and a strange uniform.

It was a ritual they had been performing morning and night for the past two weeks.

Bedtime began with their ritual of sitting on the window seat in each other's arms, watching their farm in the growing darkness.

The sacrificial ritual recognizes two kinds of srauta sacrifices, viz.

Where the ritual, as in most cases, is a revival of pre-Reformation.

The ritual of worship was peculiar, not admitting bloody sacrifices.

It was a weekly summer ritual for one or the other, but seldom both; they enjoyed stocking up on local-grown produce.

The ritual books of our Pentateuch were not then in existence, and the sacrificial cult might be treated with contempt as not authoritative.

They dealt with such subjects as the origin of the gods, the creation of the world, the ritual of purification and initiation, and oracular responses.

In advanced religion, indeed, prayer is the chosen vehicle of the free spirit of worship. Its mechanism is not unduly rigid, and it is largely autonomous, being rid of subservience to other ritual factors.

A distinct feature of this ritual was wµocbayta (eating the flesh of the victim raw), whereby the communicants imagined that they consumed and assimilated the god represented by the victim, and thus became filled with the divine ecstasy.

Of the Albanians in Sicily the great majority (4479 1) remain faithful to the Greek Church; in Italy 116,482 follow the Latin ritual, and 38,192 the Greek.

It was a sure sign he was forgiven for his irreverent try at changing the age-old ritual of greeting card purchasing.

And the Directory of Public Worship has shaped and coloured, perhaps too thoroughly, the ritual and atmosphere of every group of Protestant Anglo-Saxon worshippers throughout the world, except Episcopalians.

Paul encouraged missions, confirmed many new congregations and brotherhoods, authorized a new version of the Ritual, and canonized Carlo Borromeo.

Certain peculiarities introduced by St Ambrose distinguish the ritual of Milan from that of the general church.

It was an elaborate ritual.

In one point, however, - the attitude toward the ritual - the two men differ radically.

In like manner the special ritual at the temple prescribed for the Sabbath by the Pentateuchal law was not regarded as any part of the hallowing of the sacred day; on the contrary, the rule was that, in this regard, "Sabbath was not kept in the sanctuary."

He or his school introduced innumerable ritual customs, some of them beautiful enough.

He began his ritual of locking up and putting out a bowl of canned cat food for Mrs. Lincoln, who came on the run at the sound of the refrigerator door.

In England at the Reformation the alb went out of use with the other "Mass vestments," and remained out of use in the Church of England until the ritual revival of the 19th century.

He is, however, much more than a ritual reformer.

In more primitive ritual, however, set forms of prayer are the rule, and their function is mainly to accompany and support a ceremony the nerve of which consists in action rather than speech.

Ritual flagellation existed among the Jews, and, according to Buxtorf (Synagoga judaica, Basel, 1603), was one of the ceremonies of the day of the Great Pardon.

His ritual and mysteries (Sacra Savadia) gained a firm footing in Rome during the 2nd century A.D., although as early as 139 B.C. the first Jews who settled in the capital were expelled by virtue of a law which proscribed the propagation of the cult of Jupiter Sabazius.

Readers will recognize that some of the lectures are far too long to form part of a ritual initiation.

No prehistoric funerary and ritual monuments have been recorded in the Levels.

You, O Lord, have come into our time To lift the life of faith above ritual observance.

For a time I was very observant, watching the coffin lowered, hearing the words of the ritual.

This was a ritual washing of hands prior to a meal.

Back then, human life was a daily ritual of survival.

A tarot reader may wish to perform a cleansing ritual between readings and before the first use of a new deck.

From this time forward the new moons, which till then had been at least as important as the Sabbath and were celebrated by sacrificial feasts as occasions of religious gladness, fall into insignificance, except in the conservative temple ritual.

No general survey of sacrificial ritual is possible here, but a.

This ancient instrument was extensively used by the priests in the temple of Isis to attract the attention of worshippers to different parts of the ritual.

The walls of the throne room show frescoes with sacred griffins confronting each other in a Nile landscape, and a small bath chamber - perhaps of ritual use - is attached.

The ritual of the dead is most frequently the subject.

The ritual law was substantially completed.

It is natural that little should be said of so obvious a practice until the fuller development of ritual in a later age.

The ritual of the mass remained unchanged until the death of Henry VIII.

He, too, travelling as a Moslem pilgrim, noted the whole ritual of the pilgrimage with the same keen observation as Burckhardt, and while amplifying somewhat the latter's description of Medina, confirms the accuracy of his work there and at Mecca in almost every detail.

As his share in the controversy, Martineau published five discourses, in which he discussed " the Bible as the great autobiography of human nature from its infancy to its perfection," " the Deity of Christ," " Vicarious Redemption," " Evil," and " Christianity without Priest and without Ritual."' He remained to the end a keen and vigilant apologist of the school in which he had been nursed.

The germs of an indigenous literature had existed at an early period in Rome and in the country districts of Italy, and they have an importance as indicating natural wants in the Italian race, which were ultimately satisfied by regular literary forms. The art of writing was first employed in the service of the state and of religion for books of ritual, treaties with other states, the laws of the Twelve Tables and the like.

This metre was employed in ritual hymns, which seem to have assumed definite shapes out of the exclamations of a primitive priesthood engaged in a rude ceremonial dance.

In view of these conditions, the prophet's message is to reassert the true relation of Israel to Yahweh, and to call for a corresponding holiness, especially in regard to questions of ritual and of marriage.

In the cult and ritual of Rome there are enshrined many survivals from a very early form of religious thought prior to the development of the characteristic Roman attitude of mind.

In such a religion exactness of ritual must play a large part - so large, indeed, that many modern critics have been.

Place, again, as we have seen, was an essential element even in the conception of the numen, and is therefore all-important in ritual.

The ancient ritual of the Pax has become almost obsolete.

Herbert tried to interpret his own devout meditations by applying images of all kinds to the ritual and beliefs of the Church.

The revival of pre-Reformation ritual by many of the High Church clergy led to the designation "ritualist" being applied to them in a somewhat contemptuous sense; and "High Churchman" and "Ritualist" have often been wrongly treated as convertible terms. Actually many High Churchmen are not Ritualists, though they tend to become so.

But in that case how can the creed and ritual of baptism, the Lord's Prayer and the Eucharistic formulae, have been kept secret?

Could our modern freemasons continue to hide their watchwords and ritual, or even make a pretence of doing so, if they were constrained by public opinion to initiate every child three years of age?

The personnel, revenue, jurisdiction, ritual, even the faith of the Church, were in this way placed under the complete control of the territorial governments.

Melanchthon, who was for a moment carried away by the movement, partook, with several of his students, of the communion under both kinds, and on Christmas Eve a crowd invaded the church of All Saints, broke the lamps, threatened the priests and made sport of the venerable ritual.

By the Act of Uniformity (1559) a uniform ritual, the Book of Common Prayer, was imposed upon clergy and laity alike, and no liberty of public worship was permitted.

The chief religious purpose of the society was the worship of the generative powers of nature, and the ritual and ceremonies of initiation were grossly licentious.

And it is perhaps not arbitrary to suppose that the splendour of the ritual in Amos's time implies a tremulous anxiety that Israel's seeming prosperity under Jeroboam II.

He was the founder of what has been termed the "science of Judaism," the critical investigation of Jewish literature, hymnology and ritual.

In matters of ritual they agreed with the Western Church on the continent, save in a few particulars such as the precise time of keeping Easter and manner of tonsure.

No doubt, however, both the principles and ritual are partly derived from earlier times.

The ritual includes features found on other holy days, sacrifices, abstinence from work, &c.; and also certain unique acts.

Some were named after exclusively Vedic deities; they formed the basis of the sacrificial calendar of the Brahmins; the old Indian names of the months were derived from them; their existence was pre-supposed in the entire structure of Hindu ritual and science.

For purposes of ritual, however, the Pleiades, with Agni or " Fire " as their presiding deity, continued to be the first sign.

Kohen, iEpEbs, sacerdos, are, in fact, fair translations of one another; they all denote a minister whose stated business was to perform, on behalf of the community, certain public ritual acts, particularly sacrifices, directed godwards.

The investigations which have been carried on in recent years by King, Tallquist and Zimmern, as well as by Briinnow and Craig, on the magic and ritual of Babylonia and Assyria have been fruitful of results.

Tallquist's edition of the Maklu series of incantations and his explanations of the ritual, and also the publications by Zimmern of the Surpu series of tablets in his Beitreige have rendered us familiar with the functions of the asipu.

These powerfully-organized priesthoods, as well as the elaborate nature of their ritual and apparatus of worship, must have deeply and permanently impressed the exiled Jewish community.

Homer knows special priests who preside over ritual acts in the temples to which they are attached; but his kings also do sacrifice on behalf of their people.

In the post-Vedic period ` right ' or ` wrong ' simply means the exact performance or the neglect, whether intentional or unintentional - of all the details of a prescribed ritual, the centre of which was the sacrifice.

The ritual had a mechanical character and was by no means attractive.

The fundamental type of the Arabic sanctuary can be traced through all the Semitic lands, and so appears to be older than the Semitic dispersion; even the technical terms are mainly the same, so that we may justly assume that the more developed ritual and priesthoods of the settled Semites sprang from a state of things not very remote from what we find among the heathen Arabs.

Now among the Arabs, as we have seen, ritual service is the affair of the individual, or of a mass of individuals gathered in a great feast, but still doing worship each for himself and his own private circle; the only public aspect of religion is found in connexion with divination and the oracle to which the affairs of the community are submitted.

We see from I Kings xviii., 2 Kings x., that great Baal temples had two classes of ministers, kohanim and nebhiim, " priests " and " prophets," and as the former bear a name which primarily denotes a soothsayer, so the latter are also a kind of priests who do sacrificial service with a wild ritual of their own.

It is plain that the various priestly colleges regarded themselves as one order, that they had common traditions of law and ritual which were traced back to Moses, and common interests which had not been vindicated without a struggle (Deut., ut supra).

The ritual functions of the priesthood still appear in Deut.

Private sacrifices, too, could hardly be offered without some priestly aid now that ritual was more complex; the provision of Deut.

It is instructive to observe how differently the prophets of the 8th century speak of the judicial or " teaching " functions of the priests and of the ritual of the great sanctuaries.

Nevertheless, the concentration of all ritual at a single point, and the practical exclusion of laymen from active participation in it - for the old sacrificial feast had now shrunk into entire insignificance in comparison with the stated priestly holocausts and atoning rites2 - lent powerful assistance to the growth of a new and higher type of personal religion, the religion which found its social expression not in material acts of oblation, but in the language of the Psalms. In the best times of the old kingdom the priests had shared the place of the prophets as the religious leaders of the nation; under the second Temple they represented the unprogressive traditional side of religion, and the leaders of thought were the psalmists and the scribes, who spoke much more directly to the piety of the nation.

Of these water is the commonest, and its efficacy is enhanced if it be running, and still more if a magical or sacramental virtue has been imparted to it by ritual blessing or consecration.

The patient's skin burns, that of a frog is cold to the touch; therefore tie to the foot of the bed a frog, bound with red and black thread, and wash down the sick man so that the water of ablution falls 1 In its technical ecclesiastical sense the ablution is the ritual washing of the chalice and of the priest's fingers after the celebration of Holy Communion in the Catholic Church.

The water must in ritual washings run off in order to carry away the miasma or unseen demon of disease; and accordingly in baptism the early Christians used living or running water.

The same care is shown in ritual ablutions in the Bukovina and elsewhere.

In the rite of death-bed penance given in the old Mozarabic Christian ritual of Spain, ashes were poured over the sick man.

Hence the necessity for outward conformity, and the importance attached to ritual and ceremony, unity in which must be established at all costs, in contrast to dogma and doctrine, in which he showed himself lenient and large-minded, winning over Hales by friendly discussion, and encouraging the publication of Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants.

Generally the Abyssinians agree with the Copts in ritual and practice.

Further, the Megillath Ta'anith (" roll of fasts "), an old source with a collection of miscellaneous legends, &c.; Megillath Antiokhos, on the martyrdom under Hadrian; Seder`Olam Rabbah, on biblical history from Adam to the rebellion of Bar Kokba (Barcocheba); the " Book of Jashar "; the Chronicle of Jerahmeel," &c. Liturgical Midrash is illustrated by the Haggada shel Pesah, part of the ritual recited at the domestic service of the first two Passover evenings.

It is clear enough that, although, like her father, she was fond of ritual, she was absolutely devoid of the religious temperament, and that her ecclesiastical preferences were dictated by political considerations.

Recent grail researches have made it most probable that that mysterious talisman was originally the vessel of the ritual feast held in honour of a deity of vegetation, - Adonis, or another; if the Round Table also, as Dr Mott suggests, derives from a similar source, we have a link between these two notable features of Arthurian tradition, and an additional piece of evidence in support of the view that behind the Arthur of romance there lie not only memories of an historic British chieftain, but distinct traces of a mythological and beneficent hero.

Whether the will of the gods is determined through the inspection of the liver of the sacrificial animal, through observing the action of oil bubbles in a basin of water or through the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, it is Shamash and Adad who, in the ritual connected with divination, are invariably invoked.

It contemplated a restoration of all the religions of antiquity, by allowing each to retain its traditional forms, and at the same time making each a vehicle for the religious attitude and the religious truth embraced in Neoplatonism; while every form of ritual was to become a stepping-stone to a high morality worthy of mankind.

The works of the pseudoDionysius contain a gnosis in which, by means of the teaching of Iamblichus and Proclus, the church's theology is turned into a scholastic mysticism with directions on matters of practice and ritual.

His philosophical conception of tradition, associated as it was with conservatism in ritual practice, created what is often known as the Frankfort "Neo-Orthodoxy."

Grenfell and Hunt conclude therefore - " So great indeed are the divergences between this account and the extant and no doubt well-informed authorities with regard to the topography and ritual of the Temple that it is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that much of the local colour is due to the imagination of the author who was aiming chiefly at dramatic effect and was not really well acquainted with the Temple.

By the 13th century, with the final development of the ritual of the Mass, the chasuble became definitely fixed as the vestment of the celebrating priest; though to this day in the Roman Church relics of the earlier general use of the chasuble survive in the planeta plicata worn by deacons and subdeacons in Lent and Advent, and other penitential seasons.

It is doubtful if the attempts of reformers to spiritualize the Eucharist bring us, except so far as they pruned ritual extravagances, nearer to its original significance; perhaps the Roman, Greek and Oriental churches have better preserved it.

On extraordinary occasions indeed the more elaborate ritual continued to be observed.

The language, style and contents of this section point unmistakably to the hand of P; and it is now generally admitted that these chapters form part of an ideal representation of the post-exilic ritual system, which has been transferred to the Mosaic age.

The purpose of the ritual is to facilitate difficult childbirth.

Persons and objects have to be washed to remove ritual impurity in the Law.

In fact, I find much of the ritual incantations of bullishness here rather amusing.

I suggest that there are some errors in this ritual obeisance to received wisdom.

As tho they were taking part in a sort of erotic but slightly perverse sexual ritual.

Instead her now-familiar ritual of alternately preening then appearing petrified conjured up an atmosphere not of sober reflection but juvenile hysteria.

A ritual is interrupted if you stop role-playing casting the ritual for any reason.

Ritual is really much older than thought; it is much simpler and much wilder than thought.

Their ceremonies were secret and involved fasting and ritual purification.

You should create a bedtime ritual that might include a bath, a story, a song, and then bedtime.

You may chant the spell at this point in the ritual.

The Pawnees, however, had an elaborate ritual, in which a human victim was sacrificed to the Morning Star; the blood of the victims was sprinkled on the fields, and the details of the rite are not unlike those of the Khond custom.

This necessarily involved in that primitive age an extreme jealousy of foreign importations or innovations in ritual.

Jeremiah, when he foretold the destruction of the external state and temple ritual, found no resource save in a reconstruction that was internal and spiritual.

It was the task of Ezekiel to take up once more the broken threads of Israel's religious traditions, and weave them anew into statelier forms of ritual and national polity.

The idea underlying the word, which to us is invested with deep ethical meaning, had only this non-ethical, ritual significance in Ezekiel.

Every religion has its customary cult and ritual, its recognized times, places and persons for the observance.

This centralization involved the removal of the local priests and a modification of ritual and legal observance.

Though one may often be repelled by their lifelessness, their lack of spontaneity and the externalization of the ritual, it must be recognized that they placed a strict monotheism upon a legal basis.

Little more than half a century after the overthrow of the Jewish nationality, the Mishnah was practically completed, and by this code of rabbinic law - and law is here a term which includes the social, moral and religious as well as the ritual and legal phases of human activity - the Jewish people were organized into a community, living more or less autonomously under the Sanhedrin or Synedrium and its officials.

Their progress has not been arrested even by anti-Semitism, which first developed in 1883 at the time of the Tisza-Eslar accusation of ritual murder.

Such incidents were the Damascus charge of ritual murder (1840), the forcible baptism of the Italian child Mortara (1858), and the Russian pogroms at various dates.

The art of all the area gives evidence of one spirit and common models; in religious representations it shows the same anthropomorphic personification and the same ritual furniture.

The Mandaean marriage service occurs both in Paris and in Oxford as an independent MS. The Diwan, hitherto unpublished, contains the ritual for atonement.

The burlesque ritual which characterized the Feast of Fools throughout the middle ages was now at its height.

The ass had been introduced into the ritual of the church in the 9th century, representing either Balaam's ass, that which stood with the ox beside the manger at Bethlehem, that which carried the Holy Family into Egypt, or that on which Christ rode in triumph into Jerusalem.

The procession was followed, inside the church, by a curious combination of ritual office and mystery play, the text of which, according to the Ordo processionis asinorum secundum Rothomagensem usum, is given in Du Cange.

Among the filthiest are the Aghoris, who preserve the ancient cannibal ritual of the followers of Siva, eat filth, and use a human skull as a drinking-vessel.

Under Marie Louise the etiquette of the court of France became more stately and the ritual of religious ceremonies more elaborate.

Part of the Jewish ritual was the preservation of the Israelites from the idolatry which at that time prevailed among every other people.

Besides the ritual and religious rolls, there are the hieratic, civil and literary documents, and the demotic and enchorial papyri, relating generally to sales of property.

The substantial features of the ancient Dionysiac rites, including a ritual play by "goat-men" carrying a wooden phallus, may still be seen at Bizye, the old residence of the Thracian kings.

Hitherto the example of the Roman Church had exercised no exclusive determining influence on ritual development even in the West.

Father Braun, to whose kindness the writer is indebted for the above account of the causes of the ritual changes in the Carolingian epoch, adds that the papacy was never narrowminded in its attitude towards local rites, and that it was not until the close of the middle ages, when diversity had become confusion and worse, that it began to insist upon uniformity.

Thirty years after the Ridsdale judgment, the ritual confusion in the Church of England was worse than ever, and the old ideal expressed in the Acts of Uniformity had given place to a desire to sanctify with some sort of authority the parochial "uses" which had grown up. In this respect the dominant opinion in the Church, intent on compromise, seems to have been expressed in the Report presented in 1908 to the convocation of the province of Canterbury by the sub-committee of five bishops appointed to investigate the matter, namely, that under the Ornaments Rubric the vestments prescribed in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI.

Female proselytes are admitted after the total immersion in a ritual bath, though in some Reformed congregations this rite is omitted.

Athena has been variously described as the pure aether, the storm-cloud, the dawn, the twilight; but there is little evidence that she was regarded as representing any of the physical powers of nature, and it is better to endeavour to form an idea of her character and attributes from a consideration of her cultepithets and ritual.

Thus the vessels used at the Passover are "kosher," as are also new metal vessels bought from a Gentile after they have been washed in a ritual bath.

The second part consists of vii.-xv., and treats of church ritual and.

The trabea, which in historical times was worn by the consuls when opening the temple of Janus, by the equites at their yearly inspection and on some other occasions, and by the Salii at their ritual dances, and had (according to tradition) formed the original costume of the augurs and flamens (who afterwards adopted the toga praetexta), was apparently a toga smaller in size than the ordinary civil dress, decorated with scarlet stripes (trabes).

It survives in the ritual chasuble of the Western Church.

Annam is ruled in theory by its emperor, assisted by the " comat " or secret council, composed of the heads of the six ministerial departments of the interior, finance, war, ritual, justice and public works, who are nominated by himself.

The Parsees still preserve in western India the pure tradition of the ritual of incense as followed by their race from probably the most ancient times.

No perfectly satisfactory traces can be found of the use of incense in the ritual of the Christian Church during the first four centuries.'

The divergences in ritual and organization, the principle underlying all the various ecclesiastical unions, viz.

The Freemasons had been largely instrumental in overthrowing Iturbide; they now divided into the Escoceses (lodges of the Scottish ritual), who were Monarchist and Centralist, and the Yorkinos, who took their ritual from New York, and their cue, it was alleged, from the American minister, Joel Poinsett.

Christ as to the inner character of a supper which he already found a ritual observance among believers.

The high altar (A) stands immediately to the east of the transept, or ritual choir; the altar of St Paul (B) in the eastern, and that of St Peter (C) in the western apse.

The stalls of the monks, forming the ritual choir, occupy the four eastern bays of the nave.

By the time of the VIth Dynasty it was usual to lay the corpse on its left side in the attitude of sleep, and a wooden coffin was often provided upon which were inscribed magic formulae that had already been employed for ages in ritual.

At first the luxury of mummification was reserved for the king, who was identified with Osiris and was buried with an abundance of ritual and magic words.

Apart from alterations in detail, both as to doctrine and ritual, which will be referred to later, the following main advantages were achieved from the very first and apply to all editions of the Prayer Book equally.

We consecrate ourselves either in a ritual act, as of baptism or ordination, vows or monkish initiation; or, without any implication of particular ceremonies, a man is said to consecrate himself to good works or learning.

It is, however, impossible to understand the development of church architecture without realizing its intimate connexion with that of the doctrine, organization and ritual of the Christian Church as a religious community, and a brief sketch of this connexion may be given here by way of introduction to the more technical treatment of the subject.

In the East the cancelli, under the influence possibly of the ritual of the Jewish temple, developed into the iconostasis, the screen of holy pictures, behind the closed doors of which the supreme act of the eucharistic mystery is hidden from the lay people.

There were, however, further changes, the result partly of doctrinal developments, partly of that passion for symbolism which by the 13th century had completed the evolution of the Catholic ritual.

The cessation of persecution, and consequent gradual elaboration of church furniture and ritual, led to the employment of more costly materials for the altar as for the other fittings of ecclesiastical buildings.

These crosses must have been anointed by the bishop with chrism in the ritual of consecration before the altar can be used.

Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches, 1 55 f.), whose zeal for the Temple and the Mosaic ritual customs led to Paul's arrest in Jerusalem (Acts xix.

With the reservation of those questions, especially of a dogmatic character, which belong to the Holy Office, and of purely ritual questions, which come under the Congregation of Rites, this Congregation brings under one authority all disciplinary questions concerning the sacraments, which were formerly distributed among several Congregations and offices.

In later days the same function was performed by the Purim Rabbi, who often indulged in parodies of the ritual.

Their natural devotion and their susceptibility to pomp and ritual was a factor skilfully used by the priests, but hardly anything was done to strengthen their moral power.

In the Roman Catholic Church the most characteristic ritual feature of the festival is now the solemn extinction of the paschal candle after the Gospel at high mass.

It is also clear that Sumerian was actually read aloud, probably as a ritual language, until a very late period, because we have a number of pure Sumerian words reproduced in Greek transliteration; for example, Delephat = Dilbat, " the Venus-star"; Illinos = the god Illil = Bel; aido = itu, " month," &c.

Magee took a prominent part in the Ritual controversy, opposing what he conceived to be romanizing excess in ritual, as well as the endeavour of the opposite party to "put down Ritualism," as Disraeli expressed it, by the operation of the civil law.

The act also gives to both patron and presentee an alternative mode of appeal against a bishop's refusal to institute or admit, except on a ground of doctrine or ritual, to a court composed of an archbishop of the province and a judge of the High Court nominated for that purpose by the lord chancellor, a course which, however, bars resort being had to the ordinary suits of duplex querela or action of quare impedit.

At all of these Holdheim was a strong supporter of the policy of modifying ritual (especially with regard to Sabbath observance, marriage laws and liturgical customs).

It is purely ethical, independent alike of theology and ritual, and is the code of morals as laid down in the Buddhist sacred books for laymen.

It was, of course, not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian.

During Dr Temple's episcopate ritual irregularities of all kinds had grown up, which left a very difficult task to his successor, more especially in view of the growing public agitation on the subject, of which he had to bear the brunt.

In accordance with a vote of the diocesan conference, the bishop arranged the "Round Table Conference" between representative members of various parties, held at Fulham in October 1900, on "the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist and its expression in ritual," and a report of its proceedings was published with a preface by him.

The full ritual is gone through by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, and abroad it survives in all Catholic countries, a notable example being that of the Austrian emperor.

This article relates to the Western Cathars, as they appear (1) in the Cathar Ritual written in Provencal and preserved in a 13th -century MS. in Lyons, published by Cledat, Paris, 1888; (2) in Bernard Gui's Practica inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis, edited by Canon C. Douais, Paris, 1886; and (3) in the proces verbal of the inquisitors' reports.

Just as at the third scrutiny the early catechumen passed a last examination in the Gospels, Creed and Lord's Prayer, so after their year of abstinence the credens receives creed and prayer; the allocution with which the elder "handed on" this prayer is preserved, and of it the Abbe Guiraud remarks that, if it were not in a Cathar ritual, one might believe it to be of Catholic origin.

Here the agricultural character of her ritual is well marked; the first oxen used in ploughing were, according to an Argive myth, dedicated to her as E v cSia; and the sprouting ears of corn were called "the flowers of Hera."

Their reign was long enough to establish this tradition in respect of ritual, and even when this golden age - as it seemed to later Scribes - was over they exercised a paramount influence upon the common people.

Works are extant in papyri and on temple walls, treating of geography, astronomy, ritual, myths, medicine, &c. It is probable that the native priests would have been ready to ascribe the authorship or inspiration, as well as the care and protection of all their books of sacred lore to Thoth, although there were a goddess of writing (Seshit), and the ancient deified scribes Imuthes and Amenophis, and later inspired doctors Petosiris, Nechepso, &c., to be reckoned with; there are indeed some definite traces of such an attribution extant in individual cases.

While Theseus was in Crete, Minos, 1 The story of Theseus is a strange mixture of (mostly fictitious) political tradition, of aetiological myths invented to explain misunderstood acts of ritual and of a cycle of tales of adventure analogous to the story of the labours of Heracles.

With him the "mysteries," the entire ritual, are an integral part of the Orthodox system, and all dogma culminates in image-worship. The date of his death is uncertain; it is probably about 752.

He disclaimed the right of suggesting a common order of worship or a uniform ecclesiastical polity; and Lutheran ritual and polity, while presenting common features, did not follow one common use.

The books were compiled and preserved for definite aims, and their teaching is directed now to the needs of the people as a whole - as in the ever popular stories of Genesis - now to the inculcation of the lessons of the past, and now to matters of ritual.

There is indeed a development, but it is none the less noteworthy that the post-exilic priestly ritual preserves in the worship of the universal and only God Yahweh, Develop- rites, practices and ideas which can be understood only in the light of other nature-religions, especially that of Babylonia, with which there are striking parallels.'

Gressmann, The uniqueness of the Old Testament religion is stamped upon the Mosaic legislation, which combines in archaic manner ritual, ethical and civil enactments.

The laws are (a) partly contemporary collections (chiefly of a ritual and ceremonial character) and (b) partly collections of older and different origin, though now in post-exilic frames.

The Royal Commissions on Ritual (1867) and on the Ecclesiastical Courts (1881) were due to him, and he took a large part in the deliberations of both.

A widespread feeling of indignation spread not only among High Churchmen, but among many who cared little or nothing for the ritual practices involved; and it seemed impossible to foretell what the outcome would be.

This proved to be the turning-point; and although the ritual difficulty by no means ceased, it was afterwards dealt with from a different point of view, and the Public Worship Regulation Act became practically obsolete.

The ritual alone which accompanied divination practices and incantation formulae and was a chief factor in the celebration of festival days and of days set aside for one reason or the other to the worship of some god or goddess or group of deities, is free from traces of the astral theology.

Though, in accounting for the anger of the gods, no sharp distinction is made between moral offences and a ritualistic oversight or neglect, yet the stress laid in the hymns and prayers, as well as in the elaborate atonement ritual prescribed in order to appease the anger of the gods, on the need of being clean and pure in the sight of the higher powers, the inculcation of a proper aspect of humility, and above all the need of confessing one's guilt and sins without any reserve - all this bears testimony to the strength which the ethical factor acquired in the domain of the religion.

It is natural that under the Sumerian revival, which characterized the united kingdom of Sumer and Akkad, the ancient ritual should have been revived and the Sumerian servicebooks adapted for the use of the reigning monarch.

It has followed Buddhism in deprecating any reliance upon ritual.

The reliance upon ritual - seeking salvation through outward acts.

The intricacies of ritual and theology are ignored, and ancient laws which contradict the fundamental beliefs are unhesitatingly abrogated or denied.

They also claim oneness with a long line of Christians, for in every age there have been men who have ignored the dogma and the ritual of the Church, and in contemplation and retirement have sought to know God immediately in their own experience.

Such a conception of Christianity can recognize many embodiments in ritual, organization and dogma, but its test in all ages and in all lands is conformity to the purpose of the life of Christ.

As the result of these inquiries, he adopted the creed of pure deism and a ritual based upon the system of Zoroaster.

The outward sign of this was the substitution of the Roman ritual for the English pre-Reformation use hitherto followed in the services, while English Roman Catholicism became increasingly ultramontane in temper, a tendency much strengthened under Cardinal Manning.

It is the note of every great religious reformer, Moses, Buddha, Paul, Mani, Mahomet, St Francis, Luther, to enlighten and direct it to higher aims, substituting a true personal holiness for a ritual purity or taboo, which at the best was viewed as a kind of physical condition and contagion, inherent as well in things and animals as in man.

In the Old Testament many laws in the Mosaic legislation are certainly post-Mosaic and the value of not a few narratives lies, not in their historical or biographical information, but in their treatment of law, ritual, custom, belief, &c. Later developments are exemplified in the pseudepigraphical literature, notably in the Book of Jubilees, and when we reach the Mishnah and Talmud, we have only the first of a new series of stages which, it may be said, culminate in the 16th-century Shulhan `Aruk, the great compendium of the then existing written and oral law.

An important motif in magico-religious ritual, which may not have been without effect on the development of sacrifice, is, as Dr Frazer's main thesis in The Golden Bough asserts, the imparting of reproductive energy to animals, plants and man himself, its cessation being suggested by such phenomena as old age and the fall of the year.

Indeed, as the history of the higher religions shows, religion tends in the end to break away from secular government with its aristocratic traditions, and to revert to the more democratic spirit of the primitive age, having by now obtained a clearer consciousness of its purpose, yet nevertheless clinging to the inveterate forms of human ritual as still adequate to symbolize the consecration of life - the quickening of the will to face life earnestly.

In this article religions are treated from the point of view of morphology, and no attempt can be made in the allotted limits to connect them with the phases of ritual, sociological or ethical development.

See the separate articles on each religious system, and the separate headings for different forms of ritual.

Divine persons, objects or powers, connected with ritual, are not here considered, such as the Brahman priests who claimed to be manushyadevah (human-gods), or the sacred soma-juice which grew by strange analogies into a mysterious element, linking together heaven and earth.

In its ritual form Asha becomes the principle of sacrifice, and hence of holiness, first ritual and then moral.

Assuming the proper fulfilment of the ritual of death, ethics gradually extends its control over the future.

Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion (1899); C. Pascal, Studii di antichita e mitologia (1896), who sees in Lycaon a god of death honoured by human sacrifice; Ed.

Such ritual use of oil as a o payls or seal may have been suggested in old religions by the practice of keeping wine fresh in jars and amphorae by pouring on a top layer of oil; for the spoiling of wine was attributed to the action of demons of corruption, against whom many ancient formulae of aversion or exorcism still exist.

Even at the synod of Orebro, summoned in February 152 9, "for the better regulation of church ceremonies and discipline according to God's Word," there was no formal protest against Rome; and the old ritual was retained for two years longer, though it was to be explained as symbolical.

Here he advocated an improved ritual in the Scottish church, his action resulting in the appointment by the general assembly of a committee, with Boyd as convener, to prepare a new hymnal.

Here, again, the theology was further developed, and an attempt made to annul the old dualism by envisaging both Ormuzd and Ahriman as emanations of an original principle of infinite time (Zervan), a doctrine which long enjoyed official validity under the Sassanids till, in the reign of Chosroes I., the sect of Zervanites was pronounced heretical.i But, above all, the ritual and the doctrine of purity were elaborated and expanded, and there was evolved a complete and detailed system of casuistry, dealing with all things allowed and forbidden, the forms of pollution and the expiation for each, &c., which, in its arid and spiritles1 monotony vividly recalls the similar prescriptions in the Pentateuch.

As compared with the Anglican Book of Common Prayer it is both more and less comprehensive; more, in that it includes lessons and hymns for every day in the year; less, because it excludes the Eucharistic office (contained in the Missal), and the special offices connected with baptism, marriage, burial, ordination, &c., which are found in the Ritual or the Pontifical.

In 1902, under Leo XIII., a commission under the presidency of Monsignor Louis Duchesne was appointed to consider the Breviary, the Missal, the Pontifical and the Ritual.

All this might very early, without the incentive of Jewish and pagan example, have affected the symbolic ritual of the primitive Church.

In order to improve his knowledge of the Roman ritual he spent four years with Malchus, bishop of Lismore (in Munster), a strong advocate of Romanism.

Such a breach of ritual on the part of Aaron and his sons seemed to a later redactor to demand an explanation, and this is furnished in the present section.

Possibly the omission of this introduction is due to the redactor who combined (1) and (2) by transferring the regulations of (1) to the ritual of the annual Day of Atonement.

At a later period the ritual was further developed by the inclusion of the additional ceremonial contained in (3).

Gelasius is stated by ritual writers to have been the first who limited them to these particular times, the special solemnity of the season being in all probability the cause of the selection.

There was a school of distinctively latitudinarian thought in the Church of England; others not unnaturally thought it better to extend the realm of the adiaphora beyond the sphere of Protestant ritual or the details of systematic divinity.

In 1885 he again resigned, owing to the bishop of Winchester's refusal to sanction the extreme ritual used in the service at St Agatha's.

He contended for freedom of thought; he had no desire to fight for freedom of ritual practice.

The latter offers a cannibal-meal to the disguised God, who turns him into a wolf for his sins; and the later Arcadian ritual in honour of this God betrays a hint of lycanthropy; some one who partook of the sacrifice or who swam across a certain lake was supposed to be transformed into a wolf for a certain time.4 Robertson Smith 5 was the first to propose that we have here the traces of an ancient totemistic sacrifice of a wolf-clan, who offered the " theanthropic " animal " the man-wolf " to the wolf-God.

The peculiar characteristic of his earliest ritual was the human sacrifice; besides the legend of King Lycaon, we find it in the story of the house of Athamas and in the worship of Zeus Aacuonos of Thessaly, 8 and other examples are recorded.

The Pharisees even improved upon the Temple ritual, and their popularity enabled them to force the Pharisees into adopting the improvements.

The result has been the development within the Established Church of a most startling diversity of doctrine and ritual practice, varying from what closely resembles that of the Church of Rome to the broadest Liberalism and the extremest evangelical Protestantism.

In her six hands are torches, sometimes a snake, a key (as wardress of the lower world), a whip or a dagger; her favourite animal was the dog, which was sacrificed to her - an indication of her nonHellenic origin, since this animal very rarely fills this part in genuine Greek ritual.

A most meagre proportion only of the real religious and ritual writings, the sacerdotal law and the liturgy, has been preserved to our time.

The Kirghiz are Sunni Mahommedans by faith, but amongst them there are curious survivals of an ancient ritual of which the origin is to be traced to those Nestorian Christian Evidences communities of Central Asia which existed in the of the middle ages.

On the appointed day the nun goes through all the ritual of the marriage ceremony, after a solemn mass at which all the inmates of the convent assist.

Her name does not appear in Tertullian's list of the indigetes di, and Juvenal contrasts her worship unfavourably with the old Roman Numa' ritual.

In religious and ritual matters it is under the jurisdiction of the chief rabbi, who is, to a certain extent, recognized throughout the empire.

It is generally acknowledged that they are the equivalent of the Christian Church of the Roman lustrations of the crops in spring, the Ambarvalia, &c. The litania major, or great procession on St Mark's day (April 25) is shown to coincide both in date and ritual with the Roman Robigalia, which took place a.d.

The most important and characteristic of these still have a in the place in the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

It has been observed that whenever swinesacrifices occur in the ritual of Aphrodite there is reference to Adonis.

Apollo is further supposed to be the father of Asclepius (Aesculapius), whose ritual is closely modelled upon his.

The metrical form of the oracular responses at Delphi, the important part played by the paean and the Pythian nomos in his ritual, contributed to make Apollo a god of song and music, friend and leader of the Muses (µovvayErr i s).

Purged of elements obviously heathen, the Ka`ba became the holiest site, and the pilgrimage the most sacred ritual observance of Mahommedanism, drawing worshippers from so wide a circle that the confluence of the petty traders of the desert was no longer the main feature of the holy season.

This fiction has involved the superinduction of a new mythology over the old heathen ritual, which remains practically unchanged.

The pilgrim enters the Haram in the antique and scanty pilgrimage dress (ihram), consisting of two cloths wound round his person in a way prescribed by ritual.

Though ignorant of the legal ritual and prayers, they performed the tawaf with enthusiasm, throwing themselves against the Ka`ba and clinging to its curtains as a child clings to its mother.

But we find mention of practices condemned by the orthodox, or forming no part of the Moslem ritual, which may be regarded as traces of an older ceremonial.

He was a supporter of the principles of Abraham Geiger, and while still in`Germany advocated the introduction of prayers in the vernacular, the exclusion of nationalistic hopes from the synagogue service, and other ritual modifications.

The third part, which is entitled De Consecratione, gives, in five distinctiones, the law bearing on church ritual and the sacraments.

In 1796 he went to Berlin, where he founded a humanitarian society, and was commissioned by the freemasons of that city to assist Fichte in reforming the statutes and ritual of their lodge.

His homiletic books, Epistle on Sanctity (Iggereth ha-qodesh) and Law of Man (Torath ha-Adam), which deal respectively with the sanctity of marriage and the solemnity of death, are full of intense spirituality, while at the same time treating of ritual customs - a combination which shows essential Rabbinism at its best.

In this work Jacob ben Asher codified Rabbinic law on ethics and ritual, and it remained a standard work of reference until it was edited with a commentary by Joseph Qaro, who afterwards simplified the code into the more popular Shulhan Aruch.

They are of varying form; an altar shown in a relief at Khorsabad is ornamented with stepped battlements, which are the equivalent of the familiar "altarhorns" in Hebrew ritual.

The earliest form of the Grail story, the Gawain- Bleheris version, exhibits a marked affinity with the characteristic features of the Adonis or Tammuz worship; we have a castle on the sea-shore, a dead body on a bier, the identity of which is never revealed, mourned over with solemn rites; a wasted country, whose desolation is mysteriously connected with the dead man, and which is restored to fruitfulness when the quester asks the meaning of the marvels he beholds (the two features of the weeping women and the wasted land being retained in versions where they have no significance); finally the mysterious food-providing, self-acting talisman of a common feast - one and all of these features may be explained as survivals of the Adonis ritual.

It is thus demonstrable that the material for our Grail legend, in its present form, existed long anterior to any extant text, and there is no improbability in holding that a confused tradition of pagan mysteries which had assumed the form of a popular folk-tale, became finally Christianized by combination with an equally popular ecclesiastical legend, the point of contact being the vessel of the common ritual feast.

Gardiner, Banner, Heath, Day and Tunstall were one by one deprived of their sees; a new ordinal simplified the ritual of ordination, and a second Act of Uniformity and Book of Common Prayer (1552) repudiated the Catholic interpretation which had been placed on the first and imposed a stricter conformity to the Protestant faith.

He shared to the full his fathers dislikc and distrust of the Puritans, and he supported with the whole weight of the crown the attempt of William Laud (q.v.), since 1633 archbishop of Canterbury, to enforce conformity to the ritual prescribed by the Prayer Book.

In this sense all Greece was once "Pelasgic"; the clearest instances of Pelasgian survival in ritual and customs and antiquities are in Arcadia, the "Ionian" districts of north-west Peloponnese, and Attica, which have suffered least from hellenization.

In the 10th century, partly under the influence of the wealthy and splendour-loving community of Cluny, the use of the cope became very widespread; in the 11 th century it was universally worn, though the rules for its ritual use had not yet been fixed.

This use survived in the ritual of the pre-Reformation Church in England, and has been introduced in certain Anglican churches, e.g.

Except at royal coronations, however, the use of the cope, even in cathedrals, had practically ceased in England before the ritual revival of the 19th century restored its popularity.

Fasting in the stricter sense was not unknown; but it is certain that it did not at first occupy nearly so prominent a place in Christian ritual as that to which it afterwards attained.

All Isaac D'Israeli's children were born into the Jewish communion, in which, however, they were not to grow up. It is a reasonable inference from Isaac's character that he was never at ease in the ritual of Judaism.

In place of the goat or fawn a bear might have been expected, but the choice may have been influenced by the animal totem of the tribe into whose hands the ritual fell.

Callisto was originally a bear-goddess worshipped in Arcadia, identified with Artemis, when nothing remained of the original animal-worship but name and ritual.

Scholars differ as to whether Artemis Taurica is identical with Artemis Tauropolos, worshipped chiefly at Samos with a milder ritual, but it is more probable that Tavp07r6Xos simply means "protectress of bulls."

Her chief festival, Ephesia or Artemisia, was held in the spring, at which games and various contests took place after the Greek fashion, although the ritual continued to be of a modified oriental, orgiastic type.

Then, when Christianity threw off the Mosaic ritual, this religious sense of purity was left with no other sphere besides morality; while, from its highly idealized character, it was peculiarly well adapted for that repression of vicious desires which Christianity claimed as its special function.

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.

This book, together with his insistence on points of ritual in his cathedral church and his friendship with Laud, exposed him to the suspicions and hostility of the Puritans; and the book was rudely handled by William Prynne and Henry Burton.

The importance of their heliacal risings, or first visible appearances at dawn, for the purposes both of practical life and of ritual observance, caused them to be systematically noted; the length of the year was accurately fixed in connexion with the annually recurring Nile-flood; while the curiously precise orientation of the Pyramids affords a lasting demonstration of the high degree of technical skill in watching the heavens attained in the third millennium B.C. The constellational system in vogue among the Egyptians appears to have been essentially of native origin; but they contributed little or nothing to the genuine progress of astronomy.

From the natives of northern and central Australia to the actors in the ritual of Adonis, or the folk among whom arose the customs of crowning the May king or the king of the May, all peoples have done magic to encourage the breeding of animals as part of the food supply, and to stimulate the growth of plants, wild or cultivated.

Mannhardt, and on the facts of ritual, which preserve these ideas and represent them in a kind of mystery plays.

His home is in or above the sky, but there was a time when he walked the earth, a potent magic-worker; endowed mankind with such arts and institutions as they possess; and left to them certain rules of life, ethics and ritual.

Their religion had its fine lucid intervals, but their mythology and ritual were little better than savage ideas, elaborately worked up by the imagination of a cruel and superstitious priesthood.

Though lofty moral qualities and deep concern about the conduct of men are attributed to the gods in the Vedic hymns, yet the hymns contain traces (and these are amplified in the ritual books) of a divine chronique scandaleuse.

The Brahmanas, on the other hand, later compilations, canonized books for the direction of ritual and sacrifice, are rich in senseless and irrational myths.

Sometimes these myths are probably later than the Veda, mere explanations of ritual incidents devised by the priests.

So much for the Indian cosmogonic myths, which are a collection of ideas familiar to savages, blended with sacerdotal theories and ritual mummeries.

The anciennes cohues de France, gay, familiar and military, gave place to a stilted court life, a perpetual adoration, a very ceremonious and very complicated ritual, in which the demigod pontificated even in his dressing-gown.

In England, however, a number of prominent Positivists have carried out Comte's original ideal of a Church of Humanity with ritual and organization.

On the Ambrosian ritual see LITURGY; on the Ambrosian library see LIBRARIES; on the church founded by him at Milan in 387 see MILAN.

The adoption of the Roman instead of the Gothic ritual of Saint Isidore has been lamented, but it marked the assumption by Castile of a place in the community of the western European kingdoms. The Frenchmen, both monks and knights, who accompanied Constance brought to bear on Spain the ecclesiastical, architectural, literary and military influence of France, then the intellectual centre of Europe, as fully as it ever was exercised in later times.

To some extent, the individual came in for his share in the incantations and in the purification ritual through which one might hope to rid oneself of the power of the demons and of other evil spirits, but outside of this the important aim of the priests was to secure for the general benefit the favour of the gods, or, as a means of preparing oneself for what the future had in store, to ascertain in time whether that favour would be granted in any particular instance or would be continued in the future.

Its organization was both curious and mysterious, and had a fantastic ritual full of symbols taken from the Christian religion, as well as from the trade of charcoal-burning, which was extensively practised in the mountains of the Abruzzi and Calabria.

This elaborate ceremonial connected with the wave-offering (developed in the post-exile period) took place on the morrow of the seventh Sabbath called 1 On the critical questions involved in these ritual details of Lev.

It was written during the reign of Heraclius (610-641), and is generally attributed to an unknown Byzantine cleric and friend of the patriarch Sergius, who is specially alluded to as responsible for the introduction of certain ritual innovations.

In 1835 Pusey joined the movement, which, so far as concerned ritual observances, was later called "Puseyite"; and in 1836 its supporters secured further coherence by their united opposition to the appointment of Hampden as regius professor of divinity.

But it is certain that he explained to his own satisfaction and accepted every item of the Roman Catholic creed, even going beyond it, as in holding the pope to be infallible in canonization; and while expressing his preference for English as compared with Italian devotional forms, he was himself one of the first to introduce such into England, together with the ritual peculiarities of the local Roman Church.

Among his other works were a ritual compendium Tesoro dos dinim, and a treatise in Hebrew on immortality (Nishmath hayim).

The first order of business on lunar New Year's Day is offering ritual homage to one's ancestors.

It depicts the Hindu Raja of Jammu performing ritual ablutions prior to worship.

It was a religious act specifically undertaken to achieve the ritual purity required for participation in religious ceremonials.

The NHS does not fund ritual circumcision in England.

This time honored ritual emphasizes the continuity and majesty of the British monarchy.

Goldsinny Other wrasse have a ritual courtship in which the male prepares a nest.

Couvade syndrome is found mostly in industrialized societies (Clinton 1987) where couvade syndrome is found mostly in industrialized societies (Clinton 1987) where couvade ritual is not practiced (Helman 2001 ).

This hugely symbolic event was arguably a ritual act of public desecration which transgressed the most sacred site of communist public space.

This was emphatically taught in connection with the gorgeous ritual of the Old testament dispensation.

Many people suggest a winding-down aspect to each ritual, to slowly dissipate the energies which may have been built up during the exercise.

The reason for abstinence was, again, ritual purity.

Drinking raki is a ritual and is traditionally accompanied by a variety of meze (hors d'oeuvres ).

First the dead have to wait in another land until the funerary ritual is over and to be punished if they are sinners.

Those with panache, myself included, maintained the semblance of elaborate ritual.

Psychoanalysis and shamanism But might psychoanalysis be akin to faith healing or shamanic ritual?

Disillusioned that the local mating ritual is designed to punish everyone involved he is now hiding in his flatmate's cupboard.

An imagined funeral rite or pagan ritual with Alex listening in.

Often she accomplishes this by weaving the themes of a particular myth into the fabric of a purification ritual.

Although parents usually follow a bedtime ritual with their young children, it, too, is often cut short or rushed.

Must also remember to bring a knife to Spinning Jenny that day - ritual sacrifice of cake!

The Ngwa was expected to go into ritual seclusion for two weeks every year.

I have always needed ritual but found it rather shallow when not part of a creative process.

By drawing the sigil as part of a ritual, the magician can invoke that spirit.

Usually there is a religious or ritual significance to such an object.

These values are explored through participation in a series of ritual dramas, which use stonemason 's customs and tools as allegorical guides.

The fundamental argument of The European Ritual is that European football is now becoming transnational.

He was seemingly unaffected by the ritual, not a bead of sweat, no signs of breathlessness.

Even extreme unction has its basis in the Egyptian Ritual.

Excruciating detail of priestly vestment, description of temple architecture, chapters on ritual - forget it.

Haggai's reproofs touched the conscience of the Jews, and the book of Zechariah enables us in some measure to follow the course of a religious revival which, starting with the restoration of the temple, did not confine itself to matters of ceremony and ritual worship. On the other hand, Haggai's treatment of his theme, practical and effective as it was for the purpose in hand, moves on a far lower level than the aspirations of the prophet who wrote the closing chapters of Isaiah.

But later times nearly strangled Zoroastrian piety, not only by laws of ritual purity but also by newly evolved secondary deities - personified attributes, and the like.

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.

On the other hand, it is remarkable how conspicuous, on the whole, is the absence of prayer from the magico-religious ritual of the Australians.

It remains to add that throughout we must carefully distinguish in theory, however hard this may be to do in practice, between legitimate ritual understood as such, whether integral to prayer, such as its verbal forms, or accessory, such as gestures, postures, incense, oil or what not, and the formalism of religious decay, such as generally betrays itself by its meaninglessness, by its gibberish phrases, sing-song intonation and so forth.

In both there are ritual differences according to the Sephardic (Spanish), Ashkenazic (German-Polish), Roman (Greek and South Italian) and some minor uses, in the later additions to the Liturgy.