RITUAL QUOTES II
quotations about ritual
The magic in these Masonic rituals is very, very old. And way back in those days, it worked. As time went on, and it started being used for spectacle, to consolidate what were only secular appearances of power, it began to lose its zip. But the words, moves, and machinery have been more or less faithfully carried down over the millennia, through the grim rationalizing of the World, and so the magic is still there, though latent, needing only to touch the right sensitive head to reassert itself.
THOMAS PYNCHON
Gravity's Rainbow
We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it is good -- and that is the real theater -- to transcend them in the manner of play, by means of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair, to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put "in play," show up, transform and reverse the systems which quietly order us about.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Partisan Review, Volume 38, 1971
If you create a ritual and it doesn't work, change them. Don't let a poorly performing ritual become another bad habit.
AUSTIN CARR
"Three Rules For Creating Workplace Rituals To Improve Company Culture", Fast Company, October 27, 2017
Behind the ritual, behind the ritual
You find the spiritual, you find the spiritual
Behind the ritual in the days gone by
VAN MORRISON
"Behind the Ritual"
Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man.
DON DELILLO
White Noise
So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing?
SIMONA PANOVA
Nightmarish Sacrifice
A ritual becomes the match that lights the kindred celebration candle of sacred moments long ago ... tantalizing these entombed spirits to surface again.
WES ADAMSON
attributed, From Mormon to Mystic: Journey Through Religious Ideology into Awakened Liberation
Rituals are missing nowadays.
RUSSELL BRAND
Revolution
They live only in a world of icons and there they participate in rituals which transmute life itself to a series of grand gestures, as moving as they are absurd.
ANGELA CARTER
Burning Your Boats
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Eat, Pray, Love
Religion is more than rite and ritual.
YANN MARTEL
Life of Pi
In those rituals which are ministries of grace no man must interpose anything that can alter any part of the institution, or make a change or variety in that which is of divine appointment.
JEREMY TAYLOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
Some rituals are very good coping with losses and coping with unexpected events. But if we do it at a performance way, then it may just be the way of setting it aside and carrying on with our own narrow lives, with our own sort of personal concerns about our own well-being.
JOHN PETERSON
"Psychologists speak on how people respond differently to tragedy after mass shootings", WSBT, November 6, 2017
Rise up and celebrate your life
We're not alone in our ritual
Sing for what you feel inside
BLACK VEIL BRIDES
"Ritual"
I do not want to credit my life to spells and rituals, cushioning me from the consequences of living.
THOMM QUACKENBUSH
Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
All men promiscuously do homage to God, but very few truly reverence him. On all hands there is abundance of ostentatious ceremonies, but sincerity of heart is rare.
JOHN CALVIN
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances.
SUSAN CAIN
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
Ritual submission
It happens everyday
Welcome pain
In a
Different
Kind of way
NASTY SAVAGE
"Ritual Submission"
In addition to facilitating a sense of security and predictability, a childhood history steeped in family rituals also provides a robust template of belonging and meaning to take into our adult years. Who doesn't want that for the next generation?
SABINA READ
"Swap routines for simple rituals to help build cherished family memories", Herald Sun, October 13, 2017