Ancestral Worship Quotes

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime.

The reason why China suffers bitterly from endless wars is because of the existence of feudal lords and kings. A reliance on ancestral temples initially brought stability, but the revival of states results in the spread of soldiers. Doing so will never bring about stability.

The destruction of Chinese traditional culture didn't start in 1949. It started long before that, with the succession of revolutions. It was particularly bad during the Cultural Revolution, the destruction of traditional Chinese culture.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes --our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

I believe that there is a God, and coming from an African tradition, I believe also that there are gods.

The same thing which is now called Christian religion existed among the ancients. They have begun to call 'Christian' the true religion which existed before.

Dying people in pre-industrial cultures typically died in the context of an extended family, clan, or tribe.

Whose the spiritual people pon earth. The Black people. Dem a deal wit God. And God no let dem down.

I like to honor my West African and Taino ancestry, I consider it sacred and divine.

To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.

Memory, the priestess, kills the present and offers its heart to the shrine of the dead past.

Offspring, the due performance on religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happiness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself, depend on one's wife alone.

I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites.

Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones.

My understanding of voodoo is that it was important to the people who practiced it because it helped them survive. There are practical ways it enabled survival. It used herbal medicine to heal, to aid in childbirth. It was a spiritual system. It made room for hope and for magic and for possibility. For people who struggle and fight to survive and who fight to live, those are really important things.

I was raised in a tribal situation, among cannibal people.

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit.

What is a totem? It is as a rule an animal (whether edible and harmless or dangerous and feared) and more rarely a plant or a natural phenomenon (such as rain or water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. In the first place, the totem is the common ancestor of the clan; at the same time it is their guardian spirit and helper, which sends them oracles and, if dangerous to others, recognizes and spares its own children.

There's also the tradition of voodoo, the Haitian magic arts, in New Orleans. And because New Orleans is below sea level, when they bury people in New Orleans, it's mostly above ground. So you have this idea that the spirits are more accessible and can access you more easily because they're not even buried.

Reflective of the deep sense of gratitude and respect Mongolians reserved for wolves, there was a belief that only through wolves could the spirit of a deceased human be set free to go to Heaven.

Chinese culture has a lot of virtues that are tremendously valuable to not only us as Asian-Americans, but also the world in general.

Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.

I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against that and write a character who practiced that spiritual tradition who was not evil and intent on creating zombies or causing pain through voodoo dolls or whatever.