The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may also be a human being.
Tea ceremony is a way of worshipping the beautiful and the simple. All one's efforts are concentrated on trying to achieve perfection through the imperfect gestures of daily life. Its beauty consists in the respect with which it is performed. If a mere cup of tea can bring us closer to God, we should watch out for all the other dozens of opportunities that each ordinary day offers us.
The traditional manner of taking psilocybin is to take a very healthy dose, in the vicinity of 15 mg. on an empty stomach in total darkness.
To dispose of a two-headed Org, jump up and down three times, roll a head of cabbage, and giggle!
We like to put sacred texts in flowing waters, so I rolled it up, tied it to a piece of wood, placed a dandelion on top, and floated it in the stream which flows into the Swat River. Surely God would find it there.
You dance because you have to. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me.
Grape juice at the communion table symbolizes the historical impotence of Christ’s blood, Christ’s gospel, Christ’s church, and Christ’s expanding kingdom. Grape juice stays ‘bottled up’, confined to the historical skins of Palestine.
Why does every society seem to want to make music when it often seems like kind of a frill.
It's one of those magical acts that is so poly-sensorial and culturally enriching that as a designer one is naturally drawn to the cult of the object
Fire had an almost magical quality that suggested anything was possible. Early on, man even believed that fire was a god that had to be fed with animal sacrifices in order to burn brightly. Today we have evolved a long way from this ridiculous notion of a 'fire god' and now rightfully understand God to be a bearded being who lives amongst the clouds and hates Jews and homosexuals.
The magic of procedure: do this after that and thus before so; then your wish will be granted.
For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.
The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.
Performing magic has a lot to do with the arrangement of apparent coincidences and providing pathways along which desires can travel, or, to put it in more basic terms, there's little point in sigilizing for a lottery win if you don't also buy a lottery ticket.
The Eucharist is a symbol of that as you have bread, the staple food of the poor, and wine, a luxury of the rich, which are brought together at the table.
Music originally had a social function. You were in church, in a concert hall, a marching band; you were dancing. I'm concerned that music could be too separated from its roots and just become a pleasure-giving experience, like a drug.
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
Male circumcision has been practiced for thousands of years and is a deeply important ceremony for two major religions.
Performing an exorcism was like changing your oil. It's a drag, but necessary.
My mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Mussalman passing by.
