Ritual Quotes

“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.

[From the will of GBS]”
― George Bernard Shaw

“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

“If theater is ritual, then dance is too... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello

“A prayer couched in the words of the soul, is far more powerful than any ritual.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“Everything is possible to him who wills only what is true! Rest in Nature, study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!”
― Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual

“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life. I think ritual is terribly important.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Unanimous hatred is the greatest medicine for a human community.”
― Aeschylus, Eumenides

“Witches do not need to fix problems.
Witches fix the enegery AROUND problems.
Then the problems fix themselves.”
― Dacha Avelin, Embracing Your Inner Witch: The Maidens Guide to Old World Witchcraft

“For me starting the day without a pot of tea would be a day forever out of kilter.”
― Bill Drummond, $20,000: A Book

“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The corrupt are into rituals, whereas the virtuous are spiritual.”
― Abhaidev, The Gods Are Not Dead

“Religion is more than rite and ritual.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.”
― Peter Redgrove, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense

“The human soul can always use a new tradition. Sometimes we require them.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

“Magick is an art; using reality and the world as its canvas.”
― Dacha Avelin, Old World Witchcraft: Pathway To Effective Magick

“He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service--the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting.”
― Dan Simmons, The Terror

“Mengapa kau tanam mawar itu di pinggir jalan Kay? Apakah sengaja, agar semua orang bisa memungut atau pura pura mencintainya? Tapi bukankah kau tahu, tak ada rasa kagum semurah itu?  Seperti semua harapan palsu yang kau tabur di atas ranjangmu. Bunga mawar merah jambu yang mekar sejenak sebelum kemudian layu dibakar waktu.

Masih banyak cinta yang sesungguhnya tak kau mengerti, Kay. Apakah cuma itu satu satunya cara untuk membunuh kesendirian dan rasa sepi? Luka parut di dada dan jantung yang perlahan hilang detaknya. Sudah berapa lama engkau merasa jemu dengan rutinitas yang itu itu juga, Kay?  Seperti juga pikiran pikiran dangkal yang akan terus menghantui kita dengan potongan potongan kata dusta.

Apakah kesedihan semacam ini yang ingin engkau abadikan? Dari satu frame ke frame yang lain. Dari satu video ke video berikutnya. Cuma untuk menampilkan ingatan yang sudah kau hafal di luar kepala dan senyum getir yang susah payah kau sembunyikan dari dunia.

Atau barangkali, itulah caramu untuk mengejek dan mencemooh kami, karena terlanjur terjebak dalam ritual yang menghinakan ini. Ritual memuja ego dan menipu diri sendiri. Sebab harus kami akui, sesungguhnya cuma engkau yang paling murni di antara kita. Cuma engkau satu satunya yang telanjang dan tidak menutup diri dengan topeng kemunafikan.”
― Titon Rahmawan

“People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost. We kill to eat, we cut down trees to build our homes, we exploit other people and the earth. Sacrifice - of nature, of the interests of others, even of our earlier selves - appears to be an inescapable part of our condition, the unavoidable price of all our achievements. A successful ritual is one that addresses both aspects of our predicament, recalling us to the shamefulness of our deeds at the same time it celebrates what the poet Frederick Turner calls "the beauty we have paid for with our shame." Without the double awareness pricked by such rituals, people are liable to find themselves either plundering the earth without restraint or descending into self-loathing and misanthropy. Perhaps it's not surprising that most of us today bring one of those attitudes or the other to our conduct in nature.”
― Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

“Witches release the chapters of the past, which
invites the novels of the future.”
― Dacha Avelin, Embracing Your Inner Witch: The Maidens Guide to Old World Witchcraft

“In other words, the unique value of the 'authentic' work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.”
― Walter Benjamin

“Prayer is a path where there is none.”
― Noah Benshea, Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom For a Complicated World

“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

“I'm not particularly in favor of doctrine or creed, ordination, the elevation of holy texts, the institution of church, or, for that matter, Christianity. Like most religions, it has irreconcilable shortcomings and an unforgivable history. What I do favor is the attempt to make sense of things by living within a story. The Christian story, for good or ill, is my inheritance.”
― Elizabeth J. Andrew, On The Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness

“An experienced Witch takes magickal action based on inspiration, NOT desperation.”
― Dacha Avelin, Old World Witchcraft: Pathway To Effective Magick

“Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.

(Leoparden brechen in den Tempel ein und saufen die Opferkrüge leer; das wiederholt sich immer wieder; schließlich kann man es vorausberechnen, und es wird ein Teil der Zeremonie.)”
― Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

“The magnificence of such objects hardly pertains to the human. 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: The Collected Short Stories

“Thanks to Karen Connelly who read earlier versions of this manuscript and to Ronald Hatch my editor and publisher.”
― Nancy Holmes, Mandorla

“Dr. Murray points to the Nazarite system as what he calls an external scaffolding supporting human efforts at righteousness, reminding the participant that he is set apart. Christ, he said, needed no external reminder that the Father was His joy and that wine was not, that He was Life and was wholly Other from death, that He bore on Himself the shame that long hair but vaguely pointed to.”
― David P. Murray