also known as "The Eucharist" or "The Lord's Supper" Theology Consecration Consubstantiation Memorialism Real Presence Transubstantiation Theologies contrasted Important theologians Paul ·Aquinas Augustine · Calvin Chrysostom · Cranmer Luther · Zwingli Related Articles Christianity Catholic Historic Roots Closed and Open Table Divine Liturgy Eucharistic adoration Eucharistic discipline First Communion Infant Commun ...

Including:

• Eucharist - Names for the Eucharist
• Eucharist - Eucharist in the Bible
• Eucharist - Christian Theology
• Eucharist - Roman Catholic: Sacrifice; Transubstantiation
• Eucharist - Eastern Christianity: Sacrifice and Objective Reality but Pious Silence on the Particulars
• Eucharist - Anglicans/Episcopalians: Real Presence with Opinion
• Eucharist - Lutherans: presence as in with and under the forms—the Sacramental Union
• Eucharist - Methodism: presence as mystery
• Eucharist - Calvinist Reformed: spiritual feeding pneumatic presence
• Eucharist - Reformed/Congregational: no Real Presence
• Eucharist - Summary of views
• Eucharist - Ritual and liturgy
• Eucharist - The Agape feast
• Eucharist - Eastern Christianity
• Eucharist - Roman Catholicism
• Eucharist - Protestantism
• Eucharist - Jehovah's Witnesses
• Eucharist - Open and closed communion
• Eucharist - Footnotes
• Eucharist - Resources

Read more here: » Eucharist: Encyclopedia - Eucharist

The Eucharist has always been at the center of Christian worship, though theological interpretations vary. In general, the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions see the Eucharist as the fulfillment of God's plan for the salvation of humanity from sin (the "Divine Economy"), a commemoration and making present of Jesus' Crucifixion on Calvary and his Resurrection, the means for Christians to unite with God and with each other, and the giving of thanks for all these things. Differences in Eucharistic theology tend to be related ...

See also:

Eucharist, Eucharist - Names for the Eucharist, Eucharist - Eucharist in the Bible, Eucharist - Christian Theology, Eucharist - Roman Catholic: Sacrifice; Transubstantiation, Eucharist - Eastern Christianity: Sacrifice and Objective Reality but Pious Silence on the Particulars, Eucharist - Anglicans/Episcopalians: Real Presence with Opinion, Eucharist - Lutherans - the Sacramental Union: in with and under, Eucharist - Methodism: presence as mystery, Eucharist - Calvinist Reformed: spiritual feeding pneumatic presence, Eucharist - Reformed/Congregational: no Real Presence, Eucharist - Summary of views, Eucharist - Ritual and liturgy, Eucharist - The Agape feast, Eucharist - Eastern Christianity, Eucharist - Roman Catholicism, Eucharist - Protestantism, Eucharist - Jehovah's Witnesses, Eucharist - Open and closed communion, Eucharist - Footnotes, Eucharist - Resources

Read more here: » Eucharist: Encyclopedia II - Eucharist - Christian Theology

The Eucharist has always been at the center of Christian worship, though theological interpretations vary. In general, the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions see the Eucharist as the fulfillment of God's plan for the salvation of humanity from sin (the "Divine Economy"), a commemoration and making present of Jesus' Crucifixion on Calvary and his Resurrection, the means for Christians to unite with God and with each other, and the giving of thanks for all these things. Differences in Eucharistic theology tend to be related ...

See also:

Eucharist, Eucharist - Names for the Eucharist, Eucharist - Eucharist in the Bible, Eucharist - Christian Theology, Eucharist - Roman Catholic: Sacrifice; Transubstantiation, Eucharist - Eastern Christianity: Sacrifice and Objective Reality but Pious Silence on the Particulars, Eucharist - Anglicans/Episcopalians: Real Presence with Opinion, Eucharist - Lutherans - the Sacramental Union: in with and under the forms, Eucharist - Methodism: presence as mystery, Eucharist - Calvinist Reformed: spiritual feeding pneumatic presence, Eucharist - Zwinglian Reformed: no Real Presence, Eucharist - Summary of views, Eucharist - Ritual and liturgy, Eucharist - The Agape feast, Eucharist - Eastern Christianity, Eucharist - Roman Catholicism, Eucharist - Protestantism, Eucharist - Jehovah's Witnesses, Eucharist - Open and closed communion, Eucharist - Alleged pre-Christian origins, Eucharist - Footnotes, Eucharist - Resources

Read more here: » Eucharist: Encyclopedia II - Eucharist - Christian Theology

Eucharist (from Greek eucharistia thanksgiving)

Adopted in the early centuries of the Christian era for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, because of the thanksgiving offered over the sacred elements; also applied to the elements themselves. Thus the original meaning, a manifestation of the spirit or inner god in the soul of the neophyte or adept, became degraded into a mere ceremonial rite, itself based on the ceremony of the Bacchic participation of wine and bread -- wine signifying the spirit and bread the manifested body of the spirit in matter.

See also BREAD AND WINE

(See also: Eucharist , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A Christian theological definition of Eucharist according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

"

Eucharist

See also: Eucharist , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul

Eucharist

The principal act of worship of the Christian religion, otherwise known as the Divine Liturgy, Holy Communion, Lord's Supper, or Mass.

This name has been used from at least the second century, and comes from the thanksgiving prayer that constitutes a principal element in the rite.

Christian myths tells the story of the last supper eaten by Jesus with his disciples on the night before he died, when he performed a Jewish grace-ritual before the meal (taking bread into his hands, saying a short blessing of God for it, breaking the bread, and sharing it with those present) and the customary festal thanksgiving prayer over a shared cup of wine at the end of the meal . The myth relates that these actions signified his imminent death, interpreting the bread as his body "given for you" and the wine as his blood, and as having instructed his disciples to perform them in future in remembrance of him.

The eucharistic observances of the earliest Christians were more than a memorial meal: in some traditions believers claimed to experience the living presence of the resurrected Christ in these communal gatherings. Historically, the rite of Mass (Mazd) was adopted by the Catholic Church from the religion of Sol Invictus in which is was a reinactment of a sacramental meal performed by Mithras.

(See also: Eucharist , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Communion

The Lord's Supper The central rite of Christian worship, called variously the Eucharist, Holy Communion, Divine Mysteries (Eastern Orthodox), and the Mass (Roman Catholic)

This ritual is said to have developed out of the Last Supper of Jesus and his Apostles just before the crucifixion. Some Christians believe that the wine and bread actually transmutate into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus (see transubstantiation), others do it in memory of Jesus' passion.

The practice is believed by Christians to have evolved from the Jewish Passover. Many scholars claim that communion, also with the word Mass, is derived from the practice of the Zoroastrians. New Agers celebrate a similar ritual which is called Communion with All Life.

(See also: Communion , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Soma (Sanskrit) In Hinduism, the moon astronomically; mystically, a sacred beverage of initiates, "made from a rare mountain plant by initiated Brahmans" (TG 304).

As the moon, Soma is an occult mystery, for the moon as a symbol stands for both good and evil, yet more often a symbol of evil than of good. Astrologically, Soma is the regent of the invisible or occult moon, while Indu represents the physical moon. "Soma is the mystery god and presides over the mystic and occult nature in man and the Universe" (SD 2:45). Soma or lunar worship was once purely occult and its rites were based upon a minute and profound knowledge of nature.

According to Hindu tradition, Soma as a sacred juice gave mystic visions and trance-revelations, the result of which union was Budha (esoteric wisdom). This sacred beverage was drunk by Brahmins and initiates during their mysteries and sacrificial rites.

"The 'Soma' plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage, the Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotri (the fire priests) of the great mysteries knew all its powers. But the real property of the true Soma was (and is) to make a new man of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he begins to live in his astral body . . .; for, his spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized form. . . .

"The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually 'as one of the gods,' and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve, 'lest Man should become as one of us' " (SD 2:498-9&n).

"A 'soma-drinker' attains the power of placing himself in direct rapport with the bright side of the moon, thus deriving inspiration from the concentrated intellectual energy of the blessed ancestors. . . .

"This which seems one stream (to the ignorant) is of a dual nature -- one giving life and wisdom, the other being lethal. He who can separate the former from the latter, as Kalahamsa separated the milk from the water, which was mixed with it, thus showing great wisdom -- will have his reward" (BCW 12:203-4).

"This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest 'spirit' of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his 'irrational soul,' or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.

"Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that the Eucharist supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By means of the sacrificial prayers -- the mantras -- this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot into real soma -- or the angel, and even into Brahma himself" (IU 1:xl-xli).

The mystical drink has been known in all ages and among all peoples. The ancient Teutonic tribes, whether of the Germanic or Anglo-Saxons, spoke of their divine mead, the drink of the gods. The Hindus spoke of Soma, the direct distillation from the moon and from the overseeing and guiding eye of the sun; the Greeks of the Homeric age spoke of ambrosia or nectar, a drink of the gods which renewed their understanding and gave them inspiration as well. Another branch of the Greeks belonging to the Dionysian and Orphic branches of mystical thought, spoke equally mystically of the mystic wine, and also of the mystic cereal, partaken of during the Mysteries, and it is from this last that the mystical wine and cereal or bread of the Christians was taken over almost completely from the Dionysian Eucharist, only among Christians even from quite early times it became degraded into actual blood and flesh of Jesus.

The evident meaning must be connected with the old occult thought that wine, or the mead of the northern peoples where the grape and soma were unknown or uncultivated, all had the meaning of the inspiration of initiation, a kind of ecstasy of vision and knowledge brought about through initiation, of which the physical intoxication of wine, mead, or the soma juice has all the lower and materialized aspect, every spiritual thing having its material counterpart, every right-hand thought or rule in occultism having its left-hand or sorcerer perversion or counterpart. Thus in the highest initiation, even today and from immemorial time, the holy drink or potation was entirely mystical, and had a dozen of these significances, all bound up together; yet despite this fact, for some of the lower initiations where a student found difficulty in throwing off the physical and astral influences, a harmless -- when administered rightly -- drug or drink was given which temporarily stupefied the lower quaternary; but it is to be noted that this substitute of the physical drink came about when neophytes began to find it very difficult to do what their more spiritual forerunners had done: raising themselves solely by inner aspiration up to inspiration, by inner insight up to the epopteia or vision.

Thus the question whether the mystical drink was an actual drink, or merely a mystical one, cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. Originally it was entirely mystical, later it remained as mystical as ever, but the body with its grossness, and the astral influences with their terrible power over the men and women of the time, were temporarily reduced to quiescence by a preparation known to initiates to have the power of bringing about the condition required, without any permanent or even long after-effect, very much as a sedative will be given by a physician today. It is of course true that if this drink, however relatively innocent in a single instance, were to be constantly repeated, it would have developed into a drug habit.

Some of the later peoples in their initiations actually did use a kind of physical soma which had the effect of bringing about a dulling of the restless brain-mind for the time being, so that the inner powers were temporarily freed from the clogging influences of the astral light and the body.

The use of drugs in initiatory ceremonies of any kind, however, is a relatively late and degenerate practice, and has never at any time been, nor will it ever be, introduced by the Mother-Lodge coming down to us even from the middle of the third root-race. With it the old tradition burns more brightly than ever that the true soma, the true mead of the gods or wine of the spirit, is the raising of the human into the spiritual by aspiration, training, and strict following of the traditional laws of discipleship, so that finally the neophyte feels the sunlight from above stealing through the moon of his mind.

So strongly is this the case, that even today in theosophical occult studies, drug taking of any kind is strictly forbidden, including alcohol, for alcohol is a drug, a product of natural decay and decomposition, and while less spectacular and violent as a rule than drugs such as opium and its derivatives, it is far more easily procurable and is therefore more specifically pointed to as objectionable. The idea of the occult student is to have the body absolutely normal, healthy, clean, and functioning in the smoothness of health, so that even overeating is seen to be a harmful thing, because it clogs the body, dulls the mind, and could even actually lead to physical disability.

There is and has been a great deal of confusion, not only at present but throughout the ages, about these matters, and several mystical schools have even chosen the language of the tavern and drinking house as the cloak for conveying occult or semi-occult teaching. A noted example is the Sufi school with its poems lauding the flowing bowl and the joys of the tavern and the bosom friends therein, and the beloved's breast. Here the tavern was the universe, the flowing cup or wine was the wine of the spirit bringing inner ecstasy, the bosom of the beloved was the raising oneself into inner communion with the god within, of which the Jewish bosom of Abraham is a feeble correspondence. The friends of the tavern are those perfect human relations brought about by a community of spiritual and intellectual interests, and the associations of the tavern are the mysteries of the world around us with their marvels and arcana. Nevertheless in various countries as the fourth root-race ran toward its evil culmination, the mystic became translated into the material, the spiritual degenerated into the teaching of matter, so that indeed in later Atlantean times the drugging of initiates was common, and the results always disastrous, this being one of the sorceries for which the Atlanteans in occult history have remained infamous. Yet even in the fifth root-race, due to the heavy Atlantean karma still weighing on us, many nations as late as historic times employed more or less harmless potations to bring about a temporary dulling or stupefying of the brain and nervous system -- a procedure always vigorously opposed by the theosophic occult school which has never at any time allowed it.

(See also: Soma , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Fast, Fasting

Abstinence from food for a length of time. A common ascetic practice, it is also a widespread mode of purification with respect to ritual activities or the restoration of health.

In Christianity fasting derives from the example of Jesus, who both fasted and recommended the practice. Partial or total abstinence from food and drink was institutionalized in early Christianity for certain days. Today in Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches there are seasons of fasting before Christmas and Easter and, in some traditions, a day of fasting before participating in the Eucharist.

Muslims in good health must observe a daytime fast (Arab. sawm) during the month of Ramadan by abstaining from food, drink, smoking, and sexual activity. In the evening, a meal is eaten and many attend the mosque for seasonal litanies. A light meal is eaten before daybreak.

(See also: Fast Fasting , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Soma-drink. Made from a rare mountain plant by initiated Brahmans. This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or nectar, quaffed by the gods of Olympus. A cup of Kykeon was also quaffed by the Mystes at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Bradhna, or the place of splendour (Heaven).

 The Soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real Soma; and even kings and Rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. Haug, by his own confession, shows in his Aitareya Brahmana, that it was not the Soma that he tasted and found nasty, but the juice from the roots of the Nyagradha, a plant or bush which grows on the hills of Poona. We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true Soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants of the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The Soma drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma.

He who drinks thereof is made to participate in the heavenly king; he becomes filled with his essence, as the Christian apostles and their converts were. filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The Soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it bestows the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest " spirit" of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical Soma, with his "irrational soul ", or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven, Thus the Hindu Soma is mystically and in all respects the same that the Eucharist supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By means of the sacrificial prayers - the mantras - this liquor is supposed to be immediately transformed into the real Soma, or the angel, and even into Brahma himself. Some missionaries have expressed themselves with much indignation about this ceremony, the more so, seeing that the Brahmans generally use a kind of spirituous liquor as a substitute.

But do the Christians believe less fervently in the transubstantiation of the communion wine into the blood of Christ, because this wine happens to be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol attached to it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of soma-drinking is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu sacrificial cup. (Isis Unveiled.)

(See also: Soma-drink , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Cup A container, vehicle, upadhi; having in certain connections the same general sense as graal, solar boat, ark, crescent moon, etc.; so that it answers to buddhi among human principles and to mahabuddhi cosmically, as the vahana or container of atman or paramatman.

 It may contain wine, the symbol of spiritual life. The cup figures in the Bacchic and Orphite Mysteries, a sacred cup being handed around; this has become the chalice of the Christian Eucharist. The Grail or Graal cup is well known in European legend.

The cup has always been one means of divination, whether by looking into it, or looking into water in it, or shaking up tea leaves or coffee grounds. These last gestures are physical adjuncts to the use of the clairvoyant vision. In the Tarots, the second suite was the cups, answering to the hearts in playing cards.

(See also: Cup , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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Sanskrit Dictionary , Hinduism Dictionary , Buddhism Dictionary, Mysticism Dictionary , Spiritual Dictionary

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Orphism, Orphic Mysteries [from Greek orphikos]

Orphism originally taught of the Causeless Cause on which all speculation is impossible; the periodical appearance and disappearance of all things, from atom to universe; reimbodiment; cyclic law; the essential divinity of all beings and things; and the duality in manifestation of the universe. It postulated seven emanations from the Boundless: aether (spirit) and chaos (matter), from which two spring the world egg, out of which is born Phanes, the First Logos; then Uranus (and Gaia) the Second Logos, with Kronos (and Rhea, mother of the Olympian gods) a later phase of the Second Logos; and Zeus, the Third Logos or Demiurge -- who starts a minor sevenfold hierarchy of emanation by begetting Zagreus-Dionysos the god-man, the divine son.

Characteristic of Orphic cosmogony is the important place given to the number seven. "The rise of the Orphic worship of Dionysos is the most important fact in the history of Greek religion, and marks a great spiritual awakening. Its three great ideas are (1) a belief in the essential Divinity of humanity and the complete immortality or eternity of the soul, its pre-existence and its post-existence; (2) the necessity for individual responsibility and righteousness; and (3) the regeneration or redemption of man's lower nature by his own higher Self" (F. S. Darrow).

The Orphic teachings were kept intact by the Golden or Hermetic Chain of Succession down to the days of the Neoplatonists after which (as symbolically told in the archaic story of Eurydice) they were killed -- obscured or lost, so far as the public was concerned. Their keynote was consecration to the mandates of the god within: perfect purity, perfect impersonal love, perfect understanding, and devotion to the interests of humanity.

The three Orphic mystery-gods were Zeus, the divine All-father; Demeter-Kore, the earth goddess as both mother and maid; and Zagreus-Dionysos, the divine son. This trinity finds its counterpart in Egyptian, Indian, Chaldean, Christian, and other religions. There were two forms of baptism, one purification by water, later adopted into the Christian ritual; and the other a ceremony in which the face of the neophyte was cleansed with a mixture of earth and bran, symbolizing the washing away of stains from the soul.

The ceremony of the Eucharist was also adopted by the Christians and as Orphic ritual forbade the use of wine (substituting for it a mead of honey and milk), in the rite as adopted by the primitive Christians the neophyte drank not only wine but also milk and honey. Under Orphism, the honey symbolized not only purification and preservation, or endless life and bliss, but the secret knowledge obtained during initiation. Bees, the gatherers of honey, were emblems of the reincarnating soul, as was the butterfly; and as the bees gathered the nectar from flowers and made it into honey, so the human soul in its various peregrinations gathers from the beings and things of life the mystic experience and stores it away in the chambers of the soul. Milk symbolized knowledge, which fed the inner man, as a child of eternity, just as milk feeds the human child.

Orphism flourished from before the 14th until the 6th century BC, and again, after some five centuries of obscuration, during the first four centuries of the Christian era. Plato, Empedocles, the Pythagorean teachings, some of the Greek dramatists and poets are our main source material for the earlier period, as well as the various Orphic fragments including the Orphic Tablets.

These Tablets, with the Orphic Hymns, consist of eight gold plates containing inscriptions, dating from about the 4th century BC. They consist of instructions given to the soul for its journey through the afterdeath worlds or states very reminiscent of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The keynote is spoken by the soul: "I am a child of earth and of starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven (alone). . . . Lo, I am parched with thirst . . ." For the later period we have the writings of the Neoplatonists and their opponents, the early Christian Fathers.

That the entire Orphic mythogony is intentionally allegorical does not invalidate that a great prehistoric religious reformer named Orpheus lived, worked, taught, and founded a religion as the outgrowth of a genuine Mystery school.

(See also: Orphism, Orphic Mysteries , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Karma Yoga Lesson IX

All worship began as the worship of the dead, The offer of thilah, good thoughts, and akshatas undying affection to the manes; The tarpana; The fire mystery; The use of incense; the modern fire worship suggested; The Lord's prayer and Fateha; The obligations to other lives in Nature; The Eucharist; The duty to the Universal Mind, Brahma.

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Wine Used as an emblem of life and spirit, as in the Mysteries, where at one stage of the initiatory rites wine and bread were offered to the candidate as symbols of spirit and body, the meaning being the same as that conveyed elsewhere by fire and water, or blood and flesh. It was necessary for the aspirant to be perfected in both ways.

The rite was very early adopted from the Dionysian Mysteries by the Christian churches in the sacrament of the Eucharist where wine represents the blood of Christ, and the bread his body. Wine is also connected in the same mystical manner with the Greek god Dionysos or Bacchus, for this divinity represented the Christos or initiator, teacher, and savior of mankind; and thus wine stands for inspiration and holy enthusiasm, varying from divine inspiration and spiritual quickening all down the scale to merely phrenetic exaltation, and even when grossly degenerate, orgiastic, and drunken excitement, such as marked the degraded forms of Bacchic worship.

In the New Testament the parable of the turning of water into wine is another way of stating that exoteric or mythologic teachings were explained and illustrated so that the inner wisdom became known, the wine standing for the inner aspect. Only an adept or initiate is able to do this.

See also BREAD AND WINE; SOMA; VINE

(See also: Wine , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Transubstantiation The doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that the bread and wine of the Eucharist or Communion are miraculously transmuted into the veritable (literal) body and blood of Jesus, due to a literal interpretation of figurative language used by Jesus. It is not mere consecration of the elements -- bread and wine -- though in what the difference consists it is hard to define.

See also BREAD AND WINE

The ancients had their own views about such things, as in the Bacchic rites of Greece and Rome in which bread and water or wine were considered to be mystically -- not veritable and actual -- symbols of certain of the mysteries of the divinity they revered.

(See also: Transubstantiation , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

John Wycliff

(1326-84) English Catholic reformer and theologian who inspired one of the early efforts at translating the Bible into English. A professor at Oxford, Wycliff joined controversies on the authority of tradition, on the Eucharist, and on monasticism. The "Wycliff Bible," though supported by him, was in fact authored by his disciples, Nicholas of Hereford (d. ca. 1420) and John Purvey (ca. 1353-1428).

(See also: John Wycliff , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Fast, Fasting

Abstinence from food for a length of time. A common ascetic practice, it is also a widespread mode of purification with respect to ritual activities or the restoration of health.

In Christianity fasting derives from the example of Jesus, who both fasted and recommended the practice. Partial or total abstinence from food and drink was institutionalized in early Christianity for certain days. Today in Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches there are seasons of fasting before Christmas and Easter and, in some traditions, a day of fasting before participating in the Eucharist.

Muslims in good health must observe a daytime fast (Arab. sawm) during the month of Ramadan by abstaining from food, drink, smoking, and sexual activity. In the evening, a meal is eaten and many attend the mosque for seasonal litanies. A light meal is eaten before daybreak.

(See also: Fast Fasting , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

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The Agape feast was the Eucharistic celebration of the early Christians. While centered on the ritual of the bread and wine, it also included various other ritual elements, including elements of the Passover Seder and of Mediterranean funerary banquets, also termed Agape Feasts. Agape is one of the Greek words for love, particularly applied to selfless love. Such meals were widespread, t ...

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• Agape feast - Agape in Freemasonry

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