A Wisdom Archive on Rite

Introduction and links to related topics

Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.


Grounding -
1. living on the ground where you or your ancestors were born or near it.
2. going down into the psyche and bringing into consciousness what is now in the shadows and letting it mingle with the conscious mind. (Robert Bly)
3. the process by which electricity, poetry and the authentic life become possible. (Robert Bly) (NAD)
4. to disperse excess energy generated during any magickal or occult rite by sending it into the earth. It can also mean the process of centering one’s self in the physical world both before and after any ritual or astral experience. (CMM)

Confirmation - Initiation ritual for a Christian, usually consisting of an anointing with oil and/or a laying on of hands.

In early Christianity part of a single ceremony that included baptism with water followed by an imposition of hands in which the newly baptized received the gift of the Spirit, it is observed as a separate rite in many Christian traditions.

The ritual signals the initiation of the baptized into full and responsible church membership and into a personal mature acceptance of the faith. By the Middle Ages, both Catholics and Orthodox recognized it as one of seven sacraments, complementing and completing the Christian initiation begun with baptism.

Most Protestant denominations do not consider the ritual a sacrament, but view it as a rite of initiation into full Christian discipleship.

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.

Orphism - 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.

Yajna - (Sanskrit) "Worship; sacrifice."

One of the most central Hindu concepts - sacrifice and surrender through acts of worship, inner and outer.

1) A form of ritual worship especially prevalent in Vedic times, in which oblations - ghee, grains, spices and exotic woods - are offered into a fire according to scriptural injunctions while special mantras are chanted.
The element fire, Agni, is revered as the divine messenger who carries offerings and prayers to the Gods.
The ancient Veda Brahmanas and the Shrauta Shastras describe various types of yajna rites, some so elaborate as to require hundreds of priests, whose powerful chanting resounds for miles. These major yajnas are performed in large, open-air structures called yagashala.
Domestic yajnas, prescribed in the Grihya Shastras, are performed in the family compound or courtyard. Yajna requires four components, none of which may be omitted: dravya, sacrificial substances; tyaga, the spirit of sacrificing all to God; devata, the celestial beings who receive the sacrifice; and mantra, the empowering word or chant.
While puja (worship in temples with water, lights and flowers) has largely replaced the yajna, this ancient rite still continues, and its specialized priestly training is carried on in schools in India.
Yajnas of a grand scale are performed for special occasions, beseeching the Gods for rain during drought, or for peace during bloody civil war. Even in temples, yajna has its Agamic equivalent in the agnikaraka, the homa or havana ceremony, held in a fire pit (homakunda) in an outer mandapa of a temple as part of elaborate puja rites.

2) Personal acts of worship or sacrifice. Life itself is a jivayajna.
The Upanishads suggest that one can make "inner yajnas" by offering up bits of the little self into the fires of sadhana and tapas until the greater Self shines forth.
The five daily yajnas, pancha mahayajna, of the householder (outlined in the Dharma Shastras) ensure offerings to rishis, ancestors, Gods, creatures and men. They are as follows.
brahma yajna: (also called Veda yajna or rishi yajna) "Homage to the seers." Accomplished through studying and teaching the Vedas.
deva yajna: "Homage to Gods and elementals." Recognizing the debt due to those who guide nature, and the feeding of them by offering ghee and uncooked grains into the fire. This is the homa sacrifice.
pitri yajna: "Homage to ancestors." Offering of cakes (pinda) and water to the family line and the progenitors of mankind.
bhuta yajna: "Homage to beings." Placing food-offerings, bali, on the ground, intended for animals, birds, insects, wandering outcastes and beings of the invisible worlds. ("Let him gently place on the ground [food] for dogs, outcastes, svapachas, those diseased from sins, crows and insects" Manu Dharma Shastras 3.92).
manushya yajna: "Homage to men." Feeding guests and the poor, the homeless and the student. Manushya yajna includes all acts of philanthropy, such as tithing and charity. The Vedic study is performed in the morning.

The other four yajnas are performed just before taking one''s noon meal. Manu Dharma Shastras (3.80) states, "Let him worship, according to the rule, the rishis with Veda study, the devas with homa, the pitris with shraddha, men with food, and the bhutas with bali."

Mystics warn that all offerings must be tempered in the fires of kundalini through the power of inner yajna to be true and valuable, just as the fire of awareness is needed to indelibly imprint ideas and concepts on one''s own akashic window.
See: dharma, havana, homa, puja, sacrifice.

Great Rite - In Wicca, the major ritual of polarity between a an and a woman. It can be either symbolic or *actual*-i.e., involving intercourse. In most traditions, the actual Great Rite is performed by the couple in private, and only between a married pair of established lovers.

Dionysos - Dionysos (Greek) (from dio from dis old form of Zeus + Nysa)

Also Dionysius. Zeus of Nysa, a mountain variously placed in Thrace, Boeotia, Arabia, India, Asia Minor, and Libya; another name is Bacchos (gk char), a form of Iacchos (from ''iachein to shout)

in allusion to the Bacchic invocation. Among the Romans he is called Liber, which some connect with liber (free), calling him the liberator (cf labarum, the later mystic emblem of the Christ). He was worshiped in Athens at the Dionysia, held a position at Delphi almost equal to Apollo, and appears in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The son of Zeus and Semele, sun and moon -- hence bisexual in character and so able to be regarded at different times as a solar or lunar deity. His meaning overlaps those of Krishna, Brahma, Christos, Adonai, Mithras, and Prometheus, for he is a savior, mediator between God and man, the celestial and the terrestrial. He was also the god who sprang from the world egg, and from whom mortals in their turn sprang, uniting in himself the nature of either sex.

The principal symbols of Dionysos are wine, the vine, and the grape which also typify the double meaning implied in the true Mysteries and their perversion. For wine is a symbol of the spirit of the Christ, as bread is of the body; and both were administered in the mystic rite from which the Christian sacrament is derived. When his inner god becomes manifest to the qualified initiate, his whole nature is illumined and vivified. But one who seeks the afflatus unprepared is driven mad or destroyed by his inner god. The Bacchic orgies and Dionysiac frenzy were a later profanation.

In his cosmic aspect, Dionysos is the demiourgos or world-former. As Dionysos Chthonios, he is the son of Demeter or Persephone, and one of his names is Zagreus; he was torn to pieces and devoured by titans, but his heart was saved and given to Zeus. The same chthonian aspect is seen in the Dionysios Sabazios of Thrace and Phrygia. This allegory parallels the Hindu Padmapani, and his dismemberment by the cosmic titans signifies the processes of evolutive cosmic differentiation into the main hierarchies of the universe. He was likewise a personification of the sun, in its spiritual and material aspects. The esoteric Greek significance of this was taught in the Orphic Mysteries.

See also ZAGREUS

Hydranos - Hydranos (Ancient Greek). Lit., the "Baptist". A name of the ancient Hierophant of the Mysteries who made the candidate pass through the "trial by water", wherein he was plunged thrice. This was his baptism by the Holy Spirit which moves on the waters of Space. Paul refers to St. John as Hydranos, the Baptist. The Christian Church took this rite from the ritualism of the Eleusinian and other Mysteries.

Bread And Wine - Bread and Wine "The outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace," bread and wine stand at once for the actual elements used in initiation ceremonies and for the attainments of which they are symbolic.

Taking the Bacchic Mysteries as an example, wine was given as the blood of the grape and of Bacchus, blood signifying life, and Bacchus representing the mystic Logos which "was made flesh." So the whole rite means the imparting to the candidate of the divine life by conscious union of his lower self with the god within -- a union brought about by the self-devised efforts of the lower self. In the same way, bread or grain symbolized the intellectual aspect of the attainment, intellect being the "body" of the spiritual influx.

The Christian sacrament was adopted from the pagan rite. The Protestant Churches administer the sacrament in both bread and wine as the symbol of a divine grace received by the devout participant.

The Catholic Church teaches that the sacred elements are actually transubstantiated by miraculous means into the blood and body of Christ, denying the cup or the wine to the laity, and regarding the rite as propitiatory for the sins of the participants and of mankind in general.

The old pagan rite contained the idea that partaking of the wine meant allying oneself with the vital energy of the spiritual divinity within the neophyte, and the partaking of the bread was symbolic of a similar union of the neophyte''s mentality with the cosmic mind for which the bread stood.

See also SOMA; WINE

John The Baptist - John the Baptist Considered by Christians the last of the Hebrew prophets and the forerunner and announcer of Jesus. His statement "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire" (Matt 3:11), is explained to mean that John as a non-initiate could impart no greater mysteries than those pertaining to the plane of matter -- the exoteric gnosis and ritualism; while Jesus could impart the fire of spiritual knowledge (SD 2:566). His disciples are described as dissenters from the Essenes (IU 2:130).

The rite of baptism was an important function of the Less Mysteries, and in various forms was universal over the earth, so that John the Baptist appears as a teacher in the Less Mysteries, which he seems to have resurrected as a rite in Judea at about the time when Jesus lived. A baptismal rite is known to have been practiced as a function of the Less Mysteries not only among the Chaldeans and Akkadians, but likewise among the Egyptians and certain of the ancient Greeks.

Boodhasp - Boodhasp (Chaldean) "An alleged Chaldean; but in esoteric teaching a Buddhist (a Bodhisattva), from the East, who was the founder of the esoteric school of Neo-Sabeism, and whose secret rite of baptism passed bodily into the Christian rite of the same name. For almost three centuries before our era, Buddhist monks overran the whole country of Syria, made their way into the Mesopotamian valley and visited even Ireland" (TG 61).

Lupercalia - Lupercalia (Latin) Roman festival of purification and expiation held on February 15, originating from a pastoral festival dating before the foundation of Rome. The power invoked was that of Faunus (under the name of Lupercus), Pan, or some similar nature god, considered to be protector of flocks and promoter of fertility.

The best known feature of the later Roman rite was the running around of the two youths called Luperci, who smote people with leather thongs, especially women wishing to be cured of barrenness. In 494 it was changed to the Christian Feast of the Purification.

Saint Martin - Saint Martin, Louis Claude de. Born in France (Amboise), in 1743. A great mystic and writer, who pursued his philosophical and theosophical studies at Paris, during the Revolution. He was an ardent disciple of Jacob Boehme, and studied under Martinez Paschalis, finally founding a mystical semi-Masonic Lodge, "the Rectified Rite of St. Martin ", with seven degrees. He was a true Theosophist. At the present moment some ambitious charlatans in Paris are caricaturing him and passing themselves off as initiated Martinists, and thus dishonouring the name of the late Adept.

Kurukshetra Rite - Kurukshetra Rite An ancient initiatory rite, still performed in Nepal, which "originated with the Mysteries of the first Krishna, passed to the First Tirthankara and ended with Buddha, . . . being enacted as a memorial of he great battle and death of the divine Adept. It is not Masonry, but an initiation into the Occult teachings of that Hero -- Occultism, pure and simple" (BCW 14:75n).