CHAPTER XVIII.
RITES AND CEREMONIES.
Religious Rites: their purpose practical or symbolic—Prayer: its continuity from low to high levels of Culture; its lower phases Unethical; its higher phases Ethical—Sacrifice: its original Gift-theory passes into the Homage-theory and the Abnegation-theory—Manner of reception of Sacrifice by Deity—Material Transfer to elements, fetish-animals, priests; consumption of substance by deity or idol; offering of blood; transmission by fire; incense—Essential Transfer: consumption of essence, savour, &c.—Spiritual Transfer: consumption or transmission of soul of offering—Motive of Sacrificer—Transition from Gift-theory to Homage-theory: insignificant and formal offerings; sacrificial banquets—Abnegation-theory; sacrifice of children, &c.—Sacrifice of Substitutes: part given for whole; inferior life for superior; effigies—Modern survival of Sacrifice in folklore and religion—Fasting, as a means of producing ecstatic vision; its course from lower to higher Culture—Drugs used to produce ecstasy—Swoons and fits induced for religious purposes—Orientation: its relation to Sun-myth and Sun-worship; rules of East and West as to burial of dead, position of worship, and structure of temple—Lustration by Water and Fire: its transition from material to symbolic purification; its connexion with special events of life; its appearance among the lower races—Lustration of new-born children; of women; of those polluted by bloodshed or the dead—Lustration continued at higher levels of Culture—Conclusion.
Religious rites fall theoretically into two divisions, though these blend in practice. In part, they are expressive and symbolic performances, the dramatic utterance of religious thought, the gesture-language of theology. In part, they are means of intercourse with and influence on spiritual beings, and as such, their intention is as directly practical as any chemical or mechanical process, for doctrine and worship correlate as theory and practice. In the science of religion, the study of ceremony has its
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