#ceremonial

The whole crazy business seemed to pull out of my guts the very worst in me—my worst fears—the worst aspects of my character—my worst insecurities and feelings of shame and guilt. I didn't know it at the time, but that was exactly what was supposed to be happening. That's what Solomonic magick is all about. The worst in me was my problem. The worst in me was the demon. When it finally dawned on me that I had successfully evoked the demon, and I had the worst of me trapped in that magick Triangle, I had no alternative but to harness and redirect its monstrous power and give it new marching orders. From then on, that particular demon would be working for me rather than against me. ↗

— Lon Milo DuQuette

#demons #goetia #magick #solomonic-magick #business

The magic in these Masonic rituals is very, very old. And way back in those days, it worked. As time went on, and it started being used for spectacle, to consolidate what were only secular appearances of power, it began to lose its zip. But the words, moves, and machinery have been more or less faithfully carried down over the millennia, through the grim rationalizing of the World, and so the magic is still there, though latent, needing only to touch the right sensitive head to reassert itself. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#freemasonry #rituals #faith

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts. ↗

— J. L. Austin

#ceremonial #character #conventional #general #general character

Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies. ↗

— Joseph Wood Krutch

#ceremonial #ceremonies #desire #ever #exclusively

Gay marriage is the last bastion of, to me... as a legal, ceremonial, sentimental and religious side, it's one of the last steps. Retaining your job being one of the earlier steps, like, not getting kicked out of your job because you're gay. ↗

— Gus Van Sant

#being #ceremonial #earlier #gay #gay marriage

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#atlanta #audience #boston #ceremonial #dance

The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism. ↗

— Felix Adler

#devoid #exercises #meeting #our #simple

My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom. ↗

— Franz Boas

#allowing #ceremonial #emotional #father #freedom