Word: ritually
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...while the Catholic Church, and conventional Protestant churches too, struggle to hold the traditional line, thousands of African Independent Churches are growing up around the continent. They are thriving precisely because they are free from overseas restriction and remote form, and because they do not worry about ritual backsliding into tribal practices. Along with wild and colorful services, they usually emphasize healings and personalized visions and prophecies. Some, including the largest independent church of all, Zaïre's Church of Jesus Christ on Earth by the Prophet Simon Kimbangu, more closely resemble orthodox Protestantism. The movement was founded...
Most students of Indian history agree that Hill is right about the male homosexual (winkte in Lakota) having ritual status in Sioux society. The reference to oral sex is more elusive; Hill says she got it from John Gates, a prominent Sioux leader who is now dead. The afterbirth incident. she insists, actually occurred: "Don't tell me the placenta thing puts down Indians. It's a beautiful ceremony symbolic of the life force...
STAGING THIS hyper-intellectual verse play is a risky venture as best in these postlapsarian times. Awash in his hard-won Catholic faith, T.S. Eliot spun Murder in the Cathedral in 1935 out of the stuff of the ritual he was preoccupied with and the metaphysical poetry he esteemed. Since then, its readers have appreciated its poetic merit, but its audiences have sat uncomfortably as paradox and conceit flew by, just out of their grasp...
Eliot presents the oft-dramatized story of Becket as a morality play, a lesson in the nature of martyrdom, and eschews all the possible theatrics in the tale. He manipulates a sparse collection of performers--Becket, three priests, four tempters, four knights, and a chorus of women--through a ritual that both plumbs the deep seas of Christian theology and plunders pagan mythology for parallels and a natural background. The mutable verse form, with irregular rhymes and cyclical repetition, can hypnotically enthrall you even if you don't quite catch Eliot's meaning...
...from the tomb of Fu Hao (circa 1300 B.C.), which was unearthed at Anyang only four years ago. A formidable woman, Fu Hao was the consort of the Emperor Wu Ding; on occasion, she led his armies into battle. Her tomb contained 200 bronze vessels, some 600 sculptures and ritual objects of jade and stone. Most charming among the bronzes is a pitcher in the shape of an owl; among the jades is a stylized crested bird with a sweeping tail that any art deco designer could be proud...