| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: chapter is on Ritual Dancing it may not be out of place
to call attention to the supposed healing of sick people in
Ceylon and other places by Devil-dancing--the enormous
output of energy and noise in the ritual possibly having the
effect of reanimating the patient (if it does not kill
him), or of expelling the disease from his organism.
[1] Milk ("fast-milk" or vrata) was, says Mr. Hewitt, the only
diet in the Soma-sacrifice. See Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times
(preface). The Soma itself was a fermented drink prepared with
ceremony from the milky and semen-like sap of certain plants, and
much used in sacrificial offerings. (See Monier-Williams.
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: will, may read what Ruddiman and Love have said, and oversaid, on
both sides of the question: whatever conclusion they come to, it
will probably not be that to which George Chalmers comes in his life
of Ruddiman: that "Buchanan, like other liars, who, by the
repetition of falsehoods are induced to consider the fiction as
truth, had so often dwelt with complacency on the forgeries of his
Detections, and the figments of his History, that he at length
regarded his fictions and his forgeries as most authentic facts."
At all events his fictions and his forgeries had not paid him in
that coin which base men generally consider the only coin worth
having, namely, the good things of this life. He left nothing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: difference in the quality of their courage. The Gracchi, fighting
with their fellow-citizens, were both slain, as they endeavored to
make their escape; Agis willingly submitted to his fate, rather
than any citizen should be in danger of his life. Cleomenes,
being shamefully and unjustly treated, made an effort toward
revenge, but failing of that, generously fell by his own hand.
On the other side it must be said, that Agis never did a great
action worthy a commander, being prevented by an untimely death.
And as for those heroic actions of Cleomenes, we may justly
compare with them that of Tiberius, when he was the first who
attempted to scale the walls of Carthage, which was no mean
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