Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare

“ Thus we consecrate a king, a priest, a deacon; a temple or a church and any part of church furniture; we also consecrate water for use in lustrations, bread and wine in the sacrament; a season or day is consecrated, as a feast or fast. We consecrate ourselves either in a ritual act, as of baptism or ordination, vows or monkish initiation; or, without any implication of particular ceremonies, a man is said to consecrate himself to good works or learning. ”

“ If a spirit consents to take up its residence in the object, a low hissing sound is heard, and the suhman is complete. It receives a small portion of the daily food of its owner, and is treated with reverence, and mainly used to bring evil on some one else. [1] This is a typical case of a human consecration. ”

“ In ancient society certain animals, plants, kins, families, were also holy and bound up with the god by blood-ties or otherwise. A priestly kin owned perhaps the spot haunted by the god, and so became holy. ”

“ Among the Australian natives we catch the consecrating agency at work. Their babies are incarnations of spirits which quitted a bush or rock passed by the mothers at the moment of conception. Each spirit, as it quits its nanja or natural haunt to enter the mother, drops a churinga, a slab of stone or wood marked with the child’s totem and containing its spirit attributes. ”

“ Mexican peasants regularly paint or tattoo a cross on their foreheads, and the old Armenian equivalent for destiny or fate is čakatagir or forehead-writing. An inanimate object is similarly consecrated. ”

“ In Philo the wild pigeon symbolizes the holy spirit. A dove also descended out of a pillar of light on the occasion of the baptism in Jordan of the saintly Basil, bishop of Caesarea; and an eagle lit down upon King Tarquin. Most birds for the primitive man are souls, and the Polynesians hold that birds convey from and into their idols the spirits which live therein. A natural consecration also hallows objects fallen from heaven, like the holy shield of the Sabii, or the holy ikons or pictures “not made with hands” which abound in Russia.
In such cases the holiness or taboo (q.v.) ”

“ The Roman priest, in consecrating the water of the font for baptism, blows over it and signs it twice with the cross. He also begins the rite of baptism by blowing in the catechumen’s face. In the rite of laying hands on an elect the bishop of the Armenian Paulicians blows three times in the face of the newly ordained. The impure spirit is blown out and the pure blown in. (2) Laying-on of hands. The particular persons whose virtue is to be transmitted lay their hands on the head or shoulders of the consecrand, e.g. three bishops in episcopal consecration. ”

“ Such stones were familiar objects in the streets of an old Greek city, where Theophrastus (Characters, ch. 16) saw the “superstitious” man, as he passed by, take out his phial of oil, pour it over them, and kneel down before them to say his prayers. In a street of Benares similar devotions meet the eye, as dainty maidens pour out phials of holy water over erect stones of the same obscene pattern that was common also in Greece and Italy. The Semitic word for a stone tenanted by the numen was Beth-el, house of god, in Greek βαίτυλος. ”

“ Branding or signing the person, especially on the forehead, with the sacred emblem. So a Hindu paints his caste emblem on his forehead, and a fugitive slave in ancient Egypt, once marked with sacred stigmata in a temple, could not be reclaimed by the master. He belonged to the god. Roman recruits when they took the sacramentum, or oath of fealty, were tattooed with the “sign” or “seal.” So in Christian initiations the sign of the cross is made on the brow, and in Revelation the redeemed are so marked. ”

“ The god has not been constrained or invited to enter in. The Fetish religions afford examples of such constraint or invitation. Spirits capable of being confined in matter and made useful are in various ways sung or coaxed into the tenements prepared for them. ”