High priestess

“ Priestesses assist at all sacrifices, and the male officiants are only their deputies; in one important state, Khyrim, the High Priestess and actual head of the State is a woman, who combines in her person sacerdotal and regal functions.”508 Thus amongst the Khasis of the present day the [pg 204] superiority of the goddess to the god, and especially of the revered ancestress to the revered ancestor, is based directly on the social system which traces descent and transmits property through women only. ”

“ The household sacrifices are always performed by women.
Consider what this placing of their goddesses rather than their gods—of the priestess rather than priest—in the forefront of their worship signifies! Very plainly it reflects honour on the sex to which the supreme deities belong. We need no clearer proof of the high status of women among this people. Such customs are certainly survivals [76] from the time of a more primitive matriarchate, when the priestess was the agent for the performance of all religious ceremonies. ”

“ The domestic altar is a sacred fane where woman is the high and officiating priestess. This priestess should be virtuous, she should be intelligent, she should be competent to the performance of all her high duties. To keep her in that condition of purity, it is necessary that she should be separated from the exercise of suffrage and from all those stern and contaminating and demoralizing duties that devolves upon the hardier sex—man. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX. THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL (CONTINUED) .
While priest and priestess were folded with mutual emotion two of the loveliest souls took the place of the high priest and priestess on the silver pavement. The girl was young and tender, golden white in complexion with crimson lips. Her figure was swathed in a vermilion robe, on the breast of which was embroidered in outline a sea-green sun whose swaying rays reached the furthest parts of her garment. Her pale blue hair was crowned with a chaplet of daffodils. ”

“ It exists only as a preparation for divination; it is the movement of the god in them laboring to express himself, and his expression is couched in intelligible human language. The priestess is a part of an organized and humanized cult and, as such, represents to a certain extent the ideas of a civilized society. The Dionysiac woman yields to an excess of animal excitement, without thought for society; the priestess feels herself responsible to society. ”

“ I am convinced that her disposition is good and virtuous; for, if in beauty she surpasses all, and by her looks awes all beholders into respect, can we do otherwise than think highly of her? But what recommends her above every thing to me is, that she appears to be a priestess of some god; for, in all her misfortunes, she has with a pious regard refused to lay aside her sacred robe and chaplet. Where then can I a priest find a partner more fitting for me, than one who is herself a priestess? ”

“ Ye Gods, remove
From his fix'd eye delusion, lest this hour
Of highest bliss should make us trebly wretched!
Oh she is here, thine own, thy long-lost sister,
Whom great Diana from the altar snatch'd,
And safely plac'd here in her sacred fane.
A captive thou, prepar'd for sacrifice,
And findest here a sister in the priestess.
ORESTES.
Accursed race! Now may the sun behold
Your final doom. Is not Electra here?
That she with us may perish, nor her life
For heavier doom and deeper woe reserve.
'Tis well,—I follow, priestess! Fratricide
Is an old custom of our ancient house ”

“ There were nothing strange or unusual in freedom of conversation between the Priestess and the Sculptor—who, in former years, had added many decorations to the Temple. The virgin priestesses were permitted to receive the visits of men by day; by night none but women were suffered to enter their apartments, which adjoined the sacred building in which they ministered. Each priestess was pledged to continence for thirty years. ”

“ To-morrow is the day of your first ministration in the temple, and you will henceforth be a priestess, fully qualified for the service of the goddess. Surely, never had the goddess a more beautiful and more true-hearted servant. ”

“ You alone do not see the soft flame of your large eyes—the reflection of your heroic soul on your young but serene brow. Your charm is over everything you do—your slightest gesture is engraven on my heart. Into the most ordinary duties of every-day life you carry a peculiar grace, like a young priestess who recites her daily devotions. ”

“ She half chanted, the passion of her speech not yet fallen away from her. "And where go the fires of men when they despair"? She was silent; then he continued half in scorn, "Your priestess is the priestess of ghouls and fays rather than a priestess of men; her wisdom is not for you; the spirits that haunt the elements are hostile because they see you full of fear; do not dread them and their hatred will vanish. The great heart of the earth is full of laughter; do not put yourselves apart from its joy, for its soul is your soul and its joy is your true being." ”

“ We will not give up the reason to stand always as a priestess at the altars of human philosophy; she hath a more majestic temple to tread, and more beautiful robes to walk in, and incense rarer and more fragrant to offer in golden censers. She does well when boldly exploring God's visible works; she does better when she submits to spiritual teaching, and sits with Mary at the Saviour's feet. ”

“ The sacred song of the priestess was finished. Now she was praying aloud, slowly, and in a clear voice, so that Aziel could hear and understand her; praying from her very heart, not to the idol before her, however, but to the moon above.
“O Queen of Heaven,” she said, “thou whose throne I see but whose face I cannot see, hear the prayer of thy priestess, and protect me from the fate I fear, and rid me of him I hate. Safe let me dwell and pure, and as thou fillest the night with light, so fill the darkness of my soul with the wisdom that I crave. ”

“ Quicker and quicker, for minute after minute, grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of the light blue drapery as the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes, swung panting round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city tops rose the circumference of the earth. ”

“ Besides keeping up the fire she has other priestly functions to discharge. Before the men start on a dangerous expedition, she rubs the holy ashes on their foreheads. [706] When a woman brings her new-born infant to the sacred hearth to receive its name, the maiden priestess or Vestal, as we may call her, sprinkles water on both mother and child. [707] Every morning, when the cattle walk out of the fold, she besprinkles the fattest of them with a brush dipped in water. ”

“ The function of the mother as priestess—for woman has been the preserver, as, to so large an extent, she has been the creator, of religion—has been exercised age after age, and among people after people. Henry Ward Beecher has said: "Every mother is a priestess ordained by God Himself," and Professor Mason enlarges the same thought: "Scarcely has the infant mind begun to think, ere this perpetual priestess lights the fires of reverence and keeps them ever burning, like a faithful vestal" (112. 12) . ”

“ Who is the priestess, after an order older than Melchisedec's, but she that ministers to us that most comfortable sacrament, wherein we are made partakers not alone of the outward and visible food which we do carnally press with our teeth, but also of that inward and spiritual sustenance, the patient and enduring love of wife and mother, without which there can be no such thing as home? ”

“ But, that the prophetic faculty comes from no corporeal or animal source, and from no local or material instrumentality, but solely and extrinsically from the presence of the incoming deity, appears from this, that the priestess, before she gives her oracle, performs many ceremonious rites, observes strict purity, bathes, abstains for three days from food, dwells apart, and so, by little and little, begins to be illuminated and enraptured. ”

“ Each generation, as you know, the youngest daughter of the past generation's highest priestess is chosen as the living incarnation of the white Goddess Argo. She is reared and taught by the wisest priests and priestesses. ”

“ As the female priestess in the Roman temple and the Hebrew priest in the temple of God were responsible for the internal order of their temples, so is every woman responsible for the order, the cleanliness, and comfort of the house of which she is the social priestess. It is her house, and in it she is expected to perform duties to which she is not called in any other house. Her oversight and presence, if not her actual labour, are indispensable to the proper arrangement of everything in it. ”

“ He then refutes the heresy, the principal point attacked being that the heretics made women priestesses. No woman was at any time a priestess [167] to God: Eve herself was not; none in the Old Testament, none in the New. No woman was ever made a bishop or presbyter, and a deaconess is not a priestess, but a servant of the Church appointed for special purposes. Christ made none of the women who served Him priestesses—not Salome, not even His mother, nor Martha, nor Mary, &c. ”

“ Suffer the damsel to be relieved of becoming a priestess. Let her become my wife, and I swear that I will make over my estate [pg 279] of Ad Fines to the temple of the god Nemausus, with the villa upon it, and statues and works of art.”
“That is an offer to be entertained by the priesthood and not by me. Boy—hot bricks! and be quick about removing those which have become almost cold.”
A pause ensued whilst the proposal of Æmilius was discussed between the chief priestess of the fountain and the Augustal flamen and the other pontiffs.
The populace became restless, impatient, noisy. ”

“ Her vague conception of college life was modelled on The Princess: she imagined graceful, gracious women, enamoured of a musical, poetic, higher knowledge, deliciously rapt at the wonderful oratory of some priestess of a cult yet unknown to her: a woman beautiful and passionate, who should understand her vaguest dreams and sympathize with her strangest sorrows as no one she had yet known or seen could do. ”

“ In this respect the Ishtar cult of Erech was not unique, for we have references to priestesses elsewhere. However, the function of the priestess in religious history differs materially from that of the priest. She is not a mediator between the god and his subjects, nor is she a representative of the deity. It is as a 'witch,' that by virtue of the association of ideas above set forth, [906] she is able to determine the intentions of the gods. Her power to do harm is supplemented by her ability to furnish oracles. ”

“ It is under this twofold aspect, as priestess and as tribal mother-goddess, that the power of women was brought face to face with Christianity; the priestess and the mother-goddess were the well-defined types of heathen womanhood with which the early Church was called upon to deal. ”

“ The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;
And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking
That she and I should surely die and never live again.
O priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it,
But let the screaming echoes rest and froth your mouth no more;
'Tis true there's better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;
And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.
The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning,
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air ”

“ THE UTRICULARES The singular transformation that had taken place in the presiding deity of the fountain, from being a nymph into a male god, had not been sufficiently complete to alter the worship of the deity. As in the days of Druidism, the sacred source was under the charge of priestesses, and although, with the change of sex of the deity, priests had been appointed to the temple, yet they were few, and occupied a position of subordination to the chief priestess. She was a woman of sagacity and knowledge of human nature. ”

“ When she was young she was something of a religious enthusiast, and because enthusiasm was rare in the cloister, she was promoted by her sisters to high station. When they made her Sacrist she had her one and dearest wish. To have the charge of the beautiful [Pg 85] church, of the books, vestments and jewels of the sanctuary, to live in the holy place, with holy thoughts for companions, and in the unfailing round of holy duties—was not that a happy lot? Dignified too the office was; for in the little cloister world the Prioress herself was scarcely a greater lady than the Sacrist. ”

“ Music. Two Priestesses go up the steps before the shrine, draw the curtains on either side (discovering the Goddess) , then open the gates and remain on steps, one on either side, and kneel. A Priestess goes off and returns with a veil of marriage, then assists Phœbe to veil Camma. ”

“ Your god-father, the holy Bishop, does not intend that you shall remain a common nun more than a year. After the first year you shall be raised to the highest dignity in the convent. You shall be the Lady Superior, and all the nuns shall bow at your feet, and implicitly obey your commands.
"The Lady Superior of St. Clara is now very old, and his lordship wishes soon to fill her place. For that purpose he has selected his adopted daughter. Your talents, education, wealth, and high position in society, eminently fit you for one of the highest dignities on earth." ”