Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Weekly

This page groups rituals by how often they are performed, from a once-in-a-lifetime rite to one repeated on a fixed cycle. Wikipedia notes that "calendrical rituals give social meaning to the passage of time, creating repetitive weekly, monthly or yearly cycles." Browsing by frequency lets a visitor tell an annual festival apart from a rite performed only once in a person's life.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Rites that remove a condition the tradition treats as impurity - by washing, by abstention, by transfer to a substitute - and restore a person or place to a state fit for worship. Impurity in this sense is a ritual status rather than dirt or sin, and what causes it differs sharply between Shinto, Jewish, Islamic and Hindu law. 2
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 2
Directory
Category
Rituals 1
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The Purification Rituals

This group gathers purification rituals, the ceremonies of cleansing that remove impurity or sin and restore fitness for worship or ordinary life: ritual washing, lustration and rites of atonement performed in formal ceremonial form.

The browser will find purification rituals from across the traditions. The entries describe each rite's form and the conception of purity it serves, noting the tradition that performs it.

Weekly
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. PurificationView the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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