An esbat is a coven meeting or ritual at a time other than one of the Sabbats within Wicca and other Wiccan-influenced forms of contemporary Paganism.
Wicca is a modern pagan syncretic religion. Scholars of religion categorize it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices.
Alexandrian Wicca or Alexandrian Witchcraft is a tradition of the Neopagan religion of Wicca, founded by Alex Sanders who, with his wife Maxine Sanders, established the tradition in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. Alexandrian Wicca is similar in many ways to Gardnerian Wicca, and receives regular mention in books on Wicca as one of the religion's most widely recognized traditions.
The great rite is a Wiccan ritual involving symbolic sexual intercourse with the purpose of drawing energy from the powerful connection between a male and female. Both receive more power. It is an uncommon ritual in a full coven, as it is used when the coven is in need of powerful spiritual intervention. Most often it is performed by the high priest and priestess of a coven, but other participants can be selected to perform the rite.
Aleister Crowley wrote The Gnostic Mass — technically called Liber XV or "Book 15" — in 1913 while travelling in Moscow, Russia. The structure is similar to the Mass of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, communicating the principles of Crowley's Thelema. It is the central rite of Ordo Templi Orientis and its ecclesiastical arm, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.
Panagia, in Medieval and Modern Greek, is one of the titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, used especially in Eastern Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity.
A Hindu wedding, also known as Vivaha, Lagna (लग्न), Kalyanam or Pelli is the traditional wedding ceremony for Hindus. The wedding ceremonies are very colourful, and celebrations may extend for several days. The bride's and groom's home—entrance, doors, wall, floor, roof—are sometimes decorated with colors, flowers, and other decorations.
A paten or diskos is a small plate, used during the Mass. It is generally used during the liturgy itself, while the reserved sacrament are stored in the tabernacle in a ciborium.
Drawing down the Moon is a central ritual in many contemporary Wiccan traditions. During the ritual, a coven's High Priestess enters a trance and requests that the Goddess or Triple Goddess, symbolized by the Moon, enter her body and speak through her. The High Priestess may be aided by the High Priest, who invokes the spirit of the Goddess. During her trance, the Goddess is supposed to speak through the High Priestess.
Solemn Mass is the full ceremonial form of a Mass, predominantly associated with the Tridentine Mass where it is celebrated by a priest with a deacon and a subdeacon, requiring most of the parts of the Mass to be sung, and the use of incense. It is also called High Mass or Solemn High Mass.
In Christian tradition the churching of women, also known as thanksgiving for the birth or adoption of a child, is the ceremony wherein a blessing is given to mothers after recovery from childbirth. The ceremony includes thanksgiving for the woman's survival of childbirth, and is performed even when the child is stillborn, or has died unbaptized.
Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic, and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God, thereby being generally dualistic. In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess.
In the neopagan religion of Wicca a range of magical tools are used in ritual practice. Each of these tools has different uses and associations and are commonly used at an altar, inside a magic circle.
Coronations in Norway were held from 1164 to 1906, mostly in the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. Although a crowning ceremony was formerly mandated by the nation's constitution, this requirement was eliminated in 1908. However, Norwegian kings have since chosen voluntarily to take part in a ritual of "benediction" to mark their accession to the throne, during which the crown is present, but not physically bestowed upon the sovereign. The new ceremony retains some of the religious elements of earlier rites, while eliminating other features now considered to be "undemocratic".
Vesting prayers are prayers which are spoken while a cleric puts on vestments as part of a liturgy, in both the Eastern and Western churches. They feature as part of the liturgy in question itself, and take place either before or after a liturgical procession or entrance to the sanctuary, as depends on the particular liturgical rite or use which is being observed.
The entrance prayers are the prayers recited by the deacon and priest upon entering the temple before celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite.
In the Catholic Church, a blessing is a rite consisting of a ceremony and prayers performed in the name and with the authority of the Church by a duly qualified minister by which persons or things are sanctified as dedicated to divine service or by which certain marks of divine favour are invoked upon them. In a wider sense blessing has a variety of meanings in the sacred writings:
The accession of the King of France to the royal throne was legitimized by a ceremony performed with the Crown of Charlemagne at the Reims Cathedral. In late medieval and early modern times, the new king did not need to be anointed in order to be recognized as French monarch but ascended upon the previous monarch's death with the proclamation "Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!"
Among Eastern Orthodox and Eastern-Rite Catholic Christians, holy water is blessed in the church and given to the faithful to drink at home when needed and to bless their homes. In the weeks following the Feast of Epiphany, clergy visit the homes of parishioners and conduct a service of blessing using the holy water that was blessed on the Feast of Theophany. For baptism, the water is sanctified with a special blessing.
Blessed salt has been used in various forms throughout the history of Christianity. Among early Christians, the savoring of blessed salt often took place along with baptism. In the fourth century, Augustine of Hippo named these practices "visible forms of invisible grace". However, its modern use as a sacramental remains mostly limited to its use with holy water within the Anglican Communion and Roman Catholic Church.
