4.2. The role in Religious ritual.
Water plays an important role in the practices and beliefs of many religions since ancient times. Water is mainly used for cleansing and purifying in many of the religious rituals. The significance of it may differ from one religion to another. Its two qualities are being the source of life, and instrumentality of washing and cleaning. These underlie its place in every culture and faith. According to Eliade, water has more or less the same function in the various cultures of the world
In cosmogony, in myth, ritual and iconography, water fills the same function in whatever type of cultural pattern we find it; it precedes all forms and upholds all creation. Immersion in water symbolizes a return to the pre-formal, a total regeneration, a new birth, for immersion means a dissolution of forms, a reintegration into the formlessness of pre-existence; and emerging from the water is a repetition of the act of creation in which form was …show more content…
It speaks about the “death to the profane condition, followed by rebirth to the sacred world, the world of the gods [which] also plays an important role in highly evolved religious”. This is very similar to the passage that is “in the Aitareya Brahmana, [where it says]: “him whom they consecrate (with the diksha) the priests make into an embryo again. With water they sprinkle; the water is seed…They conduct him to the hut of the consecrated; the hut of the consecrated is the womb of the consecrated;” where they “cover him” with the garment called caul and over it, there is what they called antelope skin and then the placenta above the caul. In there the person has to close his hands very closely like the embryo from where he will be born again. This ritual is done in the Indian sacrifice, and the aim is to obtain heaven after
Water plays an important role in the practices and beliefs of many religions since ancient times. Water is mainly used for cleansing and purifying in many of the religious rituals. The significance of it may differ from one religion to another. Its two qualities are being the source of life, and instrumentality of washing and cleaning. These underlie its place in every culture and faith. According to Eliade, water has more or less the same function in the various cultures of the world
In cosmogony, in myth, ritual and iconography, water fills the same function in whatever type of cultural pattern we find it; it precedes all forms and upholds all creation. Immersion in water symbolizes a return to the pre-formal, a total regeneration, a new birth, for immersion means a dissolution of forms, a reintegration into the formlessness of pre-existence; and emerging from the water is a repetition of the act of creation in which form was …show more content…
It speaks about the “death to the profane condition, followed by rebirth to the sacred world, the world of the gods [which] also plays an important role in highly evolved religious”. This is very similar to the passage that is “in the Aitareya Brahmana, [where it says]: “him whom they consecrate (with the diksha) the priests make into an embryo again. With water they sprinkle; the water is seed…They conduct him to the hut of the consecrated; the hut of the consecrated is the womb of the consecrated;” where they “cover him” with the garment called caul and over it, there is what they called antelope skin and then the placenta above the caul. In there the person has to close his hands very closely like the embryo from where he will be born again. This ritual is done in the Indian sacrifice, and the aim is to obtain heaven after