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More "Initiation" Quotes from Famous Books



... time that Colonel A———had ended his short initiation into these various arcana, the company broke up; the doctor to give a lecture on egg-shells at the Committee of Taste; Lord Flute to visit the Opera; Lord Skimcream to the Green Boom; Lord Flash to 'Fives Court,' to see a set-to by candle-light; the exquisites to Bouge ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... of the fixed stars. The symbol was the same as that of the seven stages of Borsippa, the Pyramid of vitrified brick, near Babylon, built of seven stages, and each of a different color. In the Mithraic ceremonies, the candidate went through seven stages of initiation, passing through many fearful trials and of these the high ladder with seven rounds or steps was the symbol. You see the Lodge, its details and ornaments, by its Lights. You have already heard what these Lights, the greater and lesser, are said to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... educated in the true sense of the term, MEN OF LETTERS, by virtue of (as Ruskin calls it) "the kingship of words." "Charm" is derived from the Latin "carmen," a song that fascinates, and means to control by incantation, to subdue; while Teleo concerns the secret powers and wisdom of consecration and initiation. It is because of modern misuse of antique terms that, we have considered this somewhat lengthy explanation necessary, in order to clear away the accumulated debris of the ages, from the true foundation of our ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... generations working to meet one social necessity, of an apostolic succession of masters living in the service of one ideal. And so it is these brotherhoods of labor, it is these grim brotherhoods covered with grime and scars, that stand before you to-day inviting you to initiation. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... Frere," said I one day, during the initiation of this system, "to think that these villains whom you have made constables ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... had his initiation to Fenris," I said. "He got squirted by a tread-snail almost as soon as he got off the ship. They have him at the spaceport hospital; it'll be 2400 before they get all the poison sweated ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... made a remarkable transformation from a farm/forest economy to a diversified modern industrial economy. Per capita income has risen to the West European level; Finland is a member of the European Union and is the only Nordic state to join the euro system at its initiation ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... States of the Commonwealth and the Dominion of New Zealand have made remarkable progress, none has eclipsed the rapid growth of the State to which the steps of my family were directed in 1839. Its growth has been more remarkable, because it has been primarily due to its initiation of many social and political reforms which have since been adopted by other and older countries. "Australia, lead us further," is the cry of reformers in America. We have led in so many things, and though America may claim the honour of being the birthplace of ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... several days. Here the heads were watched by young boys of from six to ten years old, who, for the whole time the process of drying occupied—from seven to ten days—were never allowed to step out of the hall, or neglect their sacred trust. This was the commencement of their initiation in the endurance of hardships, that they also might become warriors. Night after night the men used to meet in front of the hall, dancing and singing, and beating their gongs. They used to address their heads, taunting them, telling them that ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... deliberation, stopping every moment, that my Father might expound it, verse by verse. The extraordinary beauty of the language—for instance, the matchless cadences and images of the first chapter—made a certain impression upon my imagination, and were (I think) my earliest initiation into the magic of literature. I was incapable of defining what I felt, but I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a purely aesthetic emotion, when my Father read, in his pure, large, ringing voice, such passages as 'The heavens are the works of Thy hands. They shall perish, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... discontinue conversation with Mr. Polly; he would come along to him whenever he appeared at his door, and converse about sport and women and fisticuffs and the pride of life with an air of extreme initiation, until Mr. Polly felt himself the faintest underdeveloped intimation of a man that had ever hovered on ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... removal of some stores of arms and ammunition, revealed their readiness to break into rebellion. It is not improbable that designing conspirators took advantage of the open and chivalric character of Saigo to push him into the initiation of hostilities. Admiral Kawamura, himself a Satsuma man and a connection of Saigo, was sent down to hold an interview with him and if possible to make a peaceful settlement. But the interview was declined. The rebellious elements were at once gathered together, and Saigo, at the head ...
— Japan • David Murray

... essay already quoted, vigorously vindicates "the deeply cherished belief of some philosophers, and of many Christians, that our world, in its present state, contains the mere embryo of intelligent, moral, and religious happiness; that the progress of man in his present state is but the initiation of an interminable career of glory; and that his most widely extended associations are a preparation for as interminably an intercourse with the whole family of an intelligent universe." [463] Dr. Arnott may add a final word, a last link in this evidential chain of analogy. He writes: "To ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... the Lord of the Sea indicates to the world, though with its initiation he is not ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... she rose, she was richer by a very simple conception, but still richer. She felt as a novice might feel who had been initiated, and had been intrusted at least with the preliminary secrets of her community. She owed her initiation to Mr. Armstrong, but also to her husband. Experts no doubt may smile, and so may the young people who, in these days of universal knowledge, have got up astronomy for examinations, but nevertheless, in the profounder study ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... must pass over these domestic duties to speak of state affairs and the gradual initiation therein by the Princess of this young couple. During the campaign of Italy in which Philip V. was anxious to take part, Madame des Ursins, suitably to the duties and prerogatives of her charge, did not quit the Queen for a single moment. She was ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... army; kept in splendid condition and of great size, they not only drag the heavy guns, but in the celebrated mountain artillery each mule carries a small gun on his back. A brigade of this arm would have been invaluable to the British in South Africa, having no doubt had its initiation in the guerilla warfare of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... for, starting with no other initiation into the mysteries of foreign relations than having had a father born in Wales and having spent his vacations in England, probably in the lake region studying the topography of Wordsworth's poetry,—a certain oft detected resemblance to Wilson must make Wordsworth his favorite poet, as he was Wilson's,—in ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but HE, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal what he knew—HE alone had been singled out as the victim of this atrocious initiation! ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... nice to you, too—after a bit. Of course, everybody new has to expect some hazing. Thank your stars that you won't have to be put through the initiation of the marble harp," and she pointed to a marble figure in the tiny Italian garden in the middle ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson

... by prayers and praises to eternity. "It is ordained," said they, "both here and in heaven, that you are first to enter into the temple, and remain there for three days and three nights and after this initiation you are to enter the houses of the city, which are so many chapels consecrated by us to divine worship, and in every house join the congregation in a communion of prayers, praises, and repetitions of holy things; you are to take ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... a "silent" area. Occasionally there results a change in temperament or intelligence, and the region is on this account supposed to be concerned with the higher psychical functions. There is evidence that the pre-frontal cortex has a centre for the conscious initiation of movements, and that lesions produce "apraxia," i.e., inability to perform, or clumsiness in voluntarily performing fine movements such as touching the nose with the finger, though such movements may be perfectly carried ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... tour through the valley of the Mohawk, that such a work came to be appreciated by the people, and resulted in that grand artery of wealth to our State, the Erie Canal. So I believe it has ever been in the past with the initiation and construction of great public works, and with the introduction of agencies and methods which have been of the greatest benefit to mankind throughout the world, and so perhaps it will ever be. Yet, for the welfare of these two cities, let us venture the hope that the tide of improvement ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... and Abbeville. The Chapter appointed four of its own members to superintend the work: Jean Dumas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglache, to whom my authors (canons both) attribute the choice of subjects, the placing of them, and the initiation of the workmen 'au sens veritable et plus eleve de la Bible ou des legendes, et portant quelque fois le simple savoir-faire de l'ouvrier jusqu'a la hauteur du genie ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... were to form the Council of Ancients, having powers to amend or reject the proposals emanating from the Council of Five Hundred. In this Council were the younger deputies, and with them rested the sole initiation of laws. Thus the young deputies were to make the laws, but the older deputies were to amend or reject them; and this nice adjustment of the characteristics of youth and age, a due blending of enthusiasm with caution, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... many, which are finally reunited in a single science (compare Rep.). At first immortality means only the succession of existences; even knowledge comes and goes. Then follows, in the language of the mysteries, a higher and a higher degree of initiation; at last we arrive at the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or changing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by this world, or in or out of this world, but an aspect of the divine, extending ...
— Symposium • Plato

... from the prefaces of Mr. Shaw on the subject of children and their education, plays, pamphlets, even legislation have dealt with the theme. A reaction was bound to follow, and we do not hear so much now about "sex initiation" and coeducation. Suffice it to say that Frank Wedekind was the first man to put the question plumply ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... with so much truth of their community, in the language of the Latin father, that "every one reckoned those whom he baptized as belonging to himself and not to Christ;" [541:1] for, as we have just seen, some, when baptizing their disciples, used even new forms of initiation. Never, assuredly, had the advocates of expediency a better opportunity for pleading in favour of a decree ordaining that "one chosen from among the presbyters should be put over the rest, and that the whole care of the Church should be ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Saint Anne, in the Louvre, has been attributed to him. It illustrates Leonardo's usual choice of pupils, men [117] of some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men of birth and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi—men with just enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the sake of which they were ready to efface their own individuality. Among them, retiring often to the villa of the Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he worked at his fugitive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present hour, and for a few only, perhaps chiefly for ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... away by it, without any volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can tyrannise, as well as the imagination. Derangement, I believe, has been considered as a loss of control over the sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is henceforth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim of a train of associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but must recognise the existence of a parallel phenomenon ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... drew the rectors and professors of its colleges, its preachers, confessors, and teachers in schools for the laity. They were not yet full members, though they had taken the three vows, and were irrevocably devoted to the service of the order. The final stage of initiation was reached toward the age of forty-five, after long and various trials. Then the Jesuit received the title of Professed. He was either a professed of the three vows, or a professed of the four vows; having in the latter case dedicated his life to the special service ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... attend to some of the ceremonies of what may be called the initiation of warriors, this being the first time I had been on a war-party. For the first three times that a man accompanies a war-party, the customs of the Indians require some peculiar and painful observances, from which old warriors may, if they choose, be exempted. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... Martin's initiation into the joys of sea life was a strenuous one. The gale that had sent the Cohasset flying from San Francisco, died out, as Ruth had predicted. Followed a couple of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... support of the Gov.-General of the day, was granted; and Mr. Butler, taking advantage of this recent precedent, also succeeded in founding a commercial house in Manila. To these foreigners is due the initiation of the traffic in those products which became the staple trade of the Colony and paved the way for the bulk of the business being, as it is to-day, in the hands of European ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... cool his indignation, and Bethmann-Hollweg's cynical explanation of the violation of Belgium's neutrality went far to justify Britain's action consequent upon that outraging of treaty faith. The deliberate initiation of the policy of "frightfulness" which had heaped such unspeakable horrors upon the Belgian people tore the veil from the face of German militarism and revealed in its sheer brutality the ruthlessness and lawlessness ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... There followed an impromptu initiation ceremony, interrupted but once by Lily's bleating, after which the Wildcat realized that he was the head of something that he knew mighty little about. He looked around for Honey Tone, seeking the moral support that might derive ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... to St. Peter's." Don dropped into an armchair and began to load his pipe from the Mycenaean vase. "Some of your facts are startlingly novel. For instance, where on earth did you get hold of that idea about the initiation of Christ by the Essenes at Lake Moeris ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... islanders of Crete, before sacrificing to Jupiter, had to abstain from food. A celebrated ancient author informs us, that those who wished to be initiated into the secrets of Cybele, fasted ten days before their initiation; and that, in short, the priests who gave the oracles, and those who came to consult them, had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various

... above advice if followed conscientiously by you would go to make you really fit for initiation into the more advanced stages of mastery. Take it to heart by all means. Be convinced, the man who looks for quick results and a royal road to the mastery of Mental Science breaks down in frequent despair at apparent failures ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... satisfied that the boy should have so pleasant an initiation into the life he had chosen, and was quite content that this semi-holiday opportunity had arisen instead of hard work in one of the hatchery stations. Major Dare felt that Colin had already had a strenuous summer and that it was advisable for him to do something a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... and only child. He was resolved that his offspring should enjoy all those advantages of education and breeding and society of which he himself had been deprived. For him was to be reserved a full initiation in those costly ceremonies which, under the names of Eton and Christ Church, in his time fascinated and dazzled mankind. His son, William Pitt Ferrars, realised even more than his father's hopes. Extremely good-looking, he was gifted with a precocity of talent. He was ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... was so transparently obvious. And since this was so, every member of that heterogeneous community had a respect for his companions; the fact that they were there together showed that they had all passed this initiation, and knew what for them ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... no more. What, my uncle dead! General Kock, Major Hall, Advocate Coster—all dead! It seemed impossible. We could not understand it, this first initiation of ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar

... be utilized in the support of the customary or the established, as well as in initiation and support of the novel. People ape the great, or those that pass for great, in manners and morals. The words of a distinguished public man have prestige in the maintenance of the established. Men will follow, and if the socially conspicuous lead ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... to confess a fault. It was his impulsiveness that led him to volunteer and serve four years in the Confederate army,—trying years to my mother, with a brood of seven children to feed, garb, and house. The war brought me my initiation as a cowboy, of which I have now, after the long lapse of years, the greater portion of which were spent with cattle, a distinct recollection. Sherman's army, in its march to the sea, passed through our county, devastating that section for miles ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... with the common faith, or very important in themselves, could either have been propounded by the priests or received by the audience. And it may be further observed, in corroboration of so self-evident a truth, that it was held an impiety to the popular faith to reject the initiation of the mysteries—and that some of the very writers, most superstitious with respect to the one, attach the most solemnity to the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to a pension of twenty-five dollars per month. This began to bring in one straggler after another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots, in the dull (summer) season. Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the initiation fee was only twelve dollars, and no dues ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the light of these considerations the American capital took on the semblance of a monstrous mystical infinite Werden. But they fatigued Vogelstein a little, and it was his preference, as a general thing, not to engage the same evening with more than one newcomer, one visitor in the freshness of initiation. This was why Mrs. Bonnycastle's expression of a wish to introduce him to three young ladies had startled him a little; he saw a certain process, in which he flattered himself that he had become proficient, but which was after all tolerably exhausting, repeated for each of the damsels. ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... adding, that all they found fault with was an insolent remark which, in his wrath, Manua Sera had given utterance to, that their quarrel with him was owing chiefly to a scurvy jest which he had passed on them, and on the characteristic personal ceremony of initiation to their Mussulman faith. Now, however, as Manua Sera wished to make friends, they would abide by anything that I might propose. Here the knotty question arose again, what territory they, the Arabs, would give to Manua Sera? I thought he would ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... They are apt to avoid the light shades of red and green as being too showy, and further, as being liable to fade. Greens and yellows in dark shades they treat with more favor. They consider black and indigo as the symbols of sorrow; rose is the symbol of Divine Wisdom; green represents initiation into the knowledge of ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... was succeeded, in the sense only of followed, by the Katipunan,—a native word also meaning league. The makers of this "league," though avowing the same purpose as the members of the other, were men of very different stamp. Their initiation was a blood-rite: they sought immediate independence; they preached a campaign of force, if not of violence. That a recent reviewer should have connected Dr. Rizal's name with the Katipunan is difficult to understand. Not ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... secret ramifications to the German societies; but as I have already said, I have not been able to obtain exact information as to them. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to repeat here what I heard concerning the initiation of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... alleviation of pain. The countrywoman who puts her child to sleep in the great, cradle-like, basket, for winnowing the corn, remembers Demeter Courotrophos, the mother of corn and children alike, and makes it a little coat out of the dress worn by its father at his initiation into her mysteries. Yet she is an angry goddess too, sometimes—Demeter Erinnys, the goblin of the neighbourhood, haunting its shadowy places. She lies on the ground out of doors on summer nights, and becomes wet with the dew. She grows young again ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... evidence,[196] and describe a ceremony among the northern tribes connected with the myth of the sun, which ends in a newly initiated youth being brought up, "shown the decorations, and had everything explained to him."[197] Among the central tribes the same authorities describe minutely the initiation ceremonies, during which the initiate boy "is instructed for the first time in any of the sacred matters referring to totems, and it is by means of the performances which are concerned with certain animals, or rather, apparently with ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... risk of their lives. Half the aeroplane accidents are due to the fact that many men prefer risk to safety. To do some things that other people cannot do seems to them the only way of justifying their existence. It is an initiation into aristocracy. Every man is the rival of all other men, and he is not satisfied till he has beaten them. If he is a great cricketer, or a great poet, or a Cabinet Minister, or wins the Derby, his ambition as a rule is fulfilled and he does not feel the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... ability to carry on that work to its due height and proportion, yet as that was not proposed, but an initiation only by accidence into grammar, I consented to the proposal as a present expedient till a more qualified person should be found, without further treaty or mention of terms between us than that of mutual friendship. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... mind, the perfunctory in things ecclesiastical is hardly more distressing than the service of books as conducted in many great libraries. One feels that the librarii should be a sacred order, nearly allied to the monastic, refined by varying steps of initiation, and certainly celibates. They should give out their books as the priest his sacrament, should wear sacred vestments, and bear about with them the priestlike aura, as of divine incarnations of the great spirit of Truth and Art in whose temples they are ministrants. The next step to this ideal ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... as the ambassador had furnished me with an extract of his vakayeh nameh, or his instructions, I walked out to an adjacent cemetery to read it over undisturbed. I kept the paper carefully folded in the lining of my cap, and as it was my first initiation into public business, the principal contents of it have remained in my ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... [Footnote: A medicine woman is a female doctor or juggler. No man or woman can assume this office without previous initiation by authority. The medicine dance is a sacred rite, in honor of the souls of the dead; the mysteries of this dance are kept inviolable; its secrets have never been divulged by its members. The medicine men and women attend in cases of sickness. The Sioux have the greatest faith in ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... getting-together spirit is getting more and more into Church circles. The fervent heart repeats constantly our Lord's prayer, "that they may all be one." Yet it becomes clear that there may be movements toward union that are not of the Holy Spirit's initiation, and that ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... was undergoing initiation into a secret society. He was blind-folded, and two companions were leading him along the edge of a cliff over a deep ravine, when the earth gave way, or they slipped and fell from the precipice, and Leggett was so injured ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... any case where the advance has been made by the female. Pairing may be for a season or for a period or for life. I don't think there is any rule; but in all cases of separation the children are invariably divided—the males to the father, the females to the mother. After initiation the children owe no allegiance to their parents. Love with them is a wild and wonderful rapture in all its manifestations, and without regard necessarily to sex. I never, in my life, saw a more beautiful expression of it than in the two females whom I saw ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... goddess of Licentiousness: here called 'dark-veiled' because her midnight orgies were veiled in darkness. She was a Thracian divinity, and her worshippers were called Baptae ('sprinkled'), because the ceremony of initiation involved the sprinkling ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... night of our initiation, supper was over, the house-party and guests were all assembled on the balcony, the women engaged in needlework, and the men smoking cigarettes, when Saima, the Finnish servant, arrived to solemnly announce in a loud tone that the English lady's bath was ready. Taking a fond farewell of the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... The ceremonies of initiation were peculiarly solemn. After undergoing a severe fast, and spending whole nights in prayer, the candidate confessed, and received the sacrament. He then clothed himself in snow-white garments, and repaired to the church, or the hall, where the ceremony was to take place, bearing ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... as these brought about the initiation of the dastardly plot known in history as "The Pazzi Conspiracy." The name is somewhat open to criticism, for, although the Pazzi were the chief instruments employed, and exceeded all others in detestation of the Medici, the "forefront and head of the offending" ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... been deputed to carry a dead body to burial, holds himself unclean until he has thoroughly washed himself in water prepared for the purpose by certain ceremonies.[127-2] A bath was an indispensable step in the mysteries of Mithras, the initiation at Eleusis, the meda worship of the Algonkins, the Busk of the Creeks, the ceremonials of religion everywhere. Baptism was at first always immersion. It was a bath meant to solemnize the reception of the child into the guild of mankind, drawn ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... that this mode of life has not been invented in order to cut short life as rapidly as possible, that the $2000, with all the rich diamonds upon initiation, may be repeated as frequently ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... not legitimate business. Not till we came to fly-fishing were we really entered at the sport, and this initiation took place, as it chanced, beside the very stream where I was first shown a trout. It is a charming piece of water, amber-coloured and clear, flowing from the Morvern hills under the limes of an ancient avenue—trees ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... Home; but the beauty and delicacy of this latter work are so interwoven with the author's air of being remotely outside of everything he describes, that they count for more, seem more themselves, and finally give the whole thing the appearance of a triumph, not of initiation, but of the ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... fabric of the cathedral, the remainder of the historical portion will be associated with the names of the bishops—not that, by any means, the most important works connected with the church were due to the initiation of the bishops, nor was the cost always, or indeed generally, defrayed by them. The monastic body spent large sums upon the building, as has been seen in the case of the octagon: but these works are mostly to be credited to the whole body, and, except in a few cases, which are duly noticed, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting

... strange man came to the village to live, even though no one boasted of his prowess, he was likely to suffer at the hands of the rougher element of the place. It was a sort of rude initiation into their society. These ceremonies were conducted with a savage sense of humor by a gang of rowdies known as the "Clary's Grove Boys," of whom the ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... Street; requesting him to obtain Mrs. Haughton's acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary powers with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell. To Lionel the proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of course the perfection of wisdom. Less readily pleased was poor Mrs. Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Behold, it is the privilege of mine honours,/My oath, and my profession] The privilege of this oath means the privilege gained by taking the oath administered in the regular initiation ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... how it can fail, sir. At what point in the action should it be put into effect? And will you call the time of initiation, or shall I?" ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... the all-important step from tableau to dialogue and action had been taken. Its initiation is shrouded in obscurity, but may have been as follows. Ever since the sixth century Antiphons, or choral chants in which the two sides of the choir alternately respond to each other, had been firmly established ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... jurisdiction in different localities. In order not to be confounded with the vulgar mechanics who could only use the hammer and the trowel, the Freemasons invented signs of mutual recognition and certain ceremonies of initiation. A traditionary secret was handed down, revealed to the initiated, and that only according to the degrees they had attained. They adopted for symbols the square, the level, the compass, and the hammer. In some lodges and in higher ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... first the new boy found everything quite delightful, and before a week was over had caught, as they meant him to catch, the spirit of party, and always was ready to stick up for the Noelites as the best house in the school. So far so good; but this was only the first step of initiation into these ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... with a sense of escape from prison, and for the ten days of their course they were like "freshers" at Oxford and made the most of their minutes, organizing concerts and other entertainments in the evenings after their initiation into the mysteries of Vickers and Lewis. I was invited to dinner there one night, and sat between two young cavalry officers on long benches crowded with subalterns of many regiments. It was a merry meal and a good one—to this day I remember a potato pie, gloriously ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... those who singly possessed equal science in mathematics as in metaphysics? It is not impossible, perhaps not improbable, from his course of learning and inquiries, that if Dr. Priestley had not from his first initiation into science been dedicated for what is called the immediate service of God, he himself might have been one of the greatest disprovers ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner

... fair-haired little woman of girlish figure and sweet expression, and from the moment of their introduction the unkempt monk, after crossing himself and uttering a benediction, became greatly interested in her, the result being that she became an "aspirant," and her initiation into the secrets of the cult was arranged to take place on the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... and unique chief who can appoint, pay, punish and dismiss his subordinates.—For, on the one hand, he stands alone and feels his responsibility; he brings to bear on the management of affairs a degree of attention and consistency, a tact and a power of initiation of which a committee is incapable; corporate follies or defects do not involve any one in particular, and authority is effective only when it is in one hand.—On the other hand, being master, he can rely on the subalterns whom he has himself selected, whom he controls through their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... The initiation lasted a whole year, till the time when the Christians joyfully celebrate the festival of Easter. One night in the holy week, Thais, who was already asleep on her mat, felt herself lifted by the slave, whose eyes gleamed with a strange light. He was clad, not as usual in a ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... the Bill proposed to throw technical education into the hands of the Science and Art Department. But, in reality, no power of initiation, nor even of meddling with details, was given to that Department—the sole function of which was to decide whether any plan proposed did or did not come within the limits of "technical education." The necessity for such control, somewhere, is obvious. No legislature, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... of the great goddess Diana; barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldaean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers.... The crowds which flocked to Rome from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean brought with them practices extremely demoralizing. The awful rites of initiation, the tricks of magicians, the pretended virtues of amulets and charms, the riddles of emblematical idolatry with which the superstition of the East abounded, amused the languid voluptuaries who had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... his behaviour will be much improved." He clinked the coin before her. As O'Iwa passed up the stairs he returned to the hibachi of the wife. The tea was a short course. Cho[u]bei was on needles while drinking it. He feared an outbreak from above in the course of O'Iwa's initiation into a vileness the depth of which she never even could suspect. "Yes: trade is good. Women are difficult to secure. The men prefer to have them in their homes, rather than to gain by their service elsewhere." In such professional ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... intellectual effort, whereas another is less fatigued by eight; and further, the daily occupations vary greatly in the demand that they make on attention and on such qualities as reason, judgment, and power of initiation. Those who teach or learn such subjects as mathematics, or those who are engaged in such occupations as portrait-painting and the higher forms of musical effort, must necessarily take more out of themselves than those who are employed in feeding a ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N.S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian Church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary's parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth. His father is there stiled Gentleman, a circumstance ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... chapter x.) What they found was a belief in 'the great spirit, Twanyirika,' who is believed 'by uninitiated boys and women' (but, apparently, not by adults) to preside over the cruel rites of tribal initiation.[2] No more is said, no myths about 'the great spirit' are given. He is dismissed in a brief note. Now if these ten lines contain all the native lore of Twanyirika, he is a mere bugbear, not believed ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... "Poor child! the initiation has been too much for her unformed mind," she murmured complacently, pleased with herself for having secured a disciple. "The path is narrow and rugged at the beginning, but it will broaden out before her as she ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... an initiation of a new era of religious teaching. The light is breaking and the full illumination is ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... the initiation of new members into anything you like is done, anyway, tete-a-tete and not in the company of twenty people one doesn't know!" blurted out the lame man. He had said all that was in his mind because he was too irritated to restrain ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... means the only factor which it is in our power to grasp and direct. By our energetic effort the world can be moulded. It is the concern of all of us, and especially of those nations which are strong enough and enlightened enough to take a leading part in human affairs, to work towards the initiation and the organisation of this immense effort. In so far as the Great War of to-day acts as a spur to such effort it will not have ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... my head and conducted me to my own bed, put me in, tucked me up, and tenderly kissing me, left the room, first unlocking my door and then locking the door of communication between the two rooms. Thus passed the first glorious night of my initiation into all the rites of Venus, and at the hands of a lovely, fresh and beautiful woman, who had only been married long enough to make her a perfect adept in the art. Never, oh never! have I passed such a night. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... for Lens.—As I was indebted to the kindness of DR. DIAMOND, amongst other friends, for my original initiation into the mysteries of photography, it may appear somewhat presumptuous in me to differ from one who has had so much more experience in a point of practice. I allude to that of washing the collodion negative after developing, previously ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various

... Meister's Apprenticeship and Wandering Years that I would especially refer, as these volumes contain the sum of the Sage's observations during a long life, as to what Man should do, under present circumstances, to obtain mastery over outward, through an initiation into inward life, and severe ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... When I said angels, I spoke of what the world most wants, as well as Crocus; angels in human form, I mean, or rather, in their human state of initiation. There is no substitute. Gold will do something; but nothing of what a good man or a good woman ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... to call the illusions of his youth. And so much do I desire to impress these novitiates into our calling with the necessity for preserving their ideals that I shall ask them this evening to consider with me some things which would, I fear, strike the cynic as most illusionary and impractical. The initiation ceremonies that admitted the young man to the privileges and duties of knighthood included the taking of certain vows, the making of certain pledges of devotion and fidelity to the fundamental principles ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... accompanied William the Conqueror to England, and cousin to the General St. Leger who instituted the Doncaster St. Leger race. When a young girl she was seized with a desire to see the mysteries of the initiation of a Mason which were about to be celebrated at her father's house. The generally-received tradition is that she concealed herself behind a large old-fashioned eight-day clock, but another version of the story is that some alterations being in progress, she picked a brick out of the partition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... anticipated; it is natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive. Judgment, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table-book. Some initiation is, however, necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have, therefore, shown so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... replied: "12 to 10," and turning on his heel, left the room. This caused a good deal of amusement, but it was soon explained that Hillebrand was being initiated into a secret society and that this was one of the initiation stunts. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... the great strike were ones of calm, peaceful tranquility. Each recurring November 1st, brought the initiation of Post Lyceums at all garrisons, in which the officers were gathered together twice a week, and war in all its phases was studied. We didn't exactly know where the war was coming from, but, still we boned it out. Old campaigns were fought over; the mistakes made by the world's greatest ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... although there were other excellent architects and workmen, such as Callicrates and Ictinus, who built the Parthenon on the site of the old Hecatompedon, which had been destroyed by the Persians, and Coroebus, who began to build the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, but who only lived to see the columns erected and the architraves placed upon them. On his death, Metagenes, of Xypete, added the frieze and the upper row of columns, and Xenocles, of Cholargos, crowned it with the domed roof over the shrine. As to the long wall, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... have hoped that you wouldn't. When I found your note, it was a kind of vindication; it proved that a singular episode had taken place. To find a woman with an appreciable sense of humor is rare; to find one who couples this with initiation is rarer still. I do not refer to wit, the eternal striving to say something clever, regardless of cost. How you found out ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... had fallen like a live coal into some celestial magazine of colour and glow, straightway blazed up a slow explosion of crimson and green in a golden triumph—pure fire, the smoke and fuel gone, and the radiance alone left. And now Helen received the second lesson of her initiation into the life of nature: she became aware that the whole evening was thinking around her, and as the dusk grew deeper and the night grew closer, the world seemed to have grown dark with its thinking. Of late Helen had ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... is an initiation of a new era of religious teaching. The light is breaking and the full illumination is only ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... decadents and roues, after a period of initiation somewhat longer than that which falls to the lot of ordinary mortals, behaved very gallantly in ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... spent in irrelevant interbranch wrangling is precious time taken from the intelligent initiation and adoption of coherent policies for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... thirty days after the Copyright Royalty Tribunal has been constituted in accordance with section 802, the Chairman of the Tribunal shall cause notice to be published in the Federal Register of the initiation of proceedings for the purpose of determining reasonable terms and rates of royalty payments for the activities specified by subsection (d) with respect to published nondramatic musical works and ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America: - contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. • Library of Congress Copyright Office

... were already advanced in reading, writing, and reckoning. Although many of the boys remained in the lower school as pupils, a considerable number of students began the study of grammar with the new master, Father Francisco Vicente Puche, who as an initiation to the studies, and as a welcome to the bishop, gave with his students a two-hours' dramatic representation in the cathedral, in honor of his Lordship, which proved most agreeable, learned, dignified, and devout, and gave extraordinary pleasure ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... the sacrifice of every moral virtue. There were many who pretended to confess or to relate the ceremonies of this abhorred society. It was asserted, "that a new-born infant, entirely covered over with flour, was presented, like some mystic symbol of initiation, to the knife of the proselyte, who unknowingly inflicted many a secret and mortal wound on the innocent victim of his error; that as soon as the cruel deed was perpetrated, the sectaries drank up the blood, greedily tore asunder the quivering members, and pledged themselves to eternal secrecy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... will give one man a preferential right, but at the same time they will give other men of the same group a secondary right to her. Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe. The initiation in regard to establishing the relationship of Piraungaru between a man and a woman must be taken by the elder brothers, but the arrangement must receive the sanction of the old men of the group before it can take ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... we were teaching broke in with eager explanations. "Oh, he was such a great one! He had received the Initiation. There will be a grand ceremonial, grander than ever you have!" Then they told us how this great one had been initiated into the Hindu mysteries by his family priest, and that the mystical benefits accruing from this initiation were to be caused ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... day was indeed a miserable initiation into the hitherto unknown horrors of the sea, and no greater contrast could be possible than the calm of the night before and that wretched Sunday. It rained and blew great guns all day long, and by 6 P.M. the weather culminated in a severe gale, with the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... the deity should accept it in a friendly spirit, a sacrifice was proper. In the numerous cases in which some person or some object was to be consecrated to the deity a sacrifice was necessary in order to secure his good will; the ordination of temple-ministers, or the initiation of the young into the tribe, demanded some consecrative sacrifice. And, on the other hand, there was equal necessity for a sacrifice, a deconsecrative or liberative ceremony, when the relation of consecration ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... and the universe, and between the human soul and the material world. They deny also the possibility of Nirvana or the absorption and extinction of the human soul in the divine essence. They destroy their thread at initiation, and also wear red clothes like the Sivite devotees, and like them also they carry a staff and water-pot. The tilak of the Madhavacharyas is said to consist of two white lines down the forehead ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Italy sublime. Nowhere do the Alps exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... however, they made rather more of a ceremony of the initiation of their new order. The prospective members retired into the wood above the garden, and in strict privacy took an oath of secrecy and service. Then, with Edith's fountain pen filled for the occasion with red ink, they inscribed their autographs on a piece of ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... technical terms connected with the well known mystery-teaching of antiquity? What does St. Paul mean when he says, 'We speak wisdom among them which are perfect'—a well known technical term for the men at a certain stage of initiation? Again and again he uses terms of the same sort; he speaks of 'the wisdom of God in mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world began, and which none even of the princes of this world know'—a statement which could not by any possibility have been truthfully made if he ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... shake of the head, "that the present leaders of literary thought with critical tendencies are going to have the hardest kind of a time when they cross the river and apply for admission to the Ghost Club. I don't ask for any better fun than that of watching from a safe distance the initiation ceremonies of the next dozen who go over. And as an Englishman, sir, who thoroughly believes in and admires Lord Wolseley, if I were out of jail and able to do it, I'd write him a letter, and warn him that he would better revise his estimates of certain famous soldiers no longer ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... overlooked the forest-mantled town. The first story of the building contained the smoking, dining, billiard and two drawing rooms. Above were sleeping chambers and private studies for the students, and annexed to the house proper was a small stone structure built purposely for the initiation of the new members. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... corridor ran into another chamber. "This is a place of initiation into some mystery," the torch-bearer said. "Wouldst see?" and he pointed across the room to an opening in the wall near the floor, scarce large enough for the body of a man to worm its way through. "Look thou beyond it," and the guide held ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... reunited in a single science (compare Rep.). At first immortality means only the succession of existences; even knowledge comes and goes. Then follows, in the language of the mysteries, a higher and a higher degree of initiation; at last we arrive at the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or changing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by this world, or in or out of this world, but an aspect of the divine, extending over all things, and having no limit of space or time: this is the highest knowledge ...
— Symposium • Plato

... north of such part will then say, "The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation completely deprives them of it as to all the States initiating it. The point is not that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but that while the offer is equally made to all, the more northern shall by such initiation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... "It's an initiation for one of our school societies and it must be always a secret—never tell any one we had anything to do ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... original calculation, might have become possible, but that had not really ripened and flowered. He met the decent family eyes across the table, met them afterwards in the music-room, but only to read in them still what he had learned to read during his first months, the time of over-anxious initiation, a kind of apprehension in which the terms and conditions were finally fixed and absolute. This directed regard rested at its ease, but it neither lingered nor penetrated, and was, to the Prince's fancy, much of the same order as any glance directed, for due attention, from the same quarter, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... largely determined by circumstances, such as the unregulated enthusiasm of the mob, the spite of the scribes at Capernaum, or the anger of Herod's court at Tiberias. Towards the end of the ministry in Galilee our Lord devoted Himself to the deeper instruction of His Apostles and their initiation into the mystery of His death (vii. 24 ff.; viii. 27 ff.). For such teaching the mountain slopes of Lebanon and Hermon afforded scenes ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... little Switzerland—the huge scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized, to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... Since then these essays have enlightened and amused each succeeding generation. Of the two, Addison's is the greater name, but Steele was the more innovating spirit, for it is to him, and not to Addison, that the conception and initiation of the plan of the celebrated papers is due. Steele had had a predecessor in Defoe, whose Review had been in existence since 1704, but the more airy graces which characterized the Tatler and the Spectator gave the "lucubrations" of "Isaac Bickerstaffe" ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... years that he had read no law, as large a disclaimer might have been conscientiously made by many students at Inns of Court beside him. But it is evident that he intended to follow the profession of the law, and took the orthodox steps towards initiation into it, having commenced, as was usual, with admission into an Inn of Chancery, the bygone little collection of brick tenements in Newcastle-street. There is no reason to suppose that he was ever called to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... the sitting-room, and request Lorenzo to dismiss the hermit. As soon as he was departed, she re-appeared amongst them as serene and calm as usual; and to no one but to her confessor did she mention the circumstance. Yet it was a most awful moment, that first initiation into the supernatural world, that first contact with the powers of darkness, that opening of the visible war between her and the great enemy. No wonder that she was habitually silent; her soul must have lived in very close communion with the ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... you never learn to be an artist, Denham? The modern picture should be a painted quatrain, with colours for words—words which say nothing, because everything has been said, but which suggest all that has been felt and dreamed. Art is the initiation into a mood, a mystery—a sphinx whose riddle every one can answer, yet ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter

... not strong enough to establish beneficiary systems. Moreover, at many points the establishment of local benefits conflicted with the success of the national organizations. A local union was usually forced to impose certain restrictions upon claimants of benefits, either an initiation fee or a requisite term of membership, in order to protect its funds. Such limitations on the full participation of all members in the benefits of membership militated severely against the carrying out of the prime function of the national unions—the nationalization of membership. ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... What phenomenon accompanies the initiation of the savage into humanity? However far we look back into history the phenomenon is identical among all people who have shaken off the slavery of the animal state: the love of appearance, the inclination ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the books, &c. Cf. Sec. 129 and notes. The books probably contained the formulae of initiation, or the hymns which were chanted by some Dionysiac societies. The service described here is probably that of the combined worship of Dionysus-Sabazios and ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... the toga virilis of the Romans. The German youth were presented with the shield and spear probably at twelve or fifteen years of age. This early initiation into the business of arms gave them that warlike character for which they were so celebrated. Thus, Seneca (Epist. 46) says, "A native of Germany brandishes, while yet a boy, his slender javelin." And again (in his book on Anger, i. 11), "Who are braver than the Germans?—who more impetuous ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... J.'s world was shattered. We need not enter into details in this matter, but a woman of this type needs finesse in the initiation into marriage more than at any other time. Cave-man style outraged her every fiber, and the man was dumbfounded at her reaction. Though he tried to make amends his very effort and lack of understanding ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... agreed joyfully to forward the funds for his journey and to make arrangements for his stay in Rangoon before proceeding to Mandalay, where he was to be received as a Buddhist priest after a certain course of initiation. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... proclamation[9] declaring reciprocal suspension in the United States. It is most gratifying to bear testimony to the earnest spirit in which the Government of the Queen Regent has met our efforts to avert the initiation of commercial discriminations and reprisals, which are ever disastrous to the material interests and the political good will of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... the heads were watched by young boys of from six to ten years old, who, for the whole time the process of drying occupied—from seven to ten days—were never allowed to step out of the hall, or neglect their sacred trust. This was the commencement of their initiation in the endurance of hardships, that they also might become warriors. Night after night the men used to meet in front of the hall, dancing and singing, and beating their gongs. They used to address their heads, taunting them, telling them that they were their slaves, and that they must ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... strange, whizzing, whirring noise from the scrub round. The women and children shrank together, for the sudden, uncanny noise frightened them. And they knew that it was made by the spirits who were coming to assist at the initiation of the boys into young manhood. The noise really sounded, if you had not the dread of spirits in your mind, just as if some one had a circular piece of wood at the end of a string and were whirling it ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker

... the devil, forms a conception or a fantastic image of those profound symbols? To fathom them is the task of our whole lifetime, but the developing man is warned at the very beginning of an all-disposing higher power, and I doubt if the same end could be reached by early initiation into the mysteries of the rule of three or into the wisdom of AEsop's fables. The remarkable part of it was, to be sure, that in my imagination Luther came to stand almost directly beside Moses and Jesus Christ, but without doubt the reason was that his thundering "What is that?" ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... honour by these revelations. Some will say that everything is of my own invention, and that it is not the true doctrine, others that I only said what one had already known. I own that I am not very learned in cabalistic lore, my master having perished at the beginning of my initiation. But, little as I have learned of his craft, it makes me vehemently suspect that all of it ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... member of the executive committee responsible for this step on behalf of the town, I am indebted for the following account for which I asked of its initiation: ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... order; but never take the children behind the scenes, and let them hear the creaking of your mental machinery. You must be infallible. You must be in the secret of the mystery, and admit your audience on somewhat unequal terms; they should have no creeping doubts as to your complete initiation into the secrets of the happenings ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... are ever the same; therefore, the same experiences herein narrated are applicable to Neophytes seeking soul initiation to-day as they were in the days of The Temple of Isis, and if the veil of Isis could be raised for one single moment the world would be startled ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... knowledge brings home to us the great doctrine of Maya, the transitoriness and unreality of earthly things, the utterly deceptive nature of appearances! When the candidate for initiation sees (not merely believes, remember, but actually sees) that what has always before seemed to him empty space is in reality a solid mass of inconceivable density, and that the matter which has appeared ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... were, although most unjustly treated, still guilty, in a certain sense, of the extraordinary charges brought against them. It seems at least to be tolerably certain that during their long residence in the East they had acquired the Oriental secrets of initiation into societies which taught the old serpent-lore of eritis sicut Deus, and positive knowledge; the ultimate secret, being the absolute nothingness of all faith, creeds, laws, ties, or rules to him who is capable of rising above them and of drawing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... close this introductory explanation with two remarks, made by the distinguished musician, mechanician, and inventor, Theobald Boehm, of Munich, whose inventions were not limited to the flute which bears his name, but include the initiation of an important change in the modern pianoforte, as made in America and Germany. Of priority of invention he says, in a letter to an English friend, "If it were desirable to analyze all the inventions which have been brought ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... received a lasting impetus by the wise initiation of a much-abused man, Charles II., who founded the Royal Society of London, and also the Royal Observatory of Greeenwich, where he established Flamsteed as first Astronomer Royal, especially for lunar and stellar observations ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... the recruiting was not confined to Paul and his chums. Ted Slavin and Ward Kenwood were just as vigorously employed; and several times in the course of the day the rivals ran across each other while engaged in thus drumming up new subjects for initiation. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this occasion as I had been out of it then. At ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... heated" were the fearful words which greeted Mr. Verdant Green on his initiation into a spoof Lodge of Freemasonry at Oxford. This was one of the many "rags" of which he was the butt during his days at ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... the crater of Etna. Even though the shattered official governments now clamoured for peace, bands of irreconcilables and invincible patriots, usurpers, adventurers, and political desperadoes, were everywhere in possession of the simple apparatus for the disengagement of atomic energy and the initiation of new centres of destruction. The stuff exercised an irresistible fascination upon a certain type of mind. Why should any one give in while he can still destroy his enemies? Surrender? While there is still a chance of blowing them ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... "your friend must be one of us!"—and, rapping on the table, he proposed Bartley's name. In that simple time the club voted viva voce on proposed members, and Bartley found himself elected by acclamation, and in the act of paying over his initiation fee to the treasurer, before he had well realized the honor done him. Everybody near him shook his hand, and offered to be of service to him. Much of this cordiality was merely collective good feeling; something of it might be justly attributed to the punch; but the greater part was honest. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... usual choice of pupils, men of some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men of birth and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi—men with just enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the sake of which they were ready to efface their own individuality. Among them, retiring often to the Villa of the Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he worked at his fugitive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present hour, and ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... special jurisdiction in different localities. In order not to be confounded with the vulgar mechanics who could only use the hammer and the trowel, the Freemasons invented signs of mutual recognition and certain ceremonies of initiation. A traditionary secret was handed down, revealed to the initiated, and that only according to the degrees they had attained. They adopted for symbols the square, the level, the compass, and the hammer. In ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... peculiarities and mannerisms, to the exaggeration of special features that have attracted attention in their work, and which have a factitious value set upon them by the public, as they are taken to be the signs and passwords of initiation into the new school. But, lying deeper than these, there is a danger to Pre-Raphaelitism from the tendency to insist on too literal an application of its own principles. The best principles will not include ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... into vital relation with him, to obey him is the only way to be one with him. The relation between him and us is an absolute one; it can nohow begin to live but in obedience: it is obedience. There can be no truth, no reality, in any initiation of atonement with him, that is not obedience. What! have I the poorest notion of a God, and dare think of entering into relations with him, the very first of which is not that what he saith, I will do? The thing is ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... Hunt says: "The capacity of the alcohols for impairment of functions and the initiation and promotion of organic lesions in vital parts, is unsurpassed by any record in the whole range of medicine. The facts as to this are so indisputable, and so far granted by the profession, as to be no longer debatable. Changes in stomach ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... next day, on the occasion of their first tea together, he realised fully that introduction—to the children at any rate— involved a kind of initiation. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... tenderness with which the childless women of the harem caress the babies of their happier rivals. But the sentimentalist moved by this display of family feeling would do well to consider the lives of these much-petted children. Ignorance, unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes. Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran, and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible to western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make perfectly comprehensible ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... Somebody remembered that certain cheechalkos had gone to bed at midnight. Now this was unprecedented, even impertinent. If the river is not open by the middle of May, your Sour-dough may go to bed—only he doesn't. Still, he may do as he lists. But your cheechalko—why, this is the hour of his initiation. It was as if a man should yawn at his marriage or refuse to sleep at his funeral. The offenders were some of those Woodworth fellows, who, with a dozen or so others, had built shacks below "the street" yet ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... going to have some sort of an initiation in a secret society!" exclaimed Alice. "Tell me about it, Bart, I'll never breathe a word of it, really ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... Dante as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him (and that in the midst of affairs demanding practical ability and presence of mind) capable of a depth of contemplative abstraction, equalling that of a Soofi who has passed the fourth step of initiation. It enables us in some sort to see how, from being the slave of his imaginative faculty, he rose by self-culture and force of will to that mastery of it which is art. We comprehend the Commedia better when we know that Dante could be an active, clear-headed politician and a mystic at the same time. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... stay any longer on the scene of his collapse and defeat, and went towards the Palais Royal. He did not know the topography of his quarter yet, and was obliged to ask his way. Then he went to Very's and ordered dinner by way of an initiation into the pleasures of Paris, and a solace for his discouragement. A bottle of Bordeaux, oysters from Ostend, a dish of fish, a partridge, a dish of macaroni and dessert,—this was the ne plus ultra of his desire. He enjoyed this little debauch, studying the while how to give the Marquise ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Apprenticeship and Wandering Years that I would especially refer, as these volumes contain the sum of the Sage's observations during a long life, as to what Man should do, under present circumstances, to obtain mastery over outward, through an initiation into inward life, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... ideas of a man's life, we will commence with the child. Nothing, as far as I have been able to make out, happens to him, for fetish reasons, when he first appears on the scene. He receives at birth, as is usual, a name which is changed for another on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch doctor, with certain scars on the face. These scars run from the root of the nose across the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... synods, as we have seen, make no distinction whatever in their statistical reports between occasional communicants and actual members of the congregation. Admission to membership should take place by vote of the congregation or at least of the Church Council. There should likewise be some rite of initiation. In the case of adults who come from other congregations it need not and should not be a confirmation service, but it should at least be a public introduction of the candidate into the fellowship of the congregation with which he desires to become ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... to initiation, and the novice was taken there that she might recognise solemnly what she was about ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... writer, could hardly have spoken better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... if excusing his political interludes, renewed his pledge to devote all his powers to poetry as soon, as they should be fully ripe. To complete his education as a poet, he wanted initiation into affairs. Here was an opening far beyond any he had ever dreamed of. The sacrifice of time and precious eyesight which he was to make was costly, but it was not pure waste; it would be partly returned to him in a ripened experience ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... its attributes discursively, it was at the period of its original initiation in London my privilege to be present; nor must I omit to graphically allude to my belief, not choosing to be otherwise than candid with my first impressions, that I had never listened to anything which so rapturously illustrated the spirit of those ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater

... at a time among the Indians near Victoria, while twenty or thirty others stood, with loaded muskets, keeping guard all round the place to prevent them doing any mischief. Although a clever medicine man becomes of great importance in his tribe, his post is no sinecure either before or after his initiation. If he should be seen by anyone while he is communing with the spirits in the woods, he is killed or commits suicide, while if he fails in the cure of any man he is liable to be put to death, on the assumption that he did not ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... of Eleusis.—What follows at Eleusis? The "mysteries" are "mysteries" still; we cannot claim initiation and reveal them. There seem to be manifold sacrifices of a symbolic significance, the tasting of sacred "portions" of food and drink—a dim foreshadowing of the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist; especially in the great hall of the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... authorities scarcely yet appreciated at their full value. Both were scholars in the Ecole des Chartes, the only school of accurate historical instruction in the world; and for any possibility of using fruitfully the mass of details they have brought to light I am indebted to my initiation by M. and Madame James Darmesteter into the same principles of organised research. The list of Authorities in the Appendix will show rather more fully a debt to M. de Beaurepaire which can never be ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... nursery, kitchen and parlor group in which we live. We try to teach him the behavior required by these surroundings. Two of the heaviest crosses to both the child and mother lie in his bi- and tri-daily difficulties with clothing, and prolonged initiation to the sacred mysteries of the table. We seek, as best we may, to bend the new soul visiting this world to a correct fulfilment of the polite functions of our domestic shrine; and we succeed unhappily well. We rear a world of people who put manners before morals, conventions before principles, conformity ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... (the suitability of) the place; that of the mind is in abysmal stillness; that of associations is in their being with the virtuous; that of government is in its securing good order; that of (the conduct of) affairs is in its ability; and that of (the initiation of) any movement is in ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze

... advice if followed conscientiously by you would go to make you really fit for initiation into the more advanced stages of mastery. Take it to heart by all means. Be convinced, the man who looks for quick results and a royal road to the mastery of Mental Science breaks down in frequent despair at ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... signifies reason and wisdom, thou whose temple is an eternal lesson of conscience and truth, I come late to the threshold of thy mysteries; I bring to the foot of thy altar much remorse. Ere finding thee, I have had to make infinite search. The initiation which thou didst confer by a smile upon the Athenian at his birth I have acquired by force of reflection ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... possession of all the world. But though a belief, when it prevails, may at last be adopted by the whole of a generation, it rarely happens that a widespread conviction has grown up spontaneously among the multitude. "The initiation," it has been said, "of all wise or noble things comes, and must come, from individuals; generally at first from some one individual," to which it ought surely to be added that the origination of a new folly or of a new form of baseness comes, and must in general come, at first from individuals ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Blanchard as an enemy to religion whom it is Robert's duty to take off. They lay wait for the minister and pistol him, the Illustrious Friend managing not only to avert all suspicion from themselves, but to throw it with capital consequences on a perfectly innocent person. After this initiation in blood Robert is fully reconciled to the "great work" and, going to Edinburgh, is led by his Illustrious Friend without difficulty into the series of plots against his brother which had to outsiders so strange an appearance, and which ended in a ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... creed or inward miraculous transformation of character by the profoundest of personal experiences. In all socialistic or Catholic churches—whether heathen, ethnic, or Christian—young people are admitted to membership after a definite period of training and an initiation by means of an impressive ritual. In all Protestant churches, initiation takes place as the result of personal experiences and mature convictions, and is therefore usually deferred until adult life has ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... the earliest representation of the symbol), with two serpents entwined round a staff (Jastrow, Pl. 4). From the earliest times the snake has been associated with mystic and magic power, and even today, among native races, it plays a part in the initiation of medicine men. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... negotiation—materials which will in themselves offer sufficient comment on the theories of Henry Adams, and in less degree of Bancroft—it is best to note here the fallacy in C.F. Adams' main thesis. If the analysis given in the preceding chapter of the initiation and duration of Seward's "foreign war policy" is correct, then the Declaration of Paris negotiation had no essential relation whatever to that policy. The instructions to Adams were sent to eight other Ministers. Is ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... and the administration of a great estate had devolved upon him. His desire was to do his duty by it, and he had to learn how, that prospect not having been prepared for in his education, further than by initiation in the field-sports ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... adoption he passes out of it and joins another by means of a legal fiction[2]. The other kind of association, to which the name age-grades is applied, is composed of a series of grades, through which, concomitantly with the performance of the rites of initiation obligatory on every male member of the community, each man passes in succession, until he attains the highest. In the rare cases where an individual fails to qualify for the grade into which his coevals pass, and remains in the grade of "youth" or even lower grades, he is by birth a ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... this time, accomplished their initiation into the process of walking under a knapsack, with the most complete and encouraging success. You, who in these days of vehement bustle, business, and competition, can still find time to travel for pleasure alone—you, who have yet to become emancipated from the thraldom of railways, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... Cockpaine, my initiation into Edinburgh life was through an acquaintance with the noted publishing house of the Messrs. Black, who were then getting out their splendid edition of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... said, more generally known as "the Mollies." They were a narrowly sectarian institution and they had the almost blasphemous rule that nobody but a Catholic frequenting the Sacraments could remain a member. They had their own ritual and initiation ceremony, founded on the Orange and Masonic precedents, and had their secret signs and passwords. It is possible that they were at first intended to be a Catholic protection society in Ulster at the end of the eighteenth century to combat the aggressiveness and ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... situation and surroundings of that people, the elements of force and action, for good or evil, no individual agency and no combination of men can impart the power which they lack. All that was required among the Southern people, for the initiation of this gigantic rebellion, was some universal animating idea, capable of binding them together in unanimous accord, imparting the necessary force and velocity in the direction of treason, when started and impelled by the efforts of their leading men. Slavery ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... not," said his explanatory message, "that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but that while the offer is equally made to all, the more northern shall, by such initiation, make it certain to the more southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in their proposed Confederacy. I say 'initiation' because, in my judgment, gradual, and not sudden, emancipation ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... alleged, had once been a member of a secret political society of Italy; he had taken the oath of initiation; his failure to come to the aid of that country when in power constituted him a traitor to his oath and one doomed to death; the act of Orsini was apparently the work of the society. That Napoleon was deeply moved by the attempted assassination is certain, and the ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... the arts. In a niche at the farther end of the hall were painted the divine Triad of Thebes, with Rameses I. and his son Seti, who approached them with offerings. The priests were placed with strict regard to their rank, and the order of initiation. Pentaur's was the lowest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... eternal." "This glory," he added, "was reserved for the Liberating Army, whose efforts have snatched the victims of tyranny from its hands." Thus impudently did he arrogate to himself a share, at any rate, in the initiation of a project which Lord Cochrane, knowing that he would oppose it, had purposely kept secret from him, and assign the whole merit of its completion to the army which his vacillation and incompetence were holding ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... world, man is at first outside the exciting causes, whereas he can only experience the images of myths when he is within the corresponding spiritual occurrences. In order, however, to be within them, he must have gone through initiation. Then the spiritual occurrences within which he is perceiving are, as it were, illustrated by the myth-images. Any one who cannot take the mythical element as such illustration of real spiritual occurrences, has not yet attained to the ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... they were forced to take a roundabout trail over the prairie; the cattle, moreover, could be driven only at a slow pace; but even twenty-odd miles a day was more than a Maine backwoodsman enjoyed as initiation in horsemanship. Dow was mounted on an excellent trained horse, and being young and supple was able to do his share in spite of his discomfort. But the mare that had been allotted to Sewall happened also to be a tenderfoot, and they did not play a conspicuous role in ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... firm. At the expiration of that period they were admitted to a noviciate, in which they were bound to uninterrupted silence, and heard the lectures of the master, while he was himself concealed from their view by a curtain. They were then received to initiation, and required to deliver over their property to the common stock. They were admitted to intercourse with the master. They were invited to a participation of the most obscure theories, and the abstrusest problems. If however in this stage of their progress they were ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... philological criticism, unless everybody had known that the scribes in convents who copied the classics were famous for committing endless blunders in their transcriptions. Thus, his good fortune stood steadfastly by him all through his extraordinary forgery; at its initiation as well as during the subsequent ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... the religious world from Little Bethel to St. Peter's." Don dropped into an armchair and began to load his pipe from the Mycenaean vase. "Some of your facts are startlingly novel. For instance, where on earth did you get hold of that idea about the initiation of Christ by the Essenes at Lake Moeris ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... initiation to Fenris," I said. "He got squirted by a tread-snail almost as soon as he got off the ship. They have him at the spaceport hospital; it'll be 2400 before they get all the poison sweated out ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... unseen; yet it was solely on account of a strange psychical experience which chanced to myself when I stood upon the threshold of what is called 'life' that I found myself producing my first book, "A Romance of Two Worlds." It was a rash experiment, but it was the direct result of an initiation into some few of the truths behind the veil of the Seeming Real. I did not then know why I was selected for such an 'initiation'—and I do not know even now. It arose quite naturally out of a series of ordinary events which might happen to anyone. I was not compelled ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... necessary for initiation as a citizen of the republic was cutting off the long hair universally worn by the Sioux, and if any act could be taken as indicative of sincerity, this one seemed to be conclusive. It is quite as much of a sacrifice for an Indian to cut off his hair as it would be for a young lady in society possessed ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... whose knowledge of anatomy was considerable, had that passion for the art of medicine which is almost inseparable from the pursuit of natural philosophy. At the age of twenty-four he had sought (in Germany) to obtain initiation into the brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, but unluckily could not discover any member of the society to introduce him. "He desired," says Cousin, "to assure the health of man, diminish his ills, extend his existence. He was terrified by the rapid and almost momentary passage of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... reconciling it to his circumstances: his own belief and priestly wiles, readily effected the solution. The conceit of dreams, according to the votary's wishes, was so powerfully promoted by the preparatory initiation he had undergone, that it would have been somewhat extraordinary had he been altogether disappointed. He was generally anxious to increase the fame of his divinity by his dream, and possessed a high veneration and deep impression ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... the increase of Carbonarism. You will probably ask me what Carbonarism means. I am not initiated in the secret of the Carbonari; but as far as I can understand, this sect or secret society has its mysteries like modern Free-masonry or like the Orphics of old, and several progressive degrees of initiation are required. Its secret object is said to be the emancipation of Italy from a foreign despotism and the forming of a government purely national. This is the reason why this sect is regarded with as much ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... disgraceful exile. It was to such a home of virtue, of intelligence, of the purest and best affections, that he was introduced after a long course of contamination in the lowest scenes of French corruption, which had succeeded an equally demoralising initiation into the less graceful vices of the Court of George the First. The inestimable privilege came too late in one sense. Lord Lovat had gained nothing but wariness by the lapse of years; but the benefit to his worldly ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... who has been deputed to carry a dead body to burial, holds himself unclean until he has thoroughly washed himself in water prepared for the purpose by certain ceremonies.[127-2] A bath was an indispensable step in the mysteries of Mithras, the initiation at Eleusis, the meda worship of the Algonkins, the Busk of the Creeks, the ceremonials of religion everywhere. Baptism was at first always immersion. It was a bath meant to solemnize the reception of the child into the guild of mankind, drawn from the prior ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... the first pioneering was done by devoted Franciscans and Jesuits, their chiefest concern the souls of the gentile Indians. In similar wise, the pioneering of northern Arizona had its initiation in a hope of the Mormon Church for conversion of the Indians of the canyons and plains. In neither case was there the desired degree of success, but each period has brought to us many stories of heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... slashes of Hanover County, Virginia, and he was to be seen lounging about the hotels, fashionably, yet shabbily, dressed, generally wearing soiled white kid gloves and a white cravat. It was considered the proper thing to introduce strangers to the Beau, who thereupon unblushingly demanded his initiation fee, and his impudence sometimes secured him a generous sum. He was always ready to pilot his victims to gambling-houses and other questionable resorts, and for a quarter of a century he lived on the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... appointed four of its own members to superintend the work: Jean Dumas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglache, to whom my authors (canons both) attribute the choice of subjects, the placing of them, and the initiation of the workmen 'au sens veritable et plus eleve de la Bible ou des legendes, et portant quelque fois le simple savoir-faire de l'ouvrier jusqu'a la hauteur du ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... thousand wasn't very much—not nearly so much as he had counted on—still, ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars; besides, if the Gulwings did their work cannily the ten thousand ought to be merely a starter, an initiation fee, really, for the victim. Once he was enmeshed, trust Sig and Alf to trim him to his underwear; the machinery of the wire-tapping game was ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... baptism, with shuddering joy and gleeful splashes; staring, wondering, sometimes blushing and failing to follow, but not shrinking nor wounded; laughing, when convicted, at her own expense and feeling evidently that this at last was the high cold air of art, an initiation, a discipline that nothing could undo. Sherringham said he would see her home—he wanted to talk to her and she must walk away with him. "And it's understood then she may come back," he added to Madame Carre. "It's my affair of course. You'll take an interest ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... serious-minded of her ladies, in Masses and prayers—spending gloomy hours in her oratory with its death's head, which she always carried with her on her journeys. Such was the nun-like wife whom Louis XV. led to the altar shortly after he had entered his sixteenth year, and had already had his initiation into that career of vice which he pursued with few intervals to ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... proverbs, taken from ancient tradition, but beautifully woven into a purer faith, which taught that the healthy joys of life, and all knowledge of divine truth, should be given not to a few kings or priests, a few favored with initiation into divine mysteries, as of old, but to the whole world; for the spirit of Christianity was identical with the genius of republicanism. As taught by our Lord Jesus Christ, it was eminently healthy, brave-hearted, and joyous. It did not commend celibacy, nor excess of fasting, nor too long prayers, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Just as in some circles the effort is, who shall make the best puns (horibile dictu!), or the best charades, in the salon of Port Royal the amusement was to fabricate maxims. La Rochefoucauld said, "L'envie de faire des maximes se gagne comme la rhume." So far from claiming for himself the initiation of this form of writing, he accuses Jacques Esprit, another habitue of Madame de Sable's salon, of having excited in him the taste for maxims, in order to trouble his repose. The said Esprit was an academician, and had been a frequenter ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... find his opinion anticipated; it is natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive. Judgment, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table-book. Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have therefore shewn so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... judiciary independent of political influences. In these matters the irresponsible system of the United States has not been able to effect any needful reforms. Such measures can be best carried by ministers having the initiation and direction of legislation and must necessarily be retarded when power is divided among several authorities having no unity of policy ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... and in the sayings of Greek philosophers like Empedocles and Pythagoras; as also by Cicero, in his remark that the wise men of old used to teach that we come into this world to pay the penalty of crime committed in another state of existence—a doctrine which formed part of the initiation into the mysteries.[3] And Vanini—whom his contemporaries burned, finding that an easier task than to confute him—puts the same thing in a very forcible way. Man, he says, is so full of every kind of misery that, were it not repugnant ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... now states that the Constitution having been adopted, it will be necessary for those wishing to become members to sign it (and pay the initiation fee, if required by the Constitution), and suggests, if the assembly is a large one, that a recess be taken for the purpose. A motion is then made to take a recess for say ten minutes, or until the Constitution is signed. The constitution being ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert

... stuff. I want to improve the old condition of forgetfulness. That was what knocked friend Virgil, or was it Cicero? I loved the stories and forgot the period. But I am finished for this evening, dear, and you know we have some initiation stunts to take part in. I am glad they are so simple. It seems to me each year the nonsense gets ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... is not a virtue. It is a means of self-preservation—without this degree of initiation into the boundless area of universal, or cosmic consciousness, we may not escape ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... meet to-night, Dave," said Buster Beggs on Friday morning. "Big affair—initiation of six new members. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... condition wherein absolutely no authority is imposed upon any individual, where no requirement of any kind is made against the will of any member—man, woman, or child; where everything is left to individual initiation. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy









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