# Ceremony

A ceremony is an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion.

## Quotes

* The two forms basic to American Indian literature are the ceremony and the myth. The ceremony is the ritual enactment of a specialized perception of a cosmic relationship, while the myth is a prose record of that relationship. [...] The formal structure of a ceremony is as holistic as the universe it purports to reflect and respond to, for the ceremony contains other forms such as incantation, song (dance), and prayer, and it is itself the central mode of literary expression from which all allied songs and stories derive. The Lakota view all the ceremonies as related to one another in various explicit and implicit ways, as though each were one face of a multifaceted prism. [...] The purpose of a ceremony is to integrate: to fuse the individual with his or her fellows, the community of people with that of the other kingdoms, and this larger communal group with the worlds beyond this one. A raising or expansion of individual consciousness naturally accompanies this process. The person sheds the isolated, individual personality and is restored to conscious harmony with the universe. In addition to this general purpose, each ceremony has its own specific purpose. This purpose usually varies from tribe to tribe and may be culture-specific.
** Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3. Chapter Two
* All men promiscuously do homage to God, but very few truly reverence him. On all hands there is abundance of ostentatious ceremonies, but sincerity of heart is rare.
** John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 2
* Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging—to a family, to a people, and to the land.
** Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8.
* That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred.
** Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8.
* What else can you offer the earth, which has everything? What else can you give but something of yourself? A homemade ceremony, a ceremony that makes a home.
** Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8.
* Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.
** Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 249. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8.
* What infinite heart's ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy? And what have kings that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
** William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 253.
* What art thou, thou idol ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
** William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 257.
* O ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?
** William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 261.
* When love begins to sicken and decay, It useth an enforced ceremony, There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
** William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act IV, scene 2, line 20.
* To feed were best at home; From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony; Meeting were bare without it.
** William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 4, line 36.
* Ceremony was but devised at first To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown; But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
** William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 2, line 15.
* And in the belly of this story the rituals and the ceremony are still growing.
** Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony. Viking Press. 1977. ISBN 978-0-670-20986-6.
* I discover that hardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.
** Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion : An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1918), Introductory, "Bootstrap-lifting".

## See also

* Baptism
* Coming of age
* Festival
* Marriage
* Mass
* Rite
* Worship