Those who repaired to Amphiaraus's oracle to supplicate his aid, laid themselves down in the manner we have just related, after several preparatory lustrations and sacrifices, on the skin of a ram slain in honour of the god, and awaited the dreams, which were to unfold the means of their different cures.

Lustrations and sacrifices were not, however, the only preparatives for inducing the visionary disposition.

Why, you may live To make a faire lustration for your faults And die a happie Convert.

Lustration before prayer was instituted as symbolic of the Believers' purification of heart before entering the presence of God, and provision for the ceremony made inside the Mosque.

This stuff, when not purified by the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumours that become independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory; one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages.

lustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The duty of the priests was confined to temple-ceremonial, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, lustrations and the like, the object of which was anything but the moral improvement of the individual.

Very likely however a sort of lustration has taken place; an oration was pronounced and the place again declared worthy of contributing to the recreation of the inhabitants.

She was chilled, and raw with the crude astringency of the soap, but she felt cleansed to the marrow of her bones, as though there had been some mystic quality in this lustration in running water, performed under the open sky.

"What could they add to such a Spartan lustration?" "Hurry, Hélène," said Sylvia.

It may perhaps be paralleled with the love of the Roman for processions, e.g. the lustrations of farm, city, and army, and with his instinctive desire for aid and counsel in all important matters both of public and private life, shown in the consilium of the paterfamilias and of the magistrate.

At night I was accurately surveyed from head to foot, lest I should have suffered any diminution of my charms in the adventures of the day; and was never permitted to sleep, till I had passed through the cosmetick discipline, part of which was a regular lustration performed with bean-flower water and May-dews; my hair was perfumed with variety of unguents, by some of which it was to be thickened, and by others to be curled.

On returning from the grave the property of the deceased is destroyed, the cocoa palms being cut down, and all who have taken part in the funeral undergo a lustration in the river.

Proof needs not here, for whether we compare That impious, idle, superstitious ware Of rites, lustrations, offerings, which before, In various ages, various countries bore, With Christian faith and virtues, we shall find 130 None answering the great ends of human kind, But this one rule of life, that shows us best How God may be appeased, and mortals blest.

Let his baptismal drops for us atone; Lustrations for offences not his own.

He said he would show me a spirit; but I must go out with him three nights running to a cross road at midnight, and perform divers ceremonies and lustrations which he proceeded to describe.

Lustrations were used, sacrifices were made, and the altar reeked, some say with human gore.

The candidate was at first called an aspirant, or seeker of the truth, and the initial ceremony which he underwent was a lustration or purification by water.

The coincidence to which I at present allude is this: in all these Mysteriesthe incipient ceremony of initiationthe first step taken by the candidate was a lustration or purification.

But the duty of the priests was confined merely to temple ceremonies, prayers, songs, sacrifices, processions, lustrations, and the like, all of which aimed at anything but the moral improvement of the individual.

LUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE A. TRAVER 1902 CONTENTS

This view derives support from the baptismal ceremony, in which after the public lustration one of the nymphs removes the scales from Ameto's eyes, while another, 'breathing between his lips, kindled within him a flame such as he had never felt before.'

1. I, the singer, entered into the house strewn with flowers, where stood upright the emerald drum, where awaiting the Giver of Life the nobles strewed flowers around, the place where the head is bowed for lustration, the house of corrupt odors, where the burning fragrant incense spreads and penetrates, intoxicating our souls in the presence of the Cause of All.

The place where the head is bowed for lustration.

It was almost impossible to believe that the little urchin had been able to reach the position he occupied without having been observed by any of the clerical attendants, of whom several were present, and still more difficult to suppose that no one of them had seen what we saw, standing immediately in front of the corpse while one of them performed the rite of lustration with holy water, the vessel containing which was held by another.