Gratillonius' daughter, Julia, is baptised by immersion:
"She drew her hair over her shoulders, tightly across her breasts, and kept her head lowered. In Ys you had not been ashamed of your body; Ys lay drowned." (p. 164)
Ys was right about that, at least. One of our neighbours, a Wiccan high priest, told me that paganism is the only religion where men and women worship together naked. When I relayed his remark to my daughter, Aileen, she retorted, "And it will continue to be the only religion where men and women worship together naked!"
What counts as appropriate is entirely a matter of which tradition we are practising in. A woman shouted something about Christ at an Anglican funeral probably because she was used to attending meetings where shouting out like that would have been an expected and acceptable response. Someone who had experience of Pure Land Buddhism was shocked, when entering our meditation hall, to see people sitting for meditation with their backs to the Buddha.
In a Jain Temple, I saw a life-size statue of an entirely unclothed man - sky-clad. However, nakedness is indeed unacceptable in most traditions.
7 comments:
"When in Rome..."
Kaor, Paul!
Nonsense, real pagan religions of the past, not the Wiccan absurdities of today, had priests and worshipers who dressed in clothing. That "sky clad" stuff goes back only to Gerald Gardner and his sexual kinks.
Ad astra! Sean
In Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast", in one of the alternate earths the main characters visit, the predominant version of Christianity worships naked to symbolize the innocence of pre-fall humanity.
I doubt any Christian sect in real history did that & if they did they would have had to be rather secretive about it to avoid persecution.
There were pagan rites that were done naked, but not many of them. Certain festivals -- the Saturnalia, sometimes, and the vine-harvest, which was sacred to Bacchus and Venus Obsequens ("Venus the Indulgent").
Tho' that was more like a really wild party with religious overtones.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: Quite true, Christianity has been plagued with numerous heretical and very eccentric sects. Breaking away from Catholicism tends to do that!
Mr. Stirling: Well, I was thinking of how the depictions I've seen of pagan religious rites from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, etc., all shows the priests and worshipers as clothed, not "sky clad."
But I agree some orgiastic cults were as you said, wild parties with some religious connotations. You reminded me of how, during the Late Republic, foreign cults were gaining some devotees in Rome. And that many Romans regarded them with suspicion and disdain.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: note that -gods- were often shown naked; so were heroes.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, we have many Greco-Roman nude statues of gods and heroes. But I had in mind how the depictions I've seen of religious rites shows the priests and worshipers as clothed.
Ad astra! Sean
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