“Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.”

Diwali does not end when the lights go out (2013)
Context: Hindus have a deep religious responsibility to be politically engaged. At the heart of this engagement must be a concern for the well-being of all. We ought to ensure that Hindus are known, in whatever part of the world we reside, Asia, Europe, Africa, North America and the Caribbean, for our commitment to overcoming suffering rooted in poverty, illiteracy, disease and violence. This commitment must become synonymous with what it means to be Hindu in our self-understanding and in the eyes of others. Politics, according to Mahatma Gandhi, is concerned with the well-being of human communities and anything concerned with human well-being must concern the person of religious commitment. Gandhi was deeply inspired by the life of Rama and especially by the nature of the community established after Rama's return from exile. He understood his life's purpose as working with others to make this community a reality.
Unfortunately, our religious traditions are known more for what we stand against than what we stand for. Religious identity has become negative rather than positive. We need to ensure that the positive dimension of our commitment is more prominent than the negative.
Let us celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, with joy. Let each celebration, however be a reminder and renewal of our profound obligations to help bring the lights of prosperity, knowledge, health and peace to our communities, nations and our world.

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt, p. 22-23.
Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt (1990)
Context: The proto-historic religious festivities [of the Maternal Megalith Culture] were strongly sexual in nature. They commonly culminated in what today is referred to as group sex and is socially regarded as extremely negative nowadays. In fact, the inherent potential of sexuality is to decrease social conflict, for indeed sexual activity not only gratifies, it pacifies as well. Our biological anthropological heritage disposes humanity to far more diverse varieties of sexual behaviours than our modern repressive culture permits or deems 'socially acceptable'. Abhorring them as unmentionable immoralities, white colonial masters often gladly took to using all the sexual customs of many autochtonous peoples as excuses to oppress and severely decimate the tribes in question, even doing so with a perfect peace of conscience. Islam's campaigners in the Orient, pioneers of Confucianism in China, and Caucasian Christians used their best endeavours to destroy root and branch of all surviving sexual rites they came across; that which had priorly been sacred practice became re-defined as sinful lewdness and perversion. These religious processes yielded widespread absence of such customs even in many primitive cultures by the modern period. Similar proto-historic customs [of the Maternal Megalith Culture] were wiped out in a comparable fashion [by Indo-Europeans], with structurally similar yet not identical reasonings given, for all patriarchal ethnics regard orgiastic indulgences as corruptive to their social fabric.

By Jonathan Jones.
Open thread: With the Orbit Olympic sculpture, is there too much public art?

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Jo Risalo
Shah Jo Risalo

Draft Constitution for Virginia (June 1776) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffcons.asp
1770s

Part XVIII
Sunday Up the River (1865)

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 513.
Reform

God Is An Iron (1977)
Context: "God is an iron," I said. "Did you know that?"
I turned to look at her and she was staring. She laughed experimentally, stopped when I failed to join in. "And I'm a pair of pants with a hole scorched through the ass?"
"If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. Or else He's the dumbest designer that ever lived."