“Little rituals are anchors; happiness lives where rituals are kept.”

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are

&quot;John Kerry had sex in coffins hundreds of times in Satanic ritual&quot; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=135&amp;v=5aeLkXDvO-g, September 2013 <br class="br">2013

As quoted in Infinity in Your Hand : A Guide for the Spiritually Curious (1994) by William H. Houff, p. 151
Context: Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it.

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are
Context: If something becomes common enough to turn into a ritual, and then starts to involve really large numbers of people, that's when the ritual becomes something else. It becomes widespread enough to affect the general agreement we all share. So, that's when the responsibility for running it goes out of your hands to be taken over by the institutions set up to run the rituals that matter on a regular basis, so that people can have clear rules and regulations to follow if they decide to get up to that particular ritual. The institutions take the admin out of daily life and run it for you: banking, government, sewage, tax collecting. Or, if you break the rules and regulations, one institution can take you out of daily life. This one: (James Burke displays a trial.) In every community, the law -- whether it's dressed up like this or the village elders telling you what the local custom is -- the law is all those rules I was on about earlier. I suppose what institutions like this do, most of all, is the dirty work. While they're putting them away here in the law court, for instance, that leaves us free to get on with making money, having a career, and avoiding the social responsibilities that these people have to deal with. And after a few centuries of this buck-passing, the institutions get big and powerful, and reach into everybody's lives so much they become hard to alter and virtually impossible to get rid of.

Letter to Lambertus Grunnius (August 1516), publised in Life and Letters of Erasmus : Lectures delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1894) http://books.google.com/books?id=ussXAAAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA180&amp;lpg=PA180&amp;dq=%22is+no+discipline+and+which+are+worse+than+brothels%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=PnJjrkSLNB&amp;sig=JPY0PhTf2YgYwJlf3uH2eTvCJeA&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=BGwXTNqTA5XANu6_pJ8L&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=1&amp;ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=%22is%20no%20discipline%20and%20which%20are%20worse%20than%20brothels%22&amp;f=false edited by James Anthony Froude, p. 180 <br class="br">Context: There are monasteries where there is no discipline, and which are worse than brothels — ut prae his lupanaria sint et magis sobria et magis pudica. There are others where religion is nothing but ritual; and these are worse than the first, for the Spirit of God is not in them, and they are inflated with self-righteousness. There are those, again, where the brethren are so sick of the imposture that they keep it up only to deceive the vulgar. The houses are rare indeed where the rule is seriously observed, and even in these few, if you look to the bottom, you will find small sincerity. But there is craft, and plenty of it — craft enough to impose on mature men, not to say innocent boys; and this is called profession. Suppose a house where all is as it ought to be, you have no security that it will continue so. A good superior may be followed by a fool or a tyrant, or an infected brother may introduce a moral plague. True, in extreme cases a monk may change his house, or even may change his order, but leave is rarely given. There is always a suspicion of something wrong, and on the least complaint such a person is sent back.

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 1, section 1 (p. 399; opening words)

"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris", Ch. 4, p. 122
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Source: Claimed By Shadow

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 60 “In Preparation for Violence” (p. 323)