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Initiatory   Listen
adjective
Initiatory  adj.  
1.
Suitable for an introduction or beginning; introductory; prefatory; as, an initiatory step.
2.
Tending or serving to initiate; introducing by instruction, or by the use and application of symbols or ceremonies; elementary; rudimentary. "Some initiatory treatises in the law." "Two initiatory rites of the same general import can not exist together."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Initiatory" Quotes from Famous Books



... congratulation that the great Empire of Brazil has taken the initiatory step toward the abolition of slavery. Our relations with that Empire, always cordial, will naturally be made more so by this act. It is not too much to hope that the Government of Brazil may hereafter find it for its interest, as well as intrinsically right, to advance toward ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... initiatory stage of thought, of grasping any other theory which would apparently meet the case so well or be more satisfactory. They, of course, had not yet arrived at the idea that God is a personal Spirit whose nature is revealed ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the Revelation was a Kabalist; and the writer of the Gospel of Saint John a Gnostic or a Neoplatonist. The Gospel of Nicodemus is scarcely more than a copy of the Descent of Hercules into the Infernal Regions; the Epistle to the Corinthians is a distinct reminiscence of the initiatory Mysteries of Eleusis; and the Roman Ritual, according to H. P. Blavatsky, is the reproduction of the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... which such associated ideas become vague and are lost and elements formerly significant are added and combinations of them are made for embellishment alone, without reference to meaning or appropriateness; but I am inclined to place this period a very long way from the initiatory stages of the art. It may not be possible to find evidence of the arrival of this period, as it is not necessarily marked by any loss of unity or consistency—striking characteristics of ancient American art; for such is the ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... Nahusha, thus addressed by the contented people, then installed his son, Puru, on the throne. And having bestowed his kingdom on Puru, the monarch performed the initiatory ceremonies for retiring into the woods. And soon after he left his capital, followed by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... discouraged," he said, "by the emotion which has been attempted to be created in this body by those who have seceded from it. We from the furthest South were prepared; we had heard the rumours which were to be initiatory of the exit which you have witnessed on this day, and we knew that conspiracy, which had been brooding for months past, would break out on this occasion, and for the purposes which are obvious to every member. Sirs, there ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... In one word, he left nothing unsaid or undone with the Pope in our favor; and the Pope suggested to him obtaining dispensation of our vows and forming a new company. 'They cannot expect me,' he said, 'to take the initiatory step; this would be putting the cart before the horse. Let them do this, and present their plan to me, and if I find it good, it shall have my consent.' . . . The bishop has also seen and won over to our favor Monsignor Talbot, who said ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... parent may procure for his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's undivided neglect; the other is the endurance of the reverend gentleman's undivided attention. It was the latter privilege for which Mr. Tulliver paid a high price in Tom's initiatory ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... the Church by baptism, withdraws from it, or is excommunicated therefrom, and afterward repents and desires to regain his standing in the Church, he can do so only through baptism. However, such is a repetition of the initiatory ordinance as previously administered. There is no ordinance of "rebaptism" in the Church distinct in nature, form, or purpose, from other baptism; and, therefore, in administering baptism to a subject who has been formerly baptized, the form ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... watch Basutoland. On the western frontiers of the Transvaal and the Free State strong commandos were assembling for the destruction of Baden-Powell's retaining force at Mafeking and for the capture of Kimberley. Both Kruger and Steyn aimed at results other than those achieved by the initiatory victories of 1880-1. They cherished the hope that the time had come for the establishment of a Boer Republic reaching from the Zambesi to Table Mountain; but, for the accomplishment of so great an enterprise, external assistance was necessary, the aid of their kinsmen in the south, and ultimately, ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,—the initiatory trials, labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,—before she reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches her wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... so impossible a thing as this, that hereafter baptism should, by divine revelation, be changed for anointing with oil, and nothing were said about children. I would anoint the child with oil, instead of baptizing it with water. We are to use the initiatory rite of the church for the ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... we call these new fillings with the Holy Spirit 'fresh baptisms' with the Holy Spirit?" To this we would answer, the expression "baptism" is never used in the Scriptures of a second experience and there is something of an initiatory character in the very thought of baptism, so if one wishes to be precisely Biblical, it would seem to be better not to use the term "baptism" of a second experience but to limit it to the first experience. On the other hand "filled with the Holy Spirit" is used in Acts ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey

... arm, matted hair on the head, a skull, smearing oneself with ashes, &c.'—all this is well known from the sacred writings of the Saivas. They also hold that by some special ceremonial performance men of different castes may become Brhmanas and reach the highest srama: 'by merely entering on the initiatory ceremony (dksh) a man becomes a Brhmana at once; by undertaking the kpla rite a man becomes at ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... read the accounts of the initiatory ceremonies of Australian and Indian boys (convenient summaries of which may be found in the sixth volume of Waitz-Gerland and in Southey's Brazil III., 387-88) without becoming convinced that with them, as with the Samoans, etc., there was no thought of women or courtship. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... session, about two months before the Constitution was adopted by the Convention. The members of the Convention must therefore have been well acquainted with the provisions of the Ordinance. It provided for a temporary Government, as initiatory to the formation of State Governments. Slavery was ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... scrambling and kicking at first was frightful; but Paterfamilias dragged the younger children out into the road, and other help was nigh at hand, and the providential calm that comes over fallen horses after their initiatory struggle was at hand too, and in due time matters were righted: that those two fiery stallions did not kick everything to pieces, and that all four steeds did not gallop us to destruction, was due, under Providence, to the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... divisions, and partitions of virtue, as so many surnames and branches of a genealogy, without any further care of establishing any familiarity or intimacy betwixt her and us. It has culled out for our initiatory instruction not such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin, and by their fine words has instilled into our fancy the vainest humours ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the first of the Christian emperors was unworthy of that name, till the moment of his death; since it was only during his last illness that he received, as a catechumen, the imposition of hands, and was afterwards admitted, by the initiatory rites of baptism, into the number of the faithful. The Christianity of Constantine must be allowed in a much more vague and qualified sense; and the nicest accuracy is required in tracing the slow and almost ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... morning that had been fixed for the evacuation, there came to me a polite request that I should visit M. le Maire at the Hotel de Ville. His worship was elaborately civil but obviously troubled in mind. He coughed nervously several times after the initiatory compliments had passed, and then he began to speak. "Monsieur, you are aware that the Germans are going ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... sir,' said Chalks, 'must approve his mettle by undergoing something in the nature of an initiatory ordeal. We may now drop foolery, and converse like intelligent human beings. You were asking our opinion ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... &c.'—all this is well known from the sacred writings of the Saivas. They also hold that by some special ceremonial performance men of different castes may become Brahmanas and reach the highest asrama: 'by merely entering on the initiatory ceremony (diksha) a man becomes a Brahmana at once; by undertaking the kapala rite a man becomes ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... born again of water and the Holy Ghost." (Jacobs, 385.) The paragraph of the "Declaration" on Baptism and the Lord's Supper reads: "9. That Christ has instituted the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper for the perpetual observance and edification of the Church. Baptism is the initiatory ordinance, and signifies the necessity of holiness of heart; and the Lord's Supper is frequently to be celebrated as a token of faith in the atonement of Christ and of brotherly love." In 1839, at Chambersburg, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... the comb, in a crowded state of the hive, and that some of these are afterwards enlarged and changed into royal cells by the workers. Such is the instinctive hatred of the queen to her own kind, that it does not seem to me probable, that she is intrusted with even the initiatory steps for securing a race of successors. That the eggs from which the young queens are produced, are of the same kind with those producing workers, has been repeatedly demonstrated. On examining the queen cells while they are in progress, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... settlers were an adventurous race, and eager for an opportunity to indulge their martial spirit;—Mexico was uneasy under the Spanish yoke;—and some indications of a war between the United States and Spain held out a faint hope that the initiatory steps of his enterprise might be taken with the connivance of the government. To recruit an army among the hardy citizens of Kentucky and Tennessee, to excite the jealousies of the French in Louisiana, to subdue feeble and demoralized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... that he could pass a bishop's examination. His friends told him of Islington and St Bees, of Durham, Birkenhead, and other places where the thing could be done for him; but he hesitated, fearing whether he might be able to pass even the initiatory gates of Islington. He was a good young man, at peace with all the world—except Mr Startup. With Mr Startup the veracious chronicler does not dare to assert that Mr Frigidy was at peace. Now Mr Startup was the other young man whom Miss Mackenzie ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... with his sober grey goose-quill, And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed, Would fain, pretending just the insect's good, Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again. Into another state, under new rule I knew myself was passing swift and sure; Whereof the initiatory pang approached, Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste, Feel at the end the earthly garments drop, And rise with something of a rosy shame Into immortal nakedness: so I Lay, and let come the proper throe ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... his money. To this conclusion, at least, Maud's reflections never failed to lead. Without such initiatory proceeding it was useless to think of demanding the return of that written promise. But how to raise the funds? After much wavering and hesitation, Miss Bruce resolved at last to pawn her diamonds. So dearly do women love their trinkets, that ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... will be found to be on signatures of the complicated order. Their apparent impregnability has tempted the facile penman to essay the task of harmless imitation; his success has surprised and flattered him, and the easy possibilities of forgery opened up. More than one forger has admitted that his initiatory lessons were prompted by an innocent challenge to imitate a particularly complicated ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... fragment of the secret correspondence which passed between the chief conspirators, and of the written evidence recorded by them in various forms, then and afterwards, we have a substantial unmasking of the combined occult influences which presided over the initiatory steps of the great American Rebellion—its central council—the master wheel of its machinery—and the connecting relation which caused all its subordinate parts ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... should a girl have to leave the fattening-house, she must be covered with white clay. I believe this fattening-house custom in Calabar is not only for fattening up the women to improve their appearance, but an initiatory custom as well, although the main intention is now, undoubtedly, fattening, and the girl is constantly fed with fat-producing foods, such as fou-fou soaked in palm oil. I am told, but I think wrongly, that the white clay with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... white in heavy air, under a cloud-felted sky; and other sombre appearances that moved the heart strangely, as if it discerned in them proofs that the core of life was darkness. There came on her suddenly a memory of that fierce initiatory pain which she had felt when she first drank wine, when she first was kissed by Richard. She remembered it with a singular lack of dismay. There ran through her on the instant a tingling sense of pride and ambition towards all new experience, and she leapt briskly from the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... feeling extremely awkward because Miss Alicia's initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had "rattled" him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending, and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his existence. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... hearts by kindness," exclaimed the emperor. "True, we take their insignificant fatherland, but we give them instead, the rich inheritance of our own nationality; and future history will record it to their honor that theirs was the initiatory step which subsequently made one nation of all the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... change of style, which now is strongly tinged with the Orphic, initiatory, symbolical manner, in marked contrast with the clear-flowing narrative which has just preceded. But we noticed the same characteristic before, in the first division of the Book, where the sacrificial rites and the part of Tiresias were given. Homer has many styles, not each style has many Homers, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... one knows that the constitution in Church and State no longer exists; they are ready to stand or fall with the "independence of the Upper House of Parliament", though, in practice, they are perfectly aware that, with their sanction, "the Upper House" has abdicated its initiatory functions, and now serves only as a court of review of the legislation of the House of Commons. Whenever public opinion, which this party never attempts to form, to educate, or to lead, falls into some violent perplexity, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... of small rentiers is considered, i.e., men and women of the middle-class living upon a minimum income, we can understand the usefulness of this home. I learned that the establishment is self-supporting, the initiatory expense having been borne by the town ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... and to increase their ranks by recruits. From Washington the Union army began to advance with considerable strength and determination, compelling General Lee to relinquish his design of penetrating into Pennsylvania. Initiatory steps were now being taken for a great battle, the first encounter of which took place, under General Pleasonton, who commanded our cavalry during this campaign, at the Catoctin Creek, in Middletown, Maryland. The enemy's rearguard, consisting of cavalry, was struck with some ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... critic can be of absolute value? For a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispassionate government? Where are we to look for that initiatory composure of mind which no selfishness can disturb? For a natural sensibility that has been tutored into correctness without losing anything of its quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands which an Author of original ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... sir, for I learned it, according to the Oriental custom under the most sacred obligations of secrecy. One must advance through the whole course, by initiatory degrees, before learning the final mysteries of the samurais. Now, we have a working hypothesis. The girls could never have accomplished this. One man and one alone must have killed the three, although doubtless with confederates. Yamashino assured me that there were only six men in this country ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... has to be spilt it is not suffered to fall upon the ground, but is received upon the bodies of his fellow-tribesmen. Thus in some Australian tribes boys who are being circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the living bodies of the tribesmen; and when a boy's tooth is knocked out as an initiatory ceremony, he is seated on the shoulders of a man, on whose breast the blood flows and may not be wiped away. "Also the Gauls used to drink their enemies' blood and paint themselves therewith. So also they write that ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Secretary of State under President Tyler, was killed by the explosion of a monster cannon whilst visiting said vessel, in company with the President and other members of the Cabinet. The duty aboard this vessel was of an initiatory character, to prepare officers for clerical duties peculiar to each of their particular offices. I made the acquaintance on this vessel of Surgeon James McClelland, who was the Surgeon of the Princeton. He had entered ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... out to secure a second-hand French grammar and dialogues, which had long been fluttering in the sixpenny box at the bookstall round the corner; and that the family, highly excited at the prospect of this addition to their gentility, wished the initiatory lesson to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... with me to America," he said, speaking cheerfully; "and we have already cabled instructions to Mr. Sutherland, my New York attorney, regarding the initiatory steps. Mr. Barton and myself will be accompanied by James Wilson, the old servant who witnessed the execution of the will,"—Miss Carleton's eyes brightened,—"and also by a thoroughly competent, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... accustomed to the opening sentences of our own Liturgy, "When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness that he hath committed," &c., that their opening words startled us at first; but their two or three initiatory sentences are well selected to begin the service; the first being, "The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... addition to the printed material, a very large body of manuscript matter has been used, which is now in the archives of the Bureau of Ethnology, and which, it is hoped, will ultimately be published. The author does not desire that his work shall be considered final, but rather as initiatory and tentative. The task of studying many hundreds of languages and deriving therefrom ultimate conclusions as contributions to the science of philology is one of great magnitude, and in its accomplishment an army of scholars must be employed. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... entire composition, song, or essay, a similar unity with its subject and with itself:—style is in the right way when it tends towards that. All depends upon the original unity, the vital wholeness and identity, of the initiatory apprehension or view. So much is true of all art, which therefore requires always its logic, its comprehensive reason—insight, foresight, retrospect, in simultaneous action—true, most of all, of the literary art, as being of all the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... meetings of Council, touched upon their duty. I believe the name Fire-keeper is retained from the circumstance that, in by-gone days, when the council was an open-air affair, the lighting of the fire was the initiatory step, and, taken in this way, therefore, the most important step, in ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... true that the adoption of the proposed resolution would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead to important practical results. In full view of my great responsibility to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... Rounders continued to go through a performance like the initiatory one, but at the end of that time his ambition moved him to do something more. Pompey was tractable, and he determined to attempt the "meat-jerk." He had not forgotten the advice of Brinton, but he thought it was given through jealousy. He communicated ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... the Vatican disciplined his eye and touch,—thus by a healthful, rigorous process attaining the manual skill and the mature judgment which equipped him to venture wisely in the realm of original conception,—there was a thoroughness and a progressive application in his whole initiatory course, prophetic, to those versed in the history of Art, of the ultimate and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... a great popular attraction, the first as an object of reverence, the second as food for curiosity with the profane, and a bond of union among the initiated. The religious symbolism of the Carbonari, their oaths and ceremonies, and the axes, blocks and other furniture of the initiatory chamber, were well calculated to impress the poorer and more ignorant and excitable of the brethren. The Vatican affected to believe that Carbonarism was an offshoot of Freemasonry, but, in spite of sundry points of resemblance, such as the engagements of mutual help assumed by members, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... every individual. For the centre of gravity of Judaism was in the individual. Judaism was gathered from scattered elements, and it depended on the labour of the individual to make himself a Jew. This is the secret of the persistence of Judaism, even in the diaspora. The initiatory act of circumcision, which conferred an indelible character, was not the only safeguard; the whole of the education which followed that act went to guard against the disintegrating effects of individualism. This ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... conceives it, exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of prayer, oblation, communion. It would be a mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely passive or receptive. She, too, possesses initiatory power as truly as the divine soul of the world, to which she responds with the free gift of a light and ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... and all the harm my folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a veil hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp. . . . Into another state, under new rule I knew myself was passing swift and sure; whereof the initiatory pang approached, felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet as when the virgin band, the victors chaste, feel at the end the earthy garments drop, and rise with something of a rosy shame into immortal nakedness: so I lay, and let come the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... was for a couple of hours too bright, and four o'clock came with nothing to record. Only one hour left. Then a succession of short runs from non-fastening fish, and one lightly hooked on the fly, which came away at the initiatory tightening. By now half an hour remained, and an exciting finish consumed it. I do not admit that it was wasted; I only mean that "fish" was not the cause. Kelts were. The centre rod with the Black Dog briskly rang me ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... back the old Servian rule of voting in the Comitia Centuriata. The poorer classes were thus virtually again disfranchised. He also abolished the power of the tribune to propose laws to the people, and the initiatory of legislation was submitted to the Senate. The absurd custom by which a consul, praetor, or tribune, could propose to the burgesses any measure he pleased, and carry it without debate, was in itself ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... than the variety of moods in which women take the solemn initiatory rite ushering them into their real life and their great and honourable duties. Thora was joyful as a bird in spring and never weary of examining the lovely home, the perfect wardrobe, and the great variety of beautiful presents ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... Jew, and we; entered immediately into conversation, much to our mutual relief and delight. Dr. Johnson, in one of his letters, speaking of a first visit from a young gentleman who had been recommended to his acquaintance, says, that "the initiatory conversation of two strangers is seldom pleasing or instructive;" but I am sure that I was both pleased and instructed during this initiatory conversation, and Mr. Lyons did not appear to be oppressed or encumbered by my visit. I found by his conversation, that though he was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... materialize. begin at the beginning, begin ab ovo[Lat]. begin again, begin de novo; start afresh, make a fresh start, take it from the top, shuffle the cards, reshuffle the cards, resume, recommence. Adj. beginning &c. v.; initial, initiatory, initiative; inceptive, introductory, incipient; proemial[obs3], inaugural; inchoate, inchoative[obs3]; embryonic, rudimental; primogenial[obs3]; primeval, primitive, primordial &c. (old) 124; aboriginal; natal, nascent. first, foremost, leading; maiden. begun ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... being permitted to become a member of so agreeable a society, I was formally presented by the chairman with a capacious meerschaum, richly mounted in silver, and dark with honoured age, filled with choice tobacco, which he informed me was the initiatory pipe to be smoked by every neophyte on his admission amongst the "Puffs." I shall not attempt to describe with what profound respect I received that venerable tube into my hands—how gently I applied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... shall I pretend, after all, to set up a Claim in Opposition to his? A Heathen Parent, even from the Light of Nature, might have learn'd silent Submission: How much more then a Christian Parent, who hath presented his Child to GOD in this initiatory Ordinance; and perhaps also many a time, both before and since, hath presented himself at the Table of the Lord! Have I not there taken that Cup of Blessings, with a declared Resolution of accepting every other Cup how bitter soever ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge

... imperative mood: 'let the soldier's music and the rites of war speak loudly for him.' 'Go, bid the souldiers shoote,' with which the drama closes, is a more definite initiatory ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... numbers. 1d. each. No. 1 initiatory lines, curves, letters, figures; 2 and 3, short letters, easy combinations, figures; 4, long letters, short words, figures; 5, long letters, words, figures; 6, 7, and 8, capitals, words, ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... is abundantly clear that the initiatory training of a true Vedantin Raj Yogi must be the nourishing of a sleepless and ardent desire of doing all in his power for the good of mankind on the ordinary physical plane, his activity being transferred, however, to the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... throughout a large portion of Africa, and such is the desire to place females within the bush, that poor parents who cannot pay the initiatory fee, raise subscriptions among their friends to obtain the requisite slave whose gift entitles their child to admission. Sometimes, it is said, that this human ticket is stolen to effect the desired purpose, and that no native power can recover the lost slave ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... kind of way, of course—and trusts me not a little. And yet I must seem cold to her, and hold myself aloof, and wound the tender untried heart a little perhaps. Hard upon both of us, but I suppose only a common element in the initiatory ordinances of matrimony." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... year of my academic life was one of unqualified wretchedness. For the two or three initiatory months, uncouth in speech, and vulgar in mien, with no gilded toy, rich plum-cake, or mint-new shilling to conciliate, I was despised and ridiculed; and when it was ascertained by my own confession ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... The initiatory for a state organization was taken by the Woman's Temperance Union of Syracuse, which, at a meeting held September 10, 1874, decided to call a state convention of all women's temperance organizations, to be held at Syracuse in October, preparatory ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier

... often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all; and some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain first as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the experienced Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should advance, not decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of Olinthus and Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that the two horsemen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... themselves produce; by whirling the wooden tundun, or bull-roarer. Grant that, on initiation, the boys learn that 'the great spirit' is a mere bogle, invented to mystify the women, and keep them away from the initiatory rites. How, then, did men come to believe in him as a terrible, all-seeing, all-knowing, creative, and potent moral being? For this, undeniably, is the belief of many Australian tribes, where his 'voice' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... was accomplished in what is called the eclaircissement of the eighteenth century, or in our own generation; and what really belongs to the revival of the fifteenth century is but the leading instinct, the curiosity, the initiatory idea. It is so with this very question of the reconciliation of the religion of antiquity with the religion of Christ. A modern scholar occupied by this problem might observe that all religions may be regarded as natural products, that, at least ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... successfully through this test of steady-handed manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand—and so on, till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the chorus. Tom Saft—the rogue—took care to spill a little by accident; but Mrs. Poyser (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... Indians, that he saw supernatural revelations. Again and again the form of an antelope appeared before him. The antelope is the graceful peace spirit of the Ogallalla; but seldom is it that such a gentle visitor presents itself during the initiatory fasts of their young men. The terrible grizzly bear, the divinity of war, usually appears to fire them with martial ardor and thirst for renown. At length the antelope spoke. He told the young dreamer that he was not to follow the path of war; that a life of peace and tranquillity was marked ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... to Berlin on the 2d of April. From Berlin comes thereupon, at great length, sordid description by Grumkow, of that initiatory Hotham Dinner, April Third, with fearful details of the blazing favor Hotham is in. Which his Majesty (when Hotham hands it to him, in due time) will read with painful interest; as Reichenbach now does;—but which to us is all mere puddle, omissible ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... sun, to the god Mithra." His cult is complicated, sometimes similar to the Christian worship; there are a baptism, sacred feasts, an anointing, penances, and chapels. To be admitted to this one must pass through an initiatory ceremony, through fasting and ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was now such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed to have left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for a long while, without sound ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... which lead to the divine take place in the innermost part of the human soul. We might say that the temple in which Philo seeks initiation is wholly within him, and his higher experiences are the Mysteries. In his case processes of a purely spiritual nature replace the initiatory ceremonies of ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... unexceptionable. To neither of them, considered as standing at the head of a treatise, have we much to object. At a very early stage in the study of the science, anything more accurate would be useless, and therefore pedantic. In a merely initiatory definition, scientific precision is not required: the object is, to insinuate into the learner's mind, it is scarcely material by what means, some general preconception of what are the uses of the pursuit, and what the series of topics through ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... Comparing the initiatory undertaking or covenant of the Druses, as represented by Col. Churchill in his very important disclosures (Lebanon, ii. 244.), with the original Arabic, and the German translation of Eichhorn (Repertorium fuer Bibl. und Morgenland, lib. xii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... personally, but, from the diagnostics, I have no doubt whatever he is labouring under the first fore-shadowings of cerebro-psychical perturbation. To speak plainly, the symptoms are characteristic of the initiatory stage of the germination of a morbid state of the phenomena ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... time the reader will see, that she had still greater reason for her jealousy and vigilance. And Lovelace will tell the sex, as he does in Letter XI. of Vol. V., that the woman who resents not initiatory freedoms, must be lost. Love is an encroacher, says he: loves never goes backward. Nothing but the highest act of love can satisfy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... to serious collisions between the gunners of Philadelphia and Baltimore. So far was the dispute carried, that schooners armed, and filled with armed men, cruised for some time on the waters of the Chesapeake, and all the initiatory steps of a little war were taken by both parties. The interference of the general government prevented what would have proved, had it been left to itself, a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the description of the last kind of ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... gained the consent of his mind and formed a resolution to retract, he was not long in taking the initiatory ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... advice, and its members were, on their return, hissed and hooted by the populace. Every hope of conciliation being now at an end on the motion of Lord Castlereagh, the commons voted a further adjournment, in order to leave initiatory proceedings to the house of lords. But though the commons waited quietly till their lordships made a further movement in the matter, the country did not. The whole kingdom was turned into one great arena of disputation, in which the innocence or the guilt of the queen was advocated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... subsisted. The only possible place of residence—because the only sure place of hiding—was London, and to London Mr. Tymperley betook himself. Not at once did he learn the art of combating starvation with minim resources. During his initiatory trials he was once brought so low, by hunger and humiliation, that he swallowed something of his pride, and wrote to a certain acquaintance, asking counsel and indirect help. But only a man in Mr. Tymperley's position learns how vain is well-meaning advice, and how impotent ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... held, we will select Phaddhy Sheemus Phaddhy for our purpose; and this we do, because it was the first time in which a station was ever kept in his house, and consequently Phaddhy and his wife had to undergo the initiatory ceremony of entertaining Father Philemy and his curate, the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... teeth, including the causes of the reduction of digits. In discussing the origin of the great development of the incisor teeth of rodents, he suggested that "the more severe strains to which they were subjected by enforced or intelligently assumed changes of habit, were the initiatory agents in causing them to assume their present forms, such forms as were best adapted to resist ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... the one, but only a dreary despair in the other. In the latter part of 1867, the lawyer began to realize the force of this philosophy. The amorous widow was then boarding at the Metropolitan Hotel, and he began to take the initiatory steps to be rid of her. After two years of madness, during which she had sacrificed the respect of every relative she had, including her own daughter, a pretty girl in her teens, it was hardly likely that he would evince the moral courage to declare openly and straightforward to her ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... be catastrophe, conflagration, and massacre. And that again is a point on which you have not laid sufficient stress, for you have not shown in your book that there can be no progress outside the pale of the Church, that she is really the only initiatory and guiding power to whom one may surrender oneself without fear. Indeed, and in this again you have sinned, it seemed to me as if you set God on one side, as if for you religion lay solely in a certain bent of the soul, a florescence of love and charity, which sufficed ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Wapshott soothingly. "You'll get accustomed. They began by being frogs," he explained, with the initiatory air of an elder brother, and waved a feeble hand. "Eggs— if you'll 'low me, sir, to conclude—egg-sisting in the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of that little world as primary, as the initiatory material, my perception of the world of fact widened and widened, by new sights and sounds, by reading and hearing descriptions and histories, by guesses and inferences; my curiosity and interest, my appetite for fact, grew by what it ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... rush of Members to take the oath. This was not entirely due to the new Members, naturally desirous of completing their initiatory rites, but was shared by many of the older hands, for the good and sufficient reason that, until a Member is certified as having been duly sworn, he cannot recover his one hundred and fifty pounds deposit from the Returning Officer. In their zeal to be in a position to reimburse themselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various

... the object is good for nothing; and if you swallow such a bait, you are a bete for your pains. Amici miei of Oxford and Cambridge, excuse the informality of self-introduction; and pray keep your caution-money till you have taken your Master-in-Arts degree abroad. If you pay it on the initiatory matriculation of a first journey, you may depend upon never getting any of it back; when on having studied anew the "art of self-defence," to protect you against another art, which you must also study, in close connexion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... has only to change his habitat—his ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must come from the OUTSIDE—he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of pain which modifies muscular action in a curious way. We have already stated that local pain serves an adaptive purpose. In this light let us now consider headache. Headache is one of the commonest initiatory symptoms of the various infections, especially of those infections which are accompanied by no local pain and by no local muscular action. In peritonitis, cholecystitis, pleurisy, arthritis, appendicitis, salpingitis, child-birth, in obstructions of the intestinal and ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... For his initiatory performance, he had chosen a quiet little town less than thirty miles from the city, on a line of railway. If his panorama was to be a hopeless failure at the very outset, Tiffles wanted to be within striking distance of New York. He was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton



Words linked to "Initiatory" :   opening, inaugural, maiden



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