Form
An asterisk is a small, folding metal covering which keeps the veil and Aër (larger veil) from disturbing the particles of bread on the diskos (paten).
The asterisk is made of two strips of metal laid one on top of the other and joined in the center by a brad or screw. When the two pieces are turned perpendicular to each other it forms a cross. The ends of the metal pieces are bent down so that it makes a standing frame. Sometimes, in Greek-Catholic usage, a small star will be suspended from the asterisk where the two strips of metal are joined. Among Orthodox, however, the asterisk itself is considered to be the star, so no addition to it is deemed necessary.
As the asterisk is one of the sacred vessels, it is usually kept on the Prothesis (Table of Oblation), where the bread and wine are prepared for the Eucharist, and no one except the priest or deacon should touch it. Often when a chalice and diskos are made, an Asterisk, and a liturgical spoon, and spear will be made to match them.
Read more about this topic: Asterisk (liturgy)
Famous quotes containing the word form:
“Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.”
—Henry Fuseli (1741–1825)
“Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Uprises there
A mother’s form upon my ken,
Guiding my infant steps, as when
We walked that ancient, thoroughfare,
The Roman Road.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)