Rites
Special rites/prayers are performed every sixteen days in the palace, usually by the Araba of Lagos, Chief Ajanaku, though the Oba does on occasion use other traditional priests and priestesses depending on the priority and the occasion, and the perceived spiritual prowess of such people. Some of the items necessary for performing these rituals are bitter kola, kola-nuts, alligator pepper, palm oil, schnapps or any plain gin, chickens, pigeons, goats or rams and anything else the Ifa oracle may decree, short of a human life.
Read more about this topic: Iga Idunganran
Famous quotes containing the word rites:
“As if the musicians did not so much play the little phrase as execute the rites required by it to appear, and they proceeded to the necessary incantations to obtain and prolong for a few instants the miracle of its evocation, Swann, who could no more see the phrase than if it belonged to an ultraviolet world ... Swann felt it as a presence, as a protective goddess and a confidante to his love, who to arrive to him ... had clothed the disguise of this sonorous appearance.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Th’ inferior priestess, at her altar’s side,
Trembling, begins the sacred rites of pride.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)