Ritual Purification

Abstract

“Purification” is in various religions a ritual term, whose meaning cannot be indicated by any better word. But it is true here, as so often, that its meaning does not correspond to any of our concepts, because the religious rite as such has become largely alien to our modern life and thought. It is certainly quite wrong to consider purification or cleansing in our sense of the word, which is an outward act, as the simple source of this custom. It is therefore just as wrong to conceive of the stains or impurities which are washed off in a material sense, “as if ritual impurity was originally something outward that stuck to the body.” The “primitive” is then spoken of as a crudely sensuous conception of something which we consider spiritual. This explanation seems simple, but in reality it is quite incomprehensible that a man by an ordinary washing can remove a spiritual stain which is considered a ritual impurity. If this is a “primitive” rite, then primitive is only a name for something which is completely incomprehensible. If people would recognize this, they would not talk so lightly about the “primitive” and would certainly not introduce this term as an explanation.