Word Finder - cult

definition

A group or sect of people with a deviant religious, philosophical or cultural identity, often existing on the margins of society or exploitative towards its members.

example

Oh my gosh, I'm in a repressive cult! How can I leave it?

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Devotion to a saint.

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The veneration and religious rites given to a deity, esp. in a historical polytheistic context.

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A religion that evolved out of another religion but has become a different religion through developing a radically different theology.

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A group of people having an obsession with or intense admiration for a particular activity, idea, person or thing.

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Of or relating to a cult.

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Enjoyed by a small, loyal group.

example

a cult horror movie

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True to the ideology of black metal or a stereotypical manifestation of that subculture.

example

You gotta wear make-up at kvlt gigs or you'll be thrown out.

There's an active cult in the area.

Much prominence is also given to the cult of saints and martyrs.

A universal outburst of veneration followed; indeed his cult had already begun, and after ' With the title of Nicopolis in partibus.

The cult of the Baal of Tyre followed Jezebel to the royal city Samaria and even found its way into Jerusalem.

The cult of St Lawrence has spread throughout Christendom, and there are numerous churches dedicated to him, especially in England, where 228 have been counted.

We are justified in supposing that the cult of the moon-god was brought into Babylonia by the Semitic nomads from Arabia.

And indeed, whilst in theoretic theology Brahma has retained his traditional place and function down to our own days, his practical cult has at all times remained extremely limited, the only temple dedicated to the worship of this god being found at Pushkar (Pokhar) near Ajmir in Rajputana.

His ritual and mysteries (Sacra Savadia) gained a firm footing in Rome during the 2nd century A.D., although as early as 139 B.C. the first Jews who settled in the capital were expelled by virtue of a law which proscribed the propagation of the cult of Jupiter Sabazius.

At all stages of religious development, however, and more especially in the case of the more primitive types of cult, prayer as thus understood occurs together with, and shades off into, other varieties of observance that bear obvious marks of belonging to the same family.

Although images of the divinities were certainly known, the principal objects of cult in the Minoan age were of the aniconic class; in many cases these were natural objects, such as rocks and mountain peaks, with their cave sanctuaries, like those of Ida or of Dicte.

Genesis preserves a selection of traditions relating to a few of the old Palestinian centres of cult.

This frame of mind, however, is mainly symptomatic of the lower levels of cult.

When we come to consider the moral quality of the act of prayer, this contrast between the spirit of public and private religion is fundamental for all but the most advanced forms of cult.

The remains of several shrines within the building, and the religious element perceptible in the frescoes, show that a considerable part of the Palace of Cnossus was devoted to purposes of cult.

His name is preserved in the Sicilian Minoa, and his tomb was pointed out in the neighbourhood of Agrigentum, with a shrine above dedicated to his native Aphrodite, the lady of the dove; and in this connexion it must be observed that the cult of Eryx perpetuates to much later times the characteristic features of the worship of the Cretan Nature goddess, as now revealed to us in the palace of Cnossus and elsewhere.

Near this domestic quarter was found a small shrine of the Double Axes, with cult objects and offertory vessels in their places.

The chest is of limestone coated with stucco, adorned with life-like paintings of offertory scenes in connexion with the sacred Double Axes of Minoan cult.

Anu is so prominently associated with the city of Erech in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to have been the original seat of the Anu cult.

Old Roman formula of prayer mention a Hora Quirini, his female cult associate, afterwards identified with Hersilia, the wife of Romulus.

In 399 the exercise of the pagan cult was prohibited, and the revenues of the temples, which were to be appropriated for the use of the public or pulled down, were confiscated to defray the expenses of the army.

Each community could speak of its own baal, although a collection of allied communities might share the same cult, and naturally, since the attributes ascribed to the individual baals were very similar, subsequent syncretism was facilitated.

There is strong evidence at all events that many of the conceptions are contrary to historical fact, and the points of similarity between native Canaanite cult and Israelite worship are so striking that only the persistent traditions of Israel's origin and of the work of Moses compel the conclusion that the germs of specific Yahweh worship existed from his day.

The earliest certain reaction against Baalism is ascribed to the reign of Ahab, whose marriage with Jezebel gave the impulse to the introduction of a particular form of the cult.

Another enclosure, a little to the south, is proved by an inscription to have been a sanctuary of the hitherto unknown hero Amynos, with whose cult those of Asclepius and the hero Dexion were here associated; under the name Dexion, the poet Sophocles is said to have been worshipped after his death.

The whole locality was the seat of the ancient cult of this deity, afterwards styled " Hypacraeus," with which was associated the legend of Creiisa and the birth of Ion.

The wide extension of the cult is attributable largely to Syrian merchants; thus we find traces of it in the great seaport towns; at Delos especially numerous inscriptions have been found bearing witness to its importance.

The rites, we may suppose, have become modified and more orthodox, but none the less they are a valuable testimony to the persistence of the cult among people who still claim power over serpents and immunity from their bite, and who live hard by the home of the ancient tribe which ascribed its origin to the son of Circe."

That particular dish has developed quite a cult following.

The idea which has long prevailed that Baal was properly a sky-god affords no explanation of the local character of the many baals; on the other hand, on the theory of a higher development where the gods become heavenly or astral beings, the fact that ruder conceptions of nature were still retained (often in the unofficial but more popular forms of cult) is more intelligible.

Peet, resulted in interesting discoveries, some of which tend to show that the cult of the Aten or Solardisk was not so rigidly enforced by the heretic king Akhenaton as has been supposed, and that ordinary people were allowed to worship other gods than the sun-disk, at any rate in connexion with funerary ceremonies.

One may notice that the first Ptolemy himself made a contribution of some value to historical literature in his account of Alexander's campaigns; the fourth Ptolemy not only instituted a cult of Homer but himself published tragedies; and even Ptolemy Euergetes II.

The first proved instance of a cult of the latter kind is that instituted at.

So far we can point to no instance of a cult of the living sovereign (though the cities might institute such locally) being established by the court for the realm.

After this the cult of the reigning king and queen was regularly maintained in Greek Egypt, side by side with that of the dead Ptolemies.

The Antigonid dynasty, simpler and saner in its manners, had no official cult of this sort.

The cult of the saint, who came to be regarded as the special patron of lepers, beggars and cripples, spread very extensively over Europe, especially in.

The title Belit was naturally transferred to the great mother-goddess Ishtar after the decline of the cult at Nippur, and we also find the consort of Marduk, known as Sarpanit, designated as Belit, for the sufficient reason that Marduk, after the rise of the city of Babylon as the seat of his cult, becomes the Bel or "lord" of later days.

The objects found in these researches are in the museum, the most notable being a great basalt bull, probably once an object of cult in the Serapeum.

The authentic doctrine of the Gathas had no room either for the cult of Mithra or for that of the Haoma.

Both parts of the book ignore the Jewish sacrificial cult.

The cult of Athena Itonia, whose earliest seat appears to have been amongst the Thessalians, who used her name as a battle-cry, made its way to Coronea in Boeotia, where her sanctuary was the seat of the Pamboeotian confederacy.

His morality is not yet separated from his religion; and religion for him means the cult of some superior being - the king or priest of his tribe - whose person is charged with a kind of sacred electricity.

The translation of his relics to Soissons in 826 made that town a new centre of his cult.

As a god who gave victory, he was prominent in the official cult of Persia, the seventh month and the sixteenth day of other months being sacred to him.

Modified though never essentially changed, (1) by contact with the star-worship of the Chaldaeans, who identified Mithras with Shamash, god of the sun,(2) by the indigenous Armenian religion and other local Asiatic faiths and (3) by the Greeks of Asia Minor, who identified Mithras with Helios, and contributed to the success of his cult by equipping it for the first time with artistic representations (the famous Mithras relief originated in the Pergamene school towards the 2nd century B.C.), Mithraism was first transmitted to the Roman world during the 1st century B.C. by the Cilician pirates captured by Pompey.

Towards the close of the 2nd century the cult had begun to spread rapidly through the army, the mercantile class, slaves and actual propagandists, all of which classes were largely composed of Asiatics.

The emperors, however, favoured the cult, which was the army's favourite until Constantine destroyed its hopes.

Two altars, to the Sun and the Moon, stood before the former, and cult statues along the latter.

No women were in any way connected with the cult, though the male sex could be admitted even in childhood.

The cult was supported mainly by voluntary contribution.