circuire

Updated: June 20, 2025

In fact, so common was it to unite the ceremony of circumambulation with that of expiation or purification, or, in other words, to make a circuitous procession, in performing the latter rite, that the term lustrare, whose primitive meaning is "to purify," came at last to be synonymous with circuire, to walk round anything; and hence a purification and a circumambulation were often expressed by the same word.

Albert G. Mackey - The Symbolism of Freemasonry