United States or South Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Being rather a Guebre myself, I once got enthusiastic on the subject in the company of an eccentric character, who very soon made me repent my expansiveness. Perhaps it was a monomania; let us hope so. On that occasion he heard me out quite patiently; then the blue glasses raised themselves to the level of my eyes, and I felt convinced their owner was staring spectrally behind them.
In 1854, the third Rajalo, corresponding with Rabia the Second, began on the 21st of December. The word literally means, "lighting of fire." It corresponds with the Nayruz of Yemen, a palpable derivation, as the word itself proves, from the old Guebre conquerors. In Arabia New Year's Day is called Ras el Sanah, and is not celebrated by any peculiar solemnities.
The son of the one and the daughter of the other are taken up for heretics, and, thinking themselves brother and sister, insist upon being married, and upon being executed for their religion. The son stabs his father, who is half a Guèbre, too. The high-priest rants and roars.
The Jew, the high-caste Hindu, and the Guebre, the Christian and the Moslem have their Holy Writs, their fixed forms of thought and worship, in fact their grooves in which belief runs. They no longer see through a glass darkly; nothing with them is left vague or undetermined.
Your servant, however, trusts that he may be instructed to associate with the virtuous, and take to the habits of the prudent; for he is still a child, and the lawless and refractory principles of that gang cannot have yet tainted his mind; and it is in tradition that Whatever child is born, and he is verily born after the right way of orthodoxy, namely Islamism, afterwards his father and his mother bring him up as a Jew, Christian, or Guebre.
'What can you expect of men who live in a country without a sun? observed the Guebre. Alroy awoke about two hours after midnight. His companions were in deep slumber. The moon had set, the fire had died away, a few red embers alone remaining; dark masses of shadow hung about the amphitheatre. He arose and cautiously stepped over the sleeping bandits.
At the sight of them, the youthful warrior leaped from his horse, flung away his scimitar, and clasping the maiden in his arms, exclaimed, 'Miriam, my sister, this, this indeed is triumph! 'Drink, said Kisloch the Kourd to Calidas the Indian; 'you forget, comrade, we are no longer Moslemin. 'Wine, methinks, has a peculiarly pleasant flavour in a golden cup, said the Guebre.
He had acted in no small measure according to the light he had, and time was of course given him to grow in. It is not the world alone that requires the fullness of its time to come, ere it can receive a revelation; the individual also has to pass through his various stages of Pagan, Guebre, Moslem, Jew, Essene God knows what all before he can begin to see and understand the living Christ.
His main argument was that books, full of such silly tales, of laws and rules so absurd, of descriptions of gods and demons so grotesque, could not be the work of a sage like Zoroaster, nor the code of a religion so much celebrated for its simplicity, wisdom, and purity. His conclusion was that the "Avesta" was a rhapsody of some modern Guebre.
The human sacrifice was quite contrary to Guebre, although not to Hindu, custom; although hate and vengeance might prompt an occasional murder. They are often so well concealed that even the modern inmates are not aware of their existence. An eyelash arrow from an eyebrow bow. The advantages are bodily strength, understanding and the high privilege of Holy War.
Word Of The Day