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All this applies to self-mutilation as well as to self-destruction; as parts of the whole, one's limbs should be the objects of one's charity, and God's law demands that we preserve them as well as the body itself. It is lawful to submit to the maiming process only when the utility of the whole body demands it; otherwise it is criminal. One word more.
She always kept three sticks of incense burning before the shrine, one for each religion, that she might be sure not to make a mistake. In the ardour of her devotion she even made offerings of pieces of her own flesh to the idols. Her whole body, even her face, was covered with the ugly round scars caused by this self-mutilation.
As to their religion, it consisted almost exclusively in the practice of a ceremony similar to that of the Valerians, the celebrated early Christian sect who had recourse to self-mutilation in order to protect themselves from the temptations of the flesh. The lot of the skoptzi was not a happy one, but they were upheld and consoled by their belief in the imperial origin of their faith.
'Cut it off and cast it from thee. III. And now, lastly, a word as to the solemn exhortation by which this injunction is enforced. Christ rests His command of self-denial and self-mutilation upon the highest ground of self-interest.
To-day, in the Old World, we witness the deplorable and foolish antagonism displayed by national individualities, near neighbours and close kin, distinguished only by trifling shades like France and Germany, repudiating one another, longing for one another's destruction. Parochial disputes about which the human mind is eager to achieve self-mutilation!
'But they're a deep set, they'll be here before we know where we are, some of these days. 'See thee here! said Daniel, exhibiting his maimed hand; 'a reckon a served 'em out time o' t' Ameriky war. And he began the story Sylvia knew so well; for her father never made a new acquaintance but what he told him of his self-mutilation to escape the press-gang.
The following articles were taken from her arms and preserved: Ninety-four pieces of glass, 34 splinters, two tacks, five shoe-nails, one pin, and one needle, besides other things which were lost, making altogether about 150 articles. "Needle-girls," etc. A peculiar type of self-mutilation is the habit sometimes seen in hysteric persons of piercing their flesh with numerous needles or pins.
It was situated in a beautiful spot at the head of the Adonis river, a sacred stream fabled to run with blood once a year, at the festival which commemorated the self-mutilation of the Nature-god Adonis. Aphaca was a sort of Delphi, a collection of temples rather than a town.
It was an effort at self-righting of the unhappy world, this love-fever which followed on the many centuries of monastic self-mutilation; for, in sickness of the spirit, the hot stage, for all its delirium, means a possibility of life.
For five troubled years he had been staring religion in the face, and now he saw that it must mean this or be no more than fetishism, Obi, Orphic mysteries or ceremonies of Demeter, a legacy of mental dirtiness, a residue of self-mutilation and superstitious sacrifices from the cunning, fear-haunted, ape-dog phase of human development. But it did mean this.