More rare are old hand-written copies of ritual, affording a limited understanding of early masonic rites.

These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.

The victim showed every sign of objection to early English rites; but he was dislodged, and after being dragged, struggling, across the table, subsided quickly on the floor.

It is highly probable that the early Jewish rites were festive also, though reformers constantly strove to abolish all mention of this, and there is no doubt that the Bible has been tampered with to this end.

The earliest rites took place in the wilderness-in the forests, the marshes and in the mountains (where the low oxygen content is suitable for trance induction).

The new ceremony retains some of the religious elements of earlier rites, while eliminating other features now considered to be "undemocratic".

Its scheme and most of its prayers correspond to those of the Greek St. James; but it has amplifications and omissions such as is found in all local forms of early rites.

In the cellar the coal furnace, now an oil burner, provided one of the early coming-of-age rites of boyhood: shoveling coal into the furious little hell through the small opening with the steel door.

This led him to read for a doctorate in early Christian baptismal rites at Oxford University in England in 1952.

Later quotations from a contemporary account, now lost, suggest that the razing of the area subsequent to the demolition of the circle uncovered evidence of still earlier rites.