"Priestess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... also a grand triumph for the young composer from the outset, especially as the lofty character of the Druid priestess was sung by that unapproachable lyric tragedienne, the Siddons of the opera, Madame Pasta. Bellini is said to have had this queen of dramatic song in his mind in writing the opera, and right nobly did she vindicate his ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... challenge passion with a chastity that was never to be gainsaid. But he that ever held her in his arms found that the so-seeming ice was fire, under those snows lava bubbled, and she that might have passed for a priestess of Astarte quivered with frenzy under the dominion of Eros. To speak only for myself, I found her a very phoenix ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... my mind travelled, not for the first time during the last few days, to the handsome girl who had seemed in my eyes the high-priestess of this temple of mystery in the quaint little court. What a strange figure she made against this strange background, with her quiet, chilly, self-contained manner, her pale face, so sad and worn, her black, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... man, thru long periods of time, you next meet him developed as the Crusader of the Mediaeval period. He has mounted thru war and his religion and stands at the feet of the Priestess of Religion, the last group at the upper part of ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... from the town Lavinium shifts the dwelling of his race, 270 And maketh Alba-town the Long a mighty fenced place. Here when for thrice an hundred years untouched the land hath been Beneath the rule of Hector's folk, lo Ilia, priestess-queen, Goes heavy with the love of Mars, and bringeth twins to birth. 'Neath yellow hide of foster-wolf thence, mighty in his mirth, Comes Romulus to bear the folk, and Mavors' walls to frame, And by the word himself was called the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... this Town a certain High Priestess of the Socially Elect and a Queen Bee of the Cotillion Tribe. Whatever she said, Went. No one could lay claim to any Class in this Town until he had seated himself at one of her Dinners, with the $28,000 Gold Service in front of him, ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... women. The man, impatient of painful thoughts and recollections, eager to be quit of them as weakening and unprofitable, determined to silence them by the pleasant clamor of his own ambitions and desires; the woman, priestess of the past, clinging to all the pieties of memory, in terror lest she forget the dead, feeling it a disloyalty even to draw the dagger from the wound—between these two figures and dispositions there is a deep and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seem to be unconscious of the great gods who are near to them on either side. The greater number of critics consider that the two maidens, e and d, are of the number who have embroidered the peplos; the central figure, c, a priestess of Athena; a, the Archon Basileus; and b, a consecrated servant-boy, who is delivering up the peplos. Other critics believe, however, that these figures are all preparing for the sacred ceremonies about to begin, and that the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... light, and sat in the flickering glow of the fire. Gowan, having the largest acquaintance with the occult, not to speak of having possessed a great-grandmother endowed with second sight, was universally acknowledged priestess of ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... with my lips your hand, kiss in secret the glove you had let fall, the shoe you had flung off, know that you knew of my love, that I was yours to do with as you would, to live or die according to your wish. Or that you were priestess in some temple of forgotten gods, where I might steal at daybreak and at dusk to gaze upon your beauty; kneel with clasped hands, watching your sandalled feet coming and going about the altar steps; lie ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... as good as either. When he began that original and splendid portrait of himself, and transcript of his travels, Childe Harold, he imitated Spenser in form and in archaism. But he was possessed by the muse: the man wrote as the spirit within dictated, as the Pythian priestess is fabled to have uttered her oracles. Childe Harold is a stream of intuitive, irrepressible poetry; not art, but overflowing nature: the sentiments good and bad came welling forth from his heart. His descriptive ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... woman of the Snake clan; mother of Kopeli, the Snake chief of Walpi; chief priestess of the ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... down a peaceful spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... What shame upon the Iroquois that the Senecas have defiled their purest law! May Leshi seize them all! So how, then, shall I know whether this white captive mother lives in the Vale Yndaia still—or if she lives at all? Or if they have not made of her a priestess—a sorceress—perhaps The Dreaming Prophetess of the Onon-hou-aroria!—by reason of her throat ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... "There at the annual fair year by year the stewards of the city bought a Bull 'the finest that could be got,' and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seed-time (? April) Bull was led in procession at the head of which went the chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull that nothing unlucky might come near him. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer for 'the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the women and children, for peace ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the dark passage into the outer chamber; and the illusion was of walking behind a golden-haired Madonna to some shrine of Innocence. Her perfume was like incense; her manner perfect reverence. She passed into the cave where the two dead bodies lay like a high priestess ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... she were dead, and took immediate steps to restore her. Then a great wonder happened, for she, who had been thrown into the sea as dead, came back to life. But feeling sure that she would never see her husband again, Thaisa retired from the world, and became a priestess of ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... it with a gun, because they tell me the president isn't afraid of anything except a voodoo priestess. What is your secret?" coaxed the consul. "If you'll only sell it, I know several Powers that would give ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... a great scoop on the other fellows who will write up the Temple without the Priestess!" the ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... fact hidden from me. This reserve was necessary; for, could I have known all, I should have given grandmother some trouble in getting me started. As it was, I was helpless, and she—dear woman!—led me along by the hand, resisting, with the reserve and solemnity of a priestess, all my inquiring looks to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... ladies of the court: the sons, while still young, are sent to different religious fraternities; and the daughters, on attaining a suitable age, are bestowed in marriage on the nobles of the country, except the eldest, who is appointed chief priestess of the temple of the Sun at Issie, which contains the shrine of Ten-zio-dai-zin, to which all Japanese are supposed to make a pilgrimage ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... troubles; and men of every condition had come to scoff and had remained to express, more or less offensively, their admiration. Some of the younger of these, after a first visit, returned the day following, and each begged the beautiful priestess of the occult to fly with him, to live with him, to marry him. When this happened Vera would touch a button, and "Mannie" Day, who admitted visitors, and later, in the hall, searched their hats and umbrellas for ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... commissioned to ascertain if the author of Lelia would undertake this important service. He found a badly dressed woman who was using her talents to gain a living, but was by no means anxious to become the high priestess of a new religion. Even after his disappointment Enfantin looked eagerly forward to the publication of George Sand's Histoire de ma Vie, hoping that at last the great revelation was coming, and he was again disillusioned. But before this Emile Barrault had arisen and declared ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... shrouded in herself, leaves it to chance or fate to amuse the beings whom she has herself assembled within her halls. Nonchalance is the metier of your modern hostess; and so long as the house be not on fire, or the furniture not kicked, you may be even ignorant who is the priestess of the hospitable ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... addressed to a superstitious person by the priestess of a temple situated in the deep recesses of a dense forest, among the toppling crags of some lofty mountain range, or near the gloomy habitations of the dead: it could not have failed of making a serious impression upon the mind. It was thus that the pagan priesthood ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... estimation. It was picturesque, but lamentably narrow. The life was barren, the "New England spirit" prevailed in all its severity; and this spirit seemed to her a veritable cult, a sort of religion, wherein the Old Maid was the priestess, the Spinster the officiating devotee, the thing worshipped the Great Unbeautiful, and the ritual unremitting, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... event completely destroyed her already weak health; she returned to London, and spent several years in a darkened room. Here she "read almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and gave herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." This way of life lasted for many years: and, in the course of it, she published several volumes of noble verse. In 1846 she married Robert Browning, also a great poet. In 1856 she brought out Aurora Leigh, her longest, and probably also her greatest, poem. Mr Ruskin called it "the greatest ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... that the question what was to be done should be referred to an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared that the strangely unequivocal answer of the oracle was obtained by backstairs influence; but whether this was so or no, the response as nearly as I can ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... daughter—such was the man whom Hesper, entirely aware that none could compel her to marry against her will, had, partly from fear of her father, partly from moral laziness, partly from reverence for the Moloch of society, whose priestess was her mother, vowed to love, honor, and obey! In justice to her, it must be remembered, however, that she did not and could not know of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... that she should sit there smiling tolerantly at a critic of her infernal husband as serenely as a priestess who is patient ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... gods, of the Illustrious gods, of the Paternal god, and of the Mother-loving gods, being (as by law appointed): and the prize-bearer of Berenice the Beneficent, and the basket-bearer of Arsinoe the Brother-loving, and the priestess of Arsinoe the Father-loving, being as appointed in the metropolis (of Alexandria); and in (Ptolemais) the royal city of the Thebaid? the guardian priest for the year? of Ptolemy Soter, and the priest of king Ptolemy the Father-loving, and the priest ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... laid. First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores, With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs. A heav'nly image in the glass appears, 125 To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears; Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side, Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride. Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here The various off'rings of the world appear; 130 From each she nicely culls with curious toil, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... York museums contain many phases of one same family group, painted by George de Forest Brush. There is a touch of the hearthstone priestess about the woman. The force of sex has turned to the austere comforting passion of motherhood. From the children, under the wings of this spirit, come special delicate powers of life. There is nothing tense or restless about them, yet they embody action, the beating of the inner ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... sometimes used in ritual for the purpose of preventing the sunlight from falling on sacred persons or things. See W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual (Amsterdam, 1900), p. 110 note 12. At an Athenian festival called Scira the priestess of Athena, the priest of Poseidon, and the priest of the Sun walked from the Acropolis under the shade of a huge white umbrella which was borne over their heads by the Eteobutads. See Harpocration and Suidas, s.v. [Greek: Skiron]; ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... tigress which glared with glassy eyes across the place at the snarling muzzle of a polar bear. Mycenaean vases and gold death masks stood upon the same shelf as Venetian goblets, and the mummy of an Egyptian priestess of the thirteenth dynasty occupied a sarcophagus upon the top of which rested a basrelief found in one of the shrines of the Syrian fish ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... longer be plagued with your plans and machinations—I will have repose. In the interior of my palace I will be empress; there will I establish a realm, a realm of peace and enjoyable happiness; there will I erect the temple of love, and consecrate myself as its priestess! No, speak no more of revolutions and conspiracies. I am not made to sit upon a throne as the feared and thundering goddess of cowardly slaves, causing millions to tremble at every word and glance! I will not ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... I have been obliged to do!" she exclaimed, extending both her arms down toward the opening with a look of blended horror and inspiration, such as might have sat upon the countenance of some sacrificial priestess of the olden time. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... It would have needed a greater than the Pythian Priestess to have given me hopes of either in Florence. And yet, as we pursued our way, by the Borg' Ognissanti towards the river, I could not but be struck by the subdued aspect of the citizens, who, far from being the lively impertinents they ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... nimble and inquiring mind. The Cambridge trio, however, took kindly to him, invited him to join the Society for Psychical Research, and two years after its formation were instrumental in sending him to India to investigate the methods of Madam Blavatsky, the high priestess of the theosophic movement which was then winning adherents throughout the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... her elegant coiffure powdered to excess, I could see that her face was painted like that of a priestess of antiquity. That gauze, that atmosphere, redolent with feminine perfumes, and behind those screens-behind ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was brilliantly lighted. Its sole occupant lay prone upon a low couch at the further side, apparently in sleep. From the hangings and sumptuous furniture of the room I judged it to be a living-room of some priestess, ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hate pretence," said Antonia, with a shudder. "Fancy a priestess of art stooping to pretence. Well, if you don't detest me, let us walk about for a little. Have you no wild, uncultured spot to show me, which the hand of man has not defaced? My whole soul recoils from ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... heroine Host hostess Hunter huntress Inheritor inheritress or inheritrix Instructor instructress Jew Jewess Lion lioness Marquis marchioness Mayor mayoress Patron patroness Peer peeress Poet poetess Priest priestess Prince princess Prior prioress Prophet prophetess Proprietor proprietress Protector protectress Shepherd shepherdess Songster songstress Sorcerer sorceress Suiter suitress Sultan sultaness or sultana Tiger tigress Testator ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... {'Christmas Eve'}, when to David the stars shoot out the pain of pent knowledge and in the grey of the hills at morning there dwells a gathered intensity {'Saul'},—then nature rises from her sweet ways of use and wont, and shows herself the Priestess, the Pythoness, the Divinity which she is. Or rather, through nature, the Spirit of God addresses itself to the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... swords through the camp, and, striking down those of the prisoners that they meet, drag them to a brazen kettle, holding about twenty amphorae. This has a kind of stage above it, ascending on which, the priestess cuts the throat of the victim, and, from the manner in which the blood flows into the vessel, judges of the future event. Others tear open the bodies of the captives thus butchered, and, from inspection of the entrails, presage victory to their ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... measured by the standards of to-day, say that set by Calve's Carmen, it must have been a simple age that could be impressed by the tragic power of anyone acting the part of Bellini's Druidical priestess. The surmise is strengthened by the circumstance that Madame Grisi created a sensation in "Il Trovatore" by showing signs of agitation in the tower scene, walking about the stage during Manrico's "Ah! che la morte ognora," as if she would fain discover the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... laurel{313:3} chew'd the Pythian priestess rose, Events of future actions to disclose. Laurel triumphant generals did wear, And laurel heralds in their hands did bear. Poets ambitious of unfading praise, Phoebus, the Muses all are crown'd with bays. And vertue to her sons the prize does ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... being of beauty and mystery, as strange and as lovely as the moon, the goddess and the mother of lunatics. What a wonderful destiny is hers! In addition to being the first of human beings, all that a man can be, to be so much else as well; to be, so to say, the president of a railroad and yet a priestess of nature's mysteries; a stenographer at so many dollars a week and yet a nymph of the forest pools—woman, "and yet a spirit still." Not without meaning has myth endowed woman with the power of metamorphosis, to change at will like the maidens in the legend into wild white swans, or like Syrinx, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... looked on the beauty that generations of gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds rested in the quiet as in the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of the kettle and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's aunt, a slight figure in grey with snow-white tabi and new straw sandals, we passed by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the azure hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... without any invitation, the ballad-maker, like some Pythian priestess on her tripod, began to exhibit manifestations of the afflatus. The spirit of song seemed to be stealing upon him, and in a moment the listening auditory were still. In substance, he half recited, half ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is not divided into acts; it has merely four and twenty scenes—upon the battle-field of Troy. The characters are Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons; her chief leaders, Prothoe, Meroe and Asteria, and the high priestess of Diana. Of the Greeks there are Achilles, Odysseus, Diomede and Antilochus. Much of the fighting and other action is not seen, but is reported either by messengers or by present witnesses ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... same evening without entering another house), reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling: she values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours want it:—a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... with wholesome frost. All Elmerton went about the rest of the day with hushed voice and sober brow, looking up at the closed shutters of the Temple of Vesta, and wondering how it fared with the gentle priestess, now left alone. The shutters were white and fluted, and being closed, heightened the effect of clean linen which the house always presented—linen starched to the point of perfection, with a dignified frill, but no frivolity of lace ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... So Jastrow, in the article cited above. Remarking on the statement of Lydus (in De Mensibus, ii, 10) that the Pamphylians formerly worshiped a bearded Venus, he calls attention to the Carian priestess of Athene (Herodotus, i, 175; viii, 104), who, when misfortune was impending, had (or grew) a great beard—a mark of power, but presumably not a genuine growth. Exactly what this story means it is hard ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... in most ancient lands. Offerings of food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in Egypt laid upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour. At Thebes the divine wife of the god, or high priestess, was the head of the harem of concubines of the god; and similarly in Babylonia the chamber of the god with the golden couch could only be visited by the priestess who slept there for oracular responses. The Egyptian gods could not be cognisant of what passed on earth {3} ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... of the lake there is usually called wine, and it may be that on minds and bodies "which have attained to the needful congruity," it has operated as wonderful effects as the Colophonian fount itself. The proceedings of the priestess at Brancidae, who also, from amongst other sources, derived the afflatus, or Waren, from a fountain, are to the same purpose. "The prophetic priestess at Brancidae either sits on an axis [exposing herself to the influence, as the Pythoness on her Tripod], or holds a wand in her hand, given ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... expression of countenance. She is the granddaughter of the heroic Princess Kapiolani, who, when the worship and fear of the goddess Pele were at their height, walked boldly up to the crater of Kilauea, in defiance of the warnings and threats of the high-priestess of the idolatrous rites, proclaiming her confidence in the power of her God, the God of the Christians, to preserve her. This act did much to assist in the establishment of Christianity in the Island of Hawaii, and to shake the belief ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... philosophy. She took herself in all seriousness as a genius, ran a dazzling career of a dozen years or so in Cambridge and Boston, and then her light seems to have gone out. She came to the surface, with other newness, in the Transcendental era; she was the priestess of its mysteries; when that movement ebbed away, her day was over. This is the impression one would gather, if he had only current oral ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... as relentless as a high priestess's. "I listen if you goin' tell him 'bout me," she said. "If you tell him, I ready ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... alone, the court-yard, he heard, proceeding from the back of the house, a fearful, wild cry, which ended in violent sobbing. Terrified, he went nearer, and perceived the aunt sitting in the middle of a large heap of turf. The priestess at Delphi could not have looked more agitated! Her close cap she had torn from her head; her long, gray hair floated over her shoulders; and with her feet she stamped upon the turf, like a willful child, until the pieces flew in various ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... in these opening lines is continued throughout the comedy, in which, by little touches here and there, the scene is kept constantly before us of the rocky shore in the strong brilliant sun after the storm of the night, the temple with its kindly priestess, and the red-tiled country-house by the reeds of the lagoon, with the solitary pastures behind it dotted over with fennel. Now and again one is reminded of the Winter's Tale, with fishermen instead of shepherds for ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... obviously a centre and focus of divine inspiration. On this mountain Apollo was said to have slain the serpent Python. The apartment of the oracle was immediately over the chasm from which the vapour issued. A priestess delivered the responses, who was called Pythia, probably in commemoration of the exploit which had been performed by Apollo. She sat upon a tripod, or three-legged stool, perforated with holes, over ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... unsuspected extent, had she understood how one stone rashly loosened from the laboriously erected structure of human society may produce remote fissures in that clumsy fabric. She saw that, having hazarded the loosening of the stone, she should have held herself apart from ordinary human ties, like some priestess set apart for the service of the temple. And instead, she had seized happiness with both hands, taken it as the gift of the very fate she had herself precipitated! She remembered some old Greek saying to the effect ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... temples, one dedicated to Fate like that in the underground city of Nyo, and the other to Love. Of the temple to Fate she told me her father had been the High Priest, and of the temple to Love she was the High Priestess. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... his face, which was convulsed with love and pain, and found her stern as a priestess who defends her mystery from violation. Meekly he let his arms fall from her body and turned away, resting his head on his hand and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... said the soothsayer, in the foreign music of her low voice, "what brings thee hither? Wouldst thou gain, or hast thou lost, that gift our poor sex prizes so dearly beyond its value? Is it of love that thou wouldst speak to the interpreter of dreams and the priestess of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lowest: Saturn (black), Venus (white), Jupiter (purple), Mercury (blue), Mars (vermilion), the moon (silver), the sun (gold). The highest tower contained a chapel with a table of gold and magnificent couch whereon a priestess kept ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... spirit of the days of old, joined to a brain which rebels against the divine inspiration; broken lyre, mute instrument, whose tones the world of to-day, if it heard them, could not understand, but yet in whose depth the eternal harmony murmurs imprisoned; priestess of death, I, I who feel and know that before now I have been Pythia, have wept before now, before now have spoken, but who cannot recollect, alas, cannot utter the word of healing! Yes, yes! I remember the cavern of truth and ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... "The Priestess of Culture," by Herbert Adams, one of the best-known of American sculptors, eight times repeated, we felt, had its rightful place up there and blended into the general architectural scheme. But some of the other pieces of statuary might have been ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... of Romulus, was a vestal virgin, who lived in the kingdom of Latium about four hundred years after the death of AEneas. A vestal virgin was a sort of priestess, who was required, like the nuns of modern times, to live in seclusion from the rest of the world, and devote their time wholly and without reserve to the services of religion. They were, like nuns, especially prohibited from all ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... daughter, explained the change in the woman before her. Mrs. Comerford had grown much softer. She was still a remarkable-looking woman, the wreck of stately beauty. In her black garments, which fell about her in flowing lines, she had the air of a priestess. Her age showed in her thinness, which was almost emaciation, and her face was wrinkled and heavily lined. Yet her smile was more ready than Lady O'Gara remembered and her eyes quieter. They had been very blue eyes once upon a time—her ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... they find the old home a very charming place, and fall quite in love with both the doctor and Mrs. Graham before they go away. Marilla always kept the large east parlor for a sacred shrine of society, to be visited chiefly by herself as guardian priestess; but Nan has made it a pleasanter room than anybody ever imagined possible, and uses it with a freedom which appears to the old housekeeper to lack consideration and respect. Nan makes the most of her vacations, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain attempt to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Coecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago; it ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and, as a rule, I guessed aright. This faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived, was a German—such a German, somehow, as I had seen imagined in literature. Was she not a friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of aesthetics—something in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, however, were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident friend was making of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an ungloved hand, covered altogether with blue-gemmed ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... was succeeded in this mansion by a sour fanatic knight, a distant and collateral relation, who claimed the same merit for expelling the priestess of Baal, which his predecessor had founded on maintaining the votaresses of Heaven. Of the two unhappy nuns, driven from their ancient refuge, one went beyond sea; the other, unable from old age to undertake such a journey, died under the roof of a faithful Catholic ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that had fallen from heaven. His friend Pylades accompanied him on this expedition. They were seized by Thoas the king, and Orestes, as the principal offender, was to be sacrificed to Artemis. His sister, Iphigeneia, priestess of Artemis, contrived their escape, and the three arrived safe at Athens with the sacred image.] The whole assembly rose in applause at this mere fictitious representation. What may we suppose that they would have done, had the same thing occurred in real life? In that case Nature herself ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... the town of Zeus, where it stood by the side of the sacred lake, and the fountain which breathed out fire, in the darkness of the ancient oak wood, beneath the mountain of the hundred springs. And he led him to the holy oak, where the black dove settled in old times, and was changed into the priestess of Zeus, and gave oracles to all nations round. And he bade him cut down a bough, and sacrifice to Hera and to Zeus; and they took the bough and came to Iolcos, and nailed it to the beak ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... what, Cora: everything has changed since that usurper came. This place is no longer 'Violet Banks' It is the Holy Hill. This house is the temple; that nursery is the sanctuary; that cradle is the altar; and that babe is the idol of the community. Now go along with Violet. Oh! she is high priestess to the idol. Go along. I'm going to wash my face and hands, and then ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... secretly set off to consult a distant oracle of Phoebus Apollo of which she had heard. She had to traverse thirsty deserts, and not till she was nearly dead did she reach the shrine. She told her story and handed in her scroll to a priestess, who disappeared in an inner chamber. In a few minutes the temple of the Sun-god was filled with blazing light, the child prostrated herself on the floor, and she heard the words, THERE IS NO RIDDLE. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... with rays divine, Touch'd with the flame that breaks from Virtue's shrine, Her priestess Muse forbids the good to die, And opes the temple[221] of Eternity. There, other trophies deck the truly brave, Than such as Anstis[222] casts into the grave; Far other stars than —— and —— wear,[223] And may descend to Mordington from Stair:[224] (Such ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... own their foe, And turned to jest thy warnings, though the low, Deep, awful mutterings, that precede the throe Of earthquakes, burdened all the ominous air; While yet they paused in scorn, Of fatal madness born,— Thou, oh, my Mother! like a priestess bless'd With wondrous vision of the things to come, Thou couldst not calmly rest Secure and dumb— But from thy borders, with the sounds of drum And trumpet, came the thrilling note, "PREPARE!" "Prepare for what?" thy careless sisters said; ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... be trusted to feel in his quiet way that the oracle must be a match for the priestess. "'Want' her, Jane? We wouldn't TAKE her." And as if knowing quite what he was about he looked at his wife ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... gain his love or drive him from my heart: A place there is where AEthiopia ends, And into ocean's lap the sun descends; Where Atlas on his spreading shoulders bears, And turns the shining glory of the spheres. 600 Thence comes a priestess, in Massyla rear'd, Who for the watchful Dragon food prepar'd; Th' Hesperian temple 'twas her charge to keep, The drowsy flow'rs in liquid honey steep, And watch the golden branches on the tree. 605 She, at her will, the lab'ring mind can free, With mystic verse,—or deadly cares ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... shape, are received by Philemon and Baucis, after having been refused admittance by their neighbours. The Gods, in acknowledgment of their hospitality, transform their cottage into a temple, of which, at their own request, they are made the priest and priestess; and, after a long life, the worthy couple are changed into trees. The village where they live is laid under water, on account of the impiety of the inhabitants, and is turned into a lake. Acheloues here relates the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... those eyes that glowed with the fires of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion, and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form—Dionysus as wine, Aphrodite as the act of love, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... got to be regarded as not quite right in your head, and pity is the only thing felt for you. The nurse, however, is determined that, insane or not, there shall be no shirking and that you shall go through your task to the end. In the tones of a high priestess directing some religious mystery she says, holding the ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... faithful La Pierre may wrap and bundle you up to your heart's content. Not a breath of air shall annoy you, and all your necessities shall be provided for with as much reverence as if you were the holy fire in the temple of Vesta, and I the priestess ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the opposite extreme, for emphasis fell on the mystic and uncanny powers possessed by woman. Thus it was that in ancient nations there was a deification of woman which found expression in the belief in feminine deities and the establishment of priestess cults. Not until the dawn of the Christian era was the emphasis once more focussed on woman as a thing unclean. Then, her mystic power was ascribed to demon communication, and stripped of her divinity, she became the witch to be ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... bench at the foot of the class, in your Dame's Art School, to learn the alphabet of the wonderful Renaissance; and in our chastened and reverent mood, it almost takes our breath away when your high-priestess unrolls the last pronunciamento, and tells us her startling story of 'Euphorion!' Why? Ah!—don't you know? The Puritan leaven of prudery, and the stern, stolid, phlegmatic decorum of Knickerbockerdom mingle in that consummate flower ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the cook-lady, with the rapt expression of a high-priestess. "Allenby told me how you arranged for a hot spoon. It was ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... to prove that the entrance of a bride into a family from outside was a matter of very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achieved without special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may even go so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn initiation before assuming that position. And we may still further illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the priesthood of Jupiter ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... poetry; he was ready to lay down his life for poetry. He did not read, he declaimed the verse majestically, in a torrent of rhythm, in a rolling outpour through his nose, like a man intoxicated, lifted out of himself, like the Pythian priestess. And another habit he had: first he would lisp the verses through softly, in a whisper, as it were mumbling them to himself.... This he used to call the rough sketch of the reading; then he would thunder out the same verse in its 'fair copy,' and would all at once leap up, throw up his hand, with ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the flame of the opposing passions which burned with the blood in the veins of the young fanatic. As a skillful general, seeing the enemy ready to surrender, marches toward him with a cry of victory, she rose, beautiful as an antique priestess, inspired like a Christian virgin, her arms extended, her throat uncovered, her hair disheveled, holding with one hand her robe modestly drawn over her breast, her look illumined by that fire which had already created such disorder in the veins of the young Puritan, and went toward him, crying ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... votive offerings had been disinterred from the sand in front of the building. The soil at that place is profusely strewn with fragments of images wrought in clay, representing portions of the human body. I was myself so fortunate as to fall in with the head of a priestess, a beautiful piece of workmanship, moulded according to the most exact proportions of Grecian art. It had formed part of a brazier that had served to burn perfumes on the altar near which I found it. ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... me hither, bade me greet With hail, and fair salute, Diana's priestess. For new and wondrous conquest, this the day, When to her goddess Tauris renders thanks. I hasten on before the king and host, Himself to herald, and its ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in such majesty, finding its own aptest words by its unconscious instinct, that the aged minister was presently aware of a preternatural power at his side. Was this woman a witch, genius, demon, or the very priestess ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... more than five years a widow, still young and ardent, nearing the noontide of her womanhood, and immolated in this house of perennial mourning, making vain oblation of her youth, her beauty, the rich wine of life that coursed so lustily through her being, upon the altar of a memory whose high priestess was only an ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... particular the grand old Commonwealth which they inhabited, he stated, had not long sat among the ruins of her temples, like a sorrowing priestess with veiled eyes and a depressed soul, mourning for that which had been. Like the fabled Phoenix, she had risen from the ashes of her past. To-day she was once more to be seen in her hereditary position, the brightest gem in all that glorious galaxy of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... is equally faulty; for to first impressions everything on earth is chameleon-like. The Scandinavian Divinities, the Past, the Present, and the Future, could look upon each other, but neither of them upon herself. But in the journal the Present is trying to behold itself; the same priestess utters and explains the oracle. Thus the journal is the immortal reproduction of the jour des dupes. The editors are like the newsboys, shouting the news which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... hereditary priesthood, of which Harut my uncle, for he is my uncle, is the head. We believe that the Child is God, or rather a symbol in which God dwells, and that it can save us in this world and the next, for we hold that man is an immortal spirit. We believe also that through its Oracle—a priestess who is called Guardian of the Child—it can declare the future and bring blessings or curses upon men, especially upon our enemies. When the Oracle dies we are helpless since the Child has no 'mouth' and our enemies prevail against us. This happened a long while ago, and the last ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... "Peace:" whispered an unknown voice; "injure not thy species by such a remark: the object before thee is called by a name that is familiar to thee—it is 'CANDOUR.' She is the handmaid of Truth, the sister of Virtue, and the priestess of Religion." ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the Furies seem to echo along this wild and desert shore? As soon as Madame de Hell could distinguish the line of rocks that traced the vague horizon, she began to look for Cape Parthenike, the traditional site of the altar of the goddess, to whom the young priestess Iphigenia was on the point of sacrificing her brother. Assisted by the captain, she at length descried on a rocky headland a solitary chapel, dedicated, she was told, to the Virgin Mother. "What a contrast," she naturally remarks, "between the gentle ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... am I to tell you that I have seen George Sand twice, and am to see her again? Ah, there is no time to tell you, for I must shut up this letter. She sate, like a priestess, the other morning in a circle of eight or nine men, giving no oracles, except with her splendid eyes, sitting at the corner of the fire, and warming her feet quietly, in a general silence of the most profound deference. There was something ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... mighty gates of threefold brass; and over the gates the wall is arched, with golden battlements above. And over the gateway sits Brimo, the wild witch-huntress of the woods, brandishing a pine- torch in her hands, while her mad hounds howl around. No man dare meet her or look on her, but only I her priestess, and she watches far and wide lest any ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... and passages and queer hiding-places which we children knew, and in parts queer leaded windows of bulging glass set high in the wall, and older than the reign of Hanover. Here was the shrine of cleanliness, whose high-priestess was Patty herself. Her floors were like satin-wood, and her brasses lights in themselves. She had come honestly enough by her gifts, her father having married the daughter of an able townsman of Salem, in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... God of grace, From the loud wind to me a hiding-place! Thee gird broad lands with genial motions rife, But in thee dwells, high-throned, the Life of life Thy test no stagnant moat half-filled with mud, But living waters witnessing in flood! Thy priestess, beauty-clad, and gospel-shod, A fellow laborer in the earth with God! Good will art thou, and goodness all thy arts— Doves to their windows, and to thee fly hearts! Take of the corn in thy dear shelter grown, Which ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the steppes of Russia as the ice-caps retreated . . . reembodied on the Baltic coast or the shores of the North Sea . . . sleeping for ages in one of the Megaliths, to rise again a daughter of the Brythons, or of a Norse Viking . . . west into Anglia to appear once more as a Priestess of the Druids chaunting in a sacred grove . . . or as Boadicea—who knows! But no prose can regenerate that shadowy time. I see it—prehistory—as a swaying mass of ghostly multitudes, but always pressing on—on . . . as we shall appear, no doubt, ten thousand years ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the age of Abraham, a king of Ur, Ine-Sin by name, had not only overrun Elam, but had also conquered Simurru, the Zemar of Gen. x. 18, in the land of Phoenicia. A daughter of the same king or of one of his immediate successors, was high-priestess both of Elam and of Markhas or Mer'ash in Northern Syria, while Kimas or Northern Arabia was overrun by the Babylonian arms. Proofs consequently are multiplying of the intimate relations that existed between Babylonia and Western Asia long before the era of the Patriarchs, and we need no longer ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... was always to return to myself, to be my own priest, pupil, parent, child, husband, and wife. All this I did not understand as I do now; but this destiny of the thinker, and (shall I dare to say it?) of the poetic priestess, sibylline, dwelling in the cave, or amid the Lybian sands, lay yet enfolded in my mind. Accordingly, I did not look on any of the persons, brought into relation with me, with ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... custom, to Numitor, the elder. But Amulius drave out his brother, and reigned in his stead. Nor was he content with this wickedness, but slew all the male children of his brother. And the daughter of his brother, that was named Rhea Silvia, he chose to be a priestess of Vesta, making as though he would do the maiden honour; but his thought was that the name of his brother should perish, for they that serve Vesta are vowed to ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... creatures had once been sacred to Freya. At the feast horse-flesh, once the food of the gods at banquets, was eaten. The broth for the feast was brewed in a kettle held over the fire by a tripod, like that which supported the seat of Apollo's priestess at Delphi. The kettle may be a reminder of the one Thor got, which gave to each guest whatever food he asked of it, or it may be merely that used in brewing the herb-remedies which women made before they were thought to practise ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... felt," she murmured aloud, "when, discrowned and unqueened, she crept out of the gates of Shushan to hide her broken heart. I wonder if Esther has already usurped my sceptre. Has that girl at the Cove, with her pale, priestess-like face and mysterious eyes, stolen his heart from me? Perhaps not, for it may never have been mine. I know that Esterbrook Elliott will be true to the letter of his vows to me, no matter what it may cost him. But I want no pallid shadow of the love ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... (bat), his wife, from whom were born CAY (fish), the pontiff; AAK (turtle), who became the governor of Uxmal; CHAACMOL (leopard), the warrior, who became the husband of his sister MOO (macaw), the Queen of Chichen, worshiped after her death at Izamal; and NICTE (flower), the priestess who, under the name of Zuhuy-Kuk, became the goddess ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... Slave Coast the women who served as priestesses enjoyed absolute sway over their husbands, who were in the habit of serving them on their knees. This, however, was contrary to the general rule, wherefore it is obvious that the homage was not to the woman as such, but to the priestess. The feeling inspired in such cases is, moreover, fear rather than respect; the priestess among savages is a sorceress, usually an old woman whose charms have faded, and who has no other way of asserting herself than by assuming a pretence to supernatural powers and making herself feared ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... at last and she took her place at the piano. Her hands fell softly on a group of dreamy ascending chords. Her face, then, in a long pause, took on a rapt expectancy and power. She was the priestess waiting before her altar for the descent of the god, glorious and dreadful. And it was as if with the chill and shudder of a possession that, breathing deeply, drawing her shoulders a little together, she lifted her hands and played. She became the possessed and articulate priestess, her soul, her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... salon, which in every detail was decorated and arranged for pleasure, immediately became, through the exquisite charm with which she presided, the one goal of the cultured; her blue room was the sanctuary of polite society and she was its high priestess. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... she claims the captive girl—the last of that devoted tribe—to be delivered over to her will. Her right to this remnant of her murdered husband's family is acknowledged. A knife is placed in her hand, while a deafening yell of triumph bursts from the excited squaws, as this their great high priestess, as they deem her, advances to the criminal. But it is not to shed the heart's blood of the Mohawk girl, but to sever the thong that bind her to the deadly stake, for which that glittering blade is drawn, and to bid her depart in peace whithersoever ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Oracle of Delphi: the Central Doors being the Gate of the 'Adytum,' or Innermost shrine. From the left Inferior Door enter the Priestess of the Oracle, who stands in front of the Central Gate, to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... guardian genii of each ward or quarter, is ancient, and can be traced to prehistoric times. When Servius Tullius enclosed the city with his walls, there were twenty-four such altars, called sacraria Argeorum. Two facts speak in favor of their remote antiquity. The priestess of Jupiter was not allowed to sacrifice on them, unless in a savage attire, with hair unkempt and untrimmed. On the 17th of May, the Vestals used to throw into the Tiber, from the Sublician bridge, manikins of wickerwork, in commemoration ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... and power—when she has a chance. But I also believe that Woman must conquer in herself—the love of luxury, her vanity, her fierce competition for worldly position—if only for the disastrous effect of such evils upon men. They force him to lower his dreams of her, who should be high-priestess." ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... thou, fair mount, when Greece was young, See round thy giant base a brighter choir; Nor e'er did Delphi, when her priestess sung The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire, Behold a train more fitting to inspire The song of love than Andalusia's maids, Nurst in the glowing lap of soft desire: Ah! that to these were given such peaceful ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... pretension, even, to a divine inspiration and guidance in the age in which he lived. "'The greatest blessings which men receive come through the operation of phrensy ([Greek: mania]—inspired exaltation), when phrensy is the gift of God. The prophetess of Delphi, and the priestess of Dodona, many are the benefits which in their phrensies (moments of inspiration) they have bestowed upon Greece; but in their hours of self-possession, few or none. And too long were it to speak of the Sibyl, and others, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... British Museum at night, rid at last of those who gape at Egypt's dishonoured dead, may not be filled with snatches of music from throat or hand of those unfortunates, priest, priestess, fair woman and honoured man, dug out and laid upon a slab of grass for the education of the revellers of a wet Bank Holiday, or those others from Northern climes, who bid their snuffling, sticky progeny to "coom oop, lad, an' ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... their life through. If they go astray, they never cease proclaiming aloud that 'they know it's very wrong;' though eminently unpractical, they think it due to themselves to pet certain abstract truths (circumstances don't affect them in the least), like that priestess of Cotytto, who said to the magistrate, through her tears, 'I may have been unfortunate, but I've always been respectable!' Sometimes principle gets the pull over passion, but, in such a case, regrets come as often afterward as remorse ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... they not only say this, but also they set forth for it monthly offerings, as if it were really there; and the offering consists of a honey-cake. This honey-cake, which before used always to be consumed, was at this time left untouched. When the priestess had signified this, the Athenians left the city much more and with greater eagerness than before, seeing that the goddess also had (as they supposed) left the Acropolis. Then when all their belongings had been removed out of danger, they sailed to the encampment ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief priestess at this ceremony, but her increasing deafness infuriated her mistress to such an extent that Nance was initiated into the mysteries. The temperature of the bath, the choice of underclothing, the method of procedure were matters of the utmost significance, and the slightest mistake on the part of ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... had fallen, but the room was full of finery, and the finery claimed attention. And if Paris had fallen, it would have been the same. So he told himself. Nevertheless the spectacle of the heaped finery and its absorbed priestess was very agreeable. Lois rose. Laurencine and the priestess helped her to remove the white gown she wore, and to put on the blue one. The presence of the male somewhat disturbed the priestess, but the male ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... females, or hath at least instructed them how to put it on; lest, through the indelicacy of males, the Samean mysteries should be pryed into by unhallowed eyes: for, at the celebration of these rites, the female priestess cries out with her in Virgil (who was then, probably, hard ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... short, magnificent year, forever to be contented with the grim rigidity of conventual life in an ancient cloister surrounded by gloomy mountains. She was to be a veiled shadow amongst veiled shades, a priestess of sorrow amongst sad virgins; and though, if she lived long enough, she was to be the chief of them and their ruler, her very superiority could only make her desolation more complete, until her own shadow, like the others, should be gathered into ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... emitted stupefying vapors, that were thought to be the inspiring breath of Apollo. Over the spot was erected a splendid temple, in honor of the oracle. The revelation was generally received by the Pythia, or priestess, seated upon a tripod placed over the orifice. As she became overpowered by the influence of the prophetic exhalations, she uttered the message of the god. These mutterings of the Pythia were taken down by attendant priests, interpreted, and written in hexameter verse. Sometimes ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... philosophers, concurred with the Eastern nations in general in associating with courtesans; who were, indeed, honoured with the highest distinctions. The Corinthians ascribed their deliverance, and that of the rest of Greece, from the power of Xerxes, to the intercession of the priestess of Venus, and the protection of the goddess. At all the festivals of Venus, the people applied to the courtesans as the most efficacious intercessors; and Solon deemed it advantageous to Athens, to introduce the worship ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... same time, came to rest with an adoring awe. The smell of him being extremely offensive to all this cleanly tribe, and especially to A-ya and Grom, who were more fastidious than their fellows, A-ya had taken advantage of her office as priestess of the Shining One to establish a little fire within the precincts of her own dwelling, and by the judicious use of aromatic barks upon the blaze she was able to scent the place to her taste. And the Bow-leg, seeing her ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to by the bunda woman, to ascertain what the concealed crime is, and after a decent period employed in this buffoonery, the charges are brought in conformity with the imagination or malignity of this priestess of mystery and iniquity. ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... Back in the far past we can build up the life of our ancestry—the little kingdom, the queen or her daughter as king maker, the simple life of the royal household, and the humble candidate for the kingship, the priestess with her control of the weather and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be branded ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the pledge's projecting ear, and that heaven-directed bimbo straightway turns his head toward the dust-hole, and, again illustrating the first clause of the Sphynx's not very complicated riddle, keeps the strictly noiseless tenor of his way, till Ahriman's priestess looks round to see the metaphors fulfilled, of the pup turning again to his ashheap, and the papoose that was washed wallowing in the dust-hole. And so the pull-devil-pull-baker strife goes on to the last ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... direct orders of the black despots in the land, young Ralestone got de Roche and his daughter away on his ship. Her maid chose to remain among her people. Ralestone hints that she was a sort of priestess of Voodoo and that it had been her dark powers which had protected the lives of those ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... was at its height when she planned a visit abroad, which had been a long-cherished dream, and May 15, 1883, she sailed for England, accompanied by a younger sister. We have difficulty in recognizing the tragic priestess we have been portraying in the enthusiastic child of travel who seems new-born into a new world. From the very outset she is in a maze of wonder and delight. At sea ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the neglect of Woman was a reaction on the manners of Etruria, where the priestess Queen, warrior Queen, would seem to have been so ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli |
