Untying and retying.
Five times a day the cord comes off and goes back on with a formula that renounces the lie. Zoroastrians describe it as putting the day back in order rather than as petition. It turns the tradition's central claim — that you are choosing, continuously, and that the choice is yours — into something the hands do.
The kusti ritual is performed at least five times a day and consists of washing, untying the cord, holding it while reciting the Kem Na Mazda and the Ahura Mazda Khodae — which renounce Angra Mainyu and the daevas and affirm the worshipper's allegiance — and then retying it around the waist with four knots. Practitioners describe the effect in terms of ordering rather than petition: it marks the divisions of the day, it is done at transitions, and it re-states a choice. That is exactly the theological point. A religion whose central claim is that the human being is continuously choosing between truth and the lie, and that the choice is unforced and consequential, has built a physical habit that re-enacts the choice several times a day with the hands. The formula is a renunciation and an affirmation, in that order, and it takes about two minutes.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.