You're listening to the ancient tradition. A Wonk Media production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. Here's your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

Welcome to the ancient tradition. I'm your host, Jack Logan. I hope you're all having a wonderful week. We've got a lot in this episode, so I'm going to jump right in. I'm going to pick up right

where we left off in our last episode. As I've mentioned, we aren't to the point in the podcast

where we're going to discuss ritual in depth yet. There's a bit more theological and symbolic

ground that we need to cover before we can properly do that. I did, though, want to pause while we were talking about God's status as a married being

to demonstrate to you how ritual, in particular the Hindu marriage ritual, combines

many of the important theological tenets that we've discussed on the program,

like the anointing and kingship, which we can trace

all the way back to the dawn of civilization, with key religious symbols that express the sacred

center like the circumpunk, which we can also trace back to the dawn of civilization.

And both of these, the theology of anointing and its association with kingship and the symbolism of the sacred center found in the Hindu marriage ritual strongly suggest that the Hindu marriage right grew out of the same theological system that, as we've been arguing here on the program informed the

religions of the ancient Near East a theology which we refer to on this

program as the ancient tradition now it's one thing to argue that the Hindu

holiday ceremony is an echo of the ancient kingship anointing right we see

in ancient Egypt Mesopotamia, and Israel.

On the surface, it definitely looks that way.

But the contention takes on much greater weight when we dig a little deeper

and ask Hindus about their religious beliefs.

What they believe, the turmeric anointing has the power to do.

This is where the Hindu holiday ceremony gets really interesting, because we find that Hindus

associate the turmeric anointing with four important religious beliefs.

They believe that turmeric paste has the power, number one, to heal.

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