ANOINTING, or greasing with oil, fat or melted butter, a process employed ritually in all religions and among all races, civilized or savage, partly as a mode of ridding persons and things of dangerous influences and diseases, and partly as a means of introducing into things and persons a sacramental or divine in fluence, a holy emanation, spirit or power. The Australian natives believed that the virtues of one killed could be transferred to survivors who rubbed themselves with his caul-fat. The Arabs of East Africa anoint themselves with lion's fat in order to gain courage and inspire the animals with awe.
From immemorial antiquity, among the Jews as among other races, kings were anointed or greased, doubtless with the fat of the victims which, like the blood, was too holy to be -eaten by the common votaries. Butter made from the milk of the cow, the most sacred of animals, is used in the Hindu religion.
In the Christian religion, especially where animal sacrifices, together with the cult of totem or holy animals, have been given up, it is usual to hallow the oil used in ritual anointings with special prayers and exorcisms ; oil from the lamps lit before the altar has a peculiar virtue of its own, perhaps because it can be burned to give light, and disappears to heaven in doing so. In any case oil has ever been regarded as the aptest symbol and vehicle of the holy and illuminating spirit.
The holy oil, chrism or as the Orthodox call it, was prepared and consecrated on Maundy Thursday. In various churches the dead are anointed with holy oil, to guard them against the vampires or ghouls which ever threaten to take pos session of dead bodies and live in them. In the Armenian church, as formerly in many Greek churches, a cross is not holy until the Spirit has been formally led into it by means of prayer and anointing with holy oil. A new church is anointed at its four corners. and also the altar round which it is built ; similarly tombs. church gongs, and all other instruments and utensils dedicated to cultural uses. In churches of the Greek rite a little of the old year's chrism is left in the jar to communicate its sanctity to that of the new.