lustral

Written while grappling with the deeply corporeal experience of pregnancy — which Halsey, who is nonbinary, said “leveled my perception of gender entirely” — “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God” is as much a razor-sharp thesis on their identity as it is a lustral exhale.

He poured over her the lustral water symbolic of purification and conferred upon her jeweled decorations denoting her rank.

My mother would intone the appropriate incantations to drive out the evil spirits, and sprinkle our family, our home, and its surroundings with her lustral libations.

Aretos brought clear lustral water in a bowl quivering with fresh-cut flowers, a basket of barley in his other hand.

It was agony for her to breathe that impure air any longer, and that she might freely give herself up to her grief she took refuge in the upper apartments reserved for the women, summoned her slaves by clapping her hands, and poured ewers of water over her shoulders, her bosom, and her whole body, as, though hoping by this species of lustral ablution to efface the soil imprinted by the eyes of Gyges.