purgation
/pəːˈɡeɪʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun]
1Purification or cleansing: the purgation by ritual violence of morbid social emotions...
- But in all cases the cure is effected essentially by a kind of catharsis or purgation - a release of the pent-up psychic energy, the constriction of which was the basic cause of the neurotic illness.
- I concluded that what my grandfather had been in Purgatory, though also present on earth in some mystical way, and God allowed him to appeal to his son to pray for his release and purgation from attachment to this dimension.
- The showing of Anatomy of Pain on television was seen as poignant and revealing, a sort of purgation, catharsis.
1.1(In Catholic doctrine) the spiritual cleansing of a soul in purgatory.Exorcists were known to abstain periodically from food for reasons of vision causation, purgation, and divine encounter....
- In Brown's late paintings and in the work Gillespie has been making in recent years, symbols are used less for confession and purgation than for spiritual instigation and invocation.
- The man Christ's voluntary and most innocent, most shameful, and most cruel death on the Cross was the deletion and purgation of, and the satisfaction for, all the carnal desires of human nature.
1.2 historical The action of clearing oneself of accusation or suspicion by taking an oath or undergoing an ordeal.
2Evacuation of the bowels brought about by taking laxatives.Herbs with this flavor are generally used for clearing heat, inflammation, infections, toxicity, purgation, discharge dampness, cough vomiting....
- What was the evidence, he asked, that purgation did anyone any good?
- In order to understand the use of purges in TCM it is important to understand the concepts and principles of purgation as applied in herbal practice.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French purgacion, from Latin purgatio(n-), from purgare 'purify' (see purge).