Rondgaan van de drinkbeker tijdens het Heilig Avondmaal in de Doopsgezinde Kerk De Arke Noach te Amsterdam 1743

This engraving depicts the sharing of a drinking cup during Holy Communion in the Doopsgezinde Kerk in Amsterdam. The act of passing the cup, a symbol of unity and shared faith, resonates deeply with ancient rituals of communal drinking, tracing back to pagan libations intended to bring communities together. Consider the Dionysian rites of ancient Greece, where wine was shared in ecstatic communion with the god, blurring the boundaries between the individual and the collective. This primal desire for connection and transcendence finds a new articulation here. The cup itself, passed from hand to hand, becomes a vessel of collective memory, each participant adding their unspoken hopes, fears, and beliefs to its contents. The ritual's emotional power lies in this subconscious merging, a shared symbolic act. Thus, we see how these symbols—the cup, the act of sharing, the communal gathering—echo through time, evolving yet retaining the deep-seated human desire for connection and the divine.