Inside traditional usage, a cult of the religion, quite apart from its sacred writings ("scriptures"), its theology or myths, or a individual faith of its believers, is the totality of external religious practice & observance, a forget about of which is the definition of impiety. Cult is literally a "care" owed to a god & the shrine. A term "cult" number one appeared around English inside 1617, from either a French culte, meaning "worship" or "a particular form of worship" which successively originated from either a Latin word religious cult meaning "care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated," besides a past participle of colere "to till"

By extension, "cult" has are to connote a sum cultural aspects of a religion, when it is distinguished from either others across vary & individuation.

A significant "devotion to a person or thing" is from either either 1829, & from that connotation comes a modern meaning of "cult" as in the "cultist" or even the "cult following". Cult & cultist use recently accrued blackball connotations that come individually dealt by owning at a entry cult.

A select few Christians produce refined distinctions between worship and veneration, both of which are then outwardly expressed within religious cult or even cult & come undistinguishable to the observer. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy distinguish between worship (Latin adoratio, Greek latreia [λατρεια]) which is due to God alone, and veneration (Latin veneratio, Greek doulia [δουλεια]), which may be lawfully offered to the saints. These personal distinctions between immortal & intercessor come thoroughly treated at a entries for worship and veneration.

Among the observances in the cult of a divinity come ritual, which may require spoken or even sung prayers or hymns, and typically sacrifice, or substitutes for sacrifice. More manifestations of a cult of the divinity come the preservation of relics or a creation of images, like icons (usually connoting the flat painted image) or even idols (usually connoting 3-cubic objects), & a identification of sacred wharehouses, brow & mountains, fissures & caves, springs & pools, or even groves, which can be a seat of an oracle. A sacred wharehouses can be elaborated by construction of shrines and temples, on which are then centered public attention at religious festivals (called "Feasts" within a few Christian communities) & which can get a center for pilgrimages.

A comparative learn of cult practice is a portion of the disciplines of the anthropology of religion and the sociology of religion, two aspects of comparative religion.