Ritual

For other uses, see Ritual (disambiguation).

Part of the ceremony of the Changing of the Guards in Whitehall, London.

A ritual "is a form of prescribed and elaborated behavior and occurs both as the spontaneous inventions of the individual especially of the compulsion neurotic, and as a culture trait." Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism and performance.

Rituals of various kinds are a feature of almost all known human societies, past or present. They include not only the various worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also the rites of passage of certain societies, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, school "rush" traditions and graduations, club meetings, sports events, Halloween parties, veterans parades, Christmas shopping and more. Many activities that are ostensibly performed for concrete purposes, such as jury trials, execution of criminals, and scientific symposia, are loaded with purely symbolic actions prescribed by regulations or tradition, and thus partly ritualistic in nature. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying hello may be termed rituals.

The field of ritual studies has seen a number of conflicting definitions of the term. One given by Kyriakidis is that a ritual is an outsider's or "etic" category for a set activity (or set of actions) which to the outsider seems irrational, non-contiguous, or illogical. The term can be used also by the insider or "emic" performer as an acknowledgement that this activity can be seen as such by the uninitiated onlooker.

In psychology, the term ritual is sometimes used in a technical sense for a repetitive behavior systematically used by a person to neutralize or prevent anxiety; it is a symptom of obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Etymology

The English word "ritual" derives from the Latin ritualis, "that which pertains to rite (ritus)". In Roman juridical and religious usage, ritus was the proven way (mos) of doing something, or "correct performance, custom". The original concept of ritus may be related to the Sanskrit ṛtá ("visible order)" in Vedic religion, "the lawful and regular order of the normal, and therefore proper, natural and true structure of cosmic, worldly, human and ritual events". The word "ritual" is first recorded in English in 1570, and came into use in the 1600s to mean "the prescribed order of performing religious services" or more particularly a book of these prescriptions.

Characteristics of ritual

Ritualistic behavior in animal kingdom and early human prehistory

Ritual actions are not characteristic of human cultures only. Many animal species use ritualized actions to court or to greet each other, or to fight. At least some ritualized actions have very strong selective purpose in animals. For example, ritualized fights are extremely important to avoid unnecessary strong physical violence between the conflicting animals.

According to Joseph Jordania, the initial function of ritualistic behaviors in human evolutionary prehistory was to achieve the altered state of consciousness in hominid brain, in order to transform individual hominids into a group of dedicated individuals with a single collective identity. In this state (which Jordania calls battle trance) hominids did not feel fear and pain, they were religiously dedicated to group interests, were not questioning orders, and could sacrifice their lives for the common goal. This state was induced by ritualistic actions: loud rhythmic singing, clapping and drumming on external objects, dancing, body and face painting, and the use of specific cloths and masks. The same kind of ritualistic actions are still widely used in order to achieve the psychological unity of participants in various religious practices, as well in military forces to prepare soldiers for the combat situations

Formalism

The use of Latin in a Catholic Mass is an example of a "restricted code"

Ritual utilizes a limited and rigidly organized set of expressions which anthropologists call a "restricted code" (in opposition to a more open "elaborated code"). Maurice Bloch has argued that ritual obliges participants to use this formal oratorical style, which is limited in intonation, syntax, vocabulary, loudness, and fixity of order. In adopting this style, ritual leaders' speech becomes more style than content. Because this formal speech limits what can be said, it induces "acceptance, compliance, or at least forbearance with regard to any overt challenge." Bloch argues that this form of ritual communication makes rebellion impossible and revolution the only feasible alternative. Ritual tends to support traditional forms of social hierarchy and authority, and maintains the assumptions on which the authority is based from challenge.

Traditionalism

Rituals appeal to tradition and are generally concerned to repeat historical precedents accurately. Traditionalism varies from formalism in that the ritual, such as a Thanksgiving dinner, may not be formal yet still makes an historical appeal to early Puritan settlement in America. Historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger have argued that many of these are "invented traditions", such as the rituals of the British monarchy, which invoke "thousand year-old tradition" but originate in the late nineteenth century. It is thus the appeal to history rather than accurate historical transmission which is important.

Invariance

Ritual is also invariant, implying careful choreography. This is less an appeal to traditionalism than a striving for timeless repitition. The key to invariance is bodily discipline, as in monastic prayer and meditation meant to mold dispositions and moods. This bodily discipline is frequently performed in unison, by groups.

Genres of ritual

Rites of passage

Main articles: Rites of passage and Initiation

A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's transition from one status to another.

Anthropological theories

Victor Turner defined a ritual more thoroughly thus:

A ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the actors' goals and interests. Rituals may be seasonal, hallowing a culturally defined moment of change in the climatic cycle or the inauguration of an activity such as planting, harvesting, or moving from winter to summer pasture; or they may be contingent, held in response to an individual or collective crisis. Contingent rituals may be further subdivided into life-crisis ceremonies, which are performed at birth, puberty, marriage, death, and so on, to demarcate the passage from one phase to another in the individual's life-cycle, and rituals of affliction, which are performed to placate or exorcise preternatural beings or forces believed to have afflicted villagers with illness, bad luck, gynecological troubles, severe physical injuries, and the like. Other classes of rituals include divinatory rituals; ceremonies performed by political authorities to ensure the health and fertility of human beings, animals, and crops in their territories; initiation into priesthoods devoted to certain deities, into religious associations, or into secret societies; and those accompanying the daily offering of food and libations to deities or ancestral spirits or both. (March 16, 1972)

Of particular interest to anthropologists has been the role of ritual in structuring life crises, human development, religious enactment and entertainment.

Among anthropologists, and other ethnographers, who have contributed to ritual theory are Victor Turner, Ronald Grimes, Mary Douglas, and the biogenetic structuralists. Anthropologists from Émile Durkheim through Turner and contemporary theorists like Michael Silverstein (2004) treat ritual as social action aimed at particular transformations often conceived in cosmic terms. Though the transformations can also be thought of as personal (e.g. the fertility and healing rituals Turner describes), they become a sort of cosmic event, one stretching into "eternity."

Aztec ritual human sacrifices, Codex Mendoza.

Religious rituals

In religion, a ritual can comprise the prescribed outward forms of performing the cultus, or cult, of a particular observation within a religion or religious denomination. Although ritual is often used in context with worship performed in a church, the actual relationship between any religion's doctrine and its ritual(s) can vary considerably from organized religion to non-institutionalized spirituality, such as ayahuasca shamanism as practiced by the Urarina of the upper Amazon. Rituals often have a close connection with reverence, thus a ritual in many cases expresses reverence for a deity or idealized state of humanity.

Social functions

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Kowtowing in a court, China, before 1889

The social function of rituals has often been exploited for political ends. Alongside the personal dimensions of worship and reverence, rituals can have a more basic social function in expressing, fixing and reinforcing the shared values and beliefs of a society.

Social rituals have formed a part of human culture for tens of thousands of years. The earliest known undisputed evidence of burial rituals dates from the Upper Paleolithic. Older skeletons show no signs of deliberate "burial," and as such lack clear evidence of having been ritually treated. Anthropologists see social rituals as one of many cultural universals.

Rituals can aid in creating a firm sense of group identity. Humans have used rituals to create social bonds and even to nourish interpersonal relationships. For example, nearly all fraternities and sororities have rituals incorporated into their structure, from elaborate and sometimes "secret" initiation rites, to the formalized structure of convening a meeting. Thus, numerous aspects of ritual and ritualistic proceedings are engrained into the workings of those societies.

See also

3

Further reading

• Aractingi, Jean-Marc and G. Le Pape,2011:Rituals and catechisms in Ecumenical Rite "East and West at the Crossroads Masonic", Editions l'Harmattan- Paris (ISBN 978-2-296-54445 - 1).
• Bax, Marcel. 2010. 'Rituals'. In: Jucker, Andeas H. & Taavitsainen, Irma, eds. Handbook of Pragmatics, Vol. 8: Historical Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 483–519.
• Bell, Catherine. (1997) Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Bloch, Maurice. (1992) Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Carrico, K., ed. 2011. 'Ritual.' Cultural Anthropology (Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology). Virtual Issue: http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/462.
• D'Aquili, Eugene G., Charles D. Laughlin and John McManus. (1979) The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Douglas, Mary. (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo". London: Routledge.
• Durkheim, E. 1965 [1915]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.
• Erikson, Erik. (1977) Toys and Reasons: Stages in the Ritualization of Experience. New York: Norton.
• Fogelin, L. 2007. The Archaeology of Religious Ritual. Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 55–71.
• Gennep, Arnold van. (1960) The Rites of Passage. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Grimes, Ronald L. (1994) The Beginnings of Ritual Studies. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
• Kyriakidis, E., ed. 2007 The archaeology of ritual. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology UCLA publications
• Lawson, E.T. & McCauley, R.N. (1990) "Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• McCorkle Jr., William W. (2010) Ritualizing the Disposal of Dead Bodies: From Corpse to Concept. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
• Turner, Victor W. (1967) The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
• Turner, Victor W. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
• Malinowski, Bronisław. (1948) Magic, Science and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Perniola Mario, Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World, foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, with author's introduction, Amherst (USA), Humanity Books, 2000.
• Smith, Jonathan Z. (1987) To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rappaport, Roy A. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Seijo, F. 2005. The Politics of Fire: Spanish Forest Policy and Ritual Resistance in Galicia, Spain. Environmental Politics 14 (3): 380–402
• Silverstein, M. 2003. Talking Politics :The Substance of Style from Abe to "W". Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press (distributed by University of Chicago). —. 2004. "Cultural" Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus. Current Anthropology 45: 621–652.
• Staal, Frits (1990) "Ritual and Mantras: Rules Without Meaning". New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
• Tolbert, E. 1990a. Women Cry with Words: Symbolization of Affect in the Karelian Lament. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 22: 80–105. —. 1990b. "Magico-Religious Power and Gender in the Karelian Lament," in Music, Gender, and Culture, vol. 1, Intercultural Music Studies. Edited by M. Herndon and S. Zigler, pp. 41–56. Wilhelmshaven, DE.: International Council for Traditional Music, Florian Noetzel Verlag.
• Wilce, J.M. 2006. Magical Laments and Anthropological Reflections: The Production and Circulation of Anthropological Text as Ritual Activity. Current Anthropology 47: 891–914.
• Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios and Panagiotis Roilos, Towards a Ritual Poetics, Athens, Foundation of the Hellenic World, 2003.
• Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios and Panagiotis Roilos (eds.), Greek Ritual Poetics, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2005.