What is a Ritual?
A ritual is a set of actions, words, gestures, or objects that are done in a certain way. Rituals can be written down by the traditions of a group, even a religious group. Rituals are characterised, but not defined, by their formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-following, sacral symbolism, performance, and so on. There are rituals in every human society that we know of. What we call “religion” or “cult” isn’t just about what people do when they go to church. It also includes things like “rites of passage,” “atonement and purification rites,” and “oaths of allegiance.” Even simple things like shaking hands and saying “hello” can be called rituals. In the field of ritual studies, there have been a lot of different ways to think about the word “ritual.” There are many different types of rituals, but Kyriakidis says one of the most common is that an outsider or “etic” category is used for a set activity (or set of actions) that doesn’t make sense to the outsider. Also, the insider or “emic” performer may use the term to show that the uninitiated onlooker can see this as an act of art or skill. In psychology, the term “ritual” is sometimes used in a technical sense to refer to a repetitive behaviour that a person uses to deal with or avoid anxiety. It can be a symptom of obsessive–compulsive disorder, but obsessive–compulsive ritualistic behaviours are usually just one thing at a time.
Ritual
A Ritual involves actions involving motions, words, activities, or objects conducted according to a group sequence. Rituals may be defined by the conventions of a community, including a religious and spiritual society.
Practices are described but not restricted to formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.
Rituals are a characteristic of all known human cultures. They possess not only the adoration rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults but also Rituals of passage, penance and sanctification rites, oaths of commitment, commitment ceremonies, coronations, presidential inaugurations, and weddings, funerals, and more. Even everyday activities like hand-shaking and stating ‘hello’ may be practiced.
The domain of Ritual studies has seen several inconsistent descriptions of the phrase. One given by Kyriakidis is that a practice is a foreigner’s or ‘etic’ class for a specified activity or set of actions that, to the outsider, seems illogical, non-contiguous, or irrational. The phrase can also be employed by the insider or ‘emic’ entertainer as an admission that this movement can be seen as such by the uninformed observer.
In psychology, the phrase Ritual is occasionally employed in a specialized purpose for a repetitive behavior systematically used by a person to balance or control anxiety; it can be a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but obsessive-compulsive ceremonial behaviors are typically separated actions.
Characteristics Of A Ritual
The rites of past and present communities have typically involved unique gestures and words, recitation of fixed texts, the performance of special music, songs or dances, processions, manipulation of particular objects, use of special dresses, consumption of exceptional food, drink, or alcohol, and much more. There are hardly any restrictions on the activities that may be included in a Ritual.
Catherine Bell asserts that Rituals can be described by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.
Formalism
Latin in a Tridentine Catholic Mass is an instance of a ‘restricted code.’ Ritual employs a restricted and rigorously scheduled set of expressions that anthropologists call a ‘restricted code’ in resistance to a more open ‘exaggerated code’. Maurice Bloch claims that Ritual obliges participants to employ this formal oratorical style, restricted in intonation, syntax, vocabulary, loudness, and order perseverance.
Ritual leaders' speech becomes more style than the range in adopting this technique. Because this formal speech limitations what can be said, it causes ‘acceptance, submission, or at least tolerance regarding any overt challenge.’ Bloch reasons that this state of Ritual transmission makes revolution unimaginable and revolution the only viable option. Ritual supports standard conditions of colonial hierarchy and control and supports the beliefs on which the rule is established from a challenge.
Traditionalism
The First Thanksgiving 1621 is an oil on canvas painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris 1863–1930. The painting depicts standard fallacies about the event that stay in modern times: Pilgrims did not wear such costumes, and the Wampanoag are clothed in the type of Plains Indians.
Rituals appeal to tradition and are typically continually repeating historical precedent, religious rites, mores, or ceremonies correctly. Traditionalism differs from formalism in that the Ritual may not be legal yet still makes an appeal to the historical trend. An instance is the American Thanksgiving dinner, which may not be lawful, yet is supposedly established on occasion from the early Puritan settlement of America.
Historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger have claimed that numerous of these are developed practices, such as the practices of the British monarchy, which conjure ‘thousand-year-old tradition’ but whose genuine document created in the late nineteenth century, to some degree restoring earlier forms, in this case medieval, that had been suspended in the meantime. Thus, the history request is necessary rather than objective historical information.
Invariance
Catherine Bell notes that Ritual is also consistent, suggesting detailed choreography. This is a more minor attraction to traditionalism than a striving for timeless recurrence. The key to invariance is a physical discipline, as monastic devotion and meditation are meant to mold personalities and attitudes. This physical discipline is frequently performed in unison by parties.
Rule-Governance
Rituals tend to be ruled by protocol, a feature somewhat like formalism. Regulations impose norms on conduct disorder, describing the outer limits of what is acknowledged or choreographing each move. People are held to communally agreed traditions that produce proper communal management that can deny the possible results. Historically, a war in most organizations has been secured by favorably Ritualized restrictions limiting the fair standards of war.
Sacral symbolism
Activities favoring supernatural beings are simply considered Rituals. However, the appeal may be quite indirect, expressing only a generalized belief in the existence of the sacred, demanding a human response. National flags, for instance, may be regarded more than signs depicting a country. The banner conveys more recognized characters like freedom, democracy, free enterprise, or federal authority.
Anthropologist Sherry Ortner notes that the flag does not encourage reflection on the logical relations among these concepts or the logical values as they are played out in sociable actuality, over time, and in history. On the opposite, the flag inspires commitment to the whole package, best totaled [by] ‘Our flag, love it or leave.’
Particular things become sacral symbols via consecration, which effectively constructs the sacred by setting it apart from the offensive. Boy Scouts and the armed forces in various nations introduce the standard folding, saluting, and raising of the flag, thus focusing that the flag should never be regaled as a portion of the cloth.
Performance
The performance of Ritual forms a theatrical-like structure around the movements, symbols, and circumstances that shape the participant’s knowledge and cognitive sequence of the world, facilitating the confusion of life and charging a more or less legible design of types of substance onto it. As Barbara Myerhoff put it, ‘not only is witnessing believing, accomplishing is believing.’
Ritual Genres
For simplicity’s sake, the scope of various Rituals can be separated into classes with typical features, typically falling into three primary classifications:
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rites, of course, normally transform an individual’s social and class status;
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communal rites, whether of glorification, where a community comes jointly to worship, such as Jewish synagogue or Mass, or of another nature, such as fertility Rituals and detailed non-religious celebrations;
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Rites of private devotion, where an individual bows to or worships, including devotion and pilgrimages, oaths of allegiance, or vows to marry someone.