Ritual

Alternative Title: rite

Table of Contents

Introduction

Nature and significance

Functions of ritual

Types of ritual

Conclusion

Ritual, the performance of ceremonial acts prescribed by tradition or by sacerdotal decree. Ritual is a specific, observable mode of behaviour exhibited by all known societies. It is thus possible to view ritual as a way of defining or describing humans. Nature and significance

Human beings are sometimes described or defined as a basically rational, economic, political, or playing species. They may, however, also be viewed as ritual beings who exhibit a striking parallel between their ritual and verbal behaviour. Just as language is a system of symbols that is based upon arbitrary rules, ritual may be viewed as a system of symbolic acts that is based upon arbitrary rules.

The intricate yet complex relation between ritual and language can be seen in the history of various attempts to explain ritual behaviour. In most explanations, language becomes a necessary factor in the theory concerning the nature of ritual, and the specific form of language that is tied to explanations of ritual is the language of myth. Both myth and ritual remain fundamental to any analysis of religions.

Three general approaches to a theory about the nature and origin of ritual prevail. The origin approach

The earliest approach was an attempt to explain ritual, as well as religion, by means of a theory concerned with historical origin. In most cases, this theory also assumed an evolutionary hypothesis that would explain the development of ritual behaviour through history. The basic premise, or law, for this approach is that ontogeny (development of an individual organism) recapitulates phylogeny (evolution of a related group of organisms), just as the human embryo recapitulates the stages of human evolutionary history in the womb�e.g., the gill stage. The solution to explaining the apparently universal scope of ritual depended upon the success in locating the oldest cultures and cults. Scholars believed that if they could discover this origin, they would be able to explain contemporary human rituals.

There are almost as many solutions as authors in this approach. In the search for an origin of ritual, research turned from the well-known literate cultures to those that appeared to be less complex and preliterate. The use of the terms primitive religion and primitive cultures comes from this approach in seeking an answer to the meaning of ritual, myth, and religion. Various cultures and rituals were singled out, sacrifice of either men or animals becoming one of the main topics for speculation, though the exact motivation or cause of sacrificial ritual was disputed among the leading authors of the theory. For W. Robertson Smith, a British biblical scholar who first published his theory in the ninth edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1875�89), sacrifice was motivated by the desire for communion between members of a primitive group and their god. The origin of ritual, therefore, was believed to be found in totemic (animal symbolic clan) cults; and totemism, for many authors, was thus believed to be the earliest stage of religion and ritual. The various stages of ritual development and evolution, however, were never agreed upon. Given this origin hypothesis, rituals of purification, gift giving, piacular (expiatory) rites, and worship were viewed as developments, or secondary stages, of the original sacrificial ritual. The Christian Eucharist (Holy Communion), along with contemporary banquets and table etiquette, were explained as late developments or traits that had their origin and meaning in the totemic sacrifice.

The influence of Robertson Smith�s theory on the origin of ritual can be seen in the works of the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer, the French sociologist �mile Durkheim, and Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Although they were not in complete agreement with Smith, sacrifice and totemism remained primary concerns in their search for the origin of religion. For Frazer, the search led to magic, a stage preceding religion. Both Smith and Frazer led Durkheim to seek the origin of ritual and religion in totemism as exemplified in Australia. Durkheim believed that in totemism scholars would find the original form of ritual and the division of experience into the sacred and the profane. Ritual behaviour, they held, entails an attitude that is concerned with the sacred; and sacred acts and things, therefore, are nothing more than symbolic representations of society. In his last major work, Moses and Monotheism, Freud also remained convinced that the origin of religion and ritual is to be found in sacrifice.

Freud, SigmundSigmund Freud, 1921.Mary Evans/Sigmund Freud Copyrights (courtesy of W.E. Freud)The functional approach

The second approach to explaining ritual behaviour is certainly indebted to the work of such men as Smith, Freud, and Durkheim. Yet very few, if any, of the leading contemporary scholars working on the problems of religion, ritual, and myth begin with a quest for origins. The origin-evolutionary hypothesis of ritual behaviour has been rejected as quite inadequate for explaining human behaviour because no one can verify any of these bold ideas; they remain creative speculations that cannot be confirmed or denied.

Turning from origin hypotheses, scholars next emphasized empirical data gathered by actual observation. Contemporary academic literature is rich in descriptions of rituals observed throughout the world. If the term origin can be used as central to the first approach, the term function can be used as indicative of the primary focus of the second approach. The nature of ritual, in other words, is to be defined in terms of its function in a society.

The aim of functionalism is to explain ritual behaviour in terms of individual needs and social equilibrium. Ritual is thus viewed as an adaptive and adjustive response to the social and physical environment. Many leading authorities on religion and ritual have taken this approach as the most adequate way to explain rituals. Bronis�aw Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Clyde Kluckhohn, Talcott Parsons, and Edmund Leach, all English or American anthropologists, adopted a functional approach to explain ritual, religion, and myth.

The seder, a ritual meal served on Passover, reinforces Jewish cultural cohesion by commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, an event that occurred in the 13th century bce.age fotostock/SuperStock

Most functional explanations of ritual attempt to explain this behaviour in relation to the needs and maintenance of a society. The strengths of this approach are dependent upon a claim that it is both logical and empirical. It is a claim, however, that is open to serious criticism. If the aim of functionalism is to explain why rituals are present in a society, it will be necessary to clarify such terms as need, maintenance, and a society functioning adequately, and this becomes crucial if they are to be taken as empirical terms. From a logical point of view, functionalism remains a heuristic device, or indicator, for describing the role of ritual in society. If it is asserted that a society functions adequately only if necessary needs are satisfied, and if it is further asserted that ritual does satisfy that need, then scholars cannot conclude that, therefore, ritual is present in that society without committing the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. To assert that the need is satisfied �if and only if� ritual is present is a tautology and a reversal of the claim to be empirical. The history of religions approach

A third approach to the study of ritual is centred on the studies of historians of religion. The distinction between this approach and the first two is that though many historians of religions agree with functionalists that the origin-evolutionary theories are useless as hypotheses, they also reject functionalism as an adequate explanation of ritual. Most historians of religions, such as Gerardus van der Leeuw in the Netherlands, Rudolf Otto in Germany, Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade in the United States, and E.O. James in England, have held the view that ritual behaviour signifies or expresses the sacred (the realm of transcendent or ultimate reality). This approach, however, has never been represented as an explanation of ritual. The basic problem with it remains that it cannot be confirmed unless scholars agree beforehand that such a transcendent reality exists (see also religion, study of: History and phenomenology of religion).

Rudolf Otto, 1925.Foto-Jannasch, Marburg/Art Resource, New York Functions of ritual

Ritual behaviour, established or fixed by traditional rules, has been observed the world over and throughout history. In the study of this behaviour, the terms sacred (the transcendent realm) and profane (the realm of time, space, and cause and effect) have remained useful in distinguishing ritual behaviour from other types of action.

Torii, ritual gates that mark the division between the secular and the sacred, at the 6th-century Shintō shrine on Itsuku Island, Japan.� Getty Images

Although there is no consensus on a definition of the sacred and the profane, there is common agreement on the characteristics of these two realms by those who use the terms to describe religions, myth, and ritual. For Durkheim and others who use these terms, ritual is a determined mode of action. According to Durkheim, the reference, or object, of ritual is the belief system of a society, which is constituted by a classification of everything into the two realms of the sacred and the profane. This classification is taken as a universal feature of religion. Belief systems, myths, and the like, are viewed as expressions of the nature of the sacred realm in which ritual becomes the determined conduct of the individual in a society expressing a relation to the sacred and the profane. The sacred is that aspect of a community�s beliefs, myths, and sacred objects that is set apart and forbidden. The function of ritual in the community is that of providing the proper rules for action in the realm of the sacred as well as supplying a bridge for passing into the realm of the profane.

Although the distinction between the sacred and profane is taken as absolute and universal, there is an almost infinite variation on how this dichotomy is represented�not only between cultures but also within a culture. What is profane for one culture may be sacred to another. This may also be true, however, within a culture. The relative nature of things sacred and the proper ritual conducted in relation to the sacred as well as the profane varies according to the status of the participants. What is set apart, or holy, for a sacred king, priest, or shaman (a religious personage having healing and psychic transformation powers), for example, will differ from the proper ritual of others in the community who are related to them, even though they share the same belief systems. The crucial feature that both sustains these relations and sets their limits is the ritual of initiation.

Korean shamans petitioning the spirits to protect the community's fishermen.� Karen Sparks

Three further characteristics are generally used to specify ritual action beyond that of the dichotomy of sacred and profane thought and action. The first characteristic is a feeling or emotion of respect, awe, fascination, or dread in relation to the sacred. The second characteristic of ritual involves its dependence upon a belief system that is usually expressed in the language of myth. The third characteristic of ritual action is that it is symbolic in relation to its reference. Agreement on these characteristics can be found in most descriptions of the functions of ritual.

The scholarly disputes that have arisen over the functions of ritual centre around the exact relation between ritual and belief or the reference of ritual action. There is little agreement, for example, on the priority of ritual or myth. In some cases, the distinction between ritual, myth, and belief systems is so blurred that ritual is taken to include myth or belief (see also myth: Myth and religion).

The function of ritual depends upon its reference. Once again, although there is common agreement about the symbolic nature of ritual, there is little agreement with respect to the reference of ritual as symbolic. Ritual is often described as a symbolic expression of actual social relations, status, or the role of individuals in a society. Ritual is also described as referring to a transcendent, numinous (spiritual) reality and to the ultimate values of a community.

Whatever the referent, ritual as symbolic behaviour presupposes that the action is nonrational. That is to say, the means�end relation of ritual to its referent is not intrinsic or necessary. Such terms as latent, unintended, or symbolic are often used to specify the nonrational function of ritual. The fundamental problem in all of this is that ritual is described from an observer�s point of view. Whether ritual participants are basically nonrational or rational, as far as their behaviour and belief systems are concerned, is largely dependent upon whether they also understand both their behaviour and belief to be symbolic of social, psychological, or numinous realities. The notion of the sacred as a transcendent reality may, however, come closest to the participants� own experience. The universal nature of the sacred�profane dichotomy, however, remains a disputed issue.

What is needed is a new theory that will overcome the basic weaknesses of functional descriptions of ritual and belief. Until such a time, ritual will remain a mystery. The progress made in the study of language may be of help in devising a more adequate explanation of nonverbal behaviour in general and of ritual in particular. Types of ritual

Because of the complexities inherent in any discussion of ritual, it is often useful to make distinctions by means of typology. Although typologies do not explain anything, they do help to identify rituals that resemble each other within and across cultures. Imitative

All rituals are dependent upon some belief system for their complete meaning. A great many rituals are patterned after myths. Such rituals can be typed as imitative rituals in that the ritual repeats the myth or an aspect of the myth. Some of the best examples of this type of ritual include rituals of the New Year, which very often repeat the story of creation. In a passage from one of the Brahmanas, the answer to the question of why the ritual is performed is that the gods did it this way �in the beginning.� Rituals of this imitative type can be seen as a repetition of the creative act of the gods, a return to the beginning.

This type of myth has led to a theory that all rituals repeat myths or basic motifs in myths. A version of this line of thought, often called �the myth-ritual� school, is that myth is the thing said over ritual. In other words, myths are the librettos for ritual. The works of such scholars as Jane Harrison and S.H. Hooke are examples of this theory. Although it cannot be denied that some rituals explicitly imitate or repeat a myth (e.g., a myth of creation), it cannot be maintained that all rituals do so. The ritual pattern of the ancient Near East, which Hooke considers basic to the festival celebrating the creation, is itself a typological construction. In any case, although there is a combat and killing narrated in the festival myth, no known evidence exists of ritual killing or of king-sacrifice in the ancient Near East. Nevertheless, some rituals do repeat the story of a myth and represent an important type of ritual behaviour, even though the type cannot be universalized as a description of all ritual action. Positive and negative

Rituals may also be classified as positive or negative. Most positive rituals are concerned with consecrating or renewing an object or an individual, and negative rituals are always in relation to positive ritual behaviour. Avoidance is a term that better describes the negative ritual; the Polynesian word tabu (English, taboo) also has become popular as a descriptive term for this kind of ritual. The word taboo has been applied to those rituals that concern something to be avoided or forbidden. Thus, negative rituals focus on rules of prohibition, which cover an almost infinite variety of rites and behaviour. The one characteristic they all share, however, is that breaking the ritual rule results in a dramatic change in ritual man, usually bringing him some misfortune.

Variation in this type of ritual can be seen from within a culture as well as cross-culturally. What is prohibited for a subject, for example, may not be prohibited for a king, chief, or shaman. Rituals of avoidance also depend upon the belief system of a community and the ritual status of the individuals in their relation to each other. Contact with the forbidden or transgression of the ritual rules is often offset by rituals of purification.

Negative ritual, as noted above, is always in polarity with positive ritual. The birth of a child, the consecration of a king, a marriage, or a death are ritualized both positively and negatively. The ritual of birth or death involves the child or corpse in a ritual that, in turn, places the child or the corpse in a prohibitive status and thus to be avoided by others. The ritual itself, therefore, determines the positive or negative characteristic of ritual behaviour. Sacrificial

Another type of ritual is classified as sacrificial. Its importance can be seen in the assessment of sacrificial ritual as the earliest or elementary form of religion. See sacrifice.

The significance of sacrifice in the history of religions is well documented. One of the best descriptions of the nature and structure of sacrifice is to be found in Essai sur la nature et le fonction du sacrifice, by the French sociologists Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, who differentiated between sacrifice and rituals of oblation, offering, and consecration. This does not mean that sacrificial rituals do not at times have elements of consecration, offering, or oblation but these are not the distinctive characteristics of sacrificial ritual. Its distinctive feature is to be found in the destruction, either partly or totally, of the victim. The victim need not be human or animal; vegetables, cakes, milk, and the like are also �victims� in this type of ritual. The total or partial destruction of the victim may take place through burning, dismembering or cutting into pieces, eating, or burying.

Hubert and Mauss have provided a very useful structure for dividing this type of ritual into subtypes. Though sacrificial rituals are very complex and diverse throughout the world, nevertheless, they can be divided into two classes: those in which the participant or participants receive the benefit of the sacrificial act and those in which an object is the direct recipient of the action. This division highlights the fact that it is not just individuals who are affected by sacrificial ritual but in many instances objects such as a house, a particular place, a thing, an action (such as a hunt or war), a family or community, or spirits or gods that become the intended recipients of the sacrifice. The variety of such rituals is very extensive, but the unity in this type of ritual is maintained in the �victim� that is sacrificed. Life crisis

Any typology of rituals would not be complete without including a number of very important rites that can be found in practically all religious traditions and mark the passage from one domain, stage of life, or vocation into another. Such rituals have often been classified as rites of passage, and the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep�s study of these rituals remains the classic book on the subject. See also death rite.

The basic characteristic of the life-crisis ritual is the transition from one mode of life to another. Rites of passage have often been described as rituals that mark a crisis in individual or communal life. These rituals often define the life of an individual. They include rituals of birth, puberty (entrance into the full social life of a community), marriage, conception, and death. Many of these rituals mark a separation from an old situation or mode of life, a transition rite celebrating the new situation, and a ritual of incorporation. Rituals of passage do not always manifest these three divisions; many such rites stress only one or two of these characteristics.

Rituals of initiation into a secret society or a religious vocation (viz., priesthood, monasticism, traditional or spiritual healing) are often included among rites of passage as characteristic rituals of transition. The great New Year�s rituals known throughout the world also represent the characteristic passage from old to new on a larger scale, that includes the whole society or community.

One of the dominant motifs of the life-crisis ritual is the emphasis on separation, as either a death or a return to infancy or the womb. In India, a striking example is the Hindu rite of being �twice born.� The young boy who receives the sacred thread in the upanayana ritual, a ceremony of initiation, goes through an elaborate ritual that is viewed as a second birth. Rituals such as Baptism in early Christianity, Yoga in India, and the complex puberty rituals among North American Indian cultures exemplify this motif of death and rebirth in rites of passage.

Rituals of crisis and passage are often classified as types of initiation. An excellent description of such rites is found in Birth and Rebirth by Mircea Eliade. From Eliade�s point of view, rituals, especially initiation rituals, are to be interpreted both historically and existentially. They are related to the history and structure of a particular society and to an experience of the sacred that is both transhistorical and transcendent of a particular social or cultural context. Culture, from this perspective, can be viewed as a series of cults, or rituals, that transform natural experiences into cultural modes of life. This transformation involves both the transmission of social structures and the disclosure of the sacred and spiritual dimensions of human life.

Initiation rituals can be classified in many ways. The patterns emphasized by Eliade all include a separation or symbolic death, followed by a rebirth. They include rites all the way from separation from the mother to the more complex and dramatic rituals of circumcision, ordeals of suffering, or a descent into hell, all of which are symbolic of a death followed by a rebirth. Rites of withdrawal and quest, as well as rituals characteristic of shamans and religious specialists, are typically initiatory in theme and structure. Some of the most dramatic rituals of this type express a death and return to a new period of gestation and birth and often in terms that are specifically embryological or gynecological. Finally, there are the actual rituals of physical death itself, a rite of passage and transition into a spiritual or immortal existence.

The various typologies of ritual that can be found in texts on religion and culture often overlap or reveal a common agreement in the way in which ritual behaviour can be classified. There is a striking contrast in the use of these typologies to interpret the meaning of ritual. In general, this contrast can be described in terms of two positions: the first emphasizes the sociopsychological function of ritual; the second, although not denying the first, asserts the religious value of ritual as a specific expression of a transcendental reality. Conclusion

Ritual behaviour is obviously a means of nonverbal communication and meaning. This aspect of ritual is often overlooked in the stress on the relation of ritual to myth. Thus, the meaning of ritual is often looked for in the verbal, spoken, or belief system that is taken as its semantic correlate. The spoken elements in a ritual setting do often reveal the meaning of a ritual by reference to a belief system or mythology, but not always. Such a connection has led to an overemphasis on the importance of the belief system or myth over ritual. To assert that myths disclose more than ritual ever can is an oversimplification of the complex correlation of these two important aspects of religion. A partial explanation of this emphasis is undoubtedly the fact that a vast amount of data, both primary and secondary, is literary in form. Theories about ritual are either deduced from the primary literature of a religious tradition or are translated into written language as a result of observation.

Ritual can be studied as nonverbal communication disclosing its own structure and semantics. Scholars have only recently turned to a systematic analysis of this important aspect of human behaviour; and progress in kinesics, the study of nonverbal communication, may provide new approaches to the analysis of ritual. This development may well parallel the progress in linguistics and the analysis of myth as an aspect of language.

A complete analysis of ritual would also include its relation to art, architecture, and the specific objects used in ritual such as specific forms of ritual dress. All of these components are found in ritual contexts, and all of them are nonverbal in structure and meaning.

Most rituals mark off a particular time of the day, month, year, stage in life, or commencement of a new event or vocation. This temporal characteristic of ritual is often called �sacred time.� What must not be forgotten in the study of ritual is a special aspect of ritual that is often described as �sacred space.� Time and place are essential features of ritual action, and both mark a specific orientation or setting for ritual. Time and space, whether a plot of ground or a magnificent temple, are ritually created and become, in turn, the context for other rituals. Examples of ritual time and ritual space orientation can be found in the rituals for building the sacrifice in Brahmanic Indian ritual texts, for the building of a Christian cathedral, and for consecrating those structures that symbolize a definite space�time orientation in which rituals are enacted. The shape, spatial orientation, and location of the ritual setting are essential features of the semantics of ritual action.

In recent years there has been little consensus among scholars on an adequate theory, or framework, for explaining or describing ritual. Though the term has often been used to describe the determined, or fixed, behaviour of both animals and human beings, the future study of ritual may disclose both that this behaviour, found throughout history and cultures, is as unique to human beings as is their capacity for speaking a language and also that change in ritual behaviour is parallel to, or correlated with, change in language. Although great progress has been made in the analysis of humanity as the species who speaks, the syntax and semantics of ritual man are yet to be discovered. Hans H. Penner