Value for Monday of Week 53 in the season of Harvest and Celebration

Appreciating Ritual

Practiced with a sound sense of proportion, rituals convey both social and personal benefits.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. [David Bowie]
Sharing food has always had a central place in civilized societies; it’s no accident that so many of our cultural, religious and patriotic rituals are involved with eating. [attributed to Ruth Reichl]

The wealth and quality of the study and scholarship on ritual and its prominence in art testify to its importance in human life. Although rituals can be forced on people, with unhealthy effects, they can also bind communities together and foster a sense of belonging, with good effects.

“Rituals are founded on adaptations to the challenges of group living and serve critical social functions.” They enhance social bonding and community, and foster cooperation.

Rituals convey personal benefits. “Rituals can relieve anxiety and provide comfort, meaning, and support, particularly when facing uncertainties such as those found at the end of life.” They improve self-control and self-regulation, “improve performance by decreasing anxiety”, and “decrease the neural response to performance failure”. “The regular practice of effortful religious rituals signals personal commitment and builds implicit self-control over time, promoting adaptive behaviors that enhance health and well-being . . .”

You, the reader, can devise and practice your own rituals. Anyone who meditates will understand this. The “liturgical” calendar presented here provides a framework for a form of ritual.

Ritual exerts its greatest effects when it involves action, emotion, thought and sensation. I invite you, then, to find ways to take whatever you may find useful in these pages and expand on it by putting it into an active form that incorporates your thoughts and feelings and if possible physical sensation. (Think of incense.) You might meditate on it. If you are in a group, you can find many ways to transform what you see on a two-dimensional screen into vibrant practices: by engaging in the music and art, for example, or by having a lively discussion of the subject matters. All of this will make your ritual practices more meaningful and engaging, and therefore more enduring.

Real

True Narratives

Life event rituals:

Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (Yale University Press, 1996).
David Cressey, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Death rituals:

Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Antonius C.G.M. Robben, ed., Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2nd edition, 2017).
Loring M. Danforth and Alexander Tsiaris, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton University Press, 1982).
Ralph Houlbrooke, ed., Death, Ritual, and Bereavement (Routledge, 2020).

Rituals in music:

Bell Yung, Evelyn Rawski and Rubie Watson, eds., Harmony and Counterpoint:Ritual Music in Chinese Context (Stanford University Press, 1996).
Robert Nosow, Ritual Meanings in the Fifteenth-Century Motet (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Rituals generally:

Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Malidoma Patrice Some, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community (Penguin, 1997).
Brian Hayden, The Power of Ritual in Prehistory: Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
K.C. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Harvard University Press, 1983).
Ute Hüsken and Frank Neubert, Negotiating Rites (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Ute Hüsken, Visnu's Children: Prenatal Life-Cycle Rituals in South India (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009).
Christine Brosius and Ute Hüsken, eds., Ritual Matters: Dynamic Dimensions in Practice (Routledge India, 2010).
Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice (Oxford University Press, 2007).
William S. Sax, God of Justice: Ritual Healing and Social Justice in the Central Himalayas (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Tracy Pintchman, Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Brannon Wheeler, Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (University Press, 2006).
Peter Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent (Cornell University Press, 1996).
George Cinclair Gibson, Wake Rites: The Ancient Irish Rituals of Finnegan's Wake (University Press of Florida, 1995).
Walter F. Pitts, Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 1993).
S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton University Press, 1981).
Oliver Leaman, ed., Routledge Handbook of Jewish Ritual and Practice (Routledge, 2022).
Oliver Leaman, ed., Routledge Handbook of Islamic Ritual and Practice (Routledge, 2022).
David H. Brown, Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion (Routledge, 2021).
Katherine Eaton, Ancient Egyptian Temple Ritual (Routledge, 2013).
Paul Martin, Personal Grief Rituals: Creating Unique Expressions of Loss and Meaningful Acts of Mourning in Clinical or Private Settings (Routledge, 2023).
Robert Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society; A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England (1974).

Technical and Analytical Readings

Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Frederique Apffel-Marqlin, Subversive Spiritualities: How Rituals Enact the World (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Routledge, 1969).
Jack Goody, Myth, Ritual and the Oral (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
José Ingacio Cabezone, Tibetan Ritual (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Leor Halevi, Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (Columbia University Press, 2007).
Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett and Bennett Simon, Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, Udo Simon and Eric Venbrux, eds., Ritual, Media, and Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Lori Branch, Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth (Baylor University Press, 2006).
Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
J.M Kubicki, Liturgical Music as Ritual Symbol: A Case Study of Jacques Berthier's Taizé Music (Peeters Publishers, 1999).
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Aldine Transactions, 1967).
Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, Volume 1 (1887).
Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, Volume 2, (1887).
Journal of Ritual Studies
Thich Nhat Hanh, Chanting from the Heart: Buddhist Ceremonies and Daily Practices (Parallax Press, 2006).

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels and stories:

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Contemporary artist Bengt Berger is creating a set of albums on a theme called “Funeral Beer”, fashioned after Ghanian funeral ceremonies – to Western ears, they do not sound funereal. “Death is recognised in Africa through a rite of passage that prepares the spirit of the deceased to journey on to the next realm.” A predecessor album was by Berger with the Bitter Funeral Beer Band, called “Praise Drumming” (1981) (43’).