The Meaning of Rituals

Rituals are procedures or routines that are fused with meaning. Ritual actions include various rites of passage (birth, marriage, death) or calendrical rites (religious holy days, national holidays), and are characteristically formal and traditional, engage the attention of an audience, and are marked by precise repetition with an appeal to supernatural beings.  A ritual never exists alone. It is usually one ceremony among many in the larger ritual of life of a person or community, one gesture among a multitude of gestures both sacred and profane, one embodiment among others of traditions…