Rituals are a defining element in all religions. They are a part of daily practice or mark significant rites of passage. This web site resource will explore rituals among various religions, noting comparisons and differences. We begin by presenting the concept of rituals in our daily lives

Introducing Ritual

Don C. Benjamin, Ph.D.
Arizona State University

Rituals are repeated patterns of meaningful human behavior. They are structured ways of acting, sometimes accompanied by words, sometimes not. Rituals open new worlds, where our lives are enlarged and enriched. Rituals take us to new places, and they relate us to new people. Rituals overcome isolation and bond us to communities who will support us in becoming all we were created to be, and becoming all we want to be.

Living in Two Worlds

Few humans are truly atheists. Most are believers; not necessarily members of a particular faith tradition, but convinced that there is more to life than can be explained by human activity. Consequently, they believe that they are citizens of two worlds: one secular, one sacred.

Early humans believed that what made the world sacred was its ability to imitate its divine patron. And since the sacred world imitated its creator, the secular world of humans should do no less. Rituals were an imitation of the divine behavior of creating the world. When these early husbands and wives had intercourse and when these early farmers plowed and planted their fields, they were re-enacting the moment when their divine patrons created the world. Intercourse and farming were rituals which imitated divine behavior.

The Body as a Microcosm

Early humans turned every action into a ritual. Everything they did imitated something their divine patrons had done. They linked each part of the human body with some part of the world. The world was the macrocosm, the human body was a microcosm -- a model of the world. The head was the sun, breath was the wind, bones were stones and hair was grass. The rituals for these parts of the body imitated the actions of their cosmic partners. For example, the ritual for laying down the human head in the Egypt of the pharaohs was sunset, and for raising the head was sunrise. The Egyptian pillow was a stand like the base of the hieroglyph for life. As long as the sun rose and set, the land of Egypt was alive. As long as humans slept and rose, the people of Egypt were alive.

The House as a Microcosm

Early humans not only considered their bodies to be microcosms, they also considered their houses to be worlds in miniature. Building a house was creating a world. Every part of their houses corresponded to a part of the world, and to a part of the human body. Their houses had eyes and legs. Their roofs were heaven, their floors were earth. Their rituals taught them to live in their bodies the way they lived in their houses, and the way they lived in their world. Their rituals linked the secular to the sacred, the human to the divine. They positioned them to travel from the secular world to the sacred world. Rituals are openings, Òwindows, doors, eyesÓ between one world and the other.

Human Life as a Passage, a Journey, a Pilgrimage

Early humans viewed human life as a series of passages: from unborn to born, from childhood to adulthood, from unmarried to married, from inexperience to maturity, from this life to the afterlife. Each threshold was marked by a bridge or a gate. Rituals taught early humans how to successfully cross these bridges or open these gates or complete their journeys or pilgrimages. Their rituals coached or trained them to endure the pain or labor necessary to journey or pilgrimage from the secular to the sacred, from one way of living to another. Early humans considered their two most important journeys not to be the journeys of birth, marriage and death, but rather the passage from childhood to adulthood and the passage from inexperience to maturity.

The world view of early humans taught that all humans make the journey from childhood to adulthood, but only a few make the passage into communities whose common bond was the experience of surviving infertility or learning to hunt a dangerous animal. Their rituals taught them how to successfully achieve rebirth, to be born again from death to life, from fear to courage.

Life experienced through the birth of a child, and death experienced though the killing of an animal are the two most important parts of the rituals of early humans. In traditional cultures, childbirth and hunting or sacrifice were the actions which best imitated the actions of their divine patrons creating. In life and death humans were most divine. Rituals taught early humans how to lay down their lives so that others may live, just as their divine patrons laid down their lives to create them.

Early humans who achieved the maturity, which only life and death can bring, often mark their bodies with scars or tattoos. These were the decorations of those who have been born again.

Sacred and Secular Today

Culturally diverse societies like those in Europe and North America have, at least legally, privatized ritual. By legally separating religion and public life, culturally diverse societies expect their citizens to make their own way to maturity. Many do. Many do not. The task of harmonizing the secular world of human beings with the sacred world of their divine patrons is not the task of a single person, or a task which can be accomplished in a single lifetime. Consequently, people who live in culturally diverse societies suffer from greater dysfunction than those who live in traditional societies. Freedom is a difficult discipline.

Nonetheless, human beings are survivors, and the citizens of culturally diverse societies are not exception. Many families and individuals faithfully hand on the rituals of their faith tradition or culture of origin. But even those with little ethnicity or without a faith tradition find remarkably successful ways to harmonize their lives, to open doors and cross bridges to larger worlds of experience and consciousness. New rituals emerge through which even the most secularized human beings come to know life and death, and from that knowledge live quite happily, and quite humbly not only in the sophisticated world which humans create, but also in another world which they did not.

Discussion Questions

Why do males pay for their dates dinner? How and why has this changed?
Why do we light candles on our birthdays?
Why do we follow etiquette when eating?
Why do Buddhists burn incense while praying?
Why do we make so much noise at the New Year?
Why do we hunt Easter eggs?
Why do need a ritual to fall asleep?
Why do golfers wear bright pants, plaid shirts and wing-tipped shoes?
Why do we cut and decorate an evergreen at Christmas?
Why do we eat round cookies at the Middle Autumn Festival?
Why did we throw rice at weddings, until it became bad for the birds?
Why do we sing Auld Lang Syne at New Year?
Why do we put our hand over our heart when we sing the National Anthem?