one of the things that most strongly
differentiates modern from traditional
societies is the business of rituals
broadly speaking modern ones have very
few of them traditional ones have a lot
of them what is a ritual it’s a periodic
invitation by your society typically by
its religion to come together with other
people for an event that marks an
occasion often of an underlying
spiritual or psychological nature
perhaps is the start of the year the
birthday of a god a day to apologize or
a moment to feel grateful for springtime
or the love of now dead relatives and so
you dance say some rather formal words
eat an unusual food or wear special
clothes and by doing all this you are
somehow helped perched in some way
helped to grow transition to a new stage
reconnect to an important idea or guided
to inner peace what marks out modern
societies is how ruthlessly they’ve
stripped back rituals largely because
they get in the way of making money to
generalize when societies become modern
rituals drop out of a calendar and the
main focus starts to be private and work
life and not much in between a key part
of understanding our own times is
therefore to grasp the history of
rituals what they’ve been where they’ve
gone and in what ways we might be
missing them today Rome 17th of December
150 AD it’s the first day of a three-day
celebration known as the Saturnalia a
ritual festival in honor of satin Roman
god of wealth and agriculture the
Saturnalia is a time of ecstatic release
in exuberance the Roman poet Catullus
describes the occasion as the best of
times all the normal social codes and
rules are temporarily put on hold or
turned upside down masters are expected
to look after their slaves and parents
to obey their children slaves can even
insult and poke fun at their masters
with complete impunity important
magistrates and
blick officials we’re colorful sometimes
silly clothes and cones on their heads
you’re meant to shout eeo Saturnalia at
strangers when you pass them in the
street married couples can have affairs
and no one is meant to be unduly upset
women can make the first move on men or
sleep with one another
there are orgies and you can gamble and
drink as much as you like then after
three days of fun everything comes to a
stern halt an order is restored but life
feels a lot less bitter and oppressive
the slave is back to his dinner duties
but the memory of having called his
master as lightens his burdens the
mistress of the house is back to putting
up with her boorish husband but the two
nights with her hairdresser make his
sarcasm and dullness importantly more
bearable across Rome a great many people
can’t wait for the 17th of December to
roll around again Alexandria Egypt tenth
day of Tishrei 969 ad it’s shortly after
the beginning of the Jewish New Year in
one of the thriving centres of Jewish
life under the protection of benevolent
Arab rule the Day of Atonement or Yom
Kippur is a solemn and critical event in
the Hebrew calendar Leviticus instructs
that on this date all Jews must set
aside their usual family and commercial
activities and mentally review their
actions over the preceding year
identifying all those whom they’ve heard
or behaved unjustly towards the ritual
festival is kicked off by the blowing of
a shofar a hollowed-out
ram’s horn then together in a synagogue
the Jewish community repeat in prayer we
have sinned we have acted treacherously
they then seek out those whom they’ve
frustrated angered discarded casually or
otherwise betrayed and offer them their
fullest contrition this is God’s will
and a rare opportunity for blanket
forgiveness all the people are in fault
says the prayer and so may all the
people of Israel be forgiven including
all the strangers who live in their
midsts the day of atonement has the
immense advantage of making the idea of
saying sorry look like it came from
somewhere else
neither the idea of the perpetrator nor
of the victim under the assumed I of a
benevolent God it allows everyone at JA
to make a clean break and move on Medina
June 12 2007 that Ramadan marking the
first revelation of the Quran to
Muhammad as one of the five pillars of
Islam fasting is obligatory for
virtually all Muslims requiring
abstinence from sex as well as smoking
swearing and violence fasting is
believed to cleanse the soul by removing
from it worldly concerns and focusing on
God alone
it’s admired as a way to teach
self-discipline self-control and empathy
for those less fortunate adherents to
Ramadan will provide strength and
spiritual growth for the upcoming year
Ramadan gives vital encouragement to an
enduring human desire the wish to start
afresh
reform oneself and lead a better life
henceforth but rather than these
ambitions being left to the individual
alone Islam wisely creates a collective
moment to strengthen the will and it
finds a fitting physical activity to
support what is at heart a spiritual
ghazal peninsula Papua New Guinea 1652 a
mother has come to visit her adult
daughter and grandchildren for a few
weeks in a village community of the
baning tribe now it’s time to say
farewell there is sadness all around and
the mother and her guide head off
through thickly forested hills it may be
a long time till mother and daughter
will see each other again
the baning have developed a special word
to describe the feeling that can come
over you when a friend or relative you
love has left they call it a one-book
symptoms of a one-book includes sleeping
in losing a sense of purpose and an
inclination to burst into tears but the
baning have also developed an
accompanying ritual to deal with the
sadness of our one book the people
who’ve been left are granted three days
during which they’re not expected to do
any gardening or hunting everyone is
supposed to behave very gently around
them then on the third day the sufferers
have to leave a coconut shell of water
on the veranda of their house it’s
believed to soak up sadness and with a
few ritual words they then throw the
water out into the garden thereby
purging their emotions and signaling a
return to active life the ritual of a
one-book is similar to mourning rituals
all over the world it legitimates what
might otherwise be a guilty or confused
melancholy it gives sadness a shape and
a direction it demarcates a time for it
and then gently creates a moment when
we’re meant to overcome it and rejoin
the group
warsaw poland spring 1798 it’s the
Jewish festival of bearcat illa not
which dictates that at the time of the
first blossom the community will gather
outdoors by some trees and flowers in
bloom to appreciate the beauty of nature
and honor the generosity of its creator
in the company of a rabbi Jews recite a
ritual prayer from the Talmud honoring
the hand that made the blossom blessed
are You Lord our God King of the
universe who didn’t leave a single thing
lacking in his world filling it with the
finest creatures and trees so as to give
pleasure to all of mankind 2,000
kilometers to the west an English poet
is also struck by the beauty of spring
and wants to express his enthusiasm and
attitude I heard a thousand blended
notes while in a Grove i sat reclined
writes William Wordsworth in the opening
stanza of his lines written in early
spring of 1798 both the Jewish community
and the poet appreciates springtime but
the poet is not interested in
ritualizing his feelings he is
emblematic of a new age
known as romanticism which believes in
leaving people to feel things at their
own pace at a time of their choosing
religious belief is in decline across
Europe and for many rituals are tainted
by being associated with a supernatural
that’s unfortunate even in the hands of
religions rituals have been guardians of
very important states of mind that would
otherwise be crushed or neglected a book
of poetry is in the end a hushed object
in a noisy world whereas a ritual
protects emotions to which we are
sincerely inclined but which without a
degree of fabrication and structure we
might be too distracted and
undisciplined to make time for London
October 1834 James Patterson the
governor of the Bank of England cuts
annual national or so-called bank
holidays to just for a year only three
years earlier the English bank like many
English businesses had been closed for
36 days a year to make room for all
sorts of traditional ritual festivals up
and down the land the banks drive to
slash holidays is typical of a hundred
year long process that begins in the
late 18th century the Industrial
Revolution has made it deeply
inconvenient for employers to let their
workers take holidays to mark this or
that ritual the collective purification
of the soul is of no interest to
employers it’s something you can do in
your own time there are even suggestions
to put an end to Christmas and Easter
which together cost industry a fortune
Nuremberg Germany 30th of August 1933
Adolf Hitler leads the rally of victory
700,000 people are in attendance people
sing marshal songs Varginha blast from
speakers there are banners of swastikas
torchlight parades and thousands of
soldiers goose-stepping
to engender a sense of fraternity flags
a ritual
Stickley touched against a blood-soaked
flag from Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of
November 1923 Hitler speaks for hours on
racial supremacy German art and
architecture and an international Jewish
conspiracy threatening to bring down the
Aryan race behavior like this hastens
the modern suspicion of any ritual
behavior collective activity and
excitement start to seem ever more eerie
mob-like and out of sync with an
individualistic age London 30th of July
1966 96 thousand people including the
Queen of England take their seats inside
Wembley stadium to watch England defeat
West Germany in the World Cup final 32
million people are watching on TV the
picture of England captain Bobby Moore
hoisting the trophy is immortalized by a
statue in East London while the ball is
canonized in a special Museum in
Manchester rituals have continued into
the modern age but they now tend to be
around sport they’re very limited in our
ambitions and lack a lot of the
psychological richness of religious
minded rituals of old Australia 26th of
May 2015 the 18th annual sari day is
held in Australia when white Australians
atoned for the removal of fifty thousand
children from Aboriginal tribes the day
is a somber occasion for reflection with
speeches from the indigenous Australian
community and politicians of all stripes
however the day meets with little public
enthusiasm and engenders little change
no compensation is awarded and many feel
the day obscures the still prevalent
kidnapping of children from Aboriginal
families like so many modern rituals
even once emphasising important events
in a nation’s identity national sorry
day feels rather placid and in many ways
token the part of human nature that
craved and created rituals has not been
eliminated but it is currently in many
developed societies quiescent or
unfairly tainted by associations with a
less admirable sides of religion so a
lot of what we used to do in ritual ways
we now do privately we have moments of
carnivalesque indulgence we get drunk of
affairs say sorry purge ourselves and
feel grateful for existence but we also
do so without guy
and therefore our behavior often lacks
boundaries or is half-hearted or
colorless we also often just forget
things we have very few collective
appointments with important emotions but
perhaps we remain in need of rituals all
the same points in the calendar that
help us in our endeavors to be sane and
kind a challenge for the future will be
to create new rituals every bit as
convincing as those of old with the
proper resources of art music and design
that will take some of the burdens off
us as individuals will have realized
that being modern has not replaced on need for rituals
differentiates modern from traditional
societies is the business of rituals
broadly speaking modern ones have very
few of them traditional ones have a lot
of them what is a ritual it’s a periodic
invitation by your society typically by
its religion to come together with other
people for an event that marks an
occasion often of an underlying
spiritual or psychological nature
perhaps is the start of the year the
birthday of a god a day to apologize or
a moment to feel grateful for springtime
or the love of now dead relatives and so
you dance say some rather formal words
eat an unusual food or wear special
clothes and by doing all this you are
somehow helped perched in some way
helped to grow transition to a new stage
reconnect to an important idea or guided
to inner peace what marks out modern
societies is how ruthlessly they’ve
stripped back rituals largely because
they get in the way of making money to
generalize when societies become modern
rituals drop out of a calendar and the
main focus starts to be private and work
life and not much in between a key part
of understanding our own times is
therefore to grasp the history of
rituals what they’ve been where they’ve
gone and in what ways we might be
missing them today Rome 17th of December
150 AD it’s the first day of a three-day
celebration known as the Saturnalia a
ritual festival in honor of satin Roman
god of wealth and agriculture the
Saturnalia is a time of ecstatic release
in exuberance the Roman poet Catullus
describes the occasion as the best of
times all the normal social codes and
rules are temporarily put on hold or
turned upside down masters are expected
to look after their slaves and parents
to obey their children slaves can even
insult and poke fun at their masters
with complete impunity important
magistrates and
blick officials we’re colorful sometimes
silly clothes and cones on their heads
you’re meant to shout eeo Saturnalia at
strangers when you pass them in the
street married couples can have affairs
and no one is meant to be unduly upset
women can make the first move on men or
sleep with one another
there are orgies and you can gamble and
drink as much as you like then after
three days of fun everything comes to a
stern halt an order is restored but life
feels a lot less bitter and oppressive
the slave is back to his dinner duties
but the memory of having called his
master as lightens his burdens the
mistress of the house is back to putting
up with her boorish husband but the two
nights with her hairdresser make his
sarcasm and dullness importantly more
bearable across Rome a great many people
can’t wait for the 17th of December to
roll around again Alexandria Egypt tenth
day of Tishrei 969 ad it’s shortly after
the beginning of the Jewish New Year in
one of the thriving centres of Jewish
life under the protection of benevolent
Arab rule the Day of Atonement or Yom
Kippur is a solemn and critical event in
the Hebrew calendar Leviticus instructs
that on this date all Jews must set
aside their usual family and commercial
activities and mentally review their
actions over the preceding year
identifying all those whom they’ve heard
or behaved unjustly towards the ritual
festival is kicked off by the blowing of
a shofar a hollowed-out
ram’s horn then together in a synagogue
the Jewish community repeat in prayer we
have sinned we have acted treacherously
they then seek out those whom they’ve
frustrated angered discarded casually or
otherwise betrayed and offer them their
fullest contrition this is God’s will
and a rare opportunity for blanket
forgiveness all the people are in fault
says the prayer and so may all the
people of Israel be forgiven including
all the strangers who live in their
midsts the day of atonement has the
immense advantage of making the idea of
saying sorry look like it came from
somewhere else
neither the idea of the perpetrator nor
of the victim under the assumed I of a
benevolent God it allows everyone at JA
to make a clean break and move on Medina
June 12 2007 that Ramadan marking the
first revelation of the Quran to
Muhammad as one of the five pillars of
Islam fasting is obligatory for
virtually all Muslims requiring
abstinence from sex as well as smoking
swearing and violence fasting is
believed to cleanse the soul by removing
from it worldly concerns and focusing on
God alone
it’s admired as a way to teach
self-discipline self-control and empathy
for those less fortunate adherents to
Ramadan will provide strength and
spiritual growth for the upcoming year
Ramadan gives vital encouragement to an
enduring human desire the wish to start
afresh
reform oneself and lead a better life
henceforth but rather than these
ambitions being left to the individual
alone Islam wisely creates a collective
moment to strengthen the will and it
finds a fitting physical activity to
support what is at heart a spiritual
ghazal peninsula Papua New Guinea 1652 a
mother has come to visit her adult
daughter and grandchildren for a few
weeks in a village community of the
baning tribe now it’s time to say
farewell there is sadness all around and
the mother and her guide head off
through thickly forested hills it may be
a long time till mother and daughter
will see each other again
the baning have developed a special word
to describe the feeling that can come
over you when a friend or relative you
love has left they call it a one-book
symptoms of a one-book includes sleeping
in losing a sense of purpose and an
inclination to burst into tears but the
baning have also developed an
accompanying ritual to deal with the
sadness of our one book the people
who’ve been left are granted three days
during which they’re not expected to do
any gardening or hunting everyone is
supposed to behave very gently around
them then on the third day the sufferers
have to leave a coconut shell of water
on the veranda of their house it’s
believed to soak up sadness and with a
few ritual words they then throw the
water out into the garden thereby
purging their emotions and signaling a
return to active life the ritual of a
one-book is similar to mourning rituals
all over the world it legitimates what
might otherwise be a guilty or confused
melancholy it gives sadness a shape and
a direction it demarcates a time for it
and then gently creates a moment when
we’re meant to overcome it and rejoin
the group
warsaw poland spring 1798 it’s the
Jewish festival of bearcat illa not
which dictates that at the time of the
first blossom the community will gather
outdoors by some trees and flowers in
bloom to appreciate the beauty of nature
and honor the generosity of its creator
in the company of a rabbi Jews recite a
ritual prayer from the Talmud honoring
the hand that made the blossom blessed
are You Lord our God King of the
universe who didn’t leave a single thing
lacking in his world filling it with the
finest creatures and trees so as to give
pleasure to all of mankind 2,000
kilometers to the west an English poet
is also struck by the beauty of spring
and wants to express his enthusiasm and
attitude I heard a thousand blended
notes while in a Grove i sat reclined
writes William Wordsworth in the opening
stanza of his lines written in early
spring of 1798 both the Jewish community
and the poet appreciates springtime but
the poet is not interested in
ritualizing his feelings he is
emblematic of a new age
known as romanticism which believes in
leaving people to feel things at their
own pace at a time of their choosing
religious belief is in decline across
Europe and for many rituals are tainted
by being associated with a supernatural
that’s unfortunate even in the hands of
religions rituals have been guardians of
very important states of mind that would
otherwise be crushed or neglected a book
of poetry is in the end a hushed object
in a noisy world whereas a ritual
protects emotions to which we are
sincerely inclined but which without a
degree of fabrication and structure we
might be too distracted and
undisciplined to make time for London
October 1834 James Patterson the
governor of the Bank of England cuts
annual national or so-called bank
holidays to just for a year only three
years earlier the English bank like many
English businesses had been closed for
36 days a year to make room for all
sorts of traditional ritual festivals up
and down the land the banks drive to
slash holidays is typical of a hundred
year long process that begins in the
late 18th century the Industrial
Revolution has made it deeply
inconvenient for employers to let their
workers take holidays to mark this or
that ritual the collective purification
of the soul is of no interest to
employers it’s something you can do in
your own time there are even suggestions
to put an end to Christmas and Easter
which together cost industry a fortune
Nuremberg Germany 30th of August 1933
Adolf Hitler leads the rally of victory
700,000 people are in attendance people
sing marshal songs Varginha blast from
speakers there are banners of swastikas
torchlight parades and thousands of
soldiers goose-stepping
to engender a sense of fraternity flags
a ritual
Stickley touched against a blood-soaked
flag from Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of
November 1923 Hitler speaks for hours on
racial supremacy German art and
architecture and an international Jewish
conspiracy threatening to bring down the
Aryan race behavior like this hastens
the modern suspicion of any ritual
behavior collective activity and
excitement start to seem ever more eerie
mob-like and out of sync with an
individualistic age London 30th of July
1966 96 thousand people including the
Queen of England take their seats inside
Wembley stadium to watch England defeat
West Germany in the World Cup final 32
million people are watching on TV the
picture of England captain Bobby Moore
hoisting the trophy is immortalized by a
statue in East London while the ball is
canonized in a special Museum in
Manchester rituals have continued into
the modern age but they now tend to be
around sport they’re very limited in our
ambitions and lack a lot of the
psychological richness of religious
minded rituals of old Australia 26th of
May 2015 the 18th annual sari day is
held in Australia when white Australians
atoned for the removal of fifty thousand
children from Aboriginal tribes the day
is a somber occasion for reflection with
speeches from the indigenous Australian
community and politicians of all stripes
however the day meets with little public
enthusiasm and engenders little change
no compensation is awarded and many feel
the day obscures the still prevalent
kidnapping of children from Aboriginal
families like so many modern rituals
even once emphasising important events
in a nation’s identity national sorry
day feels rather placid and in many ways
token the part of human nature that
craved and created rituals has not been
eliminated but it is currently in many
developed societies quiescent or
unfairly tainted by associations with a
less admirable sides of religion so a
lot of what we used to do in ritual ways
we now do privately we have moments of
carnivalesque indulgence we get drunk of
affairs say sorry purge ourselves and
feel grateful for existence but we also
do so without guy
and therefore our behavior often lacks
boundaries or is half-hearted or
colorless we also often just forget
things we have very few collective
appointments with important emotions but
perhaps we remain in need of rituals all
the same points in the calendar that
help us in our endeavors to be sane and
kind a challenge for the future will be
to create new rituals every bit as
convincing as those of old with the
proper resources of art music and design
that will take some of the burdens off
us as individuals will have realized
that being modern has not replaced on need for rituals
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