While starting to read Sister Sarah's recent essay, "What is Ritual?" I became predictably sidetracked, by the second sentence. It's such a good sentence! She references six pages of hopeless confusions about what rituals are; how can I resist the temptation to engage with that implicit challenge? In particular, here, I want to see, prior to reading the rest of her essay, if I can synthesize a good description of Ritual by combining the better points from those six pages of hopelessly confused definitions.
The short version, consisting of the things that seem especially important to me after having done that synthesis, is this: Rituals are theatrical productions wherein participant actors are made to suspend their disbelief in their stylized narrative interactions, so that they will feel strong emotions, the perception of which leads them to revise their concepts of their communal relations in non-ritual contexts, and to more strongly adopt traditional cultural values and ideology.
Here's the very long version, which doesn't add much (now is a good time to stop reading):
A ritual is a certain formal, customary, traditional event. It is distinguished as extraordinary from mundane, quotidian affairs. It is scheduled to occur at a specific time (an occasion of cultural significance) and at a dedicated place. The event is an extended episode, having a prior-specified and commonly known sequence. The beginning and end of the ritual are distinguished and clearly recognizable to the ritual's audience.
The ritual consists of standard, pre-specified, scripted and rehearsed coordinated acts of a group of people who normally interact as a community. Individual participants will suppress the salience of their daily interests, and temporarily adopt-as-play some indicated role-identities, with associated ritual acts.
"Play identities" is meant to point in the direction of assumptions which are commonly understood as false, but which the group temporarily acts toward as-through-true. This sense of play as common-understanding pragmatic dishonesty, in other contexts often serving the purpose of entertainment, does not require gaiety of the participants, and is to be distinguished from insincerity: ritual participants, suppressing their mundane daily interests, will often feel serious and intense emotions aligned with their false, adopted role-interests.
The role-acts of rituals are often stylized, animated, rhythmic gestures. Spoken dialogue may imitate the speech of iconic (historical or mythic) figures. Acts may form a narrative, presenting interactions between participants having culture-specific symbolism. Strong emotions are evoked by narratives involving vivid perception of past remembered or imagined experience, and by other topics of far-mode value significance, such as personal human connection to primordial and cosmic order.
The actors of the ritual are also its audience. There is a cycle of anticipation and satisfying confirmation of the rituals's continuation that the audience finds in the multi-modal stimulation of their senses by the ritual acts, which is achieved by rehearsed familiarity with the ritual and by within-ritual repetition.
The audience's deep emotional involvement, far-mode orientation, suspension of disbelief, and shared focus make them commonly receptive and suggestible to far-mode narrative messages, which the ritual provides by highlighting the importance of cultural values, concerns, ideology, and norms. The narrative may frame traditional values as solutions to narrative dilemmas, or scripted dialogue may directly call for participants to assert their regard for cultural values, or participants may implicitly affirm ideology which is implicit in the concepts of their dialogue, as when one's lines include an appeal to gods for miraculous intercession. These messages might be called morally persuasive or Meaningful with a capital M, in the that they prioritize communal values over mundane personal interests, and they are presented through narratives with stirring far-mode cultural icons and symbolism. These messages are often framed as the result of communication with the Sacred and Supernatural.
Another function of ritual is to use the colour of authority of the Sacred or Supernatural to make legitimate in the minds of the community some newly established (negotiated or imposed) social roles and relationships, which will be recognized outside of the ritual context. These involve whether the person will be ostracised or allowed present, and what the conditions of their participation will be, or what normative conditions will apply to people interacting with the subject, as summarized in the subject's duties, liberties, claim-rights, authorities, et cetera.
Of course the first function of ritual, the motive-internalization of communal values, concerns, ideology, and norms, will be a factor influencing the negotiation of roles, along with more mundane things like whether the person has adequate skills to receive some specific status upgrade.
