HUMAN RITES

We think of the rituals of life passages that have been accepted as normal in our own culture – Christenings, Graduations, Weddings, and Funerals – but what of the other major transitions that most of us go through? Why do we not honor these passages with healing and strengthening rituals? Why not ritualize:

                                 The first menstruation (as so many cultures have)

·                                Leaving home for college

·                                Buying your first house

·                                Empowering for social action

·                                Healing from trauma

·                                Personal or professional triumph or tragedy

·                                The struggle to conceive a child

·                                Blessing the conception and childbirth

·                                Dealing with the “empty nest”

·                                Menopause

·                                Retirement

·                                The awaking of the soul in the second half of life

·                                Welcoming the final stage of life

(have the party before you die!)

Of al the possible passages to honor with ritual, the one that I feel most strongly deserves a ritual is a passage that more than half of the population will experience, but usually is faced alone in shame and sorrow – Divorce. Why have we been so slow in recognizing that divorce is no a longer a personal failure of relationship, but as new cultural rite of passage? If you, or someone you know, are going through this upheaval, please read my article on Rituals of Divorce. Then, read about Soul Care and call me if I can be of assistance.

Please feel free to contact me with ideas for rituals you would like to implement in your own life or to discuss ideas for group presentations about ritual and myth. I am happy to work with you to tailor something that is just right for your need.

~ Rev. Rebecca Armstrong

toll free phone: 888.80.RITES email: ceremonies@aol.com

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What Is Ritual?

The attempt to define ritual puts one in mind of the old story about the blind men and the elephant. Depending upon which piece of the anatomy you’ve got hold of, your idea about the nature of the beast will sound radically different from those of your companions. “The elephant must be like a tree! No. Like a rope! Surely, more like a snake!” And so on. This is not meant as a merely humorous way to introduce the subject of the definition of ritual, but to suggest that this story is, in fact, a perfect analogy for the current problem of defining a field of inquiry which is drawing adherents from such a diverse body of specialties as theology, comparative religion, drama, anthropology, liturgy, linguistics, archeology, psychology, mythology, and who knows what next. The problem of arriving at a definition is deeper, however, than the dilemma of the Babel of voices from different domains of knowledge. It is, in fact, a philosophical problem and returns us to basic epistemological puzzles involving the classification of knowledge itself. Since the world consists of a virtually infinite number of different stimuli and since it is not possible for an organism to cope with infinite diversity, we are equipped with brains that can almost instantaneously divide-and-conquer the environment by means of classifications. We are predisposed, it seems, by virtue of the importance of sight in our brain’s physiology to favor “looks: in making categorizations. But that is not necessarily the best way to arrive at true knowledge. As Aristotle asserts:

When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is attained. For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles... [Aristotle, Physics, opening par.]

Which characteristics or elements of a “thing” are truly the defining ones and which ones exchangeable without loss of essential “thingness?” Are we defining a thing by its form, its content, or its function? Each of these choices has a lengthy and honorable pedigree in the history of epistemology, but while each of these choices may acquaint us with a portion of the elephant, is there one that brings us closest to the first principle of “elephantness?”

My readings in ritual studies lead me to conclude that most researchers in the field have erred on the side of structuralism - of “looks.” That is, looking at the external elements of form and the external elements of content, missing the enormous importance of the inner dynamism of the functioning of the whole. This is not surprising, for this is the overall direction that science ha taken for 500 years and it would be odd to find a branch of study which deviated hugely from the norm. The analysis of ever smaller parts of the whole has characterized western science and only recently has the “invisible” element of the relational quality of the parts to the whole and of that whole as a part in relation to an even greater whole become embraced as good methodology. In some respects then, I am advocating a return in ritual studies to Aristotle’s emphasis on the fourth of the Four Causes which give any “thing” its definition: the material cause (matter out of which something is made); formal cause (model or structure upon which a thing is based); efficient cause (agency by which a thing comes into being); and final cause (the function or goal of a thing, its Telos.)

Ritual Studies, which began as a foster child of the history of religions on the one hand and anthropology on the other, has suffered in the past from this tendency to examine the surface of its parts and miss the vital integrity of its Telos. The first scholars working from backgrounds in religion and mythology were used to looking first and foremost at text as the true content of ritual, seeing ritual in terms of its Material Cause. (See Graves, Frazer, Eliade, Wheelwright.) The structuralism school of thought, akin to Aristotle’s Formal Cause, dominated ritual studies, and still does to a large extent. (See Levi-Strauss, Turner, Rappaport, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown.) The Efficient Cause may be interpreted today as the psychobiological analysis of ritual, the search for agency in human psychology and/or physiology. (See D’Aquila and Laughlin, Erikson, Jennings, Campbell.) Those now moving towards an inquiry which embraces all of the above but emphasizes the fourth, or Final Cause, the teleological function of ritual, are in the vanguard of where ritual studies needs to go. (See Bell, Grimes, Driver, Tambiah.) If one asks, what is the teleological definition of ritual, it is akin to asking, what is the function or goal of the elephant in its innermost being? This question immediately elevates us to matters of ultimate concern and urgency. In light of this input, to ask “what is the function of ritual?” becomes a sacred question. The Final Cause of Aristotle is the most difficult to discern using the tools of modern science, which is why Teleology has been curtailed to use in theology whereas structuralism and formalism have dominated the social sciences. But if Aristotle is correct, the Final Cause is the only one of the four causes that re-unites the elements and returns the thing to its proper “thingness.” Otherwise, we are left studying the inert parts of vitally alive wholes and thereby missing the very clues that would lead us to seize the definition by a gestalt of their relational integrity.

But there is a terrible problem with posing the issue in this manner. (Grimes, following a different train of thought has arrived at the same conclusion which led him to introduce “ritual criticism” as a necessary branch of this new science.) Few things outside the realm of the Ideal ever fully realize their Telos. To define the Telos of a man using the observable functionality of Joe-Anybody-down-the-street might lead to a very shallow and misleading notion, whereas following the life of a Dr. Martin Luther King allows us to arrive at very different conclusions. A perfect example of the pitfalls of current ritual study is Staal’s assertion that ritual is meaningless. By choosing that particular school of Hinduism for his observation, he has seized upon one of the most convoluted ritual traditions in the world. It was just this deadening of rituals that had grown rigid and leaked all their numinosity that made India such a fertile field for the teachings of the Buddha. This branch of Hinduism suffered the same symptoms that any top-heavy bureaucracy does over-time – complexification and irrelevancy. Staal is absolutely right in the conclusions he draws – but he has been holding only the tusk of the elephant!

Let’s use an analogy closer to ritual studies. The field of brain research on REM sleep concluded that dreams appear to be the result of random electromagnetic discharge in the brain during deep levels of sleep. Behaviorists were able to conclude that dreams are most likely serving the function of garbage disposal for the mental detritus of the day. Given the recorded dreams of most of their subjects even a casual reader would be hard pressed to disagree. But what happens if you introduce the experience of Black Elk into the study and include his “big dream” and its enormous impact on his tribe and its eerily accurate prediction of what was to befall them? Now we have an example – a-one-in-million example – of a different Telos of a dream. This new Telos calls into question the previous theory, or at least insist on a new hierarchy of the dream world in which most dreams fall short of the potential function or ideal teleology of Dream.

This is what I hold has happened in ritual studies – that the true teleological definition has been severely hampered by the reality that 99% of all observed rituals fail to achieve their ideal function and thus we have been baffled as to their true value in human life. If we would arrive at a proper definition of ritual, we must find those rare examples in which the ritual succeeds in its designated function. Then and only then can we say anything definite about their value in human life. In the meantime, we will continue to stumble blindly around the elephant, describing the part but never making the leap to the functionality of the whole elephant – astounding in its grandeur, noble in its instinctual movements of pure elephantness.

A working definition of ritual: An action of heightened intensity capable of transforming the psyche of the participant(s) through symbolic association.

How does/may ritual affect the act of worship?

The term ‘worship’ is an old Anglo-Saxon word and is, curiously enough, non-theistic in its origin. It means, “the crafting of worth” and in that sense is closer to Paul Tillich’s definition of God as “ultimate concern.” It is also an active word, focussing on the ‘crafting’ or ‘making’ rather than mere thought or belief. A definition of ritual worship in this sense might read: Participation of congregants in acts that re-sanctify the values that give meaning and motivation to their daily life.

Spontaneous Ritual

One line of inquiry that I have been following for several years has been the gathering of evidence for a category of ritual action I call “spontaneous ritual.” I have defined this as the original impulse toward transformational action which underlies all genuine ritual, rather than the habitual, ceremonial act which has already been appropriated by the group through repetition. For instance, what was actually happening at the conscious and subconscious level when the first Homo Sapien took a stone and placed it as a marker over the body of a fallen tribesman? At that instant, a spontaneous ritual occurred which gave birth to a ritualized human action that has lasted for millennia. Our ceremonial placement of the tombstone at the grave of a relative is now a habitual human ritual, but somewhere, in the collective unconscious, that majestic, metaphoric leap of a single ancestor still resonates through the social body, giving meaning and comfort to millions.

The Function of Spontaneous Ritual

While we can speculate on the origins of that particular incident, it will be more profitable to focus on the multitudes of moments of spontaneous ritual that occur all the time in our lives. If we are alerted to these events as having significance, then we begin to see that we are engaged in such activity far more often than we realize, to the extent that it may be said that spontaneous ritual is an instinctive impulse among humans. If it is instinctive, then it surely has some practical value to us, at both the individual and collective level. My operative theory is that rituals of this sort are an aid to emotional well-being, especially at moments of great transition. In short, spontaneous ritual mediates emotions.

To read the entire article of Spontaneous Ritual, click on this link.