quotations about ritual
The sauce to meat is ceremony;
Meeting were bare without it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Our point of departure must be the conception of an almost childlike play-sense expressing itself in various play-forms, some serious, some playful, but all rooted in ritual and productive of culture by allowing the innate human need of rhythm, harmony, change, alternation, contrast and climax, etc., to unfold in full richness.
JOHAN HUIZINGA
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture
Besides constructing your own rituals, you can also choose to join a community that has ritual celebrations that meet your personal goals.
GLEB TSIPURSKY
"Celebrations, Rituals, and Constructing Meaning in Life", Patheos, November 8, 2017
Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going.
DAVID MITCHELL
The Bone Clocks
Life is a ritual of love
Life is a ritual of union, and
Life is a dance of the divine
VISHWAS CHAVAN
SoulBliss
Make rituals of the important elements of your work. It ensures that they get done without much conscious thought.
MANI S. SIVASUBRAMANIAN
How to Focus
Ritual is not simply an attitude or intention, just as love is not simply a feeling. At its most basic, ritual is something that you do. A man can't plow a field just by thinking about it, he must go out to the field and get to work. Yet if he is fully present to the work and acts with mindfulness and loving attention -- that is, if he brings his whole self along -- then even as he turns over the rich soil beneath his plow, he turns it over in his mind and heart as well. The act of tilling the soil becomes an act of tilling the soul.
ALISON LEIGH LILLY
"Turning the Soil of Soul: Ritual as Celebration", Patheos, February 11, 2016
The simplicity of the Christian ritual is the exponent of an advanced, and not of a retrograde, condition of the church.
JOHN CAIRD
Sermons
Summon the myth of a reckless world
The beast is slaughtered by the hands of sickness
Question the myth and the ancient summoning
A disgusting sight, this diabolic ritual
SINISTER
"Bleeding Towards the Wendigo"
This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.
JAMES K. A. SMITH
Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?
Over centuries, people have practiced religious rituals to mark rites of passage such as birth, marriage, and death, to mark certain times of each year like the end of the harvest season, to please divine powers, and to ward off misfortunes. Rituals impose order and structure to our lives, and assure us about our place in the scheme of things.
UTPAL M. DHOLAKIA
"Brands Are Behaving Like Organized Religions", Harvard Business Review, February 18, 2016
There is nothing ritual but it is always joined with something moral.
CHARLES BRIDGES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Rituals are important in creating a sense of continuity.
TRACEY BRYAN
"Marital Separations Can Be Contentious, but They Don't Have to Be", Huffington Post, November 7, 2017
Ritual instructs not only at the level of intellect, as is the case with classroom pedagogy, but also at the level of the soul. Ritual, as a sensorium, produces catharsis. This catharsis of mind, body, and spirit, when successful, is a much deeper sort of pedagogy than the term "learning" normally implies.
MARK PEDELTY
Musical Ritual in Mexico City: From the Aztec to NAFTA
Others suggest that religious ritual is a binding agent for human society, unifying tribes so that they can provide for their members and compete effectively against other groups. This hypothesis might sound warm and fuzzy. Sure, a religion that brings everyone together might help a tribe or nation to succeed. But in a competitive, evolutionary world, success for one group often means failure and death for another. So religion might be the human equivalent of claws and teeth: a powerful tool that helps us survive, at the expense of others. Not the best foundation for building a moral case for religion!
CONNOR WOOD
"If We Study Religion, Can We Actually Learn About It? Yes -- Using Social Simulation", Huffington Post, February 17, 2016
Fundamental changes through ritual failure are therefore quite rare, as ritual is a mode of delivery designed to mask the more dynamic, subversive elements of a society. Ritual's association with repetition and an unchanging nature is part of why it works effectively as part of a masking process. Change appears most often during times of 'crises' external to the system that highlights the inner workings of the social order, free from the predefined parameters that ritual provides.
JEFF SANDERS
"The sky almost never falls on your head -- why ritual rarely fails", Ritual Failure: Archaeological Perspectives
The Jewish ritual, in a sensuous age, had its sculptured cherubim, its pictorial and artistic wealth of representation, its gorgeous priestly vestments, its incense, and its chants; but they never became, so far as we know, the objects of idolatrous veneration.
MRS. H. B. STOWE
attributed, Day's Collacon
And when we dance
There lies untold
Belief and rituals we behold
Into the night there comes the cold
The door is open
IKON
"Hallowed"
We often back away from thinking about ritual as a performance because it seems inauthentic or unreal. But that's far from the case. It takes real work and skill to learn to control your voice, move with grace, and create something beautiful and powerful. Put on a show for the folk and the gods and see what happens.
MELISSA HILL
"Dandelion Seeds: Ten Tips for Running a Big, Festival-Style Ritual", Patheos, February 17, 2016
It is important to embody the sentiments and fundamental ideas of religion. Life can no more dispense with symbols than language with metaphors: a ritual is an acted metaphor.
ALEXANDRE RUDOLPHE VINET
Outlines of Theology