Rituals & Spirituality

 

One of the things that most strongly differentiates modern from traditional societies are the existence of rituals. What is a ritual? It’s a periodic invitation by your society, mostly by its religion, to come together with other people for an event that marks an occasion, often having a spiritual or psychological nature. And by doing this you are somehow helped, healed, purged in some way. Guided to maturity, transition to a new stage, reconnect to an important idea of your culture, or find inner peace. In modern societies, it is observed that rituals are stripped back heartlessly, mostly because they get in the way of making money. With modernity, in assistance with the romanticist ideas of individualism, rituals are dropped out of daily life. To understand the idea behind the rituals, and why it had a massive role in almost every human culture, and how it started disappearing, I need to check the history first.

(just notes to remember the historical events)

Rome – Opposite day: (Saturnalia)

“the best of times” (Roman poet Catulus)

A time of ecstatic release and exuberance. All the normal rules and social codes are abandoned or turned upside down for three days. Slaves become masters, parents obey their children, important city officials wear fancy colorful clothes, people have affairs with whomever they want, and can legally gamble etc. As a result, the society gets purged, born anew, the order gets restored, but life feels a lot less bitter and oppressive after the ritual.

Alexandria (Egypt) – Day of Atonement:

All jews must set aside and mentally review their actions throughout the year. Starting with the blow of a goat horn, people seek out those whom they frustrated discarded betrayed etc. The day of Atonement dedicates the idea of saying “sorry”, not to the victim nor the wrongdoer but to a benevolent God. It allows everyone a chance to make a clean start and move on after digesting the consequences of their past actions.

Medina – Ramadan:

Fasting becomes obligatory to almost all Muslims. Requiring abstinence from sex, smoking and violence. It is believed to cleanse the soul by remowing worldy concerns from it and focusing on god alone. It is way of teaching empathy for the unfortunate, teaching self-disipline and control. While doing so, Ramadan does not left those ambitions to the individual alone but makes it a collective and social event.

Papua New Guinea -Tranquility After Sadness of Awumbuk:

After a mother leaves her??????? loved ones for long period, tribe conduct a three day ritual for the ones that are left behind. To accompany their sadness, all of the tribe must act calmly around those individuals. For three days, they are not expected to participate in any hunting or gardening. And ritual ends with tossing a bucket of water symbolizing the return to their usual life. IT gives sadness a shape and direction. Gives time to the individual to overcome it, and then gently creates a moment when they meant to overcome it and rejoin the group

Warsaw – Spring Festival:

Collective Nazi Gathering and Speeches of Hitler:

Believed to be one of the reasons why most of the modern societies started neglecting the importance of rituals in a community.

 

England vs Germany World Championship:

A modern ritual example.

 

 

A Scientific Approach:

Emile Durkheim: describes a phenomenon that he called collective effervescence, an ecstatic feeling of excitement and togetherness that people feel when they get together to perform highly arousing events. I believe we all felt this feeling before.

How can we measure this collective effervescence, this feeling of togetherness while it is such a vague concept. Dimitri Xylgalatas and his team managed to find a way, they monitored the heartrates of the people during the ritual at Mauritus. The interesting result is that the heartrates was showing an extremely synchronized behavior, somehow proving its connective powers. Furthermore, they tested the willingness of making a donation after a ritual, especially the rituals involving physical pain. The amount of donations is strongly correlated with the pain experienced. I come to the conclusion that Painful rituals invoke the ability of empathy to the ones that are suffering.

Another research focuses on the stress reliving effects of rituals. Monitoring the hand gestures of people undergoing stressful events, they discovered most of the participants showing repetitive behavior. Such as pacing up and down while giving a speech to a crowd, or using very distinct repetitive hand gestures which are very much ritualistic behaviors. This, in my opinion, is a proof of how people utilized rituals to cope up with stress, and how we are still bound to our cultural habit despite the modernization.

Today, we still conduct rituals as societies. Many national and religious holidays, or sports events with millions of viewers are some of the examples. However, in my opinion, underground raves and festivals where people use various drugs to forget their daily endeavors, to focus on the moment, enjoy the ecstatic release of joy as a community are what resembles the past collective effervescences the most.

 

For the next week I will focus specifically on spiritual rituals and the consumption of psychedelic substances.