Here is your essay on Rituals !
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc. A ritual may be performed on specific occasions, or at the discretion of individuals or communities.
It may be performed by a single individual, by a group, or by the entire community; in arbitrary places, or in places especially reserved for it; either in public, in private, or before specific people.
A ritual may be restricted to a certain subset of the community, and may enable or underscore the passage between religious or social states. The purposes of rituals are varied; they include compliance with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, social and moral education, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one’s affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event — or, sometimes, just for the pleasure of the ritual itself.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Rituals of various kinds are a feature of almost all known human societies, past or present. They include not only the various worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also the rites of passage of certain societies, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, school “rush” traditions and graduations, club meetings, sports events, Halloween parties, veteran parades, Christmas shopping and more.
Many activities that are ostensibly performed for concrete purposes, such as jury trials, execution of criminals, and scientific symposia, are loaded with purely symbolic actions prescribed by regulations or tradition, and thus partly ritualistic in nature. Even common actions like handshaking and saying hello are rituals.
In psychology, the term ritual is used in a technical sense for a repetitive and behavior systematically used by a person to neutralize or prevent anxiety; it is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. In religion, a ritual can comprise the prescribed outward forms of performing the cults, or cult, of a particular observation within a religion or religious denomination.
Although ritual is often used in context with worship performed in a church, the actual relationship between any religion’s doctrine and its ritual(s) can vary considerably from organized religion to non-institutionalized spirituality, such as ayahuasca shamanism as practiced by the Urarina of the upper Amazon. Rituals often have a close connection with reverence, thus a ritual in many cases expresses reverence for a deity or idealized state of humanity.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The Nature of Rituals:
In the ethnographic description of rituals in diverse cultures given by scholars like Edward Tylor, James Frazer, Bronislaw Malinowski, Emile Durkheim and many others, the term ritual is used to denote two separate sets of activities.
(i) The first is strictly in the sphere of religious practice and refers to a wide range of religious activities viz. prayer, ceremonial worship, chanting, a range of gestures and movements, activities with sacred objects, etc. all done with the specific intention of spiritual communication with a Supreme Being. Thus, the various religious activities and practices engaged in by the Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, etc. in their respective temples, mosques, churches and gurdwaras etc. may be referred to be as rituals.
Besides, in their respective homes, practitioners of a faith also conduct religious activities that are referred to be as rituals. Thus the Hindu family performing ‘pooja’ on certain occasions, the Muslims family performing ‘namaz’ at the call of the muzeinin or the Christian family reciting the ‘rosary ‘at the hour of prayers are all rituals performed by these believers in their respective homes.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(ii) A second set of human activities that are identified as rituals are those associated with individual life cycle as they move from one social setting to the next.
In all societies, from birth to death an individual passes through several stages demarcating a transition from one stage of life to the next. Such transitions are often marked by activity which is ritualistic in character. Sociologists and anthropologists term such rituals as ‘rites of passage’.
Indian society with its diversity of communities and cultures reveals a rich variety of such rituals performed at birth, puberty, adulthood, marriage, death etc. One must however, note that even in such ritual activity, the spiritual or the sacred dimension is very much present. Invocations are always addressed to some sacred beings for granting a smooth transition to the next stage in the cycle of life.
These two sets of activities are what scholars refer to as rituals in their descriptions of religious practices. In this specific usage of the term, rituals constitute a major component of any organized religion. It is this specific usage of term ‘ritual’ that will constitute the frame of reference in discussing the comparative theories of rituals.