Rituals provide a nameable container for managing transformation and making meaning.
Nameable container
By assigning a name to a well-defined activity, a ritual allows people to point to a situation in need of navigation, and call for a specific response. This let's rituals...
Managing transformation
Rituals help provide structure to a process of transformation. Modern culture treats a huge variety of problems as ones to be solved on an individual scale. This can make changing oneself feel like an uphill task when not supported.
By using a ritual to effect transformation, the transformation becomes visible, and helps make it accountable. Other people can participate in the change, even if only to observe and reflect, making a successful response more likely.
Making meaning
By bringing people and energy to a situation, rituals can create felt experiences that can be meaningful and memorable. Emotionally engaging experiences help transformations stick, and provide a reason for people to return to them.
These experiences can also then lend significance to stories that originate from outside the ritual and link the individual, or a community, to the values and intentions of a broader culture. This is how most “traditional” rituals – especially religious ones – work. They bring a story to life, renew it, and connect people to it.
We can also create and reference our own stories, and build new community-scale culture through this work. The ritual becomes an activity with purpose and as long as it helps form or sustain a community, it feeds its own existence.
Ultimately, rituals are culture-generating machines.
By assigning a name to a well-defined activity, a ritual allows people to point to a situation in need of navigation, and call for a specific response. This let's rituals...
- Focus intentions
- Reduce the effort required to seek support
- Give permission to ask for support
- Establish expectations about intent and results
- Help marshall a community around a situation
Managing transformation
Rituals help provide structure to a process of transformation. Modern culture treats a huge variety of problems as ones to be solved on an individual scale. This can make changing oneself feel like an uphill task when not supported.
By using a ritual to effect transformation, the transformation becomes visible, and helps make it accountable. Other people can participate in the change, even if only to observe and reflect, making a successful response more likely.
Making meaning
By bringing people and energy to a situation, rituals can create felt experiences that can be meaningful and memorable. Emotionally engaging experiences help transformations stick, and provide a reason for people to return to them.
These experiences can also then lend significance to stories that originate from outside the ritual and link the individual, or a community, to the values and intentions of a broader culture. This is how most “traditional” rituals – especially religious ones – work. They bring a story to life, renew it, and connect people to it.
We can also create and reference our own stories, and build new community-scale culture through this work. The ritual becomes an activity with purpose and as long as it helps form or sustain a community, it feeds its own existence.
Ultimately, rituals are culture-generating machines.
In depth
While we build out the website, you can read more about how we define rituals and what people have learned from studying rituals starting at page 7 of the Guide to the Ritual Design Toolkit.
More reading and resources
Frameworks
Joanna Macey’s the Work that Reconnects
Books and other reading
Other ritual design approaches
Crafting Secular Ritual: A Practical Guide by Jeltje Gordon-Lennox (Author)
Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture that Can Adapt to Change by Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
Anthropological studies of ritual
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2004. Early Adulthood: The Winding Road from Late Teens Through the Twenties. New York: Oxford University Press.
Seligman, A. B., Weller, R. P., Puett, M. J., & Simon, B. (2008). Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (1st edition). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Bell, Catherine. (2009). Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1st edition). New York: Oxford University Press.
Bell, Catherine. 2009. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions--Revised Edition. Reissue edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beck, R., & Metrick, S. B. (2009). The Art of Ritual. Berkeley, CA: Apocryphile Press.
Driver, T. F. (2006). Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual. North Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge Publishing.
Turner, Victor. 2001. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York City: PAJ Publications.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. First Edition edition. Cambridge England ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women by Sylvia Brenton Perera
Rituals in modernity
Cann, Candi. 2014. Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press.
Furstenberg, Frank F., Ruben G. Rumbaut and Richard Settersten Jr. 2005. “On the Frontier of Adulthood: Emerging Themes and New Directions.” Pp. 3-25 in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research and Public Policy, edited by R. A. Settersten, F. F. Furstenberg, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mesmer, S. (1455178870). All Praise the Women of Menopause. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/all-praise-the-women-of-menopause/
Davis, Simon. 2015. “How Secular Americans are Reshaping Funeral Rituals.” Religion News Service, December 17. Retrieved February 25, 2016 (http://www.religionnews.com/2015/12/17/nonreligious-reshaping-american-burial-rituals/
Psychology and other ritual elements
Chaplin, L. N., John, D. R., Rindfleisch, A., & Froh, J. J. (2018). The impact of gratitude on adolescent materialism and generosity. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 0(0), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1497688
Articles
A Design Lab Is Making Rituals for Secular People. The Atlantic. May 7, 2018. By SIGAL SAMUEL.
“Capitalism launched a global campaign against festivities and ecstatic rituals” ... http://barbaraehrenreich.com/dancing-in-the-streets-introduction/
Conversations, Podcasts, and Videos
Tippet, Krista. Interview with Peter Berger, originally broadcast October 12, 2006, on “Speaking of Faith.”
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/globalization/transcript.shtml
Websites, reference collections
https://gratefulness.org/practice/practices-grateful-living/
The Ritual Well: https://www.ritualwell.org
Joanna Macey’s the Work that Reconnects
Books and other reading
Other ritual design approaches
Crafting Secular Ritual: A Practical Guide by Jeltje Gordon-Lennox (Author)
Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture that Can Adapt to Change by Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
Anthropological studies of ritual
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2004. Early Adulthood: The Winding Road from Late Teens Through the Twenties. New York: Oxford University Press.
Seligman, A. B., Weller, R. P., Puett, M. J., & Simon, B. (2008). Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (1st edition). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Bell, Catherine. (2009). Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1st edition). New York: Oxford University Press.
Bell, Catherine. 2009. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions--Revised Edition. Reissue edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beck, R., & Metrick, S. B. (2009). The Art of Ritual. Berkeley, CA: Apocryphile Press.
Driver, T. F. (2006). Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual. North Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge Publishing.
Turner, Victor. 2001. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York City: PAJ Publications.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. First Edition edition. Cambridge England ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women by Sylvia Brenton Perera
Rituals in modernity
Cann, Candi. 2014. Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press.
Furstenberg, Frank F., Ruben G. Rumbaut and Richard Settersten Jr. 2005. “On the Frontier of Adulthood: Emerging Themes and New Directions.” Pp. 3-25 in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research and Public Policy, edited by R. A. Settersten, F. F. Furstenberg, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mesmer, S. (1455178870). All Praise the Women of Menopause. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/all-praise-the-women-of-menopause/
Davis, Simon. 2015. “How Secular Americans are Reshaping Funeral Rituals.” Religion News Service, December 17. Retrieved February 25, 2016 (http://www.religionnews.com/2015/12/17/nonreligious-reshaping-american-burial-rituals/
Psychology and other ritual elements
Chaplin, L. N., John, D. R., Rindfleisch, A., & Froh, J. J. (2018). The impact of gratitude on adolescent materialism and generosity. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 0(0), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1497688
Articles
A Design Lab Is Making Rituals for Secular People. The Atlantic. May 7, 2018. By SIGAL SAMUEL.
“Capitalism launched a global campaign against festivities and ecstatic rituals” ... http://barbaraehrenreich.com/dancing-in-the-streets-introduction/
Conversations, Podcasts, and Videos
Tippet, Krista. Interview with Peter Berger, originally broadcast October 12, 2006, on “Speaking of Faith.”
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/globalization/transcript.shtml
Websites, reference collections
https://gratefulness.org/practice/practices-grateful-living/
The Ritual Well: https://www.ritualwell.org
