{"id":69578,"date":"2023-01-31T01:00:35","date_gmt":"2023-01-31T06:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=69578"},"modified":"2023-01-30T09:54:16","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T14:54:16","slug":"qotd-religious-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/31\/qotd-religious-rituals\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Religious rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I want to start with a key observation, without which much of the rest of this will not make much sense: rituals are supposed to be effective<\/em><\/strong>. Let me explain what that means.<\/p>\n

We tend to have an almost anthropological view of rituals, even ones we still practice: we see them in terms of their social function or psychological impact. Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune<\/em> (the Sci-fi miniseries; I can’t find the quote in the text, but then it’s a lot of text) put it wonderfully, “Ritual is the whip by which men are enlightened.” That is, ritual’s primary effect is the change that takes place in our minds<\/em>, rather than in the spiritual world. This is the same line of thinking whereby a Church service is justified because it “creates a sense of community” or “brings believers together”. We view rituals often like plays or concerts, experiences without any broader consequences beyond the experience of participation or viewing itself.<\/p>\n

This is not how polytheism (ancient or modern) works<\/strong> (indeed, it is not how most modern Christianity works: the sacraments are supposed to be spiritually<\/em> effective<\/a>; that is, if properly carried out, they do things<\/em><\/strong> beyond just making us feel better. You can see this articulated clearly in some traditional prayers, like the Prayer of Humble Access<\/a> or Luther’s Flood Prayer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Instead, religious rituals are meant to have<\/strong> (and will<\/em> have, so the believer believes, if everything is done properly) real effects in both the spiritual world and the physical world<\/strong>. That is, your ritual will first effect a change<\/em> in the god (making them better disposed to you) and second that will effect a change<\/em> in the physical world we inhabit (as the god’s power is deployed in your favor).<\/p>\n

But to reiterate, because this is key: the purpose of ritual<\/strong> (in ancient, polytheistic religious systems) is to produce a concrete, earthly result<\/strong>. It is not to improve our mood or morals, but to make crops grow, rain fall, armies win battles, business deals turn out well, ships sail, winds blow. While some rituals in these religions do concern themselves with the afterlife or other seemingly purely spiritual concerns (the lines between earthly and spiritual in those cases are \u2013 as we’ll see, somewhat blurrier in these religions than we often think them to be now), the great majority of rituals are squarely focused on what is happening around us, and are performed because they do something<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is the practical<\/em><\/strong> side of practical knowledge; the ritual in polytheistic religion does not (usually) alter you<\/em> in some way \u2013 it alters the world (spiritual and physical) around you<\/em> in some way. Consequently, ritual is employed as a tool<\/em> \u2013 this problem is solved by a wrench, that problem by a hammer, and this other problem by a ritual. Some rituals are preventative maintenance (say, we regularly observe this ritual so this god is always<\/em> well disposed to us, so that they do X, Y, and Z on the regular), others are a response to crisis, but they are all tools<\/em> to shape the world (again, physical and spiritual) around us. If a ritual carries a moral duty, it is only because (we\u2019ll get to this a bit more later) other people in your community are counting on you<\/em> to do it; it is a moral duty the same way that, as an accountant, not embezzling money is a moral duty. Failure lets other people<\/em> (not yourself and not even really the gods) down.<\/p>\n

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part II: Practice”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2019-11-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to start with a key observation, without which much of the rest of this will not make much sense: rituals are supposed to be effective. Let me explain what that means. We tend to have an almost anthropological view of rituals, even ones we still practice: we see them in terms of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,41,11],"tags":[209,1457,360,262,424,855,139],"class_list":["post-69578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-anthropology","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-christianity","tag-culture","tag-morality","tag-polytheism","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i6e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79666,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69578\/revisions\/79666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}