By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness; in reality there are atoms and space.

This middle step is sometimes called a “liminal phase,” and, in turn, the before and after are sometimes called the pre-liminal and post-liminal phases. Liminal comes from the Latin word for threshold. So ritual is a portal into another world. This is just as true for rituals that happen once a year—say, decorating the Christmas tree—as those that

You are separated by your sins or shortcomings from the way you believe God or your community wants you to be, from your potential, from some kind of purity. You confess, do penance, apologize, and make up for what you’ve done. And thus you are reconciled with God, or godliness, or your community’s approval, or your ability to sleep at night.

At the beginning of the last century a German-Dutch-French anthropologist called Arnold van Gennep tried to define ritual. His work is, in ways, predictably dated. He used the language of a person brought up to believe his continent is the best, that the people who live there and look like him are intrinsically superior. Were he alive today he

If you commit a crime and then cop to it, the state also ritualizes your confession, sometimes by having you allocute before the court. Sometimes you have to write your misdeeds out and sign. Either way it’s government-regulated confession. Serving your sentence might be seen as your atonement.

In Islam it’s called Istighfar and it takes place at dawn each day and on Thursday nights. It requires the repetition of the phrase astaghfirullah, “I seek forgiveness from Allah.”

I am of the firm belief that people are only really ever mean when they feel bad about themselves, projecting or overcompensating.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

usually somewhere between ages three and six, children partake in another rite of passage.