ritual
the power of rituals
Sarah Drinkwater and
ritual
That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred.
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
Patterns of Transformation: Designing Sex, Death, and Survival in the 21st Century
patternsoftransformation.com
The magic circle, a term I have borrowed directly from game studies, is the invisible perimeter between everyday life and an experience where different rules of engagement are at play. (Anthropologists call it the “ritual frame” and contemporary mystical practices call it the “container”.) The magic circle describes the limits of both the formal rules of an experience, and the informal norms that an experience allows for. It can literally feel like magic to be inside one thanks to the seemingly inexplicable shift in logic for how things happen and what is meaningful.
Ritualization is a potent stabilizing agent, a simple salve for a stressful time if only we are mindful of how we use its powers.
The Hidden Powers of Everyday Ritual
The word “practice” is such a wonderful word because it has time built into it: you can only practice if you practice
sometimes the most destabilizing chaos isn’t on the world stage. Nor is it a public outrage or even a shared experience.
It’s found instead in the quiet chaos of our everyday lives: making a home, raising a family, putting a meal on the table. These mundane corners of the human experience are also where we find the loosest pockets of culture today:
... See moreJasmine Bina • A Time to Build Tight Brands in the Chaos of Loose Cultures
In France, food norms are powerful and cohesive forces, while in the US food is simply a whirlwind of chaos.
Jasmine Bina • A Time to Build Tight Brands in the Chaos of Loose Cultures
How to Design (and Redesign) the Practices of Company Culture
future.a16z.com