ritual
the power of rituals
Sarah Drinkwater and
ritual
I’ve noticed that the people who lament that we “have no rituals left” in our society are often the same people who are anti-marriage, or just go to the courthouse. Who don’t walk at their graduation ceremonies. Who don’t wear black lace to funerals. Who don’t own a suit. Who don’t send Christmas cards or take off shoes at the door or take into acc
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ordinary rituals:
-drying your hands all the way
-opening mail without ripping it
-putting an object back where you found it
-parallel parking
-hand washing the chopsticks
-drinking water from a glass
-actually tying your shoes
-closing the car door without slamming it
-kissing someone back
The largest companies today are obsessed with generating content in a completely de-ritualized context. But content always exists in tension with form. Ritual is the form we have abandoned in our relentless quest for content.
Ted Gioia • 13 Observations on Ritual
addictive scrolling and swiping can never achieve the sense of closure and boundedness we all crave.
Companies like Crossfit and Soulcycle create a sense of consistent space and ritual that inculcate deep loyalty and community among their participants. Reimagine, an organization that describes itself as “the world’s leading end-of-life events platform,” hosts paid gatherings and festivals related to death and healing. Casper ter Kuille and Angie T
... See moreToby Shorin • Life After Lifestyle
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
when you create a social reality with no connection to a deeper divine essence, and not alignment to a value greater than itself, you get lost in a maze where essential human values and relationships are mimicked endlessly and blindly in a chaos of hollow repetition. Then, as now, the only way out is to connect to the sacred; to an experience that ... See more