ritual
the power of rituals
Sarah Drinkwater and
ritual
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.
We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.
Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.
Ritual technology operates on... See more
Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.
Ritual technology operates on... See more
Gordon Brander • Ritual Technology
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
... See moreToby Shorin • Life After Lifestyle
the disappearance of ritual “as a means of diagnosing the pathologies of the present.” RS seems to emerge in the empty space of rituals, as it uses different techniques, from meditation, visualization, frequency matching to self-hypnosis, to reach this kind of transcendent experience. some compare it to daydreaming or astral projections.
Rodrigo Turra from The Nexialist • 🪈✨The Nexialist #0176
The relationship at the heart of ritual is the relationship between life and death, mediated by elemental forces. The kinds of rituals that fall out of that might be a monthly day of silence, perhaps periodic fasting, perhaps singing around the fire. All such things need to be done as symbolic testimony to the joy and sorrow of being human, not... See more
Substack • Imagining a World Beyond Consumerism
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
Leonor: I think it is so deeply important to celebrate more than just weddings and babies which feel like they take up all the airspace and are obviously worth celebrating, but not the only things we should gather for. We should be celebrating everyone’s big life moments with BIG parties and/or registries. I want to celebrate your new job! And
... See moreAnne Helen Petersen • You Don't Need to Get Married or Have a Kid to Have a Party
Most important of all, perhaps, during rituals we have the experience, unique in our culture, of neither opposing nature or trying to be in communion with nature; but of finding ourselves within nature, and that is the key to sustainable culture.