Ritual

RITUAL [Lat. ritus, a custom], a term of religion, which may be defined as the routine of worship. This is a "minimum definition"; "ritual" at least means so much, but may stand for more. Without some sort of ritual there could be no organized method in religious worship. Indeed, viewed in this aspect, ritual is to religion what habit is to life and its function is similar; namely, by bringing subordinate functions under an effortless rule, to permit undivided attention in regard to vital issues. The chief task of routine in religion is to organize the activities neces sary to its stability and continuance as a social institution, in order that all available spontaneity and initiative may be directed into spiritual channels.

But, whilst ritual at least represents routine, it tends, histor ically speaking, to have a far deeper significance for the religious consciousness. A recurrent feature of religion, which many stu dents of its phenomena would even consider constant and typical, is the attribution of a more or less self-contained and automatic efficacy to the ritual procedure as such. Before proceeding to con siderations of genesis, it will be convenient briefly to analyse the notion as it appears in the higher religions.

Two constituent lines of thought may be distinguished. Firstly, there is the tendency to pass beyond the purely petitionary atti tude which as such can imply no more than the desire, hope or expectation of divine favour, and to take for granted the consum mation sought, a deity that answers, a grace and blessing that are communicated. When such accomplishment of its end is assumed, efficacy can readily be held to attach to the act of worship as such. Secondly, there is the tendency to identify such a self accomplishing act of worship with its objective expression in the ritual that for purposes of mutual understanding makes the body of worshippers one.

The Formal Element in Ritual.

Exactly similar tenden cies—to impute efficacy, and to treat the ritual procedure as the source of that efficacy—are typically characteristic of black magic, and their reappearance in religion can hardly be treated as a coincidence, seeing that magic and religion would appear to have much in common, at any rate during the earlier stages of their development. In magic a suggestion is made orally, or by dramatic action, or most often in both ways together, that is held ipso facto to bring about its own accomplishment. A certain con ditionality attaches to the magical operation, inasmuch as each magician is subject to interference on the part of other magicians who may neutralize his spell by a counter-spell of equal or greater power; nevertheless, the intrinsic tone is that of a categorical assertion of binding force and efficacy. Again, in magic the self realizing force is apt to seem to reside in the suggestional machin ery rather than in the spiritual qualifications of the magician, though this is by no means invariably the case. On the whole, however, spells and ceremonies are wont to be regarded as an inheritable and transferable property containing efficacy in them selves. What is true of magic is true of much primitive religion.

Sir J. G. Frazer has pronounced the following to be marks of a primitive ritual: negatively, that there are no priests, no temples and no gods (though he holds that departmental, non-individual "spirits" are recognized) ; positively, that the rites are magical rather than propitiatory (The Golden Bough, 2nd ed. ii. 191). If we leave it an open question whether, instead of "spirits," it would not be safer to speak of "powers" to which there is attrib uted not a soul-like nature, but simply a capacity for acting with mana (q.v.) (which roughly is what Frazer means by "magical"), this characterization may be accepted as applying to many, if not to all, the rites of primitive religion.

As Lang well puts it, "Ritual is preserved because it preserves luck." Given an intrinsic sacredness, it is but a step to asso ciate definite gods with the origin or purpose of a rite, whose interest it thereupon becomes to punish omissions or innovations by the removal of their blessing (which is little more than to say that the rite loses its efficacy), or by the active infliction of dis aster on the community. In the primitive society it is hard to point to any custom to which sacredness does not in some degree attach, but, naturally, the more important and solemn the usage, the more rigid the religious conservatism. Thus there are indica tions that in Australia, at the highly sacred ceremony of circum cision, the fire-stick was employed after stone implements were known ; and we have an exact parallel at a higher level of culture, the stone implement serving for the same operation when iron is already in common use. (See B. Spencer and F. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Australia, 401; cf. E. B. Tylor, Early History of Man kind, 3rd ed. 217.) The Interpretation of Ritual.—A valuable truth insisted on by the late W. Robertson Smith (Religion of the Semites, 17 et sqq.) is that in primitive religion it is ritual that generates and sustains myth, and not the other way about. Sacred lore of course cannot be dispensed with; even Australian aboriginal society, which has hardly reached the stage of having priests, needs its Oknirabata or "great instructor" (Spencer and Gillen, ibid., 303). The f unction of such an expert, however, is chiefly to hand on mere rules for the performance of religious acts. If his lore include sacred histories, it is largely, we may suspect, because the description and dramatization of the doings of divine persons enter into ritual as a means of suggestional control. Similarly, the sacred books of the religions of middle grade teem with minute prescriptions as to ritual, but are almost destitute of doc trine. Even in the highest religions, where orthodoxy is the main requirement, and ritual is held merely to symbolize dogma, there is a remarkable rigidity about the dogma that is doubtless in large part due to its association with ritual forms, many of them bearing the most primeval stamp.