Secret rites were a notable feature of the great religious ceremonies of the North Ameri can Indians in general. Almost always these secret.rites were performed in a medicine lodge or great tepee erected for the occasion and dedicated to this use alone. Into this chamber none but the initiated may enter and it is marked by cabalistic signs which distinguish it from all other dwellings and give it at once a semi-sacred, semi-mysterious nature. Proces sions, dances, offerings, purification ceremonies, songs, incantations, prayers, all performed in a manner rigidly enjoined by the ritual, generally form part of the secret ceremonies of most of such societies. There too the priests and other participants rehearse the mythical story or legend of the origin of the society and its pe culiar rites and ceremonies. Among most In dian secret societies one of the ever-present rites is that of smoking to the six directions of the universe, east, west, north, south, upward and downward. Often, too, an elaborate cere monial feast forms part of the obligatory rite. This may be private or public or both, and is frequently preceded or followed by the sacrificial food offering. Not infrequently a public altar is erected by the masses of the people, under the direction of the priests, on a certain day or days set apart between the secret and public rites. This in itself may be said to form an integral part of the rites since it is of mystical symbolization, symbolizing some culture hero, the earth, the heavens, the universe according to the ritualistic tradition of the tribe. The rites of this altar and its symbolism frequently represent the four wind gods, the great and sovereign rulers of the four quarters of the earth, the thunder gods and the spirit of the rainbow, the long bridge spanning the earth land and the sky-land. The public performance also follows an elaborate, rigidly-defined ritual, the prominent features of which generally are smoking, sacrifices, specific dances, dramatic presentations of legend and tradition, oratorical exhortations, prayers, processions and traditional songs generally sung by choruses. Masks are frequently worn and mythological characters are according to a plan rigidly de fined and exacted in the tribal rite of the cere mony.
The tendency everywhere and at all time has been for ceremonial rites to become rigidly stereotyped, a fact due to the ever-present be lief in the magic efficacy of the spoken word, of incantations and mystic signs presented in certain forms approved by antiquity and tradi tion. In ancient and modern ceremonial rites everything is ruled by precedent. From Rome to Egypt, from Persia to Hindustan and China, from Greenland to Yucatan, from Central America to Peru, even the decorations and symbols of the ceremonies and of the tepees and temples were fixed and practically un changeable in the pre-Columbian days.
Changing of Rites.— This very unchange of customs and ritual and the tend envy to relegate the most important and solemn of the rites to societies and lodges to associa tions of priests and nobles, and to reserve the spectacular and the dramatic for the great pub lic performances had two tendencies which be came invariably destructive of the ceremonies they were interested in preserving. A strong priesthood and a powerful privileged class elaborated these ceremonies and rites and read into them symbolical meanings they did not originally have, and overloaded the ritual, bind ing it soul and bodt to the secret societies•and the ruling class. The symbols, in the course of time, became conventionalized and the. original
signification of the religious rites forgotten• or obscured. Gradually for the Masses, the cele bration of the great ritualistic feasts became the occasion of a public holiday, often accompanied by licentiousness and debauchery. The mean ing of the sacred or mystical symbols obscured or forgotten or a new signification read into them, they insensibly and gradually changed form or assumed stereotyped shapes to Which semi-mystical, semi-magical powers were still attributed. Thus it was that the original temple decorations, once pregnant with meaning, be. came transformed into conventional decora• dons. In this latter shape they might still con tinue to attach themselves to the ritual of which they had originally formed an integral part. In the later Greek and Roman Classical periods the ritualistic decorations had become almost altogether conventionalized and their meaning obscured or lost. The Aztecs and Mayas, at the time of the Conquest, had arrived at the transition period when the ritualistic symbols were beginning to become stereotyped while still retaining most of their mystic signification. Among many of the northern Indian races mysticism and symbolism were still linked with the ritual and never used apart from it. These different grades of civilization illustrate well the insensible changes of ritual and its attitude toward its origin in the course of aged of social and religious evolution. Thus ritual, while ap• parently often stationary, is continually chang ing with the never-ceasing changes of the ages. This is due to the part that personal religion tends to be informal which state or tribal re ligions tend to wrap themselves about with ceremonies borrowed from court ceremonies and surroundings, vocabulary and relationship. Just as state ceremony tends to become top heavy under autocratic governments and finally to fall by its own weight, so the ceremonies of state and tribal religions are born down by the weight of their own ritual, generally after centuries of slow growth and very gradual change leading to more and more ornate, in volved and obscure symbolism. The whole course of ritual evolution is affected by the constant borrowings of races and creeds from one another, and the ever-present tendency to develop new forms from old.
The individualism of strong men has also, from age to age, had a very decided the upbudding and new interpretation of ritual, or upon its simplification or total or par- tial destruction. This is well exemplified in Biblical history, in the growth of ritualism In the state religions of Egypt and those of Assyria, Babylonia and India; and more recently in the development of Christianity, first as an clastic force directed against ritualism, and later as one of the greatest ritual-building agencies. This ritual-building was arrested and strongly affected by the individualism of such men as Zwingli, Erasmus, Calvin, Melanchthon and Luther, the most active leaders of the Reformation. Since their day the more indi vidualistic leaders of Protestantism have made repeated attacks upon ritualism until now little or nothing of the original ritual remains in the more ultra Protestant churches, and with the ritual have disappeared much of the dogma of the Roman Church and many of the customs, traditions and practices inherited by it from the earlier ages of Christianity or from pre-Chris tian times. Much the same tendency is notice able in the Mohammedan faith which has de veloped from a distinctly iconoclastic force, in its earlier days, into a strong fortress of ritualism. .