TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Anthropology > Religious Rituals and Beliefs
Rituals
A behaviour which occurs within a society either on a regular basis or at certain times of people"s lives when actions, not words, are used to convey meaning.
Rituals, religious and non-religious, are a universal feature of social life. People in the West engage in religious rituals to cleanse people of sins (such as confessions in Catholic Church), secular rituals to bring people together (such as thanksgiving dinners in the USA), political rituals to sway public opinion (such as baby-kissing by candidates) and many more.
Other societies have curing rituals to restore health, agricultural rituals to make crops grow, fertility rituals to cause pregnancy and death rituals to ensure the entry of the departed into the afterworld.
Quote from Leech, 1976:
- "The procedures ( of a rite of a passage) separate the initiate into 2 parts- one pure, the other impure. The impure part can then be left behind, while the pure part can be aggregated to the initiate"s new status. In the case of sacrifice, the sacrificial victim plays the part of the initiate, but since the victim has to first be identified with the donor of the sacrifice, the donor is by vicarious association, likewise purified and initiated into a new ritual status."
(Basically, the person who is sacrificed gives the benefit to someone else).
A sacrifice is an offering made to a spiritual being. The same term is also used for the sacrificial ritual itself. The person or group making the offering has some specific goal in line, such as ensuring a productive agricultural season, or appeasing the anger of a defended God. The most dramatic kind of sacrifice is the sacrifice of a human being (e.g. The Aztecs in Old Mexico). People view scarification as reciprocal obligation- the Gods become duty-bound to return the favour.
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