In scientific terms, a “tradition” refers to the passing down of customs and beliefs from one generation to the next, while a “ritual” is a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order, often embedded in a larger symbolic system like religion or philosophy. Rituals are observable modes of behavior exhibited by all known societies, and they can be seen as a way of defining or describing humans.
Rituals and traditions are deeply intertwined, with religious rituals being as diverse as the beliefs they represent. They often take place at special times and places, reminding a community of aspects of its worldview and history. Access to rituals may be restricted to certain members of a community.
This book codifies, describes, and contextualizes group rituals and individual practices from world religious traditions, at the interface of religious studies, psychology, and medicine. It elucidates the cultural significance of these practices and their connection to religious holidays and their accompanying rituals.
Rituals are symbolic practices that guide religious understanding by connecting the devotee physically with the abstract meanings of their religion. Religions have their own rituals attached to their beliefs, with some specific to one religion while others are practiced. Rituals can be prescribed religious or other solemn ceremonies or acts, social customs or practices, or even mundane conventional acts.
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or revered objects. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, and they are often essential components of traditions, serving as vehicles for the transmission of religious teachings, values, and stories.
📹 The Big Story: Origins of Religion
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What are some rituals and traditions?
Social practices, rituals, and festive events encompass a wide range of forms, including worship rites, rites of passage, birth, wedding, and funeral rituals, oaths of allegiance, traditional legal systems, games, sports, kinship ceremonies, settlement patterns, culinary traditions, seasonal ceremonies, and practices specific to men or women. These practices also include special gestures, words, recitations, songs, dances, clothing, processions, animal sacrifice, and food.
The changes in modern societies, such as migration, individualization, formal education, and the influence of major world religions, have significantly impacted these practices. The Vimbuza Healing Dance is an example of a healing ritual connected to this element.
Is Islam a religion or tradition?
From the beginning of Islam, Muhammad instilled a sense of brotherhood and faith among his followers, which was further strengthened by their experiences of persecution in Mecca. The strong attachment to Qur’an revelation and socioeconomic content of Islamic religious practices further solidified this bond of faith. In 622 CE, when the Prophet migrated to Medina, his preaching was accepted, leading to the emergence of the community-state of Islam. This period saw Islam unite both spiritual and temporal aspects of life, regulating individual relationships with God and social settings.
The dual religious and social character of Islam, expressing itself as a religious community commissioned by God to bring its own value system to the world through the jihād, explains the success of early generations of Muslims. Within a century after the Prophet’s death in 632 CE, they brought a large part of the globe under a new Arab Muslim empire.
Islam’s expansion as a religion began with the conquests and empire building, marked by its egalitarianism within the faithful and discrimination against followers of other religions. Jews and Christians were given special status as “people of the Book” (ahl al-kitāb) and allowed religious autonomy, but were required to pay a per capita tax called jizyah. This status was later extended to Zoroastrians and Hindus, but many joined Islam to escape the jizyah’s disability.
A massive expansion of Islam after the 12th century was initiated by the Sufis, who were mainly responsible for the spread of Islam in India, Central Asia, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Can a ritual not be religious?
Talal Asad’s historical analysis of articles on ritual and rite in the Encyclopædia Britannica reveals that from 1771 to 1852, ritual was defined as a script directing the order and manner to be observed in performing divine service. However, it wasn’t until 1910 that a longer article redefined ritual as a type of routine behavior that symbolizes or expresses something. As a symbolic activity, ritual is no longer confined to religion but is distinguished from technical action.
The shift from script to behavior is matched by a semantic distinction between ritual as an outward sign and inward meaning. The emphasis has changed from establishing the meaning of public symbols to focusing on behavior and inner emotional states. Asad emphasizes that mastering rituals is a skill requiring disciplined action, requiring abilities to be acquired according to rules sanctioned by those in authority.
Are rituals always religious?
The feminist movement has significantly transformed many traditions, including the introduction of rituals for women’s biological life. Yoga, meditation, and retreats, as well as regular gatherings like the Burning Man festival and peaceful marches like the Women’s March, have become more prevalent. The feminist movement has also led to the introduction of new rituals for pregnancy, miscarriage, infertility, menstruation, and menopause, which were not previously marked.
This shift in religious practices has led to a greater sense of spirituality and community, and has influenced the way people approach rituals and ceremonies. This shift has had a profound impact on the way people view and practice their faith.
Can a tradition be a ritual?
Rituals involve repeated actions, while traditions pass down beliefs or behaviors with cultural significance tied to the past. They do not need to be performed in a prescribed order. A common tradition is decorating homes for holidays, with some visible and others private. Special items, such as candles, may have symbolic meaning rooted in cultural or religious traditions. Jewish friends may have a menorah with candles during Hanukkah, while Christian friends may have an Advent Wreath with advent candles.
Both traditions involve the lighting of candles in a prescribed order. Both rituals and traditions play a crucial role in families and society, celebrating unique cultural heritages and building community.
What is ritual in religion?
Religious rituals are repetitive and patterned behaviors that are prescribed by a religious institution, belief, or custom, often with the intention of communicating with a deity or supernatural power. They can be performed individually or collectively, elicited by events, or performed sporadically. Rituals are an important aspect of religion as they allow believers to express and reaffirm their belief systems.
One of the primary purposes of rituals is communication, conveying information about the commitments, beliefs, and values of the individuals performing the ritual and linking them to the institution. A six-year follow-up study found that private religious activity may prolong survival.
What is religious ritual?
Religious rituals are repetitive and patterned behaviors that are prescribed by a religious institution, belief, or custom, often with the intention of communicating with a deity or supernatural power. They can be performed individually or collectively, elicited by events, or performed sporadically. Rituals are an important aspect of religion as they allow believers to express and reaffirm their belief systems.
One of the primary purposes of rituals is communication, conveying information about the commitments, beliefs, and values of the individuals performing the ritual and linking them to the institution. A six-year follow-up study found that private religious activity may prolong survival.
Is there a difference between rituals and traditions?
Tradition refers to the passing down of customs and beliefs from one generation to the next, while rituals are a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order, often embedded in a larger symbolic system like religion or philosophy. Examples of rituals include celebrating birthdays, blowing out candles on a cake, and getting married. New rituals can be created at any time and become tradition if understood and replicated by a wider community.
What is the difference between a religion and a ritual?
Religions vary globally, with different beliefs and rules that maintain their existence. While not all religions follow the same practices, there are some similarities. Religions have their own rituals, some specific to one religion and others practiced throughout. Religions incorporate myths to convey messages about the supernatural through stories or metaphors, helping followers achieve spirituality. Religion can provide peace of mind, hope, and change perspectives.
Rituals and ceremonies are practiced to show dedication and faith to a religion. James Frazer’s ethnology of religion, The Golden Bough, published in 1890 and 1922, reviewed the cross-cultural variation in ideas related to magic, myth, and religion. He proposed that human belief progressed through three stages: primitive magic, religion, and science. There are two types of known magic: imitative and contagious.
Can Muslims do rituals?
Muslims engage in a variety of rites and rituals throughout their lives. The primary rites of passage are the call to prayer and the ritual of circumcision. The call to prayer is often spoken in the ear of the infant at birth, ensuring that the call to serve is present throughout the child’s life.
What are the 4 types of rituals?
Gluckman distinguishes four kinds of ritual, with rite of passage being a typical constitutive ritual. However, the terms “rite of passage” and “ritual” face difficulties as analytic concepts, making it difficult to differentiate between common behavior, rite of passage, and ritual in a strict sense. Van Gennep’s original expressions of the basic features of the rite of passage are vague, and the core problem is what people want to change through ritual.
Travel away from home but not for subsistence is a human behavior that has been widespread in all societies since ancient times. It wasn’t until the late twentieth century that tourism became a general necessity of life, promoting the development of related industries around the world. Determining the coordinates of tourism in cultural anthropology and establishing an analytic framework of tourism are frequently the focus of research for tourism anthropologists.
Graburn and Nash, two important researchers in the anthropology of tourism, have debated these basic questions. Graburn suggests that tourism is a “modern ritual” in contemporary society, where people are outside of their daily lives and in the travel life, which differs from routine work and life. He divides the life of the tourist into three stages: secular work-divine travel-secular work.
Nash later proposed that the purpose of travel, attitude toward travel, and the traveler’s behavior vary from person to person, and not all kinds of travel are similar to pilgrimage. While Graburn’s points of view can be useful for analyzing tourism, it’s important to be wary of being trapped into any one conceptual scheme, particularly one that may acquire a quality of truth in the minds of its proponents.
📹 Please Explain: The Zoroastrian religion
Zoroastrianism was ancient when Jesus was born. Its followers believe we are connected to the environment, good and evil exist …
The way I see it, religion started to try to explain what people couldn’t yet answer. Why did the sun rise and set? Why does it rain? Why do we die? Today religion is still used to try to answer the questions we can’t answer. Why are we here? What’s our purpose in this world? What happens after death?
Honestly, not believing in a religion has made me more “spiritual.” People need to stop being so afraid of this article, and become more conscious beings with a better understanding of the environment they live in. From where religion came from, to why we perceive things the way we do by understanding our biological functions, the understanding of what composes reality itself. Period. that’s all you need to know, and there’s TONS AND TONS of information out there people just ignore, and are afraid of because they feel frightened it will hurt their beliefs. Embrace the enigma we call life, and realize the truth lies within us all. stop being blinded by culture and religion.
As an athiest I can definitely respect the origin of religion and at a time where we simply could not prove one way or another; their stories answered their questions, gave them hope, even answering things that we will never know (namely death). However we have grown up significantly and everyone should question their beliefs, their origins and see if you discover that what you have always believed doesn’t quite fit, make sense or seems very out-dated.
This article just shows that deep in our soul we knows there are “higher power” / creator…. our Soul “remember” it’s origin where “the soul” witness our creator before it is sent to this sensory body in this physical world..and the soul WILL go back to our creator after we die… that is why, it’s natural when we keep having a “feeling” that there are “higher power” that govern our life… Atheist or Religious, you knows.. within you have some sort of feelings about GOD – THE CREATOR
Really, really cool to think about. Personally, I love learning about how things got started – language, writing, religion, humanity, life itself, even the Universe (and what’ll happen to it). I prefer bases of observation of the world around us over religious ones, though I can see how easy and convenient it is to chose religion – it’s something that generations before you has gone with and you don’t want to disappoint them, and it’s generally less of a strain on the mind than atheism, enabling you to get on with the rest of your life.
Nice article that goes with my personal theory; it was probably a dream of the early cavemen … there was a superior “being” looking after them. Although these beliefs originated in different parts of the world at an early stage, you can easily imagine that the concept of “religion” was mainly there to calm down anxiety among humans (why are we here, what is the purpose of life on earth, etc.).
This is rather elitist. He basically concludes by saying that religion halts social progress, which really isn’t borne out by the evidence. There is some good material in the article but it is very biased towards a certain perspective and comes to an incorrect conclusion. But then again, you can’t really discuss the origin of religion in a 4 minute youtube article.
Stone age…def; ‘ The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 8700 BCE (or BC) and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking. : It is not possible to know what these people called themselves since ‘writing’ has been at its earliest found in china around the 7th millennia BCE. It is an arbitrary ‘period’… and ‘stone age people’ cannot be grouped together as one. It is like dating the use of fire… come on … this entire article is conjecture claiming to be solidly scientific… i find it laughable when science is used incorrectly to promote a philosophy. Philosophy is not science or scientific thinking. it is the opposite…starts with a conclusion and desperately grovels to find evidence supporting it…
The only reason god exists for people is in places they are too uneducated to explain. For Example: “I dunno how x got here, therefore god did it”. This is not an answer. Lol, religion just pretends to give an answer. Science is what actually gives answers. If one is religious, then he/she willfully ignores the relevance of “Evidence”. I don’t do that cause I’m not stupid 🙂 The only thing which separates: Knowledge and Information Facts and Claims Reality and Fiction Reason and Beliefs Wanting something to be true and something that is true Atheists and Theists Science and Religion is “EVIDENCE”. Evidence is how we determine what is true and what is bullshit. 🙂 This isn’t some rule I made up. This is just how LOGIC works. Something religious people don’t ever seem to understand.
This article overall presents interesting arguments but the last conclusion, that religion is an obstacle to progress, does not convince me. Civilization and technological progress began long before people started questioning the supernatural. In fact skepticism and outright atheism probably flourished after such progress enabled it. Religious people don’t seem particularly bothered by any new scientific theory as long as it doesn’t deny something fundamental to their faith. For instance, Christians and Muslims have a lot of problem with the idea of evolution by natural selection because it does not require the intervention of God. If God even exists at all, then natural selection means that He is not the architect of the human soul and thus is not its rightful shepherd. Sinful behavior is not a consequence of spiritual corruption but an adaptive behavior that evolved to address survival needs, and which thus must be dealt in a pragmatic fashion instead of a dogmatic one. But as long as it doesn’t threat a fundamental tenet, religious people exhibit no special distrust of progress. When was the last time the Catholic Church completely outlawed some technology or scientific theory?
The Sun-God HORUS was Worshipped Nearly 1,000 Years Before the “STORY” of Jesus. Check these Parallels: 1.Both were conceived of a virgin. 2.Both were the “only begotten son” of a god (either Osiris or Yahweh) 3.Horus’s mother was Meri, Jesus’s mother was Mary. 4.Horus’s foster father was called Jo-Seph, and Jesus’s foster father was Joseph. 5.Both foster fathers were of royal descent. 6.Both were born in a cave (although sometimes Jesus is said to have been born in a stable). 7.Both had their coming announced to their mother by an angel. Horus; birth was heralded by the star Sirius (the morning star). Jesus had his birth heralded by a star in the East (the sun rises in the East). 8.Ancient Egyptians celebrated the birth of Horus on December 21 (the Winter Solstice). Modern Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25. 9.Both births were announced by angels (this si nto the same as number 7). 10.Both had shepherds witnessing the birth. 11.Horus was visited at birth by “three solar deities” and Jesus was visited by “three wise men”. 12.After the birth of Horus, Herut tried to have Horus murdered. After the birth of Jesus, Herod tried to have Jesus murdered. 13.To hide from Herut, the god That tells Isis, “Come, thou goddess Isis, hide thyself with thy child.” To hide from Herod, an angel tells Joseph to “arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt.” 14.When Horus came of age, he had a special ritual where hsi eye was restored. When Jesus (and other Jews) come of age, they have a special ritual called a Bar Mitzvah.
I always loved the idea of spirits being in everything. I think there’s a misconception in what is meant by this. Of course the pre-intellectual humans actually believed in these kinds of things, but I think there is some truth to it. Maybe not a literal factual truth but some kind of tangible abstract truth in the mind brought through feeling (even though feelings can be so powerful in convincing us that they are literal, making us fear our intuitive insights – there’s still room for interpretation and analysis). The mind can look at things in objective and subjective ways. The objective way is very literal and logical. The subjective way is often mystical, but provides an insight into the true nature of reality. You could say philosophers look at the world this way combining both aspects of their subjective experience and objective analysis and that is what it means to be truly rational. Fantasy is a tool for us to understand reality, as is logic which can prune our fantastical conceptions and theories to find truth. So when they say that objects have spirits, maybe they take that too far, and as you said, separated fantasy from logic. But when you take fantasy and apply it’s concepts to logic, you can see a certain reasoning behind it. When you look at a plant, you can feel that it is alive like you. It has some kind of spirit to it that is the sum of it’s functions to survive.
Same purpose, different time. People’s minds invented religion to fill in the blanks, only back then it was smaller, now common sense questions. Religion really does hold people and societies back form progress and equality, and it’s very sad when people give their lives for a religion which is easily found false if you keep asking the question: why?