Anatomy of ritual

1. the use of symbols to convey a ritual’s messages;

2. a cognitive matrix (belief system) from which ritual emerges;

3. rhythm, repetition and redundancy: ritual drivers;

4. the use of tools, techniques, and technologies to accomplish ritual’s

multiple goals;

5. the framing of ritual performances;

6. the order and formality that often separates ritual from everyday life,

identifying it as ritual;

7. the sense of inviolability and inevitability that rituals can generate;

8. the acting, stylization, and staging that often give ritual its elements of

high drama, the fact that it is performed and that it often intensifies

toward a climax.

Not all rituals exhibit each of these characteristics; however, they are all

salient features of ritual in general, all part of the anatomy of ritual and its

capacity as a powerful communicative form.