What is the role of ritual in the evolution
of humanity?
For Rappaport Ritual and Religion, "Religion’s major conceptual and experiential constituents, the sacred, the numinous, the occult, and the divine, and their integration
into the Holy, are creations of ritual" (p.3)
He goes on to say that ."…binary signals are intrinsic to ritual occurrence,
and they are, in their nature, free of ambiguity" (p. 89).
So what doe Binary signals do? They offer clarity, or a sharper distinction. They remove the vagueness and ambiguity that exists in the daily life of human beings.
The binary is the reduction of discrete units or states to two only. Any religious ritual…can at any given time only be occurring or not occurring. The occurrence of a ritual transmits a binary (yes/no, 0/1, on/off, either/or, boy/man, war/peace, etc.) signal"
Rappaport discusses how time can be viewed as sacred or secular time, or sacred or mundane time..Overall, time provides a framework for conceptualization . For example, in discussing the binary aspects of time, sacred time would deal with things such as a perception of eternity.For both the individual and the society "…the public ordering of time, not simply to coordinate social life, but to provide a well-marked road along which each individual’s temporal experience
The result is a separation in conception between time in daily life and other-worldly life, or secular and sacred. Rituals and sequences of rituals
keep things in order; they establish and constitute order, rather than chaos or
disorder. These are orders that can be ranked and they are directives, We perfrom rutuals and 'form; is a key part of perfrom. Ritual is form. To look at ritual in religion in this way is to take an anthrpological view
of humanity?
For Rappaport Ritual and Religion, "Religion’s major conceptual and experiential constituents, the sacred, the numinous, the occult, and the divine, and their integration
into the Holy, are creations of ritual" (p.3)
He goes on to say that ."…binary signals are intrinsic to ritual occurrence,
and they are, in their nature, free of ambiguity" (p. 89).
So what doe Binary signals do? They offer clarity, or a sharper distinction. They remove the vagueness and ambiguity that exists in the daily life of human beings.
The binary is the reduction of discrete units or states to two only. Any religious ritual…can at any given time only be occurring or not occurring. The occurrence of a ritual transmits a binary (yes/no, 0/1, on/off, either/or, boy/man, war/peace, etc.) signal"
Rappaport discusses how time can be viewed as sacred or secular time, or sacred or mundane time..Overall, time provides a framework for conceptualization . For example, in discussing the binary aspects of time, sacred time would deal with things such as a perception of eternity.For both the individual and the society "…the public ordering of time, not simply to coordinate social life, but to provide a well-marked road along which each individual’s temporal experience
The result is a separation in conception between time in daily life and other-worldly life, or secular and sacred. Rituals and sequences of rituals
keep things in order; they establish and constitute order, rather than chaos or
disorder. These are orders that can be ranked and they are directives, We perfrom rutuals and 'form; is a key part of perfrom. Ritual is form. To look at ritual in religion in this way is to take an anthrpological view
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