Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Ritual or religious?

"I define rituals as acts that have a social meaning and are designed to communicate with an audience. Such acts are not necessarily related to the supernatural and thus are not necessarily part of religion (for example, Kyriakidis 2007); however, based on accounts provided by the ethnographic record, formal and repeated actions that result in the death of humans and modification of their remains are almost always tied in some way to beliefs in a supernatural world (Ucko 1969: 264ff.). "—Mary Voight in Sacred Killing , page 264


<idle musing>
A very good distinction. Not every ritual act is necessarily a "religious" act...
</idle musing>

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