Pixxx
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 10:24
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Does it really matter?
Pix xx
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PeterH
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 10:25
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"To me life in Western Europe is full of ritual activity and pretty deviod of spirituality"
Its devoid of spirituality alright! But are we confusing "ritual activity" with "compulsive disorder". Mere repetition of pointless actions like -
Christmas shopping, buying stuff in M&S today and exchanging it tomorrow, getting a new mobile though there is nothing wrong with the old one, just having to have the latest ring tones, downing as much ale as you can to prove your manhood, conforming to daft spellings like R*man and Xtian - are compulsions.
Our few remaining festivals are cheapjack commercial exploitations designed to sell cards, gifts and booze. They lack any real ritual. Each generation creates its own new compulsions within its peer groups and despises those of previous age groups. That is how society evolves and eventually collapses. The alternative is stagnation, tyranny and obsessive observation of ritual.
To me - ritual is formalised behaviour that we choose to follow - Catholics taking communion for example. Would I could go back to a time when simple rustic folk danced the sun up on May morning, brought in greenery and yule logs at Christmas, sang the harvest home... but I can't. That is a romantic dream and we are divorced from the old folk ways. Fake replication without meaning is all that remains. Alas!
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nigelswift
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 10:29
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Alas!....
Cheer up!
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
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Jane
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 10:59
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Your actions - to deliberately choose Christmas - illustrate a human need for some kind of midwinter feasting festival.
Following my own logic, does my choosing NOT to celebrate Christmas make me inhuman ?!?! Probably....
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FourWinds
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 11:36
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To me? Not in the slightest :-)
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FourWinds
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 11:41
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Everytime I go on a stone seeing trip I play Buddy Holly's <i>Rave On</i> as I set off. That's a riutal with no particular spiritual meaning.
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morfe
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 11:54
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"I think ethnological studies of none western (capitalist) societies are possibly our best chance at trying to understand Britain 5000 years ago."
I completely 100 percent agree, Fitz-o. In fact have been trying to make this point for ages, but the silence is monolithic! We have to our hands extensive studies of tribal peoples from all over the world, from the Tunguska to Irian Jaya. Their animist and arguably pantheistic world-view is born directly from being part of the 'wild' in the wildeerness. Where agriculture begins, the separation begins, yet even then it seems to take thousands of years to forego the rituals, they become customs.
Back on point, stone age tribes do exist today, even though contact with westerners changes them irrevocably, the data is there to study.
The trip-up is that no (to my knowledge) existing 'primitive' societies build stone circles. Given this, even, we could surely learn enough via behavioural traits of historic and exisiting agrarian and/or hunter-gatherer communities to make more educated guesses regarding our ancestors? Better than time-team anyhow ;-)
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Wild Wooder
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 11:58
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Simple, as others have pointed out Christmas isn't necessarily Christian in today's society. I'm afraid I tend towards the self indulgent approach at this time of year!
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morfe
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 12:03
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"Would I could go back to a time when simple rustic folk danced the sun up on May morning, brought in greenery and yule logs at Christmas, sang the harvest home... but I can't. That is a romantic dream and we are divorced from the old folk ways. Fake replication without meaning is all that remains."
In Chiswick or Chepstow, maybe, yet...
Kopivosian Tadau Ka’amatan!
Homowo!
Alkhalalalaj!
And no matter how cynical and ultra-westernised I might be, just the simple action of serendipity in finding a few handfuls of cornstalks laid carefully in the (now defunct?) Chapel of Brigit at Glastonbury, moved me to big gay tears.
The joy of harvest only recedes under a tide of gluttony. Gluttony never lasts ;-)
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PeterH
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Re: Ritual
Jan 09, 2006, 12:07
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Yes I do agree, but ... there are buts. I never was convinced by that TV archaeo who brought someone over from Madagasgar (?) to tell us what Stonehenge was for. Are we to assume that because Mexican pyramids were used in conjunction with massive human sacrifices, Silbury Hill was also?
Having said that - then I do agree. We can learn more about prehistoric British cultures by looking at more recent ones that we perceive (and that is the danger word) to be similar.
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