Castles and Ritual

Abstract

As Chapter Two illustrates, community identity depends upon its spaces – how they are used and who gets to be there, for example. The use of space varies throughout the day, during the course of a year, and over a longer period, and ranges from the mundane to the remarkable, from the simple to the complex, and from the seemingly meaningless to that steeped in cultural importance. Deeply meaningful actions, especially those repeated in some form or fashion, like rituals, are particularly adept at telling us about their practitioners. Rituals suture together thought and action, belief and practice. Indeed, ritual demands meaning behind behaviors and actions. Catherine Bell elaborates on ritual theory: ‘ritual mediates thought and action,’ and ‘is a dialectical means for the provisional convergence of those opposed forces whose interaction is seen to constitute culture in some form.’Rituals thus become a lens through which we can make sense of a community, because they are a physical enactment of its belief system. Rituals, like all acts, occur in and thus interact with space, and participate in defining that space. Thinking about where rituals happen can tell us about both the place and the particular rite. Jonathan Z. Smith emplaces ritual for us, arguing that ‘[r]itual is, first and foremost, a mode of paying attention. It is a process for marking interest … It is this characteristic, as well, that explains the role of place as a fundamental component of ritual: place directs attention.’For Smith then, the locales in which rituals occur help us look, both literally and critically, at the right things, the important parts. Both movement across and pauses in ritual spaces – be they temples, homes, forests, or so forth – help us piece together how a ritual works and what it tells us about the community and its places. Moreover, thinking about the meaning imbued in spaces by ritual activity – and vice versa – helps us unpack narrative (or lived) moments of ritual. Ronald L. Grimes invites us to think about ritual space through a series of questions that ask whether the ritual occurs in a fixed or fluid location, in a natural or built environment, in a permanent or temporary location; how the space looks and feels; and how the people relate to the space – territorially, or hierarchically, for example.I aim to parse these details in my own discussion of some key rituals in King Arthur’s Round Table community.