V A Comparative Analysis of Ritual Practice of Time

Abstract

The ritual practice of time has been analysed concerning the ritual's relation to the cosmogony and the past, space, its social meaning and function, power, the future, and the philosophy of the order and the quality of divine/sacred time. The context of the ritual language influences the interpretation of the inscriptions. Rituals celebrated at the termination of the 260-day calendar, the 365-day calendar and the 52-year calendar entail an ending of the old and the introduction of a new calendar period. A determined structure of the proceedings of the rituals of time of the Long Count calendar cannot be discerned in the classic Maya inscriptions. The ritual practice of the politics of time is intimately related with the religious and socio-political structure. The complicated temporal philosophy and practices of this calendar is to be explicated through simultaneous historical-philological studies and field research in collaboration with the Indigenous peoples.Keywords: Long Count calendar; politics of time; ritual practices; ritual temporal practice