Contemporary Rituals Research Articles

Aprender a ver y sentir lo invisible:

This article describes a progressive somatic learning process that aims to produce a body sensitive enough to interact with the non-human agents promoted in New Age and neopagan spiritual practices. Contemporary rituals organized at the archeological site in Carnac, France, are the empirical research subject of this ethnography. These rituals are approached as spaces for sensory learning where participants tune into their body in order to verify the effectiveness of the techniques. As shown in the analysis, the core elements of the somatic learning applied in the rituals include the incorporation of an alternative sensory language, body techniques, visualization, and somatic imaginaries.

Stag tourism and scripted liminality

Stag party tourism is a highly ritualized contemporary rite of passage that is associated with drunken excess and norm-breaking toxic masculinity. Despite contravening societal rules and encouraging deviant behaviour, stag parties are generally tolerated. This paper explores how stag tourism is a constructed rite of passage and a scripted liminality, packaged by destination marketers, staged by service providers, and performed enthusiastically by participants. Analysis of interview and observational data suggests that the bachelor movie genre is the inspiration which informs expectations and experience. Indeed, the degree of inter-textuality between on-screen (reel life) and off-screen (real life) performances confirms that this is a scripted liminality, informed not by elders or peers, but by Hollywood film makers. We conclude with a discussion of a series of contributions and implications for practice.

Μια νέα ερμηνεία ενός γκράφιτι από υστερορωμαϊκή οικία της αρχαίας Ελεύθερνας

P. Themelis (Κριτική Εστία 5, [1994-1996], 269; SEG 45, 1266) published a shortgraffito that was engraved on the door lintel connecting the rooms 23 and 26of the so-called House 2 of Sector I of ancient Eleftherna. It reads Νείκην τῷΚυρείῳ. It has been dated to the third or the early fourth century CE and ithas been interpreted as a wish to the God by Christians, possibly related to thereligious persecutions of the Roman State against them ca. 250 CE. The use ofthe terms κύριος and ν(ε)ίκη in Roman and Late Roman acclamations foundin textual sources, in both religious and secular contexts, is here analysed;the author rejects the previous interpretations and argues that this graffito isan acclamatory wish for a victory and/or the well-being of the owner of thehouse. Based on Amm. Marc. 16.8.9, he, moreover, connects it with a contem-porary ritual of the Roman house.

Contemporary Ritual: Teyyam and the Creation of Its Epistemic World

This article examines the various interpretations of teyyam, a ritual of North Kerala, arguing that new meaning-making practices and fresh experiences of teyyam continue to reinvent the ritual even as it references tradition. We study the meaning-making process through three main modes of understanding: origin stories, the politics of textualisation and performance, and an analysis of contemporary forms of circulation. We draw from these modes of meaning-making to conclude that teyyam functions as a floating signifier gathering possibilities as well as constraints. Furthermore, despite ritual’s close relationship with tradition, ritual is amenable to continuous reinvention due to the inherent adaptability of tradition.

Pamięć o ofiarach zagłady Romów i Sinti a współczesny stosunek do zmarłych w społecznościach polskich Romów – podobieństwa i różnice

REMEMBRANCE OF THE ROMA AND SINTI HOLOCAUST VICTIMS IN COMPARISON TO CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE DECEASED IN POLISH ROMA COMMUNITIES – SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
 Many contemporary scholars of Roma communities consider the extermination of the Roma during World War II as foundational to their contemporary collective identity. The commemoration of the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of over half a million European Roma and Sinti individuals, accounting for approximately 70% of their population, has now evolved into a transnational tradition that involves culturally diverse Roma communities around the world. This article aims to compare the commemoration of Holocaust victims with contemporary rituals associated with honoring the deceased in Polish Roma communities. By examining the similarities and differences between these practices, the article seeks to explore their underlying origins. In doing so, it contrasts the experience of postmemory, inherited from previous generations, with the current remembrance of the deceased in present-day contexts.

Ritual Relationships with Copal Incense

Copal, an aromatic tree resin, has long been harvested and offered as incense in Indigenous communities of Mesoamerica. In contemporary academic contexts copal and other non-human materials and entities are often conceived of through objectifying ontologies. However, metaphysical frameworks grounded in life forces such as teotl (Nahuatl) and ch’ulel (various Mayan languages) offer alternative insights to human relationships with other-than-human worlds. Copal can be traced temporally and spatially, across thousands of miles and millennia. Specifically, we can follow copal from Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica across the northern border of Mexico into contemporary rituals in Denver, Colorado where copal continues to burn in Danza ceremonies. Beyond these ritual spaces, copal also moves in neoliberal and new age contexts as a market commodity and is stored in museum collections as ‘artifact’. Centering Mesoamerican metaphysics offers a counternarrative to these versions of settler-colonial objectification. Ultimately, precolonial and decolonial kinship practices can inform reinterpretations and reimagining of copal in the processes of museum and market appropriation.

The Law of the Gospel: Shifting Interpretations of a Temple Covenant throughout Latter-day Saint History

The Law of the Gospel: Shifting Interpretations of a Temple Covenant throughout Latter-day Saint History

Contemporary rituals of entering adulting - the 18th birthday and the maturity examination in the perception of young Lubusanitans

Contemporary rituals of entering adulting - the 18th birthday and the maturity examination in the perception of young Lubusanitans

Navigating the Contemporary Rites of Passage: A Typology of STEM Professional Identity Transition

Anchored upon a renewed rites of passage perspective, this study employs a narrative inquiry to understand how professional identities are enacted, developed, negotiated, and reconstructed among final year STEM undergraduates in Malaysia. While professional identities are largely studied within the workplace or organisational context, there is limited knowledge of how students make sense of their professional identities during their study. To address this gap, this study explores the dilemmas and dreams of twenty-four final year STEM undergraduates as they were at the critical juncture of transition towards their first full-time career. While the participants shared a common experience of STEM professional identity formation during their childhood and adolescent phases of life, there were variations in how individuals negotiated their professional identities as they reached the crossroads upon university enrolment and graduation. In navigating the liminal phase of uncertainties, negotiation strategies included defending and rethinking STEM professional identities while balancing identities in work and non-work roles. Towards the reconstruction phase, a process of redefining, affirming, and securing STEM professional identity takes place as individuals make sense of their roles and place in the communities. The narrative findings illustrate contemporary dynamics of societal expectations, structural forces and personal agency that facilitate STEM professional transitions. The study also adds insights into emerging discourses surrounding STEM education and talent retention strategies among the contemporary STEM workforce.

The Existence of Imported Fruit in Contemporary Rituals in Pandemic

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the existence of imported fruit used by the Balinese Hindu community as a ritual tool during the pandemic. There is an assumption that imported fruit is more expensive, meaning that everyone who uses these fruits in their offerings (banten) is a person who is at a certain economic level and social status. Although the government recommends using local fruit, because it has an impact on the welfare of local farmers, this does not make people switch to consuming local fruit. Even during the pandemic, this phenomenon can still be seen in various ritual activities, in cities and villages. With the argument that imported fruit is easier to find than local fruit, imported fruit is the people's choice. In addition, many Hindu religious ceremonial activities in Bali from small to large scale require the community to buy fruit in a certain amount and at a certain time. Thus, it can be understood that the high consumption of imported fruit is due to the high demand for fruit and the lifestyle of the people who want to look classy. Methodology: This research was conducted using an ethnographic approach as a variant of the qualitative approach. Data collection is done through observation and interviews with the perpetrators, namely people who carry out ritual activities. Respondents were met randomly at the location of the ceremony. The results of data analysis are presented informally in descriptive – narrative form. Findings: Religious ceremonies in Bali are carried out in contemplative life, manifested by the totality of their people in giving offerings to God. The spiritual totality of the Balinese Hindu community not only has an impact on the preservation of tradition, but also on the economy of the Balinese people. The high demand of imported fruit for offerings, in addition to having an impact on the occurrence of contestation, also provides economic benefits for the Balinese people who work as fruit sellers, both in the market and in supermarkets. Originality/Value: By this research, an understanding of the making of ceremonial facilities is still often found to fulfill desires rather than spiritual needs, namely to show socioeconomic status. One can be shown by the use of ceremonial facilities that look classy.

The rite of cremation in contemporary burial practices of the Chukchi reindeer herders

In the Reindeer Chukchi and Koryak cultures, cremation practices did not interrupt for centuries. In contem-porary Chukchi culture, burial practices include cremation, leaving the body in the open space, and burial in “Rus-sian style”. Cremation is still practiced among Reindeer Chukchi nowadays, although with some modifications and simplifications. The article is based on the fieldwork materials assembled by authors in 2000–2021 from the vil-lages of Vaegi, Khatyrka, Meinypylgino, Omolon, Kaiettyn, and Ilirney of the Anadyr and Bilibino municipal dis-tricts, as well as on published materials. For the comparative analysis, the ethnographic materials from Kam-chatka and Magadan regions were used. The informants’ answers suggest that contemporary burial rites in Vaegi, Khatyrka, Meinypylgino, and Omolon villages are the closest to the traditional cremation ritual. The pur-pose of this article is the reconstruction of the rite of cremation of Chukchi peoples and compare the traditional ceremony with the contemporary rituals of Reindeer Chukchi from Vaegi, Khatyrka, Meinypylgino, and Omolon localities. This paper described the full cremation ceremonial cycle: the preparation for the burial, sewing the bur-ial clothing, crafting specific tools, distribution of the ceremonial roles, activities on the day before, during and after the cremation. The rite of asking the dead, preserved virtually with no changes till modern days, is described in detailed; the actions of main participants on every stage have been reconstructed. The local differences in the burial ceremony be-tween various Chukchi groups have been specified. Special consideration has been given to the local Chukchi termi-nology, formulas, and spells, which were in use in the burial rite until 1970–1980s. Currently, informants practice simpli-fied elements of the rite, the Chukchi language is not routinely used for the ceremonies, some words being spelled in Russian. Nevertheless, the burial practices have kept the mythological elements such as crossing the border into the other world, dividing of the worlds, creatures-guardians, evil spirits, guardian spirits.

Bodies of Silence, Floods of Nectar: Ritual Music in Contemporary Brahmanical Tantric Temples of Kerala

The Tantric concept of sound (nāda) as universal life-force has seen worldwide diffusion over the last few decades but such a fame does not reflect academic interest in the impact of Tantra on music. Indeed, while a number of essays have been written to demonstrate the contribution of Tantrism to the evolution of Indian religions and culture, its contribution to music has been left largely unexplored. The word Tantra refers to a pan-Asian religious phenomenon spread over numerous centuries and including a wide number of sects having different and even opposite philosophical and theological approaches which may be addressed from the perspective of the concept of the body. In fact, the divinization of the body or the understanding of the human body as the major Tantric metaphor of the cosmos and its processes is the most important uniting factor of such diversity. The tradition of Brahmanical temple Tantrism practiced in contemporary Kerala, with its own map of the body, interior practices and rituals including music, helps an understanding of the concepts and ideas embedded in Tantric ritual practices and musical forms. It adopts the human body as the model for temple architecture and also for musical forms and intends the ritual activity as a re-enactment of the process of enlightenment. By adopting a multidimensional approach including ethnography, musical analysis and textual sources, this article studies how ritual music is structured and attributed meaning in the Brahmanical temple Tantric tradition of contemporary Kerala. It reconstructs a narration behind the contemporary ritual procedure associated with the pouring of water and other substances (abhiṣeka) on the icon of the deity and argues that the ideas embedded in compositional forms mirror and complement such narration.

“Straightaway Their Vision Came to Them”: Maya Ancestral Vision and Blood Memory

According to the Popol Vuh, a Maya text compiled soon after the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century, the first men created by the gods had the gift of extraordinary vision whereby they could see all things: “Perfect was their sight, and perfect was their knowledge of everything beneath the sky. If they gazed about them, turning their faces around, they beheld that which was in the sky and that which was upon the earth. Instantly, they were able to behold everything. They didn’t have to walk to see all that existed beneath the sky. They merely saw it from wherever they were. Thus, their knowledge became full. Their vision passed beyond the trees and rocks, beyond the lakes and the seas, beyond the mountains and the valleys” (Christenson 2007: 197). Although the creator gods eventually clouded this vision so that men could only see those things which were “nearby,” the progenitors of the Maya and their descendents nevertheless bore within their blood the potential for divine sight, bestowed upon them by their creators. Present-day Maya traditionalist priests in the highlands of Guatemala believe that their divine ancestors, who set the pattern for contemporary rituals, continue to operate through them as conduits at appropriate times and under appropriate circumstances. It is their sacred ancestral vision that allows indigenous priests to “see” beyond the limits of time and distance as the first men once did as they conduct divination ceremonies connected with the ancient Maya calendar.

Sacred Places and Cultural Memory on a Triple Border: Revitalizing Veneration of the Hermit Saints at Osogovo Monastery

This article presents the results of fieldwork at Osogovo Monastery, that took place during the major Christian Orthodox holiday the Dormition of the Mother of God (Mac. Golema Bogorodica), as well as on the day of the patron saint of the monastery, St. Joachim of Osogovo. The article observes and analyzes contemporary rituals and pilgrimage practices related to local religious beliefs and cultural memory in the border area between Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Serbia, as well as the existence of transborder religious tourism.

Mining in a Sacred Landscape: Adivasis, Deities and Alliances in a Former Princely State in Odisha/India

The papers explores ideas of a sacred landscape inhabited by indigenous people as well as other communities, deities as well as other beings manifested in localities and ‘objects’ forming various relationships, alliances and a thick web of relationality in a former kingdom in central-eastern India. It introduces these historically evolved ties through the foundational narratives as well as contemporary rituals, while the area is undergoing major transformations after Indian independence and even more so in a phase of accelerated industrialisation, especially tied to a mining boom and sponge iron factories. The latter not only threatens to uproot an existing, though changing sacrificial polity around local deities, but it also has massive ecological consequences and leads to partially successful protests.

Religion, Nonreligion and the Sacred: Art and the Contemporary Rituals of Birth

This paper looks at the role of art and material culture in the rituals of birth, first taking into consideration research on material culture in traditional rituals of birth and then turning to the primary topic, which is how art in the contemporary rituals of birth often holds sacred meaning even when the ritual is of a nonreligious nature. A discussion about the sacred in the context of a nonreligious ritual hinges upon an understanding of that which is “sacred”; thus, the paper looks at research on modern theology and the sacred to examine the term in the context of birth as a contemporary rite of passage. Giving examples of how material culture has been important in several traditional birth rituals from different cultures, the paper then traces a similar occurrence in which participants in contemporary nonreligious rituals of birth also uphold art and material culture as sacred elements of the rituals. The paper provides the reader with description of a rich array of art and material culture used across cultures in different rituals of birth. Taking into consideration the numerous contributions that scholars have made to the emerging field of birth and religion, including the interdisciplinary importance of theories related to birth as a rite of passage, the paper also presents new research on the materiality of the contemporary rituals of birth.

“Connected to the past”

Contemporary rituals at archaeological sites display competing interpretations of the past, future, and related religious, identitary and political claims—as found in research on contemporary Paganisms. This paper examines such rituality and tradition-building among the Rainbow Family. The article compares the Rainbow case to research on Paganisms, after describing what kind of ritual expressions related to archaeological sites are found in a Rainbow Gathering and how the expressions relate to each other in the frame of the collective culture. The article provides an example of crafted rituals and folkloric narratives in an ‘event-cultural’ community that recognizes the right for subjective signification. It explains how narratives and practices, while not completely convergent, can still relate to each other in the collective frame without being a threat to social cohesion or cultural coherence. In the Rainbow case, a demand for shared beliefs is replaced with participation in the shared practices, and a broad ideological division accommodating various alternative-holistic religious traditions.

Illuminating Rituals for the Dead in the Mortuary Roll of Prioress Lucy of Castle Hedingham

After the death of their founder and first prioress, Lucy (d. ca. 1225-30), the members of her community at Castle Hedingham, Essex, circulated a mortuary roll to memorialize and request prayers for their beloved leader from religious houses in their confraternity. Opening the mortuary roll is a frontispiece with three scenes featuring the priory’s patron saints, the ascent of Lucy’s soul to heaven, and her funeral, with her body lying in a bier, surrounded by the presiding priest, clerics, and her fellow sisters. This tribute to Lucy is the earliest extant illustrated mortuary roll and contains one of the few artistic representations of vowed religious women from medieval England engaged liturgically, but it has yet to receive scholarly attention as a liturgical artifact. This article examines Lucy’s mortuary roll alongside contemporary rituals for the dead in order to recover the liturgical activities performed by the members of Lucy’s community and others to care for her soul at her funeral, after her burial, and on the anniversary of her death. Viewed through these rituals, Lucy’s mortuary roll is rightly seen as both a reminder and a repository of the spiritual benefits her sisters at Castle Hedingham believed she needed to gain heaven.

Ritualistic Nudity. Dressing and Undressing in Ovid’s Fasti

Los Fasti de ovidio son una obra de gran importancia para analizar la relación existente entre la identidad religiosa y la vestimenta. este artículo examina la interacción entre el vestir y lo divino y aborda el papel clave que desempeña la vestimenta, el desvestirse, y la desnudez en el culto de ciertas deidades en los Fasti. la ropa y la desnudez están íntimamente ligadas a la naturaleza cambiante del panorama sociopolítico en el culto de estas divinidades. los rituales con temporáneos en la Roma del primer siglo se relacionan con la fertilidad, difuminan los límites sociales y recuerdan a los antiguos pueblos preliterarios anteriores a la agricultura, proporcionando continuidad histórica a las prácticas cultuales.

Longings, Letters and Prayers: Visitor's Books at Hungarian Marian Shrines

The following study seeks to show the flow of contemporary rituals associated with pilgrimage shrines. I will consider how visitor’s books placed on display at shrine churches are being utilized in the modern context by pilgrims and tourists alike. Requests, words of thanksgiving, and testimony are coupled with an honest, reflexive style that lends to the formation of these individualized prayers. These prayers are original, specific and peculiar as they follow patterns that are informal in nature. These prayers allow pilgrims to initiate contact with the Transcendent through the act and practice of writing. An idiosyncratic form of sacred communication arises in these prayers. In what follows, I will seek to evaluate such books, as well as prayer slips with similar prayers, found at five notable Hungarian shrines. I will seek to determine the function and purpose of said books. First, I am curious as to what gestures and practices are typical of pilgrims who write in such books. Lay tourists follow patterns they became acquainted with at museums, or galleries where they encountered similar books. However, most pilgrims who visit such shrines in Hungary will use these visitor’s books as a forum of thought, and as a vessel for longings and prayers. In their own petitions to the Transcendent realms, they not only make requests, worship, and give thanks but rather, take concrete steps towards solving their problems. They do so by writing down their cares and troubles. This task lends itself as a way to find spiritual relief and peace of heart. In my study I present the different ways visitor’s books are used in the shrines. My aim is to show how, in this particular, written rite, the border between tourism/commerce on the one hand and religion or the profane and the sacred is blurred.