Participants would conform to ritual.
The external passed into the internal.
Nowadays human consciousness has changed, such that the power of ritual has weakened greatly, or even ceased to operate; and ritual no longer works in an objective (almost irresistible) manner.
What matters most now (at least in a positive sense, see below) is the internal - and the external is secondary.
Thus; an outward ritual may help, or may hinder, an intended internal state; but the ritual does not "compel" the mind, in the strong way it used to.
One implication is that, because of the greater ease of destruction than creation, ritual continues to be pretty effective in a destructive way - but not in a positive, Christian way.
So, while church rituals are feeble in effect; the rituals of leftism (e.g. the "training" in feminism, antiracism, diversity etc.), which employees are compelled to participate-in, do have some reliable negative and destructive effect on the participants.
This; simply because it is much easier to encourage sin than virtue: even rather feeble external stimuli (images, songs, slogans) can objectively encourage sin.
Likewise the coerced rituals of the birdemic succeeded in creating (the sin of) fear at a mass level; but it would not be possible to use these same propaganda and manipulation methods to en-courage people; that is, propaganda cannot, anymore, fill people with courage, or other virtues.
Such a radical change in less than one hundred years. The consciousness of the 1940s resembles more the consciousness of the 18th century than the one of the 1960s, in my opinion - speaking as one who cannot but belong to the latter.
ReplyDeleteI feel this paradigm is coming to a close now and we're poised for another radical change, probably in the worst direction possible. The zombie apocalypse seems to be the most accurate prediction of the future, regardless of what political schemes are erected on top of it, the antichrist will not be an ideologue.
The good news is that these changes also mean that the we can never truly be compelled to lose our salvation, we can only choose to. That's the silver lining.
Yes, the people conformed to the ritual, and I wonder if in a sense the rituals also conformed to the people. In the Middle Ages, life it self was and depended on ritual. In survive at all, the country folk had to get up every day, tend the gardens, care for the livestock, attend to their homes, stock up food and firewood, and more. The seasonal rituals followed the suit. For the most part, your neighbors did the same and cooperation was essential to survive the year. I still have a hard time imagining how they survived winters - today, I know that I could not.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, since the early 1900s life has gotten so easy that those rituals are not necessary. The idea of "do your own thing" took over and the destruction began.
@Pk - What you say is mostly correct; but I was meaning ritual in a much more focused, formal and specific meaning - like church rituals (first and foremost), law courts, in the military, in professions and guilds.
ReplyDeleteI would call the "ritual year" you describe, more a matter of handing on traditional wisdom; on the basis that society *already knew* how best to live life and deal with problems.
When society - including agriculture - industrialized, these rituals either lost relevance and necessity (eg. whole village harvest rituals destroyed by the combine harvester) - or were attacked as false when new (improved?) methods were introduced along with compulsory bureaucracy (eg. get your guidance from the Ministry of Agriculture, instead of your grandfather).
I don't have much to add but I felt the strong desire to share this music after reading and thinking on the subject.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZwt6QdMie0&list=PLfNI8tKGRuJZT1uT-8btMHN7zxrIVEsNf
I quite understand what you’re getting at with respect to a certain kind of diminishment in the power of rituals, at least vis-a-vis the toxic political climate we face daily. However, there are still aspects or components of rituals that may not only maintain their potency, but actually attain an increase of it. In this case, I am referring to the practice of reciting the daily offices of the church, or the hours, which has indeed long been considered a backbone of spiritual support for churches Eastern and Western. As one priest once told me, it is the real prayer of the church which priests must commit to daily; that is, even if the celebration of the mass and the eucharist is not possible for technical reasons (e.g. perhaps when one is traveling), priests must always keep to the daily offices.
ReplyDeleteFollowing that, I raise consideration of a certain topic that has become more prevalent today in conversations oriented towards the esoteric — that of the egregore as a spiritual matrix that is created through the efforts of repetitive rituals or prayers, and which in part functions as a kind of “feedback loop” involving the participants. Over long periods of time the continuous performance of certain prayers or rituals lead to a potency that practically guarantee a certain effectiveness, especially if one enters into their practice with open intent and sincerity. Hence, I find that as someone who has been drawn to reciting from an Orthodox book of hours, even just the recitation of the so-called Trisagion prayers which open each hour, is instantly effective at transforming my disposition. It is a powerful refuge even when I recite it on its own, and I have little doubt of its positive effects which I experience regularly without manufacture.
The final portion of the Trisagion to recite is the Our Father, the power of which remains supreme as the most often and continually recited prayer among Christians. Of course one may not connect to its power if one isn’t undistracted, or providing an open and sincere heart and mind. But it’s not about expecting God’s stooping to provide grace, but about “making oneself more relevant to God” (as Bernadette Roberts once put it) in order for spiritual attainment to manifest (i.e. earning grace).
In any case, the above should add meaning to the assertion being increasingly made today that not only a turning inward will assist the survival of the church, it will depend on supporting its monasteries and convents as necessary “spiritual power generators,” and with lay people coming more into contact with them.