Tuesday 18 October 2016

The objective power of repeated rituals

Obviously, repeated rituals have power to change the psychology of participants; the question is whether they have power 'objectively' to affect things beyond the participant, beyond those who even know about the rituals - can rituals change 'reality'?

The typical modern materialist view would be - certainly not; the typical view of most times and places in human society would be - yes, of course!

The historical consensus would also be that rituals can do harm or good (or a mixture); and that to be more effective rituals should be done 'correctly', repeated, and done with concentration and sincerity (ie. with a strong motivation appropriate to the desired outcome).

But rituals do not inevitably have an effect - rather they induce a kind of pressure towards an effect; yet the pressure of rituals may be resisted, and also some things and people are either immune to these ritual pressures or else are protected against them.

Supposing all this is true, and that rituals (done in the proper way) are an effective way of tending to change reality in a desired direction - what are the strengths and limitations of such induced change?

My general impression is that the changes produced by ritual tend to be rather narrow and specific. A 'good' ritual cannot make people all-round-good, but may make them behave better in some specific way (either doing some thing, or not doing some other thing).

And the same for evil rituals. They may harm people, torment them, put ideas into their heads, make them do something bad - but none of these or similar can make a person evil (especially if they repent what they have thought or done).

So evil rituals - even when they 'work' are more like temptations than actually imposed evil.

And - because of protections and immunities - there is a sense in which evil rituals must be invited-in or at least consented-to.

The relevance is that evil rituals are being repeated all over the world and most of the time - for example among the Establishment global cabal; in government and public administration; in innumerable bureaucracies and social systems; and in the mass media administration.

In nearly all large, powerful wealthy institutions evil rituals are 'on the agenda' in a literal sense, and on a weekly, daily - sometimes hourly basis. My contention is that this has an effect - objectively - in making the world a worse place.

And, because Men are fallible, weak, prone to sin and made blind and helpless by secular materialism... the immunities and protections are grossly inadequate; the effects of evil rituals are significantly damaging.

This is where the special and unique strength of Christianity comes in; because no matter how effective evil rituals actually are; Christ's gift of repentance is infinite in power and scope; and can never be overwhelmed by them.



4 comments:

Ingemar said...

Funny that this is a post about the power of repeated rituals and there's not a single mention of the Mass.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Do you mean that most institutions are secretly performing Satanic rituals -- or do you mean that certain ordinary non-secret behaviors of institutions are actually best interpreted as being evil rituals?

Bruce Charlton said...

@INgemar - It isn't 'funny' - the argument is general.

Bruce Charlton said...

@WmJas - Both, but mainly the latter - and other things too.