Rite Of Passage

416 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Cultural differences and communication

Rituals

"Rituals are found in every human community and area primary means of social communication and cohesion."(pg. 96, Livingston) Rituals help to make a smooth transition through the human life cycles. It gives a structure to the chaos of these events. Rituals also help explain changing of the seasons or a commemoration of a historical event. " A religious ritual can be defined as an agreed on and formalized pattern of ceremonial movements and verbal expressions carried out in a sacred context." Rituals clearly help the psychological aspect to the human mind. Humans at one point might have been nervous of puberty and not been able to understand it. Many religions have special ceremonies to help embrace the rite of passage. In some …show more content…

In Chinese Buddhism, a monk shaves the head of a boy, which enters him into Shanghai. Most of the vocational initiation rites are dealt within the tribal communities. These rituals help to make smooth transitional from one stage of life to another. Rituals also help to deal with marriage and death. There is always such an emphasis on your wedding day. As a child, you are taught that someday you will be married. As you grow up you might become more nervous and anxious when you think about your wedding day there are little rituals that may help ease the tension. There are also rites and customs in dealing with death as well. We dress the deceased in nice clothes, we place flowers with them and have a ceremony for them. This has to die into corporation of afterlife. Why else would we make such a fuss on the deceased? These rituals help us to deal with life crisis. In primal societies, they deal with illness as a form of the supernatural. They have special members of the community such as, medicine men, shamans and exorcist perform rites to help the possessed in dealing with the supernatural. The shaman helps by going into altered states of consciousness and seeing what the problem is and then help to overcome it. Healing rituals are found in most tribal societies. They deal with people that are hurt by performing ceremonies to cure the pain. These non-periodical ceremonies are linked to the seasonal

Show More
Related

  • Albanese's Theory: Religious Practice And Boundaries

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ordinary religion shows people how to live well within boundaries, and concern themselves with living well in this current world, not in another. Ordinary religion promotes cultures, traditions, values, and common social acts. In contrast, extraordinary religion helps people to transcend beyond their ordinary culture and concerns, crosses the borders of life as we used to know it and seeks to new better place. It is also believed that people have chance to contact God through spiritual ceremonies and get helped by supernatural power. For instance, ceremonies and rituals of baptism and circumcision for infants, and conformations for adolescents, marriage, and funerals for the dead. Through these spiritual ceremonies, people are crossing the physical boundaries and reaching something supernatural that they believe will give them power to encounter challenges and difficulties during stages of life. There are three elements in religious belief developing most religions in America, which are fundamental, ritual, and tradition. The first element is the fundamental structures which are defined with a myth, philosophy, or theology and limited by the boundaries that create the basic ways in which people, cultures and communities imagine, define, and accept how things are and what they mean. A second essential element of religion is ritual. Rituals are a representative set of

    Read More

  • Superstition In George Gmelch's Baseball Magic

    913 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rituals help many people to feel more in control of their lives. Both American baseball players and Malinowski’s Trobriand Islanders practice some sort or ritual. In each case, the ritual is used to bring comfort in the face of

    Read More

  • Five Step Approach In Jewish Marriage

    612 Words  | 2 Pages

    A ritual "is a sequence of events involving motions, words, and objects, performed according to set sequence”. In addition, a religious ritual is a solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order (Michael, 2012). The ritual I have chosen to investigate is Jewish Marriage. This ritual will be analysed using Lovat’s five-step approach.

    Read More

  • Difference Between Quinceañera And Rites Of Passage

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    In every Culture around the theres rituals, traditions, and customs that the people practice and continue to show to the younger generations. For example, in the hispanic Culture

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Great Pilgrimage

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    These beliefs help us make analyses about this ritual, interpretations not strictly bound to earthly or worldly things.

    Read More

  • marriage and funeral in ancient greece

    2321 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marriage in Classical Athens was inevitable. It was a part of life. Everyone had to get married, just as everyone had to someday face death. Although most people would not see a connection between marriage and death, the Greeks did. Both define an irreversible physical change—the loss of virginity and the loss of life. This idea of loss, rebirth, and renewal are present in both wedding and funeral. This is evident in the way wedding and funeral ceremonies complement each other in character and content. Both ceremonies are interwoven with ritual meaning and overlapping rites.

    Read More

  • Improving End-of-Life Care in The United States

    2060 Words  | 5 Pages

    Death comes to all in the end, shrouded in mystery, occasionally bringing with it pain, and while some may welcome its finality, others may fight it with every ounce of their strength. Humans have throughout the centuries created death rituals to bring them peace and healing after the death of a loved one.

    Read More

  • Native American Medicine and Spiritual Healing

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout time, mankind has persistently been seeking ways to maintain their health and to cure those that had not been so fortunate in that task. Just about everything has been experimented with as a cure for some type of illness whether physical, spiritual or mental. There has always been evidence of spiritual healing and it will continue to be an important part of any healing process, large or small. In particular, the roots of Native American Medicine men (often a woman in some cultures) may be traced back to ancient times referred to as Shaman. A special type of healer used by the Indians is referred to as a medicine man (comes from the French word medecin, meaning doctor).

    Read More

  • traditions

    595 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story depicting an annual event that takes place on the very same day each year in a small town. The reader learns that all residents of the town must attend, including the children. Jackson thoroughly describes the setting and the characters in the story to ensure the reader will not question the importance and significance of this day. As Jackson draws the reader into the event, she purposefully leaves the unspeakable outcome of this lottery drawing until the end. Jackson uses an obsolete and antiquated tradition to expose human evilness and hypocrisy.

    Read More

  • Jewish Death Essay

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    Funerals are very important ceremonies in Hindu tradition. Hindus see cremation as an act of sacrifice to God and...

    Read More

  • Rituals of Transition Is Our Right of Passage Through Life

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    French Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep created the phrase ‘Rite of Passage’ to explain ceremonies such as births, baptisms, marriage, death and funerals after observing social groups. “Detailed descriptions and monographs concerning magico-religious acts have accumulated in sufficient number in the last few years that it is now possible to attempt a classification of these acts, or rites, that would be consistent with the progress of science. Several types of rites are already well known, and it seemed to me that a large number of other rites could also be classed in a special category……These rites may be found in many ceremonies. Until the present time however, neither their close relationship nor its cause has been perceived, and the reason for the resemblances among them has not been understood.”(13) “Conversation has been such amongst people in this day and age that the meanings, strengths and eventual implications of rites has diminished in our modern culture. Even back in 1958, Eliade was quoted as saying in his book, It has often been said that one of the characteristics...

    Read More

  • Coming of Age Rituals

    1228 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rituals around the world all teach valuable lessons that help initiates see the value and importance of life. Each culture has different rituals that provide experiences for their youth to learn these valuable lessons of life. Many coming of age rituals are intense procedures. The Amazon's Satere Mawé youth enter adulthood through the bullet-ant glove initiation, teaching courage and endurance, and the crocodile scaring ritual that the men from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea participate in teaches them pain and accomplishment.

    Read More

  • Religious Observation Paper

    2192 Words  | 5 Pages

    Every religion embodies a plethora of recognized rituals that are significant to its teachings. Customs exclusive to each religion can include acts such as: attending a weekly mass, praying five times a day at specified hours, celebrating the transition from childhood to manhood, along with endless others. The similarity shared amongst all religious rituals is that the follower of faith must believe whole-heartedly in what he/she is doing or saying. Dhikr, or the remembrance of God, is a ritual based in Islam that does not receive the attention it deserves from mainstream Muslims, and is highly under appreciated for its value (Robson 238). Its myriad versions allow it to be very personal, whereas other rituals are more structured, which is

    Read More

  • Paui Religion

    1883 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rituals are an important part of Buddhist practice, dating back to the times of Buddha himself . Rituals can be practiced in a variety of ways from precept ceremonies to initiations and ordinations. In Shan tradition, the initial ordination ceremony of a monk is called the paui sang long and is an elaborate festivity that is important for sustaining the sangha . It is important because without the ceremony there would be no new monks joining the sangha, causing it to shrink and eventually die out. Similar to other religions, over time rituals, lessons, and text in Buddhism get reinterpreted and sometimes misrepresented. The paui sang long ceremony is no different, as it too has been used for reasons other than its initial purpose. The paui

    Read More

  • Turner's Theory Of Liminality

    1490 Words  | 3 Pages

    Roy Rappaport (1999) showcases the idea that ritual is a fundamental aspect of human society. A community requires trust, and rituals are a necessary function of society, which creates that trust. For example willingly enduring a painful initiation as part of a ritual creates a sense of trust. In this essay I will discuss the theoretical works of Durkheim, Rossano and Douglas to attest to rituals preserving social order. While the works of Gluckman and Turner provide an interesting insight into reintegration through ritual, and Geertz provides an alternative view to the idea that rituals preserve and reiterate social order.

    Read More

More about Rite Of Passage

Open Document