Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living by Dimitris Xygalatas [NF Review]

Summary 💬

Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. And yet, though rituals exist in every culture and can persist nearly unchanged for centuries, their logic has remained a mystery—until now.
 
In Ritual, pathfinding scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior. Armed with cutting-edge technology and drawing on discoveries from a wide range of disciplines, he presents a powerful new perspective on our place in the world. In birthday parties and coronations, in silent prayer, in fire-walks and terrifying rites of passage, in all the bewildering variety of human life, Ritual reveals the deep and subtle mechanisms that bind us together.

Goodreads

Review ✍🏻

I’m not sure how this book came on my radar, as I added it to my TBR back in July 2022. I picked it up the other month hoping for something that would hone in on a topic that is touched upon throughout Joyful: that personal rituals can bring us joy. Ritual is actually about the social rather than personal implications of completing rituals. But the social value of ritual is, of course, still a valid and fascinating topic to read about!

Ritual focuses primarily on religious rituals, as they are the most commonly studied type of rituals. And you know religious rituals intrigue me, even though I don’t frequently engage in many myself. Author Dimitris Xygalatas’ background in anthropology and cognitive science allows him to provide great insight into the reasons why we engage in ritual. He doesn’t fall into the trap of focusing too much on himself. He does a good job at incorporating and balancing his own experiences studying religious rituals (in particular, fire walking in northern Greece) with other areas of study.

In my attempt to resolve the ritual paradox I embarked on a two-decade journey to study some of the world’s most extreme rituals, as well as many commonplace ones. […] Rather than taking practitioners out of context by placing them in a laboratory, I often decided to bring the laboratory into context by moving it into the field. […] Biometric sensors and hormonal sampling allowed me to explore the neuro-physiological effects of various rituals; behavioural measurements helped me study how these bodily processes affect the way people interact with one another; psychometric tests and surveys revealed some of the motivations behind ritual practices; and participant observation provided insights into how people experience these pracices and how they find meaning in them. (pg 16-17)

Ritual, pg. 16-17

It seems to me you can divide non-fiction books into two broad categories: the author became interested in a subject and decided to write a book exploring their learning process, or the author is already involved in the subject and decides to write a book about what they know. Both books could cover similar topics, but you’d end up with two distinct narrative approaches. It feels like it’s been some time since I read a book that falls into the later category (i.e. the author is already a subject matter expert), so I found this to be a refreshing read in that way.

[R]itual allows [highly intelligent organisms] to deal with some of the challenges that come with havin ga complex psychology, such as mating and pair-bonding, coping with loss and anxiety, and achieving cooperation and social organisation.

Ritual, pg. 27

The first chapter, The Ritual Species, documents ritual behaviour in animals and humans. This chapter alone was already an eye opener for me: Humans engage in ritual because we can, because we have the ability, the capacity, to choose to do something ‘meaningless’. We can afford to engage in ritual. The look at Göbekli Tepe (a religious archaeologic site built about 12,000 years ago) was particularly compelling to me. I couldn’t believe that was the first I’d heard of it!

Across various areas in which our evolved mechanisms are somewhat ill fitted to the challenges of life, rituals serve as mental tools that help us to overcome those challenges by bpassing or recalibrating thoe mechanisms.

Ritual, pg. 49

While reading, I kept the Shikoku Henro in mind throughout. That is a substantial religious ritual (worshipping at 88 Buddhist temples around the Japanese island of Shikoku) which I have participated in myself (and am preparingto get back to in two or three years 👀). For myself, that ritual was undertaken primarily as a cultural pursuit, bolstered by my interest in religious studies. But I still enjoyed participating in many of the religious elements, such as burning incense and chanting the Heart Sutra. I am starting to brush up on my Japanese so I can better engage with folks next time. If there’s one key takeaway from this book, it’s that rituals are a key way that we connect with one another.

By using symbolic markers of group membership, evoking notions of continuity, coordinating ideas and actions and creating meaningful experiences, rituals generate feels of unity that can transform individauls into communities.

Ritual, pg. 110

Lastly, there is one chapter in Ritual that directly mirrors a chapter in Joyful: “Effervescence”. I loved Xygalatas’ description of his experience at a huge football game he attended as a child, and the experiences of ‘collective effervescence’. There is a unique power in congregating. That is why I enjoy being in a crowd filled with positive energy, even if I don’t engage with anyone directly.

The Bottom Line 💭

Ritual lives up to its subtitle with a fascinating exploration of religious rituals and “how seemingly senseless acts make life worth living”. While I went in hoping for a more personal exploration of ritual, this book shows how socially signficiant the effects of ritual can be.

Further Reading 📰

🍂 Read an excerpt
🍂 Author website
🍂 Interview @ NPR
🍂 Related: If you are intrigued by Ritual, there’s a good chance you are the sort of person who would also be intrigued by Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.

What’s your favourite ritual, religious or otherwise to engage in?
Why do you practice it?