Liberating Rites by Tom F. Driver

Author:Tom F. Driver [Driver, Tom F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, General
ISBN: 9780813334554
Google: 2Ug3swEACAAJ
Publisher: Avalon Publishing
Published: 1997-12-04T03:46:17+00:00

It is important to note that the procedures employed in phase three of the Turnerian drama are characteristically those of ritual. In some cases, healing rites are employed; in others exorcisms; in others ceremonies of prayer. In modern societies, the redressive rituals are most likely to belong to the judicial system, whether in a court of law, a Congressional inquiry, or what not. Likewise, the state of affairs that comes to be accepted in the fourth phase of the social drama, be it reintegration or schism, is likely to be publicly ratified in ceremony: the smoking of a pipe, the signing of a treaty, a declaration of banishment, exile, or prison sentence. Turner's "social drama" pattern highlights the use of ritual in defining order, maintaining it, and restoring it after it is breached.

Social order is not only a matter of convenience or biological necessity. We must think beyond the sheer necessity and utility of ritual ordering to a matter more deep, close to the root of human existence. Roy Rappaport and many others since Durkheim have seen that there is a link between the social functions of ritual and the idea (or experience) of sacredness.142 The performance of certain rituals, following specified orders of procedure, is often regarded as a sacred duty, or else a sacred opportunity, the ritual providing the occasion for a numinous encounter. In the Eastern world, the holding to ritual as an order that should be followed out of sacred duty is most prominent, perhaps, in Brahmanic Hinduism. In the Western world, the oldest and arguably most faithful witness to it has been borne by Judaism.

A reader who casts an eye upon the ritual laws recorded at length, with so much repetition, in the Pentateuch must be struck with a certain precision of voice that lends to the texts themselves some of the quality of ritual. These are texts generated by ritual performances, preserved by ritual recitation over many generations, eventually encoded in writing {after which they have continued to be read aloud ritually), having as their subject certain acts that should be ritually performed and others to be ritually avoided.

Let us look at one example of this ancient Hebrew ordering, devoted to instructions for building a place of worship and ordaining a priesthood. I quote at length because length is an important part of this text's ritual quality. The reader should notice how the words describe actions, as if someone is telling how these things have usually been done, and also how the recitation of the words becomes itself an action, The sense of this can best be felt when the text is read aloud, which the reader is encouraged to do, the better to grasp how this passage, which describes and prescribes some articles used in ritual, has itself become a ritual text. One may note also that not a word is said about any words that are to be spoken in the ceremony the speaker has in mind.

Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.

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