Concept in Definition ABC

A ritual is composed of a series of actions, attitudes, related, marked or marked by some value symbolic and that generally find a meaning or reason for being in the context of a religion or tradition from some community.

Although the latter is not always the case, that is, for example, veneration and prayer through the use of candles or, failing that, pictures of the god of some religion, is understood as ritual, but ritual can also be a daily activity or action that, due to its repetition over time, becomes a kind of irreducible habit for a person. For example, if I get up every day at 7:30 in the morning and have a cup of coffee with milk, always accompanied by three toast with sweet, that is also understood as a ritual: the repetition of the same action and under the same circumstances in the weather. It is worth noting that some rituals can become true pathological habits when their Systematic reiteration cannot be abandoned by a person without causing damage to his mode of live or your

quality of life. In the kids with autism, for example, the need for absolute systematics in your organization makes violations of that scheme they trigger real crises.

So, from this it follows that rituals have two reasons for being, on the one hand, the strictly religious which is the generated by some need, such as fertility or the growth of crops, in the case of cultures animists... and, on the other hand, the custom that corresponds to the last case mentioned in the paragraph previous.

In primitive societies, rituals had a special reason for being, such as, for example, validating a person's entry into adult life. In some African cultures, it was very common to perform the so-called "initiation rite of the snake", in which of course there was one of these reptiles in scene, in addition to the people who summoned him and the child (who was about to cease to be). In this particular case, a being like the snake was used as an allegory due to the change of skin that occurs in it as symbol of mutation to want to mean almost the same thing: growth, in the case of this African child who stopped being an African child to become an adult. The same concept holds for other major life changes, such as weddings, motherhood, and even the burial of the dead. To varying degrees, the great religions maintain their rituals, in order to facilitate their performance by the faithful who speak different languages ​​throughout the world.

Strictly speaking, the loss of religious values ​​in many societies has led to the appearance of behaviors that, since from the scientific point of view, they continue to be rituals, adapted and modified for better "acceptance" in a society worldly. A classic example is the celebrations to celebrate the fifteen years of adolescents, on the occasion of which large parties are held with certain modalities and habits. Likewise, some scholars of the conduct humans believe that the birth of sports has been an adaptation of the ancient hunting habits of primitive man, surrounded by unbreakable rituals, which have been modified to give rise to the rules of each of the collective sports that we know in the present.

Therefore, rituals are part of daily life, in versions adapted to modern times in large cities, in each of our individual and collective actions.

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