CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RITUALS

Abstract

UDK 2-5(091)

Rituals are most apparent and most manifested elements of any culture. Customs and rituals are all around us and we observe them in manners of addressing God, in communication with others and in the manners of having food or drinking water even. As far as we can see back in human history we will find, more or less, development of some form of rituals. The word ritual itself connotes some kind of repetitiveness, even banality. However, in the world of constant changes, rituals have a role to preserve some secure spot, to be the axes of balance. This article presents a theoretical analysis of the significance and the role of rituals in religious and cultural milieu and it also shows how rituals have a crucial function therein. We here show evidence that rituals are a practical expression of every religion. Surely the main feature of any religion is its worldview and its system of values as these are also primary contents of every culture. However, rituals serve to bring these abstract teachings expressed in theoretical formulations into real life and to disseminate the same into wider community. Thus, rituals are also the most general form of mnemotechnic and culture of memory through which memories of one community circulate and are transferred from generation to generation. Rituals are congested form of symbols and therefore valid decoding and understanding of these symbols is of crucial significance for an adequate practice of rituals. Thus, in some elements, rituals are very similar to arts, in a sense that arts as well uses symbols to deliver certain messages which are otherwise difficult to comprehend.