A Maya shaman in Guatemala performs a ritual to ward off evil spirits. The world is a stressful and unpredictable place, and ritual offers a sense of structure and stability. In our research, my colleagues and I used motion detectors to examine how anxiety affects ritualized behavior. We found that when participants engaged in a stressful task, their hand movements became more repetitive and patterned. This hints that ritualization might be a coping strategy against stress.
In the Spanish village of San Pedro Manrique, a fire-walking ritual is performed annually on the summer solstice. Participants report feeling one with the community during the event—a feeling often called “collective effervescence.” My colleagues and I have shown that this ritual produces elevated heart rates that are synchronized between performers and local spectators, suggesting a strong bond of empathy that extends to the whole community.
A woman in Mauritius falls into a trance during an ecstatic collective ritual. From ancient shamanic rites to modern rave parties, humans seem to have a primordial craving to achieve altered states of consciousness. The trance state shown here can spread like wildfire in an impressive demonstration of emotional contagion.
A man in Mauritius gets skewered through his cheeks during an ancient Hindu ceremony. The terror in his eyes will soon give way to more positive feelings. Painful rituals like piercing, flagellation, and fire-walking can release endorphins (natural opioids) in the brain and produce a state of euphoria. In a study of a ritual involving prolonged suffering, my colleagues and I showed that those who went through the most intense ordeals felt less tired and more euphoric after the event than onlookers who did not participate. These rituals can provide a sense of catharsis and redemption.
A diviner in Guatemala arranges a handful of beans from the palo de pito tree, or pito coral tree, in the ancient practice of tz’ite’ seed divination. Since the dawn of humanity, people have tried to gain insights into the future by performing divinatory practices: communicating with the dead (necromancy), seeking omens in the clouds, sacrificing animals, and casting bones, tarot cards, or beans. The human thirst for knowledge and need for guidance make these practices a human universal.
A Tamil boy in Mauritius stoically endures the pain of multiple piercings in his body—because that’s what men do. Rites of passage often mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. Psychological research shows that undergoing an unpleasant initiation in order to join a group increases a person’s liking for that group—presumably because participants feel a need to justify their ordeal.
In a tradition familiar to most people in the West, a group of Vietnamese students gather at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi to celebrate their graduation. Ritual can provide a sense of status and formality, which is why it marks some of the most important occasions in secular (as well as religious) life—from presidential oaths and public coronations to weddings and birthday parties.
Two girls in Madagascar fight while villagers look on. In this ritual, participants are grouped by age and gender and paraded in front of the crowd. Anyone can challenge a competitor in the same group by looking into his or her eyes. Once a fight is accepted, the combatants throw punches at full strength until an arbiter breaks the fighters up. Although battles are fierce, there is usually no resentment among opponents after the games. Such rituals allow people to vent steam in a controlled and socially acceptable way. Some highly ritualized sports (think of martial arts) may serve a similar function.
In Vietnam, ancestor worship is widespread, and most households have an altar where the deceased are venerated though regular prayers and offerings. Losing a loved one can be one of the most traumatic experiences in life. By performing rituals for the dead, the living can seek closure and solace—and find hope of reunion.
A Mauritian man carries a large rod pierced through his cheeks during the Thaipusam Kavadi Festival. Such extreme rituals may demonstrate a person’s genuine commitment to a group. According to costly signaling theory—an anthropological perspective drawing from evolutionary biology—such acts of loyalty signal trustworthiness, resulting in higher levels of cooperation among group members. When my colleagues and I studied this festival, we found that intense ordeals can make the community more altruistic.
Mauritian Hindus playfully throw a mix of colored powder and water at each other during the Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors, which marks the arrival of spring. Spring festivals signify transformation, rebirth, and hope. They allow people to leave their daily worries behind, connect with one another, and above all, have fun.
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A rain dance won’t make water fall from the sky. Casting a spell won’t cure cancer. Tarot cards can’t really reveal the future. Yet rituals like these have persisted for thousands of years. In fact, ritual is just as common today as it was in the distant past. Even in the most secular societies, ritualization is everywhere: from military parades to gang initiations, and from knocking on wood to raising glasses for a toast.
When ethnographers ask people why they perform these ceremonies, the most common answer is some version of the following: “It’s just what we do. It is our tradition. It’s who we are.” Anthropologists who study rituals have found that these traditions survive because they fulfill primordial, deep-seated human needs and serve important functions for individuals as well as for society. So what are some of these functions?
Dimitris Xygalatas is an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, where he directs the Experimental Anthropology Lab. He has previously held positions at Princeton University, Aarhus University in Denmark, and Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, where he served as the director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion. His research focuses on some of the things that make us human, such as ritual, sports, music, and group membership, which he studies through a combination of ethnographic and experimental methods. Xygalatas has conducted several years of ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Europe and Mauritius. He is the author of Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living and over 100 articles published in journals and volumes across several disciplines. Follow him on Twitter @xygalatas, Facebook @xygalatas, and Instagram @xygalatas.
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