Word: rituals
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Alan Dundes probably thinks brushing your teeth is an erotic ritual...
...wine lovers around the world, a momentous annual ritual is the wine auction in the Burgundian city of Beaune. Technically, it is a charity sale: for the past 127 years, the auction has been the principal source of support for the Hospices de Beaune, a hospital that has been in continuous operation since 1443. In practice, the sale of wine from its Premier and Grand Cru vineyards is a closely watched price barometer for all Burgundies. At this year's auction, in a hall bedecked with medieval tapestries, the needle shifted to "stormy...
...Dance, Art and Ritual of Africa by Michel Huet. Text by Jean-Louis Paudrat. (Pantheon; 241 pages; $35). The dancing black African in mask and full feather has become an anthropological cliche, reproduced tirelessly in lavish gift books. French Photographer Michel Huet triumphantly reclaims the subject in these 261 photographs taken during the past 30 years. Focusing on the tribes of the vast sub-Sahara, Muet has assembled a vivid and invaluable record of African costumes, rituals and artistic traditions that are fading before the winds and transistors of change. In the Gallic manner, both text and pictures are presented...
Every human ritual, after all, owns the ulterior intent of pressing people out of habituated everyday behavior. Just as a parade or fiesta is intended to tug people en masse onto the streets to see and celebrate who they are, so the rites of the winter holidays are aimed at prying people out of their diurnal' ruts into unaccustomed minglings, new communions, fresh gestures. The purpose of it all, undeclared and unsentimental, is to arouse a general reaffirmation of the commonality of life as the year's shortest day comes and goes. While emotionally fragile individuals may suffer...
THUS THE LOYALTY test assumes for Jones an almost ritual importance. It is a way of keeping absolutist beliefs absolute. It is not the first the time Americans have heard of loyalty tests: McCarthy once advocated them. In both men it is the old Puritan penchant for the absolute truth surviving deformed through history, breeding paranoia and, in Jonestown, total tragedy...