What are rituals and ceremonies? Why do we do them, and why do they matter?

Over the years I’ve collected many quotes about rituals and ceremonies - about what they are, why we do them, and why they matter. The human life cycle is full of transitions, initiations and developmental milestones, and throughout time and across cultures ceremony has been used to mark and anchor changes big and small. I hope you enjoy reading the thoughts and ideas about rituals and ceremonies from this incredible bunch of storytellers, ceremonialists, community leaders, wisdom keepers, elders, mentors, luminaries and guides.

“Ceremony may be self-derived, it may come from vision, it may be given by a teacher, it may be cultural. But from all sources it has the same underlying root. It is a process in which the human capacity for sacred feeling and reverence is given form and expression. One tells the Earth, one tells Creator, what is felt and thought through specific actions and movements and intentions. This underlying intention held within the ceremonialist is given outward expression in ceremonial form. And in the process humans, the spirit world, the different elements of the Earth are bound together in a living fabric that is alive, vital and new.” -Stephen Harrod Buhner

“The purpose of rituals is to end, for a time, our sense of human alienation from nature and from each other. Ritual seems to be one method of reintegrating individuals and groups into the cosmos, and to tie in the activities of daily life with their ever present, often forgotten, significance. It allows us to feel biological connectedness with ancestors who regulated their lives and activities according to seasonal observances. Just as ecological theory explains how we are interrelated with all other forms of life, rituals allow us to re-create that unity in an explosive, non-abstract, gut-level way. Rituals have the power to reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves suddenly and truly at home.” -Margot Adler

“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.” -Elizabeth Gilbert

“Ceremony doesn't belong to one belief system, and the nature of the human psyche demands a connection to a greater whole, whether through politics, religion, or superstition. A healthy culture needs to offer ritual to embody its citizens' abstract emotions and to provide structure for the intangible ties which give identity and connection.” -Gerald Fierst

“Ceremony can bring the quiescent back to life; it can open your mind and heart to what you once knew but have forgotten.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer

“One purpose of creative ritual was to experience the connection to “the other” as well as a deeper connection to oneself. That’s why ancient people would say: that ritual made me more aware of how I’m connected to life, to the earth, to the spirits, to the song of creation, and made me more aware of who I am inside, at the level of my own being. What we’ve lost is partly the sense that we are each connected to the whole thing, that each human soul is secretly connected to the living soul of the world.” -Michael Meade

“Ceremonial observance adds lucid layers—depth, dimension, drama and distinction—to our lives, making the ordinary seem special, and the special, extraordinary.” -Donna Henes

“When humans participate in ceremony, they enter a sacred space. Everything outside of that space shrivels in importance. Time takes on a different dimension. Emotions flow more freely. The bodies of participants become filled with the energy of life, and this energy reaches out and blesses the creation around them. All is made new; everything becomes sacred.” -Sun Bear

“The only cure I know is a good ceremony...” -Leslie Marmon Silko

“When the comforting routines that sustain us have all but disappeared, then ritual and ceremony become vital nourishment, perhaps as never before.” -Fabiana Fondevila

“Our culture has little to offer us for our crossings. Never was there such talk of communication or such technology to facilitate it. Yet at the heart of our newfound wealth and progress there is a gaping emptiness, and we are haunted by loneliness. While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things - multiplying and acquiring stuff we neither need nor truly want - we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging. With the demise of religion, many people are left stranded in a chasm of emptiness and doubt; without rituals to recognize, celebrate, or negotiate the vital thresholds of peoples lives, the key crossings pass by, undistinguished from the mundane, everyday rituals of life. This is where we need to retrieve and reawaken our capacity for blessing. If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention, the crossing will bring us more than we could have ever hoped for." -John O'Donohe

“Human beings have a natural urge to worship that “something greater” which coheres us, but we, in modernity, are living in a kind of spiritual cul-de-sac where our gifts only serve ourselves. Unlike the many shamanic cultures that practice dreamwork, ritual, and thanksgiving, Westerners have forgotten what indigenous people understand to be cardinal: that this world owes its life to the unseen. Every hunt and every harvest, every death and every birth is distinguished by beauty-making and ceremony for that which we cannot see, feeding back that which feeds us. I believe our alienation is the felt negligence of that reciprocity.” -Toko-pa Turner

“Across cultures and over millennia, the tradition of ceremony to mark and anchor thresholds and initiations has been deeply integrated into healthy human life. We celebrate and mourn in ceremony, honoring our embedment within the natural world while taking our place in the communities and families to which we belong. We witness and honor each other within community, as we discover, ever-more, our authentic expression and place. With the rise of Western Industrial Culture, ceremony was placed into the hands of churches and other colonizing institutions while Earth-based, self-designed, community-driven ceremonies were abandoned, forgotten, repressed and/or pushed away. In the modern era, ceremony has been stripped of its meaning and transformative power, and instead has mostly devolved into impersonal, watered down, formulaic conventions. The few ceremonies remaining in our culture have become events that mark our process of further homogenization – picture most graduation and wedding ceremonies. Yet, in its original role, ceremony marked a threshold crossing calling each human into more of their essential expression and contribution; a thing without which The World would not be whole. While the dogma and structure of dominant culture keep us indoctrinated and separate, it is up to us to listen to the deepest parts of ourselves, to find our voice, and to reclaim ceremony as a gateway into meaningful relationships with ourselves and each other, with Eros and Erotic Intelligence, and with the more-than-human World. With scarce community and no real guides, it can feel intimidating to imagine undertaking a meaningful ceremony of our own making. Being witnessed by, and held within our human community weaves our responsibility and wholeness together, generating greater meaning and power for witnesses and initiates alike. It is also a powerful opportunity for an individual to be seen and acknowledged by their community; an essential step if we are to take our place within the web of Life, as initiated adults. Many of us carry baggage when it comes to ritual and ceremony. Their power and beauty have been usurped by Western Industrial Culture and monotheistic religion and used as a tool of domestication. Reclaiming ceremony and ritual so that we can enact both to cultivate wellness and belonging is a part of the path of embodiment and embedment, one that we get little, if any guidance around.” -Institute for Erotic Intelligence