Here are a few quotations from Roy Rappaport's book, 1 Ecology, Meaning and Religion, along with notes of my own.
These excerpts come from notes I made in July and September 1980 — more than 20 years ago. I purchased the book in June of that year, and found it hard to read. It was full of long and convoluted sentences. Consequently, I felt I had no choice but to make excerpts and notes.
Text within double quotation marks should be an exact copy of what Rappaport wrote; text within single quotation mark is paraphrased.
Page references are to the 1979 paperback edition, ISBN 0-913028-54-1.
Rituals bring into being certain states of affairs. "When authorized persons declare peace in a proper manner, peace is declared whether or not the antagonists are persuaded" to comply. (p 189)
In addition, these states of affairs are judged according to criteria that are provided by rituals. If "a man is properly dubbed to a knighthood and then violates the code of chivalry, ... we do not say that the dubbing was faulty," but that the knight is faulty. The state of affairs created by a ritual is judged "by the degree to which it conforms to the stipulations of the ritual." (p 189)
A descriptive statement, on the contrary, is "assessed by the degree to which it conforms to the state of affairs it purports to describe." A yellow house is accurate described only if the house is indeed yellow. The two sources of criteria are "exactly inverse." (p 198)
Rituals create conventional states of affairs and conventional understandings. Magic is the extension of the process "beyond the domain of the conventional in which it is effective into the domain of the physical in which it is not." A war can be ended by a properly conducted ritual of peace, but a drought cannot. However, the two domains are hard to distinguish: "People do occasionally die of witchcraft ...." (p 191)
A ritual does not only establish social convention, it establishes acceptance. By taking part in a ritual, the participants tell themselves and others that they are willing to go along with it. Going along with the ritual implies public acceptance of the conventions established by the ritual. Acceptance, in turn, brings with it the obligations entailed by the convention. (pp 193 - 194)
By performing a ritual, the participant "indicates to himself and to others that he accepts" the ritual. No other form of communication does this. A myth, for example, can be recounted as 'entertainment, as an edifying lesson, or as doctrine,' but to recite a myth is not necessarily to accept it. (p 193)
Public participation does not demand belief. Belief is an inward state not visible to witnesses. The participant in a ritual may have doubts: a priest, for example, may have doubts about his faith and may transcend them to perform a ritual. (pp 194 - 195)
The social order is not based on "invisible, ambiguous and private" sentiments; it depends on the "visible, explicit, and public" actions of a person. "Action is socially and morally binding." Consequently, disbelief does not destroy the social order created by ritual, although it does hurt it. (p 195)
Violations of the social order do not destroy it either: violations are considered to be faults of the person rather than errors created by the ritual. (p 195)
Since the invention of agriculture, it has been possible for rulers to force social conventions upon unwilling people through the control of strategic resources such as irrigation water. Prior to agriculture, this may have been more difficult because hunter-gatherers could wander away. Ritual may have been the primordial means by which pre-agricultural peoples ordered their social life. (p 197)
Not all social conventions are created by force or ritual. Some may emerge from everyday behavior or usage. For example, it is likely that the word "stone" evolved without being established by ritual. However, ordinary usage cannot establish conventions about gods which have no behavioral or material referents; and it is difficult to establish conventions about aspects of life that arbitrary, dangerous, emotionally charged, or require cooperation with others, "such as sex, leadership, and service to the group." (p 196)
Descriptive messages must be able to vary according to variations in the states of affairs that are described. A row of houses is described by saying that the first is green, the second is red and the third is white. It is meaningless to say that the first is green, the second is green and the third is green. The description must vary according to the various colors of the houses.
Sacred messages, on the other hand, are invariant. They are always repeated in the same way, time after time. The Shema, for example, has been repeated for centuries: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." In a descriptive message, such invariance would be meaningless; but in a sacred message, such invariance implies certainty. (p 209)
In addition, the most sacred parts of a liturgy have no material references. Consequently, the assertions are neither verifiable nor falsifiable. Because such assertions can neither be verified nor falsified they are held to be unquestionable. The illogic of this does not disturb the faithful. 'Sanctity is the quality of unquestionableness imputed by a congregation to postulates in their nature neither verifiable nor falsifiable.' (pp 208 - 209)
In ritual, unquestionableness is transferred from the most sacred postulates to conventional states of affairs. This helps to create acceptance for a particular social order. This is a process of fundamental importance. The association of a particular social order with an ultimate sacred proposition certifies the 'correctness of conventions, the legitimacy of authorities and the truthfulness of testimony.' (p 211)
Social adaptation is aided by the lack of material references in the invariant parts of ritual. Since the invariant parts of a ritual do not have material references, their meaning, other than that of being certain, is mysterious. Consequently, past interpretations may be in error. Proper people may re-interpret the meaning of sacred propositions to adapt to new physical states of affairs. (see "Sanctity and Lies in Evolution," same book, p 233)
Ritual requires and implies public acceptance. Although private belief is not required, it helps. 'The numinous, when it is experienced, supports acceptance with belief.' A numinous experience compounds the emotions of love, fear, dependence, fascination, unworthiness, majesty and connection. It does not have any particular references, but 'is powerful, indescribable, and utterly convincing.' (p 217)
Sacred postulates are unfalsifiable and numinous experiences are undeniable. 'In ritual, the unfalsifiable message of the liturgy partakes of the undeniable quality of the numinous: the most abstract and distant of conceptions are bound to the most immediate and substantial of experiences. The unfalsifiable supported by the undeniable yields the unquestionable. This transforms the dubious, the arbitrary, and the conventional into the correct, the necessary, and the natural.' (p 217)
Different kinds of information are transmitted in a ritual. One kind is 'indexical.' It is about the 'current physical, psychic, or social state' of a participant. A rash is an index of measles; a dark cloud is an index of rain. An index is caused by, or is a part of, that which it indicates. In the extreme case, an index is identical with what it indicates. (p 179)
Indexical information is transmitted in both human and animal rituals. It is transmitted both to the participant himself and to others. (All kinds of information are transmitted both to the self and to others. In a ritual, the self is often a very significant receiver.) (p 178)
Indexical information inverts the familiar qualities of sign and signified. Usually, a sign is as insubstantial as the word "stone," and the signified is as substantial as the "stone" itself. But an indexical sign is substantial and the signified is insubstantial. A Goodenough Islander transmits the insubstantial and abstract notion that he is a man of importance, influence, or prestige by giving away a large number of yams and pigs. The yams and pigs have substance. (p 181)
Although it is possible to deceive with an indexical message, it is more difficult than with the use of insubstantial signs. A man could way with words that he has influence and could lie about it. Pigs and yams, however, are trustworthy evidence. (p 180)
In some human rituals, 'canonical' information is transmitted as well as indexical information. Canonical information is not encoded by the participants of a ritual although it is transmitted by them. Canonical information is found by the participants already encoded in the liturgy as invariant sacred messages. The Shema is an example; so is the information implicit in a Maring ritual: "Deceased Ancestors persist as sentient Beings." (p 179)
Indexical messages refer to the here and now; canonical messages do not. The conventional states of affairs created by rituals are a third class of information which might be called 'efficacious' (a term that is not used by Rappaport).
Participation in a ritual is an indexical message of acceptance. The canonical message is supported by the undeniability of a numinous experience. The canonical message sanctifies the efficacious message that creates a state of affairs. Efficacious message may be re-interpreted and changed to adapt to changing physical states of affairs.
Ambiguity is a fault of everyday language that is usually eliminated by context. The context of a canonical message may enhance ambiguity by suggesting yet more references. Ambiguity destroys the meaning of a description and creates meanings within a liturgy. 'A ritual sign may refer to all it significata at once and derive its meaning from a union of them all.' In ordinary communications, ambiguity prevents a message from being understood unless the ambiguity is resolved. The contrary occurs with canonical messages. "That which is noise in ordinary language is meaning in liturgy." However, the meaning of that which is derived from a concatenation may "be so abstract, complex and emotionally charged as to be ineffable." (p 204)
While the canonical message of a ritual may be ambiguous, the ritual itself may impose unambiguous distinctions on ambiguous differences. For example, "a Tahitian lad decides ... around the age of twelve to have himself supercised, thus making clear his transition from the status of child to that of _T'aura'area_." The process of maturation is slow, continuous and obscure; the ritual summarizes the decision as a simple yes or no signal. (p 185)
In both canonical and efficacious messages, the signal is different from the signified, 'the map is not the territory.' In an indexical message, the part stands for the whole or the whole stands for the whole; the sign is part of, or is the signified. The map is the territory. (p 206)
In addition to participation, formality is an aspect of all rituals. Also, rituals are usually decorous, 'stylized, stereotyped and repetitive. They require the proper persons, occasion, place, and time.' (pp 175 -176)
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