1. Introduction; 2. The ritual form; 3. Self-referential messages; 4. Enactments of meaning; 5. Word and act, form and substance; 6. Time, eternity and liturgical order; 7. Intervals, eternity and communitas; 8. Simultaneity and hierarchy; 9. The idea of the sacred; 10. Sanctification; 11. Truth and order; 12. The numinous, the holy, and the divine; 12. Religion in adaptation; 13. The breaking of the holy and its salvation.
A comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance and a study of its main component, ritual.
'Once in a great while there appears a book that alters the dimensions of the intellectual field to which it speaks. This is such a book. In it, the author marshals insights drawn from ethnography and ecology, the cybernetics of communication, comparative religion and semiotics to establish the centrality of ritual for what it means to be human. In clear and elegant prose, Roy Rappaport calls into question many of the ways we think about the world. The result is an intellectual adventure of the first magnitude' Eric Wolf 'Roy Rappaport's book is an admirable blend of rich information and analytical power. It is a committed and challenging reflection on the importance of religion and the constructive power of rituals for a post-modern world, seen in the light of it pre-modern and modern history. A courageous work in a period of over specialized scholarship, I have never read such a comprehensive and penetrating treatise on rituals.' Hans Kung, Universitat Tubingen 'Invoking concepts from fields as diverse as speech-acts theory and cybernetics, Rappaport constructs one of the fullest and richest theories of ritual to be found ... Roy Rappaport writes with both clarity and passion ... the grandeur of Rappaport's effort to demonstrate the centrality of ritual and of religion is most impressive.' Times Literary Supplement 'This is a massive volume, full of great philosophical complexity and possibly the most detailed epistemological analysis of the phenomenon of rituals.' Cambridge Archaeological Journal
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