The word “ritual” in general brings to mind images of outward social performances, but silence and the inward meaning in cultural practices, rituals, and religion seem to be popular topics these days, particularly in northern Europe. This is illustrated in the present book, in which the Swedish senior lecturer in religious studies, Clemens Cavallin, examines several issues concerning rituals, such as their origins, their purpose, and different ways of conducting them. He particularly discusses the place of interior dispositions versus exterior forms in the rituals of various peoples and religions through history, and the ways in which interior dispositions, when they are counted important for a ritual, are sometimes exteriorized in order to make them known. In his work, he particularly draws on examples from ancient Vedic (Indian) ritual texts, his main research area, the efficacy of sacrifice and its development into action in the Vedic bramana texts, being the topic of his 2002 doctoral dissertation. In the present work, he deals with the way in which the Vedic rituals, which began by having an extreme dependence on flawless exterior delivery, were transformed in order to place a much greater emphasis on the interiority of the individuals performing them. But he also considers various Catholic Christian rituals, such as sacraments, and the ways in which these balance interiority with exteriority. In short, the book examines the inward meaning of rituals, arguing that ritual and several forms of interiorization are interconnected processes providing ritual practices with a particular basic dynamism.
In addition to a one-page acknowledgement and a short abstract, followed by an introduction providing some methodological remarks, the book consists of four chapters: (“Ritualization,” “Interiorization,” “The Interaction of Interiorization and Ritualization,” “Modernity and Deritualization”), a bibliography, and an index.
According to the author, his study will not establish an antagonism between ritual and interiorization, or the inner and outer aspects of human actions, but it seeks to illustrate their dynamic interdependence. He is aware of the traditional division of the two aspects in the Western cultural sphere and its preference for interiorization.
The account of ritualization is given in chapter 1, when we learn that the word refers to the actual creation of ritual acts (21), and is defined as the “giving up” of individual intentionality (37, 102). The next chapter characterizes interiorization, stating that the concept contains many different meanings, exemplified by interiorized fire rituals in India and Tibet (39). (In passing, one may mention that there are interesting potentialities for making comparisons between these and similar rituals within eastern European Christianity, but the author seems to be unaware of that.) The concept of ritual interiorization is seen as signifying an emphasis on the inner aspects (material or mental) of a ritual action (43), since various aspects of ritual actions can be interiorized, such as their efficacy or effects (14). From indicating the many forms interiorization in a ritual context can take, taking account of both body and mind, he moves to discussing the dynamic relationship between exteriority and interiority, followed by an account of deritualization in chapter 3. The author sees the potential for deritualization to reach its peak when all dimensions of ritual action are interiorized. The last chapter places the discussion of interiorization in a wider context of modern self-reflexivity, turning the analysis toward the scholar’s position and the larger venture of religious and ritual studies that he or she is a part of. By tying the concept of interiorization to such topics as ritualization and modernity, the author searches to give fresh knowledge to a central question within the humanities, namely the relationship between external social displays and internal personal acts.
According to Cavallin, modern society is characterized by deritualization. Moreover, the typically modern versions of interiorization are variants on a universal theme present in all ritual traditions (14), premodern included. This claim may, however, be worthy of discussion, depending on how one sees ritual. The word “ritual” may be connected with austere physical gestures or exuberant pageants of song and dance, but also repetitive gestures, which are found within all aspects of “modern” societies. This is partly also acknowledged by Cavallin (123), although one may debate the degree of difference between “premodern” and “modern” societies (for some, all societies today may be seen as modern), at least in the context of religious practice.
Earlier scholarship has claimed that rituals, performance, and emotion must be analyzed in cultural context. Although Cavallin does not discuss emotion per se, I think it belongs to the topic of his research. As already mentioned, he tries to provide fresh insight into the relationship between external social displays and internal personal acts, claiming that the inner is not more unreal by being more difficult to observe (15), despite his awareness of earlier scholarly opinion on that topic (55, 110). In my opinion Cavallin’s statement is very difficult to accept, at least if I listen to my own (practically thinking) Greek informants, to whom rituals are extremely important, and who tells me that it is difficult, if not impossible, to know another person’s inner “real” state of mind. One can only know what is publicly expressed. This logic is in stark opposition to northern European ethnocentric thinking, and, at least in my view, a more honest one (pace Cavallin: 112, despite his awareness of the problem: 18 f.). The idea of the existence of an “inner state,” and thus interiorization, may be a peculiarity of particularly (but not only) northern European or Western culture, along with various theological ideologies, that in practical life may be far from ordinary people’s (especially women’s) everyday religion in the very same religious traditions. All of us who have done fieldwork on popular religious festivals in southern Italy know that the local Catholicism differs from that of northern European academics. This is not to deny that I have also talked with informants in a Greek Orthodox area who have told me that they felt a great satisfaction and relief after having conducted physically difficult acts during their pilgrimages, such as crawling on their bare and bleeding knees to a church in the middle of summer as a vow and an offering to a saint. In this way, the performance of rituals and the suffering they generate lead to relief in the same way as other physical activities.
This book is an interesting read, also for non-theological “ritualists,” but it does not manage to transcend a Western-oriented view in our globalized era, despite the author’s intention (11).
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[Review length: 1084 words • Review posted on April 30, 2014]