a founder of the codex

Ritual

Ritunidus iterans·the Processional Nest

From Latin ritus, a rite, nidus, a nest, and iterare, to do again; a nest of rites built by doing them again.

Level
Conceptorganism
Book
Meteorathe meteorological atlas
Phylum
Pathimage schema
Class
Mechanismits convection cell
Niche
Symbionta partner
Mode
Habithow it keeps existing
Stage
Transindividualtransindividual
Status
Living
Habitat
Ritual

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Religious Affections · Wilkins, 1668: Ecclesiastical Relation · WordNet, 1990: Act · Llull, 1308: K · Instrumentative

Processional Nest, the whole specimen
Plate XXXII. Ritunidus iterans, the whole specimen.

Repeating a prescribed form together creates belonging and passage that no single intention could create.

What is done together in the same way becomes true for those who do it.

behavior Is rebuilt every year on the same spot, each builder laying one strand exactly where the last one lay.

provocation

Which ritual do you perform without noticing, and what does it make true?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its mechanism, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Ritual

Fig. 1. Kernel

Rubric

Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?

Prescribed actions repeated in a fixed form make a shared reality that participants could not make by intention alone.4, 1

drawn as: condensation nucleus · view: series

Boundary of Ritual

Fig. 2. Boundary

Magic circle

What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?

It is set apart from habit by its frame; a rite is marked off in time and place as different from ordinary acts.3

drawn as: front · view: transparent

Intake of Ritual

Fig. 3. Intake

Cairn

What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?

It needs participants, a time and a place set apart, and the memory of what was done before.4

drawn as: inflow · view: in situ

Mechanism of Ritual

Fig. 4. Mechanism

Muscular bonding

❦ dominant organ

How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?

Acting out the form together brings bodies and attention into step and commits each participant publicly to what the form says.4, 1

drawn as: convection cell · view: pinned

Output of Ritual

Fig. 5. Output

Threshold

What does it make possible, visible or knowable?

It gives belonging, passage from one state of life to another, and a time that comes back.2, 3

drawn as: precipitation · view: series

Dispersal of Ritual

Fig. 6. Dispersal

Handshake

What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?

It travels by being taught and copied, and lives on in gestures whose reasons are forgotten, a handshake, a toast.3

drawn as: plume · view: cross section

Decay of Ritual

Fig. 7. Decay

Lip service

What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?

When the form is kept but its shared meaning is gone it becomes empty routine, and it can be turned into a means of exclusion.3

drawn as: dissipation · view: cast

II Meaning associations

gave rise to · holdstakes fromgives tooffspring, by symbiosisoffspring, by colonizationoffspring, by colonizationfeeds · output → intakefeeds · output → intakeCommemorative RevisionAnniversary RewriterThe Festival CalendarRing of FeastsSimultaneous RememberingTide of RecallMemoryRecollecting FungusEquinoxHinge of the Year

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Offspring

Food web

  • feeds its output → the intake of Memory
    Ritual gives a time that comes back and passages marked in public; Memory feeds on what is repeated, strongly felt or given meaning. Ritual's product is Memory's best food.
  • pollinated the dispersal of Memory → its intake
    Memory spreads into stories, archives, monuments and rites, and Ritual needs the memory of what was done before. Memory has already pollinated Ritual.
  • homology its dispersal resembles the decay of Memory
    Ritual lives on in gestures whose reasons are forgotten; Memory's other half is forgetting. The form outlives what it remembered.
  • friction its kernel rubs against the boundary of Memory
    Ritual repeats actions in a fixed form; Memory says a trace that never altered would be an archive, not a memory. One lives by not changing, the other by changing.
  • feeds the output of Equinox → its intake
    Equinox gives a fixed point from which seasons and feasts are counted; Ritual needs a time set apart. The sky supplies the rite's time.
  • feeds its output → the intake of Memory
    Ritual gives a time that comes back; Memory feeds on what is repeated and given meaning. Each return of the rite is a recall.
  • friction its boundary rubs against the decay of Equinox
    The equinox drifts against the stars, while a rite holds to its fixed form; over centuries the feast and the season part.

Kin

same kind in Roget Geomancy

same kind in Wilkins Commemorative Revision

same kind in WordNet Geomancy, Mimesis, Knowing Trust

same kind in Llull Chiaroscuro, Faith, Geomancy, Innocence, Music, Patience, Syllable, Symbol, The Shaping Pause, The Festival Calendar, Subtractive Phenomenology

same phylum Entelechy, Memory, Music, Nostalgia, Prophecy, Wind, Tongue Horizon, Afterlistening

same dominant organ Chimera, Dream, Fire, Metamorphosis, Music, Presence, Resonance, Storm, Symbol, The Common Lung, Self-Fulfilling Alarm, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Witnessed Relief (Mycelia), Commemorative Revision, Fear's Breath, The Shaping Pause, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry, Subtractive Phenomenology

Genome

III In the world

Echoes

  • a wedding
  • a graduation
  • the handshake
  • a New Year's countdown

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 2, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axisvalue
bookmeteora
symmetryradial 3
organizationchained
silhouettecrown
scalehand
proportiontapering latent
growthgrafted
articulationimbricate latent
opennesssolid latent
skeletonunmarked latent
locomotionjetting latent
patternrosettes
colorationeyespots latent
substanceaura
surfacecrackled
palettegilt
luminositypoints
transparencytransparent latent
gesturebursts
unitycomposite latent
modalitynecessary latent
causationfinal latent
determinacydissolving
fusionbecoming
anomalytenant
graftmirrors
techniqueengraving
viewpointabove
valueflat latent
balancegrounded latent
densitygraded detail latent
rhythmregular latent
saturationaccent
appendagesvalves
anchor (body)a sea pen, a feather-shaped colony rising from a fleshy stalk
anchor (detail)beetle wing cases, hard, iridescent and finely ridged

Sources

  1. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
  2. Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909)
  3. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (1969)
  4. Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999)

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