Recommendations from our site
“Ritual, by its own nature, is a condensed event where there is high symbolism. Somebody watching a ritual that he or she is not familiar with might see some acts that look ‘bizarre’. But once you start doing field work and looking at these ‘bizarre’ acts, you begin to understand the meaning of symbols and then, at another level, of the religion itself. Xygalatas explains to us, in a very accessible way, the significance of rituals. We are yet to find a human society that doesn’t have rituals. We all have them. We, in the West, might think that we have abandoned rituals. We don’t do that kind of thing anymore. We don’t walk on fire. We don’t organise events where people put swords or metal objects through their bodies. But we still retain some aspects of ritualistic behaviour.” Read more...
The 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding
Madawi Al-Rasheed, Anthropologist
“Xygalatas wants to explore, understand, and explain the curious fact that so much of what we do in life is guided by ritual, and some of these rituals are very painful. People cut themselves or starve themselves or walk up hills on their knees. And after, they describe themselves as happy. Xygalatas suggests that part of the reason is that ritual helps us become part of a community.” Read more...
Five of the Best Self-Help Books of 2022
Avram Alpert, Literary Scholar
