Books by Dimitris Xygalatas

“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