Our modern lives are filled with digital gadgets, non-stop endless live-feeds, information saturation, hormone hijacking, microplastics on the brain, widening inequality, polarisation of everything… We're more technologically connected than ever, and yet less anchored to anything that feels real. Why are we slaves to the grind? Where is it that we are going? Why do we bother? Life is becoming meaningless. As meaning thins out and depression rises, I keep coming back to the same drum I’ve been banging for years: ritual. I’m guessing that is no surprise given where you are reading this.
In this article I am going to set out step by step my core argument as to why ritual is so valuable a human practice, more important now than maybe ever before. And by ritual practice I do not mean of any specific tradition, religion or cultural context. Nope, just ‘ritual’ in whatever form it takes for you.
Here we go.
When we do rituals, we interact with symbols - the ritual space is a space that implicitly states that some aspects of it have additional meanings. Symbols do not need to be abstract glyphs like crosses and crescents, nor do they need to be ceremonially sacred things like effigies on altars. The chinking of glasses in a ‘cheers’ ritual symbolises the coming together of the holders of those glasses - the glasses are the people, or at least symbols of such.
Even when symbols are not explicit, the context of the ritual asks us to find connections between things. It achieves this by having us enact non-ordinary actions. Forget that nonsense about glasses being chinked in ‘cheers’ to spread poison around; if there was ever any truth in it (none that I can see), we certainly don’t do it because of that. What the gesture of chinking glasses is, is not overtly functional. It is a non-ordinary action with a glass, just like ‘raising your glass for a toast’. Generally a glass is filled with liquid and emptied, often into our mouths. That’s its function. Similarly we don’t blow out the candles on a birthday cake for purely functional reasons - we put them on the cake so we can blow them out, we blow them out to mark a moment and make a wish - set an intention for the next year of our lives.
When we do non-ordinary things, there is part of us that looks for justification, for a reason we have done it… for meaning. In instances where the function is not obvious, we conclude we did this thing because it carries a meaning, it communicates that meaning or demonstrates it symbolically.
When we do rituals we do non-ordinary things, and the non-ordinariness asks us to attribute a meaning to justify why we did it. That meaning is symbolic insofar as it relates to something else. We did this thing because it means this other thing. We clink the glasses together as we say cheers because we are a group of people who have all come together to enjoy some cheer. The ritual actions symbolises the people enacting the ritual action.
When we use symbols and make meanings, we link things together; ‘X = Y’, this means that. This impulse to assign meaning, to say “this equals that”, isn’t limited to rituals alone. It sits right on the edge of something deeper, something older: magical thinking.
When we link things together, even just as symbolic devices or metaphors, we encroach on magical thinking, especially if we believe that by simulating a specific action type with one thing it will promote a correlate action type in the other thing. Society even makes it a legal imperative that we abide by oaths we have attached to ourselves by signing our names - ‘I’m as good as my word’.
Rituals often have built in meanings, certainly in religious or political contexts where indoctrination is involved, but also, their general non-ordinary nature encourages us to find our meanings.
When we find new meanings in things we get a sense of seeing some connectivity we had not seen before. The world becomes a more connected place. This is not the connections of external algorithms, of expected instant replies to texts, emails, voice notes… but the connections we make often within ourselves, often silently.
These connections are ones we own, ones that we have made, and that we can value and cherish. Penny-drop moments are profound realisations that connect two or more things we had not previously seen.
Here it comes:
When we do rituals we learn to make connections between the things in the ritual and the things in the world or our lives that we see meaningful parallels with. The important thing here is not the meaningful connections per se, but rather that the rituals train us to see them.
People that proactively engage in ritual practice live in a world that is rich in internal connections, in meaningful links between things. Through this melange of connections an entirely personal, internal and meaningful world begins to blossom. The connections we make between different things in the world, are also passing through us - we are the instruments of perceiving the connections and finding them meaningful…
We begin to be situated in the midst of the meaningful world that surrounds us.
When we make connections, the world can begin to feel less chaotic. Ritual has a tendency to present an organised reality, ordered, where everything has its place. In the immediate the ritual act can provide comfort a stability, while in the wider context, it can help us stabilise ourselves and our reality.
This is not just theoretical for me. I suffered from clinical depression in my late teens. Some very dark times, tormented, crushing and, on occasion, enlightening. One of the manifestations of depression is isolation - of breaking lines of communication - sometimes literally in terms of spontaneous mutism - a dark spiralling dissociation from the wider world, increased tiredness leading to further withdrawal into the tormented self.
Part of what is experienced is the loss of meaning and the loss of meaningful connections. The withdrawn, introspective-tormented and dissociated person does not feel part of, let alone integrated into, the wider world.
Equally, we love it when we feel that ‘special connection’ we have with someone, even if its a momentary connection with a person we will never see again.
I believe rituals can help us nurture the connections we already have, help us form new ones that carry deep personal meanings. This is a type of nourishment that far exceeds that which a digital world can offer us; these are actions that bring us back to ourselves.
We need to find ways to make meaningful connections, with other people, with our immediate lives, with the wider world… as we make connections we find our place in the world, we find our own reasons for being. Life becomes meaningful once again.
Ritual might be one of the oldest, tried and tested, ways of doing exactly this.
Ulysses Black
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Here at The Ritualist, it is part of my mission to help both the curious and the adepts to explore and develop their relationship with their own rituals, if there is any aspect of ritual that you would like to know more about it, please leave a comment below!
This really hit home for me—especially the part about ritual teaching us to find meaning through connection. It brought back something from my insight meditation practice (influenced by Daniel Ingram’s approach): initially, the connections between things seem chaotic, almost too much to handle. But gradually, that chaos becomes the entry point to something more profound. You begin to understand how meaning actually forms—not as something static, but as something fluid and alive.
That’s when the real freedom emerges.