Religion and spirituality in Western postmodern societies

The newest major religious group reported in national censuses of high-income Western cultures is “no religion” (Inglehart RF Reference Inglehart2020). Membership in organized religions in postmodern Western societies has been in decline for decades, paralleled by the rising popularity of the construct of spirituality.

Traditionally, religion is understood as possessing substantive and functional aspects. Substantive aspects are generally conceptual in nature, systems of belief in a divine power prescribing what is important and sacred (Bruce Reference Bruce2011). Functional aspects are concrete and experiential, actions and behavior in pursuit of what is important and sacred, guiding humans through challenges, such as meaning-making, death, suffering, isolation, and injustice (Pargament Reference Pargament2001). Historically, many Christian lineages evolved emphasizing substantive mentalistic aspects and devaluing experiential practices (Elias Reference Elias1998; Meyer Reference Meyer2012; Taylor Reference Taylor2007). Prevalent postmodern attitudes embrace spirituality as a reaction to and rejection of organized religion, polarizing the 2 constructs (Huss Reference Huss2014; Oman Reference Oman, Paloutzian and Park2013; Zinnbauer and Pargament Reference Zinnbauer, Pargament, Paloutzian and Park2005). Religion is commonly perceived as cognitive, impersonal, and institutionalized; in contrast, spirituality represents emotionally invested efforts to reach sacred and existential goals, finding meaning, wholeness, inner potential, and interconnections (Pargament et al. Reference Pargament, Mahoney, Exline, Pargament, Exline and Jones2013).

A growing demographic in postmodern societies describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” (Wixwat and Saucier Reference Wixwat and Saucier2021), an emergent sociocultural phenomenon described as post-Christian spirituality. Individuals independently evolve personal credos that give meaning to existence, according to their own frame of mind, subjective experience, interests, and aspirations (Hervieu-Léger Reference Hervieu-Léger2006). Post-Christian spirituality is characterized by 7 logically interrelated ideas: perennialism (fundamentally all religions are identical and interchangeable); bricolage (freedom to draw on different religions in a way that makes sense personally); immanence of the sacred (sacred is present in life, nature, and cosmos as an impersonal spirit, energy, or life force); cosmos (cosmos is alive, not inanimate); holism (sacred connects everything within the cosmos); self-spirituality (sacred resides within rather than without the self); and experiential epistemology (experiences and emotions are emanations of the spiritual self that lies within, inner knowing and truth) (Houtman and Tromp Reference Houtman, Tromp, Ai, Wink, Paloutzian and Harris2021).

In Western academic discourse, definitions for spirituality which have received wide acceptance are representative of post-Christian spirituality. Some examples are:

“The dynamic dimension of human life that relates to the way persons (individuals and community) experience, express and/or seek meaning, purpose and transcendence, and the way they connect to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, to the significant and/or the sacred” (Nolan Reference Nolan2011, 88).

“The aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred” (Puchalski et al. Reference Puchalski, Ferrell and Virani2009).

Generally, post-Christian spirituality reflects longings for embodied and transformational experiences of “connection,” the “sacred” and “transcendence” (Huss Reference Huss2014). Sacrality comprises qualities of transcendence, ultimacy, and boundlessness. Transcendence is “felt” as a state outside ordinary experience; self-transcendence takes one beyond the limited confines of oneself (Otto Reference Otto1926; Pargament Reference Pargament2011). Ultimacy is a sense of deeper truths to existence; boundlessness is an experience of feeling outside temporal and spatial constraints, merging oneself into a larger whole in which all things are interconnected (Hood Reference Hood1975).

However, post-Christian spirituality remains fraught with contradictory forces. The widely cited definitions for spirituality conflate substantive, functional elements with desired consequences, which traditionally were understood as hard-won fruits of functional religious practices toward substantive goals. All-inclusive immanence erases the critical distinction between the sacred and profane (Durkheim Reference Durkheim1912). By rejecting coherent, substantive belief systems, postmodern notions of spirituality often lack a sacred core, rendering them indistinguishable from secular pursuits, confounding yearnings for transformational experiences (Zinnbauer and Pargament Reference Zinnbauer, Pargament, Paloutzian and Park2005). Although it rejects mentalistic, dwelling Christian lineages in favor of active subjective experience, post-Christian spirituality often cannot adequately inform functional pursuits toward God; aspirants mystically think of themselves as passive vessels of the divine that need only to open to the sacred, again a mentalistic approach (Weber 1922/Reference Weber1963, p. 326). Finally, individualization of sprituality can exacerbate disconnectedness (Taylor Reference Taylor2007).

Traditionally, communal rituals provided the embodied, experiential functional aspect for religions. However, in postmodern Western societies, the historic trajectory of secularization spurred a rejection and decline of rituals.

Rise of secularism and decline of ritual in Western Christendom

Secularization of Western societies evolved over centuries following The Reformation and Philosophies of Enlightenment; conceptions of human existence transitioned from religious worldviews of a mysterious and transcendent divine cosmos to theories of “natural law” based exclusively on the immanent, material plane. Philosophies of Enlightenment promulgated individual autonomy, rationality, and social reforms. Interlocking changes in economic, religious, technological, and political realities led to decline and derision of ritual, deemed an impediment to human progress (Taylor Reference Taylor2007).

The Reformation granted superiority to direct relationship and responsibility to God, as an individualistic moral self; spiritual practices transitioned to “inner dwelling” contemplative modes of self-examination and self-discipline. Collective social rituals were discouraged as disorderly and depraved; religious aesthetics and sensorial experiences were demoted and condemned (Stephenson Reference Stephenson2015; Taylor Reference Taylor2007).

In The Age of Reason, from late 17th century, scientific enquiry rose to prominence and was heralded as key to human flourishing. Humans could now control and manipulate nature for advancement. The primacy of divine assistance receded, replaced by prominence of science. Descartes’ theory split reality into spirit and matter thereby creating a mind–body dichotomy. Nonmaterial, cognitive consciousness was elevated, while somatic and emotional experience denigrated. By subtracting embodied experience, humans could operate as rational, goal-oriented agents (Elias Reference Elias1998; Taylor Reference Taylor2007).

The Romantic movement arose in rebellion against oppressive self-control and rationality. The unfettered nature of man is celebrated as a self-generative force of life/God, connection to the divine accomplished through focusing on inner experience, imagination, and self-expression, an inner quest to find a true self. The individualistic self becomes “non-porous,” a “buffered identity” (Taylor Reference Taylor2007). Secularization transferred religious life out of bodily forms of ritual, worship, and practice; religion becomes more and more residing in the head.

Decline in communal rituals contributes to endemic disconnectedness in human society, an erosion of embodied interrelatedness (Durkheim Reference Durkheim1912; Sennett Reference Sennett2012, Reference Sennett2017). Modernity, by turning away from ritual, has turned away from “innate, embodied intelligence and know-how” for coping with the challenges of being human (Stephenson Reference Stephenson2015, 5). A text from Confucian literature from early China, Liji, is a social cosmology describing the fall of humans from a state of harmony and well-being. The story tells that profound people appeared bringing devices, practices, and guides for recovering well-being. Li, as practices of ritual and ceremonies, are envisioned as knots, binding society together, connecting people to natural goodness and harmony (Stephenson Reference Stephenson2015).

Culture, self, and mind–body experience

Taylor (Reference Taylor2007) proposed the concept of “social imaginary,” the way that people envision society and organize internal and external relationships. Cultural neuroscience provides evidence that self-experience arises through socially imagined templates for reality. The human neonate is born profoundly undeveloped; sense of a coherent self is cocreated through interaction with caretakers. The infant learns shared patterns for perceptual awareness as caretaker directs attention to notice certain stimuli and sensation.

Merleau-Ponty (Reference Merleau-Ponty and Smith1964, 13) illustrated the primacy of perception as the ground of experience: “The perceived world is always the presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence.” Perception is prior to and the prerequisite to experience itself, involving an active meaning-making process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations (von Glasersfeld Reference Von Glasersfeld1995). The interplay between social transmission and the functional organization of the nervous system has been described as “enculturation of brain and embrainment of culture” (Han Reference Han2013; Han and Northoff Reference Han and Northoff2009; Northoff Reference Northoff, Chiao, Li, Turner, SY and Pringle2021). The socially imagined becomes the experience of reality (Allen and Friston Reference Allen and Friston2018; Miller and Clark Reference Miller and Clark2018; Roepstorff et al. Reference Roepstorff, Niewöhner and Beck2010).

Cultural templates as an interpretive frame for understanding the world can be oriented toward independent or interdependent modes of self-experience (Gardner et al. Reference Gardner, Gabriel and Lee1999), resulting in differences in the development of neural circuits, notably for patterns of perception, sense of self, connectedness, and empathy (Chiao et al. Reference Chiao, Harada and Komeda2009; Chiao and Mathur Reference Chiao, Mathur, Chiao, Li, Seligman and Turner2016; Marsh Reference Marsh2018).

Centuries of socially imagined cultural patterns in the West have emphasized and encouraged self-contained individualism as well as a decoupling of conceptual thought from embodied states, leading to an inversion of perception and experience (Malafouris Reference Malafouris2019; Meyer Reference Meyer2012): “The logic of inversion, characteristic of modernity, manifest as an attempt to reconfigure the relational matrix of the world we live into a series of internal representational schemata of which our actions are but an outward expression: Through inversion, beings originally open to the world are closed in upon themselves, sealed by an outer boundary or shell that protects their inner constitution from the traffic of interactions with their surroundings” (Ingold Reference Ingold2010, 355).

The cultural entrainment of mentalistic religions and cognitive inversion lead to endemic disembodied disconnectedness. Cultural neuroscience shows that mind–body patterns/habits create the mind–body experience. Rituals, as mind–body practices, have evolved with human cultures as transformational technologies, manifesting embodied knowledge and wisdom.

In modern medicine, the effectiveness of placebo and nocebo treatments show that “ritual and words” can powerfully alter neurophysiology through behavioral conditioning, directing attention, expectations, and hope (Benedetti et al. Reference Benedetti, Carlino and Pollo2011; Petrovic et al. Reference Petrovic, Dietrich and Fransson2005; Wager et al. Reference Wager, Rilling and Smith2004). Cultivation of a porous interdependent self has been linked to resilience, sense of safety, and reduced neural reaction to physical pain in those who feel they have social support (Coan et al. Reference Coan, Schaefer and Davidson2006; Eisenberger et al. Reference Eisenberger, Taylor and Gable2007). The Tibetan Buddhist training in “vast mind” appears to prevent post-traumatic disorders (Lewis Reference Lewis2013, Reference Lewis2020). Embodied practices and rituals appear to alter perceptual reality through altering neural pathways (Winkelman Reference Winkelman, Grob and Grigsby2021), suggesting that self-transcendence is a universal human capacity (Hood and Chen Reference Hood and Chen2005; Piedmont Reference Piedmont1999).

Historical Western understandings of ritual

Historically, the Western academic study of ritual emerged from observing foreign cultures, where activities were dismissed as illogical and primitive (Bell Reference Bell1997; Stephenson Reference Stephenson2015). Durkheim (Reference Durkheim1912) pointed out the existence of secular rituals in large, complex Western societies. Rituals were social actions that expressed and reestablished the collective consciousness, as a fundamental organizing mechanism. Ritual manifests cultural symbols to provide a shared focal point for collective cohesion and meaningful existence. Rituals shape how we see, feel, and think about the world through a shared system of intersubjective symbols (Geertz Reference Geertz1973, Reference Geertz1974). Rituals encode meaning for cultural participants through experiential enactment of symbolic representations (Geertz Reference Geertz1973, Reference Geertz1974; Turner Reference Turner1979, Reference Turner, Schechner and Appel1990).

Academics began to study ritual as performances, observable in small social conventions to grander ceremonies marking special occasions (Turner Reference Turner1979, Reference Turner, Schechner and Appel1990). Ritual as pragmatic action establishes centrality of body and materiality. The body-as-performative shifts between representational and symbolic, a sociocultural object mediating immateriality and materiality (Csordas Reference Csordas2002; Grimes Reference Grimes2004; Schechner Reference Schechner2017). Communal rituals act to dissolve psychic separation between people and states of consciousness; transformation becomes possible in this “sacred liminality” (Turner Reference Turner1978). Transitions in human life and death are supported through enacting 3 stages of ritual: separation from everyday life, liminal-in-betweenness and reincorporation back into society as a different self (Tambiah Reference Tambiah1990; Van Gennep Reference Van Gennep2019).

Goffman (Reference Goffman2017) examined how performances of everyday “interaction rituals” organize social behavior. Collins (Reference Collins, von Scheve and Salmela2014) identified the necessary components for ritual interaction as: 2 or more people in physical presence; a mutual awareness and a shared focus of attention; an activity or particular symbol; and, a common emotional mood. These combined elements lead to rhythmic coordinated behavior as the foundation for group bonding, cooperation, and shared meaning-making.

Ritual as “performance,” requires adherence to scripted behavior; autonomous choice is surrendered in favor of collective action. Rappaport (Reference Rappaport1999, 24) defined ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers.” One is not fully the author or owner of one’s actions, as behavior and experience are imbued by intersubjective meanings external to the performer (Laidlaw and Humphrey Reference Laidlaw, Humphrey, Kreinath, Snoek and Stausberg2006). Thus, ritual action melts individual barriers, creating porosity and unification.

Ritual, like theater, is set apart from normal reality by “framing” the event, delineating an “as-if” space where ordinary time and context are suspended, creating liminal spaces. Performers and audience take their roles, and a shared subjunctive space is created. Combining aesthetic forces and mimetic play, actors, and audience are impacted and transformed alike as they enter the imaginal frame of “as if” together (Schechner Reference Schechner2017).

Defining ritual

While ritual defies neat definitions, fundamentally it creates relationship, bringing together parts into wholes, unifying elements into embodied and experiential dynamics (Houseman Reference Houseman2006; Tambiah Reference Tambiah1990). Rituals act to establish, affirm, mirror, resolve, transform, and alchemize multidimensional relationships between self, other, and cosmos. Once created and sustained, rituals become entities unto themselves, “worlding the world,” enacting “intra- and interwoven beingness,” creating social and personal realities (Mika et al. Reference Mika, Andreotti and Cooper2020, 20).

The “family resemblance” model can be used to understand ritual (Snoek Reference Snoek, Kreinath, JAM and Stausberg2006). By collating common elements, a general framework emerges (Table 1).

Table 1. Component dimensions of ritual

Current understandings of ritual

Universality of ritual extends beyond humans as ethologists have long documented ritualized behaviors throughout the animal world (Huxley Reference Huxley1966; Stephenson Reference Stephenson2015). In animals, ritualization occurs through exaptation, when behaviors take on functions other than the original evolutionary adaptation, evolving into communicative functions (Petak Reference Petak, Vonk and Shackelford2022). Ritualization communicates emotional states; behaviors become exaggerated, rhythmic, stylized, and stereotypical (Rossano Reference Rossano2009). Ritualized behavior in primates promotes socialization by overriding strong fight or flight survival reactivity; the neurophysiological state is calmed, availing opportunities to build trust, reinforce social relations and group harmony (Lang and Kundt Reference Lang and Kundt2023; Rossano Reference Rossano2009).

These neurophysiological effects of ritualization are believed to have driven biological and cultural evolution of humans (Rossano Reference Rossano2020; Stephenson Reference Stephenson2015). Research shows socialization of the human child is achieved through ritualized interactions between mother and infant (Nagy and Molnar Reference Nagy and Molnar2004). Caretakers mirror the embodied experience of the infant, using patterned, simplified, stereotypical, repetitive, exaggerated, and elaborated signals to establish communication through multimodal voice, gesture, and somatic interactions (Dissanayake Reference Dissanayake2004, Reference Dissanayake and Friedmann2022). Directing “joint attention” to an external object or phenomena simultaneously builds cognitive and linguistic communication skills through relational bonding (Greenspan and Shanker Reference Greenspan and Shanker2007; Tomasello et al. Reference Tomasello, Carpenter and Call2005). The ritualized patterns established between caretaker and infant become templates for interaction and bonding in wider society (Collins Reference Collins2022).

Play, another universally observed behavior, underpins ritualization activity. Both humans and animals recognize signals framing transitions between “real” mode to “as-if” play mode. Play becomes prominent in caretaker–child interactions when predictable patterns become boring for the developing infant (Dissanayake Reference Dissanayake2017). Novel/creative permutations of ritualized features are used to manipulate expectation, producing a range of emotionally induced learning experiences.

Play creates capacity for “as-if” representation, driving development of conceptual and symbolic cognition, upon which ritual practice and religious thought are predicated (Burghardt Reference Burghardt, Renfrew, Morley and Boyd2018; Dissanayake Reference Dissanayake2017; Huizinga Reference Huizinga2003; Renfrew et al. Reference Renfrew, Morley and Boyd2017). It is hypothesized that play activities which produced impactful, transformative experiences were repeated and formalized through ritualization (Jones Reference Jones2020; Morgan Reference Morgan, Renfrew, Morley and Boyd2018). Rituals and rites emerged by embedding these behaviors within ceremonial and symbolic elements, heightening their emotional impact and memorability (Bell Reference Bell1997). Rites producing powerful, transformative experiences led to beliefs and values which became formalized into organized religions (Burghardt Reference Burghardt, Renfrew, Morley and Boyd2018). Thus, the interrelatedness of creativity, play, and ritualization coalesce as a ground from which meaning-making and world views emerge from embodied experience (Morley Reference Morley, Renfrew, Morley and Boyd2017).

Creativity underpins activities of play and ritualization and is believed to be an evolutionary capacity to flexibly adapt to changing contexts, involving tolerating ambiguity, uncertainty, and an openness to experience (Bateson and Martin Reference Bateson and Martin2013). Metaphorical and symbolic thought enhance creativity, merging conceptual, imaginary, intuitive, and somatosensory realms (Brown Reference Brown2008). Many scholars have proposed both creativity and mystical transcendent experience involve dissolution of the bounded self, a “melting of the physical boundaries of flesh and the psychic boundaries of feeling” as transformational forces move between consciousness and the unconscious (Brown Reference Brown2010, 335).

Creative endeavors have been found to enhance existential meaning and purpose, as well as transformation and healing (Nelson and Rawlings Reference Nelson and Rawlings2007; Thomson and Jaque Reference Thomson and Jaque2019). “Distributed creativity” describes creative endeavors in groups, where dynamic interaction of ideas takes place relationally. Engaging in coordinated creative activities has been found to release oxytocin, enhancing bonding; coordinated action and gestures can increase social cooperation, empathy and positive evaluation of others (Thomson and Jaque Reference Thomson and Jaque2019).

Neurobiologically, creativity is enhanced through interconnectedness of brain regions, maximally realized through recruiting sensory and motor systems together (Dietrich and Zakka Reference Dietrich and Zakka2023). Neuroaesthetics, the study of emotional response to beauty, such as awe or wonder, exhibits overlapping features with transcendent and transliminal experiences (Thomson and Jaque Reference Thomson and Jaque2019). Access to spiritual transcendent states appears to require embodied engagement in execution of creative tasks (Mistrík Reference Mistrík2011). Models for the creative process closely resemble ritualization phenomena, looping through discursive and reiterative frameworks, e.g., repeating, redefining, redirecting, reconstructing, and reinitiating. Thus, participating in embodied ritual practices can support transformational experience (Thomson and Jaque Reference Thomson and Jaque2019).

Post-Christian spirituality reflects yearnings for transformational experience; however, lack of a coherent cosmology or substantive sacred core confounds this longing (Partridge Reference Partridge2021). Identifying what is sacred in life provides the focal point around which structures for meaning and purpose coalesce (Pargament et al. Reference Pargament, Oman and Pomerleau2017). Through intentional action, the sacred is realized through the “world of ordinary objects experienced in a particular way” (Jones Reference Jones2014, 61), a “window is opened through which people can envision a deeper reality” (Eliade Reference Eliade1959, 12). Sacralization, as the identification of what is sacred, transmutes the material to immaterial, connecting heaven to earth (Pargament and Mahoney Reference Pargament and Mahoney2005; Pargament et al. Reference Pargament, Oman and Pomerleau2017). Once an object or activity is transformed in the mind of the perceiver, it takes on spiritual vitality, the capacity to soothe, inspire, comfort, empower, connect people to past and future, generate meaning, and engender feelings of wisdom and wholeness (LaMothe Reference LaMothe1998; Pargament et al. Reference Pargament, Wong, Exline and Vitterso2016; Walsh Reference Walsh2015).

Sanctification, creation of the sacred, refers to things that are set apart, made special, through psychological, social, institutional, cultural, and situational forces (Pargament et al. Reference Pargament, Oman and Pomerleau2017). Theistic sanctification involves perceiving aspects of material reality as manifestations of God; nontheistic sanctification involves identifying which aspects of life are important and therefore special (Taves Reference Taves, Paloutzian and CL2013). Ritualization represents a process through which ordinary actions become non-ordinary, a distinctive quality of action that can be brought forth through intentional actions (Bell Reference Bell1997; Laidlaw and Humphrey Reference Laidlaw, Humphrey, Kreinath, Snoek and Stausberg2006).

Dissanayake (Reference Dissanayake2009, Reference Dissanayake, Malotki and Dissanayake2018) proposed that humans manifest an innate process for transforming the ordinary through “artification,” a ritualization process arising from creativity and play developed in human caretaker–infant interactions. The ordinary and mundane is made “special,” as various aspects are patterned, simplified, made stereotypical, exaggerated, and elaborated. Focusing attention and intention toward making something “special” imbues the particular material/immaterial experience or object with value, the process through which ritual nurtures and births the sacred (Dissanayake Reference Dissanayake2013).

Discussion: Mechanism of ritual

Rituals represent mind–body technologies for transformational experiences. Innate human capacities of play, creativity, adaptation, and communication form the basis for ritual building. Ritual is a “structuration of sensory perception and cognition in which particular human potentialities both of experience and of meaningful construction may be formed … in which the dynamics of cosmological, social and personal construction – dynamics as a field of force – achieve their most intense concentration” (Kapferer Reference Kapferer2004, 37). Powerful effects of ritual, involve multidimensional levels of subjective and intersubjective being, intertwining cognitive, emotional, and physiological experience (Malafouris Reference Malafouris2019), are described variously as “collective effervescence” (Durkheim Reference Durkheim1912), “sensational forms” (Meyer Reference Meyer2012), and “dynamic force” (Langer Reference Langer1953).

Kapferer (Reference Kapferer2004, Reference Kapferer, Kreinath, Snoek and Stausberg2006) suggested that rituals provide a technology of virtuality, establishing alternative spaces and states of consciousness, which allow us to step out of the “actuality” of lived lives into the “really real.” Ritual mechanisms slow down actuality, creating simplified, rarefied spaces, where we can enter into contained, imaginal “as-if” frameworks, enabling participants to break free from everyday life in order to reorient to everyday life. In ritual virtuality, we enter into self-reflection and intentional forces of production, construction, and reinvention, reordering and recreating our world realities (Kapferer Reference Kapferer2004, Reference Kapferer, Kreinath, Snoek and Stausberg2006).

Through framing, ritual is set apart from the mundane (Bell Reference Bell1992; Durkheim Reference Durkheim1912; Humphrey and Laidlaw Reference Humphrey and Laidlaw1994). Framing can be achieved through behavior contradicting normal intention–causality linked actions (e.g., lighting candles when it is not dark); framing actions signal entry into the world of symbolic representation (Clay and Tennie Reference Clay and Tennie2018; Whitehouse Reference Whitehouse2021). Intentionally directing awareness to symbolic representations manifest a “ritual stance,” where “if people define something as real then it is real in its consequences” (Kapferer Reference Kapferer2004, 40). Embodied practices invest ritual space with value, creating a tangible construction in which one can dwell (Bell Reference Bell1997; Franchetto Reference Franchetto2020; Smith Reference Smith, Kedar and Werblowsky1998; Tuan Reference Tuan1977). Embodied meanings emerge through repeated body movements which bring awareness to certain aspects of human experience (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1985). Ritual is the practice of making the invisible visible, by offering multiple media for materializing the sacred. Once made material, “the invisible can be negotiated and bargained with, touched and kissed, made to bear human anger and disappointment” (Orsi Reference Orsi, Lynch, Mitchell and Strhan2012, 147).

Thus, ritual activity is a symbolic process, expressing complex abstractions and concrete realities with economy and simplicity, creating “blended” spaces and states, transporting and transforming consciousness (Franchetto Reference Franchetto2020; Langer Reference Langer1953). Contradictory phenomena can be brought together, reordered, readjusted, and resolved through manipulating symbolic representations (Handelman Reference Handelman2004). Collective rhythmic movement, dance, music, and voice create neurophysiological entrainment, linking limbic systems, blurring physical boundaries, and manifesting increased empathy and bonding (Merker et al. Reference Merker, Madison and Eckerdal2009; Perry et al. Reference Perry, Polito and Thompson2021). Even the simple birthday celebration blends the embodied with the intentional, emotional, and relational: gustatory experience, collective rhythmic coordinated singing, a specific and special number of candles lit and blown out with a heartfelt wish/intention.

In ritual, use of multimodal sensorial devices can act powerfully through aesthetics, an embodied experience unifying feeling and form (Langer Reference Langer1953). Aesthetic forms achieve their potency through organizing dynamics of the perceptual field. “Sensational forms” offer strong stimuli, mobilizing, and training certain senses to invoke emotions, pulling together various sense impressions into a “whole” (Meyer Reference Meyer2012). Sensation authenticates spiritual concepts; the ritualized body becomes the producer, transmitter, and receiver of an actual experience of the sacred and transcendent (Meyer Reference Meyer2012).

Ritual could be considered a staged drama of culturally assembled embodied processes, creating bonded liminal states through joint attention, shared actions, emotional investment, and collective intentionality (Malafouris Reference Malafouris, Renfrew, Morley and Boyd2018). Framing of “performance” empowers observation of what is meaningful (Scheff et al. Reference Scheff, Beck and Carroll1977). Playing a role or watching a role being played engenders self-reflexivity, driving metacognitive reflection, the ground from which understandings and meaning for one’s life are discovered (Scheff et al. Reference Scheff, Beck and Carroll1977). Emotional and behavioral regulation is facilitated vicariously, through contained enactment of powerful emotional experiences. In performance, speech acts accomplish social magic, (e.g., wedding vows), providing a powerful vehicle for transforming “actuality” through virtuality. Practice and performance of intentional actions can cultivate different levels of consciousness which can grant access to numinous and metaphysical experience (Raposa Reference Raposa and Schilbrack2004; Schilbrack Reference Schilbrack and Schilbrack2004). Ritual stance is to invite “intentional non-intentionality,” relinquishing individualism, suspending rational and logical control, embodying a state of heightened openness; one can become porous, merging with multifaceted experience and other beings (Laidlaw and Humphrey Reference Laidlaw, Humphrey, Kreinath, Snoek and Stausberg2006; Pehal and Cieslarová Reference Pehal and Cieslarová2011). Embodied action of ritual in subjunctive spaces offers mysterious mediations, allowing connections, transformations, and permutations of relationships.

Post-Christian spirituality and ritual in palliative care

As nondenominational rituals increasingly emerge in palliative care settings, a small number of empirical studies have studied their impact. The studied ritual activities reflect post-Christian spirituality, exhibiting individual self-spirituality, perennialism, bricolage, immanence of the sacred, and experiential epistemology.

Most of the studies document use of ritual by staff and medical professionals. Jones (Reference Jones2005) found hospice workers used personal rituals for self-care. Personal rituals are used to better manage grief by marking transitions, connections, affirming the value of the individual (Balmer et al. Reference Balmer, Frey and Gott2022; Doka Reference Doka2002). Small, ritualized activities created structure, meaning, and value for patients and carers; were a source of human connectedness, compassion; and achieved a common value of a “good death” (Weegen et al. Reference Weegen, Hoondert and van der Heide2020). Montross-Thomas et al. (Reference Montross-Thomas, Scheiber and Meier2016) reported over 70% of hospice staff and volunteers used personally meaningful rituals after the death of their patients to help them cope. Those who used rituals demonstrated significantly higher compassion, satisfaction, and significantly lower burnout. Kapoor et al. (Reference Kapoor, Morgan and Siddique2018) found 79% of respondents felt ritual brought closure and helped them overcome the feelings of disappointment, grief, distress, and failure after the death of their patient. For 73%, ritual instilled and encouraged a sense of team effort; and for 82% ritual made efforts feel appreciated.

Running et al. (Reference Running, Girard and Woodward Tolle2008) reported using organized grief rituals in a work setting reduced stress, job dissatisfaction, and compassion fatigue among hospice staff. Established rituals, such as the sacred pause or lit candle after a death, supported reflection and processing of repeated deaths (Mayr et al. Reference Mayr, Barth and Walker2024; Volek Reference Volek2021).

There is much less research on rituals used by patients. For hospice patients and carers, personally derived rituals organically emerge (Quartier Reference Quartier2010); and ritualization of daily routines intensify as death approaches (Weegen et al. Reference Weegen, Hoondert and van der Heide2020). Personally meaningful practices provide a mechanism where all involved can feel less isolated, more supported, discovering opportunities for intimacy, reconciliation, and closure (Bourgeois and Johnson Reference Bourgeois and Johnson2004; Bowman et al. Reference Bowman, Martin and Singer2000). The symbolism of ritualized meaningful practices affords those involved to seek understanding and meaning, promoting spiritual comfort (Loseth Reference Loseth, Kuebler, Berry and Heidrich2002; Prior Reference Prior, Aranda and O’Connor1999). Personally constructed rituals have been found to positively support bereavement and heal complicated grief of survivors (Lewis and Hoy Reference Lewis, Hoy, Neimeyer, Harris, Winokuer and Thornton2011; Reeves Reference Reeves2011; Sas and Coman Reference Sas and Coman2016).

Implications for secular palliative care settings

In postmodern multicultural societies, institutionalized palliative care presents diverse demographics. The power of ritual in undercutting differences and conflict is achieved through its universality and ambiguity (Seligman and Weller Reference Seligman and Weller2012). The unspoken embodied action of ritual allows individuals to derive their own meaning and value.

For those who are dying, personalized rituals provide more support. Identifying what is important and valuable in that individual’s life establishes a sacred core which informs the construction of ritual building. The dying individual and significant people can join into a creative process employing symbology, sensorial embodied action, aesthetics to honor, and celebrate the life lived.