Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Kind of ritual

This page groups rituals by their general kind, such as a rite of passage, a communal rite of worship, or a rite of personal devotion. Wikipedia notes that "for simplicity's sake, the range of diverse rituals can be divided into categories with common characteristics." Browsing by kind lets a visitor compare rituals that serve a similar purpose across many different traditions.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Rites performed to obtain knowledge not otherwise available - about a decision, an outcome or a hidden cause - by a procedure the tradition holds to be reliable. Systems differ in whether the answer is taken to come from a deity, from an impersonal order, or from the diviner's trained reading of a sign, and the difference governs how each is practised. 2
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 2
Directory
Category
Rituals 1
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The Divinatory Rituals

This group holds divinatory rituals, the rites by which a question is put to the divine or to hidden knowledge and an answer is read from signs, drawing on the structured procedures of divination in a ceremonial setting.

The browser will find divinatory rituals from various traditions. The entries describe each rite's method and interpretive frame, noting the tradition to which it belongs.

Kind of ritual
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. DivinationView the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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