Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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This page groups rituals by whether they are performed by a community together or by a single person alone. Wikipedia distinguishes "communal rites, whether of worship, where a community comes together to worship" from "rites of personal devotion, where an individual worships, including prayer and pilgrimages." Browsing this way lets a visitor separate group ceremonies from solitary devotional acts.

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.

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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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