This page groups rituals by whether performing them is a required duty or a voluntary devotion. Wikipedia notes that "for daily prayers, practicing Muslims must perform a ritual recitation from the Quran in Arabic while bowing and prostrating." Browsing this way lets a visitor separate a mandatory rite from one an adherent may choose to observe or not.
Facts
Origins
Whose Classification This IsThe category is van Gennep's: Les rites de passage (1909) proposed that such rites everywhere follow a three-stage pattern of separation, liminality and incorporation, and Victor Turner's 1969 work on liminality made the middle stage the centre of the frame. It is a scholars' scheme, not a traditions' one. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingRites marking a passage in an individual life - birth and naming, coming of age, marriage, ordination, death. Nearly every tradition marks some of these, but not the same set, and which passages are marked by religious rite rather than by civil custom differs by tradition and by period. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 2 Learn More
The lifecycle rituals
This group gathers lifecycle rituals, the rites that mark the great transitions of a human life: birth and naming, coming of age, marriage, and other passages by which a person moves from one status to the next. Such rites of passage are found in every religious tradition and are among the most universal features of religious life.
The browser will find lifecycle rituals from across the world's traditions. The entries describe each rite's form, meaning and setting, noting the tradition to which it belongs and the transition it marks.
Obligation
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
Catherine Bell, Oxford University Press, 1997Basic Genres of Ritual ActionView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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