Rituals

Thursday's class was all about rituals. We spoke of several different varities of rituals, and basic criteria for our ritual presentations this Thursday. We can use personal rituals, and even ficticious ones, the more grotesque the better. We mentioned corpediem (I think), which means "sieze the day" and was a ritual from Elizabethan England. People would get together, go out to the woods, and let nature take it's course. We mentioned how prehistoric hunters offered bear meat to the bear because they reverred it as a diety. I have a notation in my notes about a book called The Clan of the Cave Bear which is based in prehistoric times and involves several odd rituals. We talked again about the sacrificing of virgins. I made a rant somewhere in these blogs involving how idiotic that is. Child rape would skyrocket because then they wouldn't be virgins and therefore, couldn't be sacrificed. This time virgins were sacrificed for a harvest festival. We mentioned the short story "The Lottery" and read it in class (or at least the gist of it). I'm fairly sure there was a play done of it as well, and that I saw it in high school. We mentioned deus ex machina which was a crane type thing that was used in ancient theater to pull the hero out of trouble. Myth is tied to rituals, the myth is the written or spoken part of a ritual which is what is done. We went through the ritual involving Charilla which is in Calasso and we cannot be used for ritual presentations. Thaere is a note about one should only do rituals when they know what it is about, otherwise the ritual loses meaning. We mentioned effigies, which are images of people, that other people to horrible things to. Dr. Sexson claims to have been hanged in effigy several times. I have a note in parantheses saying that Mr. Franklin was burned in effigy in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and that he admits that the time referenced in the book was not the first time that they had done so. My last note is that the middle equals life.