Topic summary
Rituals
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Ritual.
Genres
Rituals may be seasonal, ... or they may be contingent, held in response to an individual or collective crisis. ... Other classes of rituals include divinatory rituals; ceremonies performed by political authorities to ensure the health and fertility of human beings, animals, and crops in their territories; initiation into priesthoods devoted to certain deities, into religious associations, or into secret societies; and those accompanying the daily offering of food and libations to deities or ancestral spirits or both.