One may wonder what is a the difference between art and ritual? Since my craft is the art of ritual, I though it might be worth brining out the different dimension ritual encompasses and therefore clarifying what I mean by a ritual.

A developmental edge

Rituals often mark a moment of transition and transformation, two words that point to similar action. They are at the edge of our developmental edge, they often encompasses overcoming a difficulty, physical (like pain) and psycho-emotional (isolation). The discomfort is the incarnation of that edge. Or they are here to mark either the start or the end of that developmental journey, something that soul wants to process.

An Embodied interrogation of reality

Often this edge will be incarnated into a physical dimension which will also touch the psycho-emotional dimension, as a way to inquiry into the nature of reality. Many technics have been used across different religions such as fasting, taking certain
psychotropic drugs, isolation, darkness, often to shift our perception of reality. There is an element of overcoming a certain discomfort or even pain, which allow the participant of the ritual to realised one potential, understand oneself better and go deeper in it's understanding of reality in life.

Words of Wisdom 2018 - Performance by Sylvie Barbier, London

Community

Ritual are often set in a context of one's community as it mark also a sense of belonging and ones place within your community. The role of the community can play at different level. One level is taking part in the ritual as a collective, the other one is where the collective plays a role of witnessing the development of a individual or a group of individual such as initiation process. This then mark in return their belonging, acceptance and place within that community. The ritual and belonging can be marked physically like with tatoos or through fashion. They also allow a quick visual sence of ones position within that community ( war mark, number of children,... ). This is for exemple a key difference between performance art and ritual. As the audience of a performance can be quite anonymous and there is no accountability between the performer and it's audience, whereas with a ritual the people are knowed and form a relationship with one an other.

A moment of transition

Since we are in a moment of paradigm transition, it is not surprising that more and more artist name their work as ritualistic as they help the transition from one paradigm to an other. There is like a collective wisdom which knows the role of the artist to help be the priest of a dying age and midwife a new paradigm.

The art of transformation - Life as an Art

Rituals are here to physically mark the practice of "Life as an art". "Life as an art" means that there is a conscious cultivation of one's being by actively engaging in transforming what is in the way of our inner growth. By doing so the ritual re-sacralised art and in return art helps sacralised life.

One therefore may ask, when is a relationship an artwork and when is the relationship not? The answers lies in a of intentionality, and consciousness in how one's approach that relationship and to go beyond what the default would be. Like a craftsman, carefully cultivating inner skills, that then shows up in our ability to transcend and integrates our past wombs and reactivity in this relationship ( or the projection of past relationships onto this one).

There is therefore an incorporation of one's life into one's art. "Art as a life" is to sacralised one's life through art and therefore show the extra-ordinary in what is ordinary, to bring out the beautiful of the daily life, such as bringing up children, parental relationships, past trauma, friendships, pregnancy, deaths,...

"Life as an art and art as a life"

Cycles

Ritual are also something that has a relationship with marking moments within the life cycle: equinox, new moon, death, birth, sunset, new year, period, reaching adulthood, or in commemoration of a specific date. They have therefore a repeatable dimension and collective dimension. The repeatability is a way to create deeper integration, for exemple traditionally the Sun Dance ritual happens yearly, or the sweat lodge ritual happen monthly.

Sun dance, Shoshone at Fort Hall, 1925

Now some ritual might be punctual and individual and are therefore not related to a sense of external, physical time but internal time. A time when the individual feels a inner transformation, healing or transition that wants to be marked, celebrated and embodied through a ritual.

Symbols

There uses symbols that are relevant to the individual participant and/or to the collective. These symbols sacralised the moment. Lighting a candle or incense, wearing specific clothes, partial or full nudity, the use of specific objects, ect