Stop for a minute and look around. If you pay attention, there are rituals everywhere in society. These might provide a well of creative ways to enrich your fantasy creations by adding rituals in worldbuilding. I’ll begin with some simple rituals.
- Birthday parties
- Weddings
- Funerals
- Baptisms
- Bar mitzvahs
- Lucky items (rabbit’s foot, ball, jersey, etc.) used over and over
Beyond these personal, every-day rituals, there are bigger ceremonies throughout our world. These are shared by entire cultures. For now, I won’t go into any of these in detail in this article. However, this blog series will continue. So look for more entries on rituals in relation to worldbuilding. For the time being, here is a (non-exhaustive) list of broader rituals in the real world:
- Mardi Gras (New Orleans, LA, USA)
- Carnaval (Brazil)
- Bastille Day (France)
- Cherry Blossom Festival (Japan)
- Tapati Festival (Easter Island, Chile)
- Holi [The Festival of Colors] (India)
- All Souls Procession (Tucson, AZ, USA)
- Lisbon Sardine Festival (Portugal)
Value and Effectiveness of Rituals
Some of the research I read indicates the value of rituals may be difficult to understand. Legare, in his article: Evaluating Ritual Efficacy, claims this is because they aren’t constrained by a connection between the ritualistic actions and the desired outcome.
However, consider the following questions:
- Why does the coach shaving his head cause a sports team to win the game?
- What does burying a statue of St. Joseph have to do with selling a home?
- Why might stretching in the morning help you quit smoking?
- For what reason would a society believe that burning a dead body send its soul to heaven?
- Why would immersing a person in water or trickling water over their head save a person’s soul?
I’d argue that the value rituals provide people lies in belief and a sense of community. Some may call it superstition, but sometimes belief is all that’s necessary. Think about the placebo effect…
Rituals, a classic definition
‘‘Rituals are patterned and ordered sequences of words and acts, often expressed in multiple media whose content and arrangement are characterized in varying degrees by formality …, stereotypy …, condensation …, and redundancy …’’ from Tambiah, 1979.
Rituals when worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is often viewed through a series of fantasy-specific tasks. Examples of this:
- How to create a magic system
- Creation of social stratification and governmental systems
- Appropriate ways to create land and water masses
- Histories and religions.
In this article, I want to push my fellow worldbuilders to consider things that enrich the cultures you create.
For example, let’s say you create a polytheistic culture with nine gods and goddesses. What does each god or goddess represent? What might be done by his/her followers and for what purpose?
- If there is a goddess of war, the followers might forge weapons or perform weapons blessings in tribute to her.
- Let’s say there is a god of nature, his people might have a huge feast to celebrate his blessing of a bountiful crop for the season.
- Maybe there is a god of the seas if you have an island-bound culture. Perhaps they would make sacrifices through drowning to feed that god’s will and keep the swells from turning into typhoons or hurricanes.
Many ideas can be generated through studies in human history, sociology, and cultural anthropology.
The point to impress is that these small details or shared cultural ceremonies, when experienced through a character, will enrich your world. Whatever the purpose of your world, rites, rituals, and ceremonies will bring it to life and give it a flavor above-and-beyond other worlds your consumers have experienced.
Rituals in gaming and writing
If you are a gamemaster or gamemistress, consider having your campaign run into a festival like Mardi Gras or Japan’s Cherry Blossom Festival. How will your players interact with this setting? Think about how this will push your campaign beyond the traditional D&D settings. I mean, every gamer in the history of tabletop roleplaying games has gone into a tavern, right? This becomes a good way to get out of the same-old, same-old.
If you are a writer, consider having your main character experience a funeral pyre, unique wedding ceremony, or something like India’s Holi (Festival of Colors). In this case, you will still need to drive your plot forward, but it gives a setting that’s different than the norm. It throws chaos into the mixture and thereby introduces a nuanced level of conflict.
Some ways I have incorporated rituals into my writing:
- My debut series, The Caeteran Tales, places my main character into a society’s ceremony that involves indoctrination of new members of the society.
- In my upcoming series, my main character is derailed from doing what she desires by some elaborate funeral rites.
- For another of my writes in progress, there’s a ceremony for courtship that my main character is trying to avoid.
Rituals in popular fantasy
In more popular fantasy fiction, here are some works to consider:
- The Hunger Games revolves around a ritual “game” within the post-apocalyptical culture. The purpose of this game is to oppress the districts.
- George R.R. Martin’s series, A Song of Ice and Fire – When the ruler of the Iron Islands dies, the successor must drown and come back to life in order to ascend to leadership over the smaller part of culture within the world.
- Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart – courtesans must earn the marque of their house within the Court of the Night Blooming Flowers.
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – the sorting hat ceremony.
- In The Witcher series, the soiree where suitors ask for the hand of the princess.
There are many, many more. These are simply some of the ones that come to top of mind.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this introduction to my Rituals in Worldbuilding blog series. If you have ideas for future installments or wish to comment on something herein, drop down and leave me some words in the comments area.
Notes & References:
Brenner, Abigail. “10 Ways Rituals Help Us Celebrate Our Lives.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, August 26, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-flux/201508/10-ways-rituals-help-us-celebrate-our-lives.
Bone, Alison. “Why Rituals Are Still Relevant.” SBS. Alison Bone, June 27, 2016. https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2016/06/27/why-rituals-are-still-relevant.
Legare CH, Souza AL. Evaluating ritual efficacy: evidence from the supernatural. Cognition. 2012 Jul;124(1):1-15. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.03.004. Epub 2012 Apr 19. PMID: 22520061. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22520061/
Tambiah, S. J. (1979). A performative approach to ritual. Proceedings of the British Academy, 45, 113–169.
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