The Origins of Myth and Ritual

René Girard. Violence and the Sacred.

Parts of this were silly, but he made some good points-- here's what his main ideas are:

(92) I contend that the objective of ritual is the proper reenactment of the surrogate-victim mechanism; that is, to keep violence outside the community. and

(94) When relationships between men are troubled, when men cease to cooperate among themselves and to come to terms with one another, there is no human enterprise that does not suffer... Therefore, the benefits attributed to the generative violence extend beyond mankind to nature itself. The act of collective murder is seen as the source of all abundance; the principle of procreation is attributed to it, and all those plants that are useful to man; everything beneficial and nutritive is said to take root in the body of the primordial victim.

The 'pharmakos' (or victim) then embodies the symbolic role of the original victim-- by reenacting this violence, in a 'controlled' manner, tribute is paid but also violence in the community is kept in check. The pharmakos is a stand-in-- for the community itself, as an entity. ...'But the ritualistic mentality does not understand why they have accrued; the only explanations it can offer are mythic. However, this same mentality has a good notion of how these benefits are obtained, and it tries unceasingly to repeat the fruitful process.' (98)

(102) ... the rite is performed during periods of relative calm, as a preventative measure-- 'if it did not limit itself to appropriate sacrificial victims but instead, like the original act of violence, vented its force on a participating member of the community-- then it would lose all effectiveness, for it would bring to pass the very thing it was supposed to prevent: a relapse into the sacrificial crisis.'

Sometimes monarchs-to-be are required to take on the role of the 'pharmakos'... this is both to show their prowess (no evil is beneath them, they are privy to all things, rawr) and to turn something bad into something good... what sacrifice does, essentially.

(115) Given the fundamental importance to mankind of the transformation of bad violence into good and the equally fundamental inability of men to solve the mystery of this transformation, it is not surprising that men are doomed to ritual; nor is it surprising that the resulting rites assume forms that are both highly analogous and highly diverse.'

Girard also talks at G-R-E-A-T -L-E-N-G-T-H-S about incest as part of ritual, which I'll skip over here... and use Thanksgiving as an example. Aaron and I were taking a Buffy break during dinner this afternoon, and we watched the episode where it's Thanksgiving... um, Season 4 somewhere. Thanksgiving is the important part-- Anya says something about how she loves a good ritual sacrifice, everyone protests, and she says: 'You kill an animal and eat it. Ritual sacrifice.'

This got me thinking, and I explained to Aaron: the turkey, in this scenario, is the pharmakos, an innocent victim that we kill and eat not to celebrate, but to commemorate-- or duplicate-- the violence enacted upon Native Americans. The violence that our ancestors committed-- but we can't really face up to, so we have this ritual celebration where we give thanks then kill the runner-up-nt'l-bird and eat it. Perhaps we feel shame over what we've done, guilt, angst, hate, whatever-- it's kept in check with a good yearly ritual.

Become enlightened; go veggie.