Ritual definitions

Stereotypic displays through which members of a very large number of species communicate with their conspecifics.

Performance is part of the message; more precisely, it is a metamessge about whatever is encoded in the ritual.

The sequences of formal acts and utterances constituting ritual are not absolutely invariant but only more or less so.

The invariant aspects of ritual are the changeless messages signified by the order of the ritual's canon - enduring aspects of social or cosmological order.
Variant aspects are concerned with the immediate states of the performers, expressing, among other things, the current relationship of the performers to the invariant order that the canon encodes.

That which is signified by the invariant canon may not be confined to the present - and in the case of transcendent deities, may not exist in the space-time continuum - thus, their signification requires the use of symbols.

Words are the quintessential symbols.

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The use of the body indicates that the subordinated self is neither a fabrication of insubstantial words nor some insubstantial essence or soul that cannot be located in time and space. It is his or her visible present living substance that the performer demonstrates by participating.

Reliance upon both word and act in ritual has further significance. By drawing themselves into the formal postures to which canonical words give symbolic value, the performers give bodily form to the symbols they represent. They give substance to symbols as the symbols give them form.