4/21-Physicality within the Magic Circle

The writings of Gill and Laird serve as acute examples of the emotional and cognitive impact of ritual within a religious or social environment. When incorporated with the writings of Penny, there are similarities between the physicality of a ritual and the performance within a virtual space.

It is helpful to begin in charting how these separate authors approach examining the real world and its interaction with ritual space. It is striking how Penny and Laird’s draw similar lines when delineating the separate approaches to looking at ritual. Penny is speaking of course of examining “digital social practice” within a virtual environment. He describes the machine-centric and user-centric outlook. The machine centric aspect focuses on the autonomous aspects of how responses can be mechanically derived, while the user centric approach focuses on the behavior and experience of the user. Laird draws a similar line when approaching ritual therapy within a family setting. The first approach is machine-centric, with the therapist working to “prescribe a ritual to be enacted by an individual or family members without necessarily calling upon their interpretations, meanings, or cognitive understandings of their own ritual life”. This approach is not interested in the user’s behavior or experience. The next approach echoes Penny’s user centric outlook, as it is concerned with “exploring and interpreting [ones] ritual life”(Reader in Ritual Studies, 363).

Having drawn these similarities in analytic approach, one is now able to examine the joint impact of a ritual climate within a virtual environment, and how physical inaction within this space ha a profound impact on the effectiveness of realism within the space. Gill describes disillusionment as playing a significant role within many male adolescent initiation rituals. Many of the boy’s fears and beliefs are played upon and revealed as an illusion to them. This enhances their awareness of the real world application of their religion, and the importance of their role within the religious community. The must swear not to unveil the secrets of their rituals to the uninitiated, and must themselves then carry on and conduct the often violent and frightful ritual. Boys go from a state of reverence and fear of the unknown to a responsibility for upholding what the traditions of what they now know to be false, as within the Hopi religion. This relationship between the real world and the magic circle of a ritual space is discussed in Penny’s work on the physicality of a virtual space, observing the “degree of literalness of simulation depends substantially upon the precision with which bodily behaviors germane to the task in the real world can be accommodated and measured in a simulator environment”(First Person, 78). Both of these example place great importance on the accurate physical representation of the ‘real’ within the virtual or ritual ‘unreal’ environment.