such a mystery once we understand how human minds understand
(and often misunderstand) the web of social relations around them.
Third, perhaps most important for our purposes, notions of super-
natural agents are included in many rituals; the wedding ritual takes
God or the ancestors as witnesses, the sacrifice is directed at the spir-
its. This supernatural participation problem is better understood if we
realize that the participation in question is really optional, as witness
the number of rituals without any gods or spirits. In other words you
can understand what gods are doing in ritual, so to speak, once you
realize that they are an add-on to a human activity that does not really
[236] require them. As we will see, belief in gods and spirits does not really
entail that you have rituals, but since people have them for other rea-
sons, gods and spirits are much more convincing once they are some-
how included in these salient activities.
On all three counts, I think it is possible to highlight the reasons
why ceremonies are salient to human minds. Not all rituals have these
three properties, but the ones that do are optimally relevant and suc-
cessfully transmitted. This may help us understand why religious con-
cepts are usuallyaccompanied by at least someritual.
THE INTUITIVE SENSE OF URGENCY
People acquire ritual prescriptions by observing what others are
doing and by being told that certain ritual recipes are appropriate in
certain contexts. The requirements of ritual come in the form of spe-
cific rules, for instance, "If you want to give a goat to Chandli, the
Brahman must first bless the sword"; "If you want the spirit's protec-
tion, circulate the relics counterclockwise (otherwise you will die)."
So we might think that ritual rules are just another example of social
conventions. We know that humans are extremely good at acquiring a
vast amount of seemingly arbitrary social rules. But if ritual prescrip-
tions were mere conventions, like wearing a suit at a job interview, it
would be difficult to understand the feeling of urgency that accompa-
nies them. A Brahman who killed the goat himself would be polluted;
offering a goat without first consecrating the sword would be insult-
ing the goddess; mishandling the relics could kill. So ritual prescrip-
tions are examples of what psychologists call precautionary rules, they
are presented as what you must do in order to avert a danger.^9RELIGION EXPLAINED