This empty slot in our representation of ritual in many cases
remains empty. This is very much what happens for many male initia-
tions. People say that it changed the boys into men. When asked how
this happened, they just say that it happened and that's that. The mar-
ried couple are now different from what they were before the wed-
ding. But we do not know why. It just happened.
Now an empty slot like that can also be filled by whatever repre-
sentation you have that could be connected in some relevant way to
the unexplained effect. This is why concepts of gods and spirits and
ancestors are often activated in such contexts. People then think that
[258] the people were changed by the wedding because the gods were wit-
nesses to their pledge. The apprentice turned into a shaman because
the ancestors effected some mysterious change in his body.
Obviously, such explanations do not literally explain much but they
certainly are relevant comments on the situation. Since the rituals pro-
duce effects without clear causes and the supernatural agents are not
clearly detectable, there is no great effort in putting the two together.
Also, this produces inferences about the results of rituals. For instance,
the intuition you have that there is some social danger in people's
extramarital affairs takes on a new flavor if you assume that this is
because the spirits are watching everyone's behavior. So we can better
understand what gods and spirits are doing in rituals, so to speak, once
we realize that they are addedto the mental representation of the cere-
monies. This way of seeing the situation is of course less inspiring
than the notion of a human urge to worship the divine, but it is more
faithful to what actually occurs in minds acquiring cultural knowledge.
WHAT GODS DO
(AND WHAT IS DONE TO THEM)This way of understanding religious ritual not only helps us under-
stand why gods are associated with rituals at all but also what precise
roles they are supposed to play in these occasions. As Thomas Law-
son and Robert McCauley point out, performing a ritual is not just a
matter of being in some vague relation to gods and spirits but also of
doing things to them (giving them objects, addressing statements to
them) or of getting them to do things (e.g., possessing people, provid-
ing rainfall or curing the sick). The supernatural agents' specific role
is very precisely described in people's mental representations of theirRELIGION EXPLAINED