Ritual Thwartedness

My first semester back in school is winding down to a close, and though I look forward to the winter break I find myself slightly disappointed that I will no longer be in Myth, Symbol, Ritual class, which has been immensely informative and is really reshaping, or reaffirming, the direction of my life.

For my last research paper I decided to look at the Ghost Dance among the Lakota Sioux, which in the first steps of tentative research fascinated me as an example of a ritual response to oppression, as the Sioux at the time of Ghost Dance, in 1890, were terribly distraught over vanishing food supplies, the encroachment and lies of the American Government, and the prohibitions against their performance of their traditional ritual Sun Dance. However, in looking closer at the subject, what began to emerge was this picture in which the Ghost Dance, as practiced by the Lakota Sioux, failed to work. Instead of reviving the earth and promoting peace, as the prophet Wovoka had urged people it would, or bringing about a millennial destruction of the white oppressors, the Ghost Dance only led the Sioux into the bloody massacre at Wounded Knee. This led me to ask, just what in the way that the Sioux had taken up the Ghost Dance was the cause of this ritual failure? How did it draw on their own religious traditions, how did it distort the original, peaceful message of its messiah? Most peculiarly, just where did the doctrine of Ghost Shirts come from, the special articles of clothing worn only by the Lakota Ghost Dancers that they believed would protect them from bullets, and by playing into their warlike nature may have led them into a more active resistance against the US military?

The idea of ritual failure is not one discussed by many theorists on ritual, despite the fact that it is experienced with almost as much frequency as ritual success by participants. While researching the Soma sacrifice in the Vedic rituals earlier in the semester, I came upon one theorist who had suggested that rituals of sacrifice had at one point contained an element of death or danger as their driving force. But by the time many of these practices had become codified in the Brāhmaṇas the only thing the priests had to fear was that they might perform the rituals wrong. For some reason this idea fascinated me, and I began to pay more attention to examples in my own life where a given set of actions didn't go according to plan, and the resulting cognitive dissonance that results. For instance, I ordered a book online last week, and yesterday received the wrong item in the mail. Not that this is a big deal, but it created an extra amount of effort on my part to rectify the problem. Mainly though it seemed a breach of conduct, a situation where something was supposed to happen one way, but then happened some way else, and instead of the smooth system of transaction I'd always experienced before with online shopping I was faced with a moment when the whole system was cast into confusion. How much more disastrous would this feel when the rituals that go wrong are not just something so trivial, but are relied upon to ensure the functioning of your whole reality, the continuation of life as you know it?

I suppose the real source of my fascination with ritual failure comes from an existential situation I call "thwartedness." Last year while trying to organize all the symbols and themes that occur in my dreams, I kept finding situations in which something was supposed to happen but couldn't. The desire to go somewhere but you end up somewhere else, walking down the street but suddenly realizing that you are not wearing any clothes. I was struck by the way in which these dream failures could show something very explicit about just what isn't working in my life (though thankfully this thwartedness has lessened with the years). And after asking around I determined that this was a situation many people found themselves in during their dreams, if not in their waking lives as well. But why would we subconsciously want to thwart ourselves? What is it in that peculiar brew of human desire and fear that continually throws up barriers, self-sabotage? The Lakota adopted a doctrine that they believed would make them invulnerable, but did not test it due to unshakeable belief in the power of the Ghost Shirts. When doctors told one women that they would have to remove her Ghost Shirt to treat her wounds, she told them to go ahead, she didn't want it or believe in it anymore, since it failed to keep her safe.