“I would suggest that, among other things, ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment where the variables (i.e., the accidents) of ordinary life may be displaced precisely because they are felt to be so overwhelmingly present and powerful.
Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled course of things.”
– Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Bare Facts of Ritual”