Rituals and Religious Innovation. The Meaning of Rituals in Shan the Rising Light

Authors

• Mikael Rothstein

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67217

Keywords:

Ritual, Rites and ceremonies, Religious movements, Popular, Scandinavia, Theosophy, Freemasonry, Liberal Catholic Church, Syncretism

Abstract

This paper presents an example of how rituals may play an important role in the birth of a new religion, and how this religious innovation can be interpreted through the  rituals. This example concerns a religious group — Shan the Rising Light — that has managed to introduce a comprehensive body of rituals into a belief system otherwise characteristed by its general lack of rituals and ceremonies (namely the theosophy of Madame Blavatsky), thereby setting the standards for a virtually new religion. Jeanne Morashti was excommunicated from the organization she felt obliged to save, and started her own religious group. During her religious career, she had encountered numerous groups within the broader limits of the theosophical milieu, and when establishing her own group, she formed a synthesis of the various elements. The old process of syncretism and eclecticism, in the case of Shan the Rising Light, have managed to include the rituals too. The systematized mixing of strongly ritualized traditions with a non-ritualized belief system has led to a religious innovation.