3. Menstrual Slaps and First Blood Celebrations: Inference, Simulation and the Learning of Ritual

Abstract

Much of what follows is a first attempt to conceptualize Neopagan and New Age ceremonial in relation to ritual activity of a more classical variety. Present-day ritual crafting is approached as a means to test and reconsider certain ideas regarding the nature of ritual action in general. Relying on data drawn largely from the Internet, I base my analysis on a contrast between episodes that mark a young womanís first menstruation in two different modern Western traditions: ritualized face-slapping and contemporary menarche rites. In both cases, participants rely on inferential interpretation and on empathic simulation in order to make sense of these exceptional events. They do so, however, in quite different ways. Taking this divergence into account prompts speculation regarding the principles governing the organisation and transmission of ritual behaviour. Inference and simulation The arguments presented here proceed from the idea that it is useful to envisage ritual behaviour as enacting special patterns of relationship, at once between participants and, in an embedded fashion, with other human and non-human entities: spirits, ancestors, objects, liturgical pronouncements, places and so forth (Houseman and Severi 1998; Houseman 2000,

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