ABSTRACT
Social life in general and political life in particular require ceremonies and rites, those quasi-dramatic enactments that express and define people's relationships and also make possible their transformation as part of the social dynamic. The business of religions and their rituals, then, is to effect transformations, not only of persons' individual subjectivities but also transformations of society and the natural world. In a religious perspective, the personal, societal, and physical realms are not isolated from each other but participate together in a single field of divine power. Agents of transformation, rituals are themselves transformed by the histories to which they belong. It is important to remember that the morality of magic is determined by its practitioners. Since the rites of religion are techniques of transformation, Van Gerinep realized, when people divorce religion from magic they end up with metaphysics on the one hand, empirical science on the other, and religion gone.
