ABSTRACT
The relationship between reenactment and ritual is often associated with the restagings and reappropriations of narratives from a mythological past and is common in many religious ceremonies. The new approach defined rituals by their function, whether it be to establish social solidarity, to cope with individual or collective crises, to bring success on the hunt, or to structure the life cycle or the seasonal cycle. The field of ritual studies distinguishes between reenactment as an analytical concept or scholarly method, and historical reenactment as a social phenomenon. The type of meaning varies from case to case: historical meaning is produced when a battle is reenacted in a living history museum, while spiritual meaning can be produced through religious reenactments like the Eucharist. The line between historical reenactment and religious ceremony becomes even more blurred in the appropriation of trance or possession rituals.
