ABSTRACT
The early Christian apologist Lactantius identifies a failed ritual of divination as the spark that set off the Great Persecution of the early church that ended with Constantine's Edict of Toleration in 313 ce. This chapter draws upon the field of ritual studies, especially Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice and Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Ritual practices are situational, that is, they are rooted in real cultural and historical circumstances, and cannot be grasped apart from their specific contexts. Bell sees ritualization primarily as a strategy for the construction of power relationships. Greco–Roman authors regarded divination as a transcultural phenomenon handed down from time immemorial. Alternate states of consciousness (ASC) always occur within the context of specific belief systems that fill them with culturally significant and expected scenarios, and provide the key to understanding and interpreting them. ASC techniques for accessing knowledge from god(s) were truly trans-cultural.
