ABSTRACT
In 1993 Robert Ritner published his foundational work, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. In this study, Ritner focused on magic as action—encircling, spitting, and the like. However, all study of ritual benefits from action-based analysis of ‘mechanics’. In fact, one of the only things which ritual theorists tend to agree on is that ritual requires the precise repetition of actions, such as bodily movements, gestures, and manipulations of objects, in addition to sounds and utterances. Structuralists, like Staal, view ritual as primarily or even exclusively structured action:
Ritual, then, is primarily activity. It is an activity governed by explicit rules. The important thing is what you do, not what you think, believe or say
(Staal 1989:116)