Research field 01 · Ritual Space

Thresholds and secular ritual forms

Ritual is first of all a form: beginning, intensification, transition, return. I am interested in how this form can be shaped without a shared belief.

Central research question

Which means mark a transition when no religious framing carries it?

Secular here does not mean “ritual-poor” or “arbitrary”. It means a situation in which framing, authority, meaning, risk and return are not given in advance by a stable religious order. Precisely for that reason they have to be shaped deliberately.

Core thesis

A secular ritual space emerges where everyday life is interrupted in operational terms. A threshold is a concrete arrangement of space, time, body, rule, attention, sound, light, group and return.

The task is to understand historical or religious procedures: how is a beginning marked? How is attention gathered? How does intensification arise? Who holds the frame? How does the process end so that participants find their way back into everyday life, language and relationship?

This page therefore sets the basic architecture of the whole area. All other fields — music, body, group, sensory perception, states of consciousness, figures and failure — describe means or risks within this threshold sequence.

A working model

Classical ritual studies work with separation, threshold and reintegration. From this a simple model can be formed for the website, one that is also usable artistically.

Everyday lifeInitial state, social roles, language, expectations and ordinary time.
ThresholdMarking: entry, circle, silence, change of light, rule, sound, a different posture.
IntensificationRhythm, repetition, body, group, sensory perception, affect and altered attention.
Bringing backSlowing down, language, witnessing, integration, everyday life and responsibility.
The fragile point is often the ending. A space can begin strongly and still fail if it offers no return.

Architecture and natural sites of ritual

Ritual spaces often begin at chosen natural sites: caves, springs, rivers, mountains, gorges or clearings. Such places already bring their own qualities — darkness, echo, narrowness, expanse, height, water, wind, temperature. In many cultures these qualities are later translated into built forms: temples, mithraea, kivas, cathedrals, mosques, stupas, theatres or contemporary installations.

The architectural expressions are manifold: entrance, axis, circle, course, descent, ascent, enclosure, resonance, the directing of the gaze, verticality, spherical form or an oculus through which light falls into a space. Research on cave acoustics shows, as one example, that sound, image and gathering place can already be thought together in early ritual contexts.

Etruscan burial chambers and pictorial spaces extend this question to death, memory and threshold architecture. Since the written record for many ritual practices is sparse, it is above all space, wall painting, tomb form and material arrangement that become sources here.

Eleusis, mithraea, caves, kivas, cathedrals, Borobudur, Bomarzo or installation spaces remain historically distinct. What is comparable are procedures: you enter, wait, descend, are guided, see less, hear differently, move differently, come back out. For research, ritual space thus becomes legible as a spatial dramaturgy.

Secular means: producing the frame

In traditional rituals, the frame is often carried by liturgy, authority, community and repeated practice. In secular forms this frame has to be produced specifically: why does this process begin? Who holds it? What may happen? How is intensity dosed? What happens with overwhelm? When is it over?

These questions connect the threshold page directly with the page on the figures of the ritual space. A setting without a person is unstable. Thresholds need people or roles that open, hold, limit and close.

Who opens?
  • Ritual leader, facilitator, space holder, artistic direction
  • Voice, light, sound or rule as threshold marker
  • Group as social confirmation of the beginning
Who closes?
  • Integration figure, awareness role, re-entry role
  • Slowing down, language, reflection and reintegration into everyday life
  • A clear boundary between experience and after-effect

Sources

Own research
  • Arystan Petzold, research manuscripts 2026: theoretical groundwork, architecture, threshold and figures. Basis for threshold, space of enactment, bringing-back and the question of roles.
  • Working and research material Reconnection 2024–2026. Practical anchor for secular framing, sound dramaturgy and bringing-back.
  • Collection of material on Umbria, Etruscan burial and pictorial spaces, the Villa dei Misteri and the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo. Working context for historical threshold spaces, image programmes, death, initiation and spatial dramaturgy.
Key research literature
  • Arnold van Gennep: Les rites de passage (1909). Foundational model of separation, threshold and reintegration.
  • Victor Turner: The Ritual Process (1969). Liminality, communitas and transformation in the threshold state.
  • Catherine Bell: Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992). Ritualisation as the strategic marking of actions.
  • Erika Fischer-Lichte: Ästhetik des Performativen (2004). Co-presence, feedback loop and performative space.
  • Ronald Grimes: Ritual Criticism (1990) and The Craft of Ritual Studies (2014). Important for the question of when rituals go wrong or are framed incorrectly.

Open research status

The least understood phase is the return. What happens after the intensification? How can one tell whether integration succeeds, or whether a space only brings people into intensity and then releases them abruptly?

For secular formats this is the central test: whether a threshold is opened and closed again responsibly.

← Back to “Ritual Space”