Ritual magic: Encyclopedia - Ritual magic

Ritual magic

Ritual magic is the performance of a ritual for magical purposes.

Practically all magical traditions include ritual magic. It may be highly complex and include nearly all of the magical system such as in hermetic or salomonic magic, or be merely a more extensive form of intuitive and informal magical practices as in shamanism or chaos magic.

As opposed to religious and social rituals, magical ones are not necessarily repeated in the same or a similar way on certain occasions. However, there always are elements and symbols that appear throughout a single tradition and just like other rituals, ritual magic usually uses a special ritual space. General forms of ritual such as the rite of passage or the rhythmization of daily life are usually incorporated into a magical context by magic practitioners.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ritual magic", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki