He found the ritual contests across the debating floor alien and unnatural.
In decorating ceremonial objects, artists began to depict the ceremonies themselves, such as ancestral offerings in temple settings, as well as ritual archery contests (important in the recruitment and promotion of officials), agriculture and sericulture, hunting, and the waging of war all activities vital to a well-ordered state.
Performance contexts include shamanic rituals, storytelling, song contests, traditional games, and sacred dances performed at events such as the Bladder Festival or the Messenger Feast.
Military novels that stint on the shells a-bursting and the guns a-rat-a-tatting tend to be positively prickly with black humor, filled with the kind of jocular cutting-contest rituals that occur between salvos in the field.
Each contest was a ritual, with an outcome that satisfied the urge to have a victor and a loser.
The meetings, which consisted of 40-minute presentations followed by 20 minutes of questions by company executives, are part of a ritual known as a beauty contest.
Once cornered, It can't be defeated with physical force alone; It must be confronted through the "ritual of chüd," an obscure contest of spiritual and imaginative stamina.
Many metalcore kids think that shows are a popularity contest, or a ritual to attract mates, and take it very very seriously.
If ball games were contests rather than noncompetitive ritual performances, such as the Japanese football game kemari, then they were sports in the most rigorously defined sense.
After each contest there will be rituals of celebration and atonement by the winners and losers, respectively.
