Everyday magic From Rafael Nadal's ball-bouncing to wedding and funeral traditions, does ritualistic behaviour serve any purpose?

The adjective "ritual", from Latin via French, means related to religious rites. As soon as it appeared, however, the word "ritual" could be used in a derogatory fashion to denote things empty of authentic spiritual content.

- Steven Poole

In his Ecclesiastical History (1570), for example, the martyrologist John Foxe complained about two epistles erroneously (so he argued) attributed to the third-century pope Zephyrinus: they contained "no manner of doctrine" but only "certain ritual decrees to no purpose". Today one may disparagingly speak of some writers' "ritual genuflection" to fashionable norms, to accuse them of a kind of moral and intellectual cosplay.