The word ritual seems to allude to grand processions, the hoisting of flags and costumed movements with determined choreography. In a word, something theatrical. On the one hand, this is quite correct. Theatre has got all these elements. Just like life and its great theatrical moments. However, this is perhaps not essential. Modern theatre as an ancient form of ritual has only retained the fact that attention is focused on the performance where something that does not directly influence or change life takes place. Theatre itself currently primarily tackles everyone's local rituals, a de-ritualisation of everyday life. Theatre, in this sense, is art, and a conveyer of new experience. A novel outlook on life. When theatre ritualises life, it maintains eternal attitudes. It is a soporific and soothing theatre. Looking at ourselves in a theatrical mirror, we are able to understand how we are and why we are like we are.

As a five-year-old, I sat on the front stairs at my grandparents' house in the country and watched the trees. It was windy. The big birch trees were all bending in the strong wind. There were fields beyond, and a fir forest in the distance. The fir trees were still. To the right was an old manorial distillery, and the trees standing around it were also playing in the wind. This is what I thought then: where is the wind coming from? The trees must generate wind themselves. I examined the blades of grass at my feet. These did not move. I conducted a scientific experiment and stood under a big birch. I thought that if the tree was producing wind, it must be still under it. But it wasn't. The other trees must produce wind too was my conclusion. I tried to think with my own mind. The mind may produce weird questions. For example, where does the world fit? Milk fits in a glass, the glass fits in a room, the room fits in a house, the house in the yard, the yard in the horizon... but where does everything fit that is beyond that border, and where does the world fit? These questions are not going to vanish in the near future, because culture interferes. It explains the causes and results of things and phenomena, and how to deal with them. Culture, in turn, contains innumerable ritual activities. These are the agreed code-messages, to be carried out and exchanged with others. Otherwise childish questions might arise that annoy adults.

The entire society has been ritualised. All of it. Births, deaths, weddings, new undertakings, promotions, a contract with the bank, various meetings, parliamentary elections and the President. Even sackings. Cars, watch brands and smiles are all ritual items or gestures to carry out certain rites. Asocial people fulfil the aim of ritual with their existence, reminding us how we have progressed in life. A ritual means conducting deeds with certain magical contents. They must provide human activity with some kind of frame and order. Those who violate the order are also punished by society in a ritualised way. For example, by burning stigmata onto their images through the media. In a more classic form, the be-wigged judge reads out the verdict and the handcuffed culprit is taken to prison. Some of those who violate the order, and whose violation is not sufficiently graspable to the common mind, get another type of ritual treatment. They are, for instance, separated from the rest of society by awarding them medals or prizes.

ly lestberg "elysion" 2003

Ritualism is a serious matter. If someone dripped rooster's blood on a crucifix and broke wind at a nocturnal sabbath a few hundred years ago, he was burnt at the stake. Now you can earn money through such a ritual. When someone took down the Soviet flag and set fire to it behind the shed, he was thrown into prison. Now we can have a good laugh at this. Loitering in front of the U.S. embassy disguised as Osama can get you transported to Guantanamo.

Rituals are supposed to make something better, but what is better for one might be worse for another. In the course of a ritual, something changes. Man associates himself with other, mightier forces, acquires an experience, a perception, through which to enter a general order of the world.

At the moment I am not interested in the more festive side of rituals, song festivals, parades and St John's Day celebrations. These are public enough and in their essence a bit more devalued. More significant are perhaps everyday rituals and their concealed side. They contain life. What does this mean? It means that they function. They have a more far-reaching influence.

It seems to me that our Estonia as a whole is at the point of intersection between the mythological past and mythological future. The past myth convinces us that, despite history, we have survived and maintained our independence. The vision of future myth presupposes that we will maintain our independence also in the European Union, NATO, wherever. Our vocabulary of rituals up to now has been a peculiar mixture of the western, northern and eastern space. Our current desire is to understand primarily, and only, the ritualised language of the West. How to communicate with other countries, how to do business.

But we must not lose our INDEPENDENCE. INDEPENDENCE is in fact the main axis of our culture on which rests a network of complicated social and psychological rituals.

Absolute individualism. We need space around us. Ritual void. Even functioning in a group, each person requires a distance of at least two metres between himself and others. At a distance it is easier to decipher a person. Body language is legible, and you are not deceived. The need for a private void is also manifest in typical Estonian villages, where farms are separated by at least one kilometre. Live and let live.

We also wish to present ourselves as someone else, never as our true selves. The self must be hidden and protected. Excessive sincerity may be fatal. This need for protection may arise in self-defence, a hunter's need to fool his prey. Or perhaps the reason lies in the werewolf tradition - you creep into another creature's skin, contemplate the world furtively, see it through another's eyes and then turn it to your own favour. This has been transferred to the world of both business and politics.

Church has never been particularly important to Estonians, as it is in Catholic or Orthodox cultures. Hence we do not have over-ritualised attitudes towards the state, religion or culture. Congregational life is fragmentary, and, as in politics, there are many smaller and bigger parties, the ideological boundaries of which are quite vague. Arts are much revered, people go to the theatre quite often, but attitudes towards all that are still remarkably sceptical. Idols are not significant. Estonians want to make their own decisions, because the good creator may well make a mistake, but the master in his own house never will.

Relations with the countryside occasionally acquire the dimensions of a religious ritual. People love their land. There must be land. Time and effort is lavished on land, without any hope of getting anything in return. If anything, people desire an experience of bliss. After a year of hard work in town, they want to live the life of a true human being during their holidays in the country.

Estonian women have their own rituals in dressing and taking care of their appearance. When an Estonian woman leaves home she looks like a bride in her best regalia. Estonian men are not the only ones to rejoice in that.

An Estonian man works 12 hours a day. His worldview is right-wing in the morning, efficient and sensible. In the evenings he is leftist and brotherly.

Maybe these attitudes are about to vanish. Rituals of the new time emerge, worship of television and the media, conferences and various courses, with their festive air and tribute-paying ceremonies and offerings. Joint weekend visits to supermarkets and skiing abroad. The disappearance of individualism and the invasion of collectivism. All in order to feel part of the bigger world, understand its operating mechanisms and finally to establish at least some sort of power over reality that today, just as in the days of cavemen, tends to be inexplicable to the rational mind.

Hendrik Toompere (1965), theatre director and actor, focused on alternative texts and theatre language.