And does this sort of example from the ancient world or late antiquity where these rituals are imbued with beings, is that necessary? Can we take the action without the fundamental belief?

Well, that's an interesting question and gets you back to all these formation questions because, you know, there was a great debate over myth and ritual back in the day, which is what comes first.

Is it the belief in the beings and the myths that lead to the ritual? Or do we have the ritual and that in turn leads to the belief? making sense of the rituals because the rituals kind of arise in their own.

I'm actually much more the second camp in terms of thinking through kind of how ritual survives.

I think there are certain rituals that we find compelling for all kinds of reasons that are not totally explicable and that we can't even totally explain to ourselves simply it roots us back to tradition.

Sometimes it creates community, it creates a routine.

there is um you know kind of a great debate among jewish theologians on exactly this question of can you be a good jew without believing in god and just doing other commandments Just do the commandments and belief because belief is something you actually cannot command because we are not the kind of creature that can just believe and that we have all kinds of weird thoughts at weird times that are questioning our own convictions, intellectual convictions, and you can't always control them.

So what do you think modern people, either religious or secular, can learn from the way ancient people related to this unseen world?