Teahouse Media | Promoting Peaceful Resolution of Conflict

Another theory equally important for Tea is René Girard’s understanding of ritual as a means to create order over the lurking dangers of violence and chaos. This would trace the birth of ritual to a reaction to something dangerous and negative, that is, ritual assumes the role of avoiding violence by creating an order in which humans can live peacefully, an order that would subject violence to ritual controls and limits. Were it not for ritual’s regulative effect, potentially disruptive and chaotic behavior might otherwise get the upper hand in society. (from Violence and the Sacred, 1977.) Girard’s theory is relevant to the Tea we know to have developed in the disruptive Warring States period in order to avoid violence and to create consensus.

From "An Anthropological Perspective on the Japanese Tea Ceremony" by Herbert Plutschow.