The Value of Ceremony

I was reading Stephen Lawheads Arthur this afternoon. As I came to a particular pivotal section, the point at which Arthur obtains the legendary sword Caliburnus (Malorys Excalibur), the aspect that captured me most wasn't the gaining of the sword (I knew enough King Arthur stories to see that coming a long way off) but the manner in which it was received. The Sword of Britain, which Arthur had drawn out of a stone, was broken in combat. This was discouraging at the very least; a disastrous omen at the outside. Morale (Arthurs and that of his men) began to slump. But Merlin knew of another weapon that he had long foreseen would be taken up by the saviour of Britain. He knew where this sword was, and who kept it - it would not have been difficult for him to fetch it and present it to the young war leader. What he did instead caught my attention. He rode with Arthur to a secluded place nearby where the sword was kept, then told him to hold vigil all night and prepare his soul for the receiving of the sword. In the morning, Merlin brought him to a small boat tied at the edge of a lake and instructed Arthur to pole his way across to an island in the midst of the water - there he would be given the sword. All of this was, pragmatically speaking, patently unnecessary. It's just a sword remarked one character. Not to Arthur replied Merlin. No, it was much more - it was a powerful symbol, and the ceremony with which it was obtained reinforced this. We are losing (have, to a large extent, already lost) meaningful symbols and ceremonies in our society today. I'm well aware that in the past they've been blown out of all proportion and revered in fear and ignorance, but that doesn't mean we should throw them all out. Humans seem to be chronic reactionaries: when they finally realise that they have made an error, they purge every idea within ten leagues of the original mistake. Through this we've lost a valuable dimension in our lives - the physical representation of unseen truths. We live in bodies and often need to experience principles through our senses, rather than by purely cerebral methods. There's nothing wrong or "unspiritual" (in the pejorative sense) about this; any idea that the body is somehow unworthy of absorbing profound concepts is rooted primarily in Gnosticism - shaky ground for secular and theistic philosophers alike. Ceremony has ruled the western world with an iron grip in the past, and is now being aggressively marginalized. Both occurrences are tragedies. We must hang on to this art because if it leaves this earth forever, part of us will die.