21 CIPHERS

Rituals both unify and divide and are one way of structuring symbolic exchanges and can establish powerful social bonds. However, they also have the power to control. As Richard Sennett observes when ritual turns to spectacle something happens to communities and individuals. Spectacle turns community into hierarchy in which those at the bottom observe and serve, but do not participate as individuals.

The question of whom a ritual excludes becomes as significant as that of whom it includes. There is power in secrecy, the knowing and not knowing. If you take a dot and a dash and put them together in a certain order a cipher is made. When you crack the code, you have the principles of secrecy and a monopoly on the secrets held within.