Géraldine Mossière

This article discusses the contemporary figures of the ritual bricoleur (amateur ritual crafter) and the ritualist artist. Distanced from religious institutions, these practitioners are creative and innovative in the ritualization of daily life and the life cycle. Based on two bodies of data from ethnographic research conducted in Quebec, the authors analyze the initiatives of these self-taught ritualists in an ascending order of virtuosity, drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s categorization of creative modalities in the field of culture (ideotypes of the bricoleur and the artist). Ethnographic exploration of these emerging ritual practices highlights the dynamics of a post-institutional type of religious regime associated with the rise of holistic spiritualities and personal growth. These new and seemingly disparate ritual practices aim at the transformation of the subjects’ interiority while reorganizing their relationship to the other, to the sacred and to the world according to a holistic, experiential and voluntarist approachy.