As crystallized repetitions, rituals significantly shape our everyday lives and our coexistence. Both in terms of society and the individual, the contributors to this volume incisively analyze their positive and negative aspects. While rituals offer protection and security, they also impose constraints. It is no coincidence that rituals have long been seen as the epitome of the conservative, rigid, and formal. A completely ritualized world would undoubtedly be an unfree world. In an age of deregulation, hyperactivity, and attention deficits, their stabilizing and structuring aspects are being rediscovered. Do rituals mutate into nests of resistance against general transience? Can they serve as focal points for pausing and as pathways for unwavering thinking, gaining a new critical potential? The contributions gathered here present these questions.