Rituals Are for Rebels: Why You Need to Make Every Day Sacred or Shut the Fuck Up
By Michael Kelman Portney
The spiritual discipline of not becoming an algorithmic husk
I. You’re Already in a Cult — It Just Sucks
Let’s stop pretending rituals are optional. You already have them. You just don’t own them.
Waking up, doomscrolling, necking caffeine like it’s medicine, staring at a screen, bathing in blue light until your soul shrinks to the size of a Slack emoji — that’s a ritual. One engineered by people who think your inner life is a monetizable inefficiency.
These rituals aren’t accidental. They’re the default programming of a culture designed to turn living organisms into economic functions. And if you don’t actively choose your own rituals, you’re not just complicit — you’re outsourced. You’ve let some intern at TikTok design the operating system of your soul.
Ritual is not superstition. Ritual is sovereignty. If you don’t ritualize your time, your attention, your space, your energy — someone else will. And they won’t ask nicely.
II. Ritual Is What Separates Us from Apps
Most people mistake routine for ritual. That’s like mistaking a microwave for a campfire. Routines are unconscious. They’re done because they’re efficient. Rituals are conscious. They’re done because they’re sacred.
When you fold your clothes like a monk instead of a Target employee, that’s a ritual. When you cook dinner like it’s alchemy, not logistics, that’s a ritual. When you speak a word aloud and feel its weight rather than rushing to the next one — you’ve entered the realm of ritual.
Ritual is repetition infused with meaning. It’s the opposite of automation. It’s what makes us human in a world that’s doing everything it can to sandblast that status away.
III. The Machine Hates the Sacred
You want to know why ritual matters right now? Because the entire cultural, technological, and economic machine is allergic to it. Ritual slows things down. Ritual can’t be monetized. Ritual doesn’t scale. Ritual is inefficient by design.
When you light a candle to honor your ancestors or your dead cat or your future self, there’s no click-through rate. When you write a line of poetry into your coffee foam or speak an intention into the void, there’s no data to harvest. Ritual resists the metrics of empire.
That’s why it’s dangerous. That’s why you need it.
IV. The History of Every Revolution Is a History of Ritual
Before the pamphlets, before the weapons, before the hashtags — there were rituals.
Civil rights marches had hymns and prayer circles.
Punk shows had mosh pits and mic grabs.
Indigenous resistance has always been ceremonial, from pipe to drum to flame.
Even Occupy, anarchic as it was, had the people’s mic — a sacred call and response.
Ritual is the technology of identity. It builds trust through repetition. It binds through shared meaning. It says: you’re not just showing up — you belong here.
And before you dismiss that as hippie shit, remember: every military ceremony is ritual. Every court procedure. Every swearing-in. Every inauguration. The powerful know what they’re doing. They use ritual to make their hierarchy seem inevitable. Your job is to hijack that power and redirect it.
V. Design Your Rituals Like You’re Building a Cult
Here’s where we get practical. If ritual is so important, how do you do it? How do you build a ritual that doesn’t feel like a corny Pinterest checklist or a self-help seminar for broken tech bros?
Simple. You think like a cult leader. A benevolent one, if you want, but a cult leader nonetheless.
1. Anchor It in Time
Time is the first battlefield. If your rituals don’t show up at the same time daily (or at least rhythmically), they’ll dissolve. Set alarms if you have to. Call it prayer. Call it plotting. Call it whatever you want. But own time, or be owned.
2. Sensory Cues Are Key
Rituals must have texture. Incense. Candles. Drum hits. Cold water. Vinyl crackle. The brain encodes meaning through sensation. Don’t just think your ritual — feel it.
3. Symbols Matter
Every ritual needs a talisman. Could be a pen. Could be a specific jacket. Could be a song. But your subconscious speaks in symbols. Give it something to grab onto. And guard that symbol like a weapon.
4. Consecrate the Mundane
Take something stupid and make it holy. Maybe brushing your teeth is your reminder to speak only what you mean. Maybe your joint is lit only when you finish a paragraph. Maybe your Friday beer is poured for the ghosts of past selves you refuse to become again.
5. Invite the Gods or the Ghosts
You don’t need to believe in literal deities to ritualize your practice. Call on your ancestors. Your future self. The voice in your head that knows better. Make it theatrical. Make it real.
VI. Ritual Is a Portal to Presence
You ever notice how fast the day disappears? You look up, and the sun’s gone. Your attention’s been sold. You’ve checked every box but felt nothing.
Ritual interrupts that. It forces presence. It says: stop scrolling. Stop reacting. Stop vanishing.
Whether it’s five minutes of silence, or slamming a drum, or holding your kid’s hand while you breathe — ritual pulls you back to the now. And the now is where everything real happens.
VII. Without Ritual, There’s No Transformation
You don’t become new by making a to-do list. You become new by marking the moment.
The haircut that isn’t just a haircut, but a shedding of skin.
The tattoo that binds a promise.
The fire that swallows the old contract.
The walk into the sea that says “I’m not coming back the same.”
Without ritual, change is just logistics. With ritual, it’s alchemy.
If you want to stop repeating old cycles, build new rituals. You don’t heal because time passes. You heal because you honor the passage.
VIII. Kill the Algorithm Before It Kills You
Let’s be blunt: your mind is being mined.
Every scroll trains you. Every notification reprograms you. Every dopamine loop widens the trench in your neural path until you can’t climb out.
Ritual is the rope.
You’re not going to out-discipline the machine with logic. You need myth. You need motion. You need meaning. Ritual hacks the nervous system in ways a productivity app never will.
It’s not a life hack. It’s a soul defense.
IX. Make Rituals That Fuck With the System
Your rituals should disturb the algorithmic gods.
Turn your phone off during sunset. That’s a heresy.
Spend ten minutes staring at the moon. That’s treason.
Gather your friends and say weird shit with intention. That’s sedition.
When they say “it’s just a habit,” you say: It’s my goddamn temple.
When they say “what’s the point?” you say: The point is to remember I have one.
When they say “there’s no time,” you say: That’s exactly why I make it.
X. The Sacred Is Not Safe — It’s Necessary
Let me be clear. I’m not advocating rituals because they’re comforting. I’m advocating rituals because they’re dangerous. Because they put you back in contact with the part of you the system can’t predict. The part that creates. The part that destroys. The part that refuses to go numb.
Ritual doesn’t make life easier. It makes it realer.
And if you’re not ready for that, fine. Keep watching YouTube videos about routines while your soul ferments. But if you’re ready to own yourself, start with ritual.
XI. Start Here, Start Now
You don’t need incense and chanting to begin. You need three things:
A time (wake up, lunch, sunset, midnight — pick one)
A gesture (stand, sit, write, walk, punch the air)
A meaning (honor, release, prepare, destroy)
Tie them together. Do it again. Then again. Let it evolve. Let it deepen. Let it scare you.
You’re not doing this for Instagram. You’re not doing it for enlightenment. You’re doing it to remember who the fuck you are before the machine convinces you otherwise.
XII. Ritual Is the Ultimate Punk Move
The world wants you reactive. It wants you rational, efficient, disembodied. Ritual spits in that face.
Ritual is useless. Beautifully, gloriously useless. And that’s why it’s powerful. Because in a world obsessed with utility, the sacred becomes subversive.
So light a candle. Sharpen a knife. Burn a list. Breathe like it’s your last breath. Sing something no one else knows. Turn your morning into a mass. Make your journaling a courtroom. Make your coffee a spell.
Do it daily. Do it defiantly. Do it until the ghosts of yourself show up just to say thank you.
Final Word
If you’re serious about change, don’t wait for inspiration. Don’t wait for therapy. Don’t wait for the system to break down and hand you freedom.
Make your own damn ritual. Make it now.
Because if you don’t declare something sacred, the world will convince you that nothing is.
Let me know if you want to add sidebars, footnotes, or a “Ritual Starter Kit” download PDF at the end. You could also break this into a series if you want to build a newsletter funnel off it.
