We have been led out of mundane time and into the extraordinary time of ritual intervals. I have referred to the durations encompassed by rituals themselves as “times out of time,” “sacred time,” and extraordinary time,” and other writers have used similarly mysterious language. We will now consider how times out of time really are out of mundane time. This will lead to a consideration of eternity and to a discussion of the relationship of tempo to the state of mind and society that Turner (1969) called “communitas” and to the simultaneous grasp and synthesis of the multiple significata of ritual representations (like Turner's mudyi tree (1961; passim), into more comprehensive meanings.

Time out of time

In making sense out of such obscure phrases as “Time out of time” we may heed an observation made but not developed in chapter 3. In distinguishing two temporal conditions from each other, ordinary periodic time and extraordinary intervalic time, liturgical orders operate in a manner which bears formal resemblance to the operation of digital computers. To quote from the introduction to an old textbook on circuit design:

Before and after the moment of change the variables have their “desired values,” that is to say, the values that enter into the machine's computations.