Making the Sacred Observable by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
Making the Sacred Observable Sacred-in-Action and the Interactional Accomplishment of Spiritual Reality in Ritual Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. Abstract This paper advances an ethnomethodological analysis of ritual practice that treats sacredness not as an essence, belief state, or metaphysical domain, but as an interactional accomplishment. Drawing on the analytic resources of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, I examine a contemporary Dionysian Naturalist psilocybin liturgy as a ritual transcript. The analysis demonstrates how sacred frames are entered, maintained, and exited through publicly organized methods: footing shifts, membership categorization devices, instructed actions, and sequential organization. Sacred...
