Social & Popular Rituals & Beliefs in the Palestinian Literature in Ramallah District

The social rituals represent an important part of the Palestinian folklore and literature, and the memorized oral literature which exists in the hearts and consciences of the people off spring's establishes and forms an essential core of support which preserves and keeps such rituals for long. This matter was certain for a recent time. However; today the risk of loosing this inheritance and this treasure of gold threatens our popular folklore and literature. So, the way to save our popular literature is by recording it. Some kind of connotations and moves which accompany these rituals are hard to record, but such events are recorded in the hearts of elderly grandmothers. Thus such events will be exposed to be become extinct along with the death of grandmothers. And they are, in reality, vanishing slowly over the passing days. Eventually, this was an important stage during the study to save, record, document, and study this great inheritance. So, the study in the beginning was established by analyzing the rituals and behavior of humans. Therefore it unfolds and reveals the ambiguity of this terminology. Then, it manifested its binding through an unseen out side force, and its main cause was to seek the Creator help. The rituals and norms were flowing in a sequence from the specific moment at which human wishes to deliver. And so, this was the field of my research in its first chapter. So, I mentioned the related sorcery traditions of rituals into which woman adopt in order to reproduce (bear a baby) or to keep her infant safe if she ever becomes pregnant. One of her rituals is to stand before a holy man grave to offer her vows and supplication near the grave of man who was killed by oppression. Another ritual is to swallow the left over of the process of circumcising a woman. Then, I manifested the information about the killing attempts and the trials to cause apportion, which a pregnant woman believed that she may become exposed to through her pregnancy, from her evil companion. I mentioned the sorcery rituals that a woman may use to get rid of the evil companion harm or to cast her out such as, uttering strange words, sorcery made barriers of protection, superstitions, and trials of illusionary protection. In the second chapter, the chapter of delivering, I mentioned the rituals of begotten children as, what a woman may do to facilitate this process and the accompanied sorcery superstitious traditions. I deduced that the used bath-water, through bathing the child, looks similar to holy water, the water which is used in baptisms in other religions, or as the flood water which baptize the earth to prepare it for new fertility and new production. Then I moved to describing the stages and phases of rearing up the child and what it may include out of rituals as, having a hair cut and offering a sacrifice and a dough. Also I mentioned the used popular superstitious chanting and superstitions which cast the envied eye and the evil female companion, the one that causes disease and harm. Then I mentioned the accompanied rituals for the appearance of the child teeth and the related rituals to the child walking. Finally I mentioned the circumcising stage, assured and supported by examples and popular traditional chanting. In the third chapter, I stated the consecutive rituals that accompany the process of looking for and seeking a bride, and so I mentioned the traditions of asking her for marriage, and the description of her wedding, her hair-dying, and her sought clothing. I even reached to the stage of describing her marriage party and the sprinkle of water and the grains of barely. I was stating each ritual or norm including its related popular folklore, then I would go back to its old tales-roots which begins at the (tendril-human), at sometimes (two hundred thousands years ago_200000 B.C.), then the Roman era, and the famous Ignorance era at several times. I have used the same method in the rituals that describes death, too. Thus I mentioned the last moments of dying and the transition of a dying person between the world of life and death up to the final moment when he is declared dead. Also, I mentioned the process of washing the dead, covering him, and laying him in a coffin, then his funeral and the accompanied prayer and then laying him in the grave in a certain direction and rehearsing to him what he is suppose to say whenever he is raised up again. Further more, I mentioned the offered sacrifices to his grave, the watering of the grave, and the pessimism and created fear_ by the living humans_ from him, out of his supposed harm. In all of these rituals, I mentioned them according to their related times and prior to their existence in the popular literature, then I compared them with the ancient rituals and I was able to reach a lot of conclusions that assures the following: