Rituals may take many forms, which are manifestations of an underlying worldview. There are many others than the three mentioned below, including re-enactment and some kinds of more apparently social meetings:

Prayers

Every cult has its forms of organized ritual, and one of the possibilities is 'prayer'. Prayer implies the existence of some supernatural being.

Prayers may be uttered (said) by special individuals at special places in a special posture or it might not.

Zuni

Their prayers are formulas, the effectiveness of which comes from their faithful rendition. The recital must be meticulously correct.

Pueblo

A man whose wife dies must isolate himself for four days. Then he plants his prayer-sticks to the dead and prayes for her to leave him in peace and not bother him and give him good fortune.

Dusan

At time of community-wide crisis the male ritual expert goes thorough a ritual which is climaxed by a call to the creators to ask for their help in keeping out disease.

Offerings

These offerings may be in the form of sacrifice of animals and people. Other offering may be the first fruits of crops, part of a catch or hunt or valuable objects. When it is a sacrifice some of the meat may be burned, prepared and possibly put at some special (sacred) place for the spirit, or it may be eaten by the people themselves. Feasts often have not only special meaning socially but a religious meaning and follow a ritual pattern.

Semai

They have a terrible fear of thunderstorms. They felt that certain things, loud laughter, flashing lights, playing with dark things would produce them. During a storm certain rituals had to be perforned to appease "Thunder". Like filling bamboo with rain and some of your own blood and throwing it all out into the storm.

Dusun

The ritual for appealing to the ancestors involves the ceremonial killing of a chicken to appease the creators. Rice, rice wine, tobacco and salt are also offered.

Ritual Language

The language use in ritual is frequently different from that in everyday use. Sometimes intelligible and at other times actual language that's understood by everyone.

Zuni

They have a ritualistic language which they use in their prayers. The recital must be meticulously correct.

Dusun

There are 180 separate ritual forms used in Dusun life. Some ritual forms consist of recitiation in specific order of more than 500 sentence length lines of special verses. A female expert must remember in proper order of time, sequence and technique 131 rituals composing of more than 2000 lines.