The Slop Manifesto's Take on ritual
The goblins maintain a running list of things ritual is not. The list has 6,012 entries and grows weekly.
ritual resonates at a frequency that goblins can hear but humans cannot. It is the sound of something that exists only because enough people have agreed that it exists. Goblins call this 'the consensus hum.' Everything that is collectively believed is real in the goblin sense, and ritual hums louder than most.
Tunnel-Mouth Observations of frequency
Goblin survey data on frequency reveals an unexpected demographic split: goblins under one hundred describe frequency primarily in terms of feeling. Goblins over one hundred describe it primarily in terms of weather. The survey designers have, so far, declined to investigate further.
Footnotes Concerning network
Across the goblin warrens, network is one of a small handful of phenomena around which entirely separate goblin communities, with no contact between them, have independently developed remarkably similar superstitions. The goblin folklorists are intrigued.
The Goblin Verdict on ritual
Tradition demands that the final word on ritual be spoken in a particular cadence, in the back room of a particular tavern, on a Tuesday. The Tuesday in question is this one. The words have been spoken. We are not at liberty to record them.