Here’s a typically tenuous connection with ritual. On the subject of transmission, this piece from Stewart Lee is rewarding as ever:

—as well as his still more thoughtful reflections in How I escaped my certain fate, pp.136–42, 169–76. One of the many delights of this masterpiece is the way that scholarly footnotes often take over, like Flann O’Brien‘s arcane annotations on de Selby in The third policeman.