interpretive drift is largely unconscious, not articulated, but brought on through practice (Luhrmann 1989:316). It involves more than a shift in the language people use (Luhrmann 1989:315, 321). It is not just cognitive, not just a new interpretive framework, but a shift in ontology and habitus, though Luhrmann uses the term “interpretive” drift. It is an acculturative process of change, but not an entirely passive internalization of culture. It is an interactive, though not necessarily conscious ongoing collaboration. We do this partly through imitation, but also growing skills in ourselves, as Michael Polanyi describes of tacit learning of personal knowledge.

Participation in ritual can change habitus and ontology through tacit learning. Luhrmann describes how “perception of [the practitioners’] world—what they noticed and experienced—altered, and the way they interpreted these perceptions altered …. They acquired the basic knowledge—common knowledge—and basic assumptions, sometimes explicitly articulated, other times implied, which affected the way they noticed and could observe the events around them” (Luhrmann 1989:11). Changes in practice generate changes in what people notice, pay attention to, their perception, sense of patterns, how they interpret events, and rationalize what they are doing. She observed that “Intellectual and experiential changes shift in tandem, a ragged co-evolution of intellectual habits and phenomenological involvement” (Luhrmann 1989:315). Interpretation and rationalization, through practice becomes personal knowledge, embodied knowledge acquired through tacit learning.

When entering an unfamiliar field we lack the knowledge of how to get along in it, but over time our perspective shifts to fit new parameters, recognizing new patterns, and we fit ourselves to the norms we find and begin to share in the shaping of them. Luhrmann describes this process as “interpretive drift,” and explains how the process can be initiated through ritual practice.