Thursday, June 30, is the Chinowa (茅の輪, cogon grass ring) Ceremony, a great chance to have more questions raised than you would likely ever want to have answered. For example, “cogon” is a type of grass traditionally used for thatching roofs. The maturity of cogon marked the entrance to summer, so this season was as good as any for a Shinto purification rite - this is why the ceremony is also called Natsugoshi Shinji (夏越神事, summer purification ceremony).
Large rings of cogon (or, more generally today, easier to obtain materials such as bamboo) are set up at shrines, and worshipers must pass through the ring in a prescribed manner. The order I don’t precisely remember - jump through the hoop, go left, jump through the hoop again, go right, jump through the hoop a final time and do something I’ve totally forgotten but if done incorrectly likely undoes all the previous hoop-jumping - yet even for those who hold no interest in Shinto, the ceremony clearly bears relevance for modern life: Jumping through hoops in just the prescribed way simply because everyone else is doing so and with no idea why.
Visit your local shrine tomorrow so that you may ritually enact what for many of us is a major part of our actual lives - and feel pure after doing it for once. - William