In general usage, a ritual is a formalized sequence of actions, often ceremonial or symbolic, performed according to a fixed format in a fixed circumstance. Rituals most often relate to religious or spiritual contents and seek to mark something or to obtain something from the spiritual world.
Some rituals are purely secular and are done for added solemnity, as if associating the secular process to a spiritual content. The value of pomp is well understood by government also when this government recognizes no spiritual authority above itself.
Sometimes the word is used in an allegoric sense and simply means engrained habit.
A ritual by definition is not creative. The idea of a claim to power is central to the idea of ritual. Even when a secular body engages in rituals such as national celebrations, it makes a formalized statement where it claims and displays power. This is a message of power to the constituency, as in evoking patriotic sentiment as well as to the rest of the world where the government entity proclaims its separateness and power.
Some rituals are markers of passage. Various initiations, whether inauguring a government or accepting a new student to a class or the graduation formalities of a school all play on the concept of establishing a link. The power there has to do with claiming the authority of a tradition. Whether by nature or culture, man is generally susceptible to this and this claim seems to meet some inner need of security.
In a religious or spiritual context the claim to power also exists. The most obvious example is the black magician performing rituals with the intent of commanding spiritual forces. Church rituals are not as obvious in this regard and there is much variation among them.
The difference between ritual and a procedure done for a specific end is that in the case of the ritual there is a belief and expectation that the ritual will accomplish a function simply because it is done as it always has been. Performing a procedure involves understanding the steps and how these interrelate, why they are done and what the effect of each is. Even though it may be done for a specific end and in the same way each time, baking a bread is not a ritual, that is, unless its ostensible purpose be something other than making bread.
The idea of ritual vests the ritual act with some power that the person performing the ritual wishes to appropriate. The power is seen as external to the self, a sort of mechanical resource that can mysteriously be commanded by will and form.
All these properties make ritual a feature of the service to self polarity. The Cassiopaeans have linked ritual to anticipation, restricting the creative potential of the universe by placing limits on what is accepted and seeking to command and control.
