In other cases, the danger represented by the taboo can be overcome through ritual. This is often the case for taboos meant to protect communities and individuals from beings or situations that are 14)simultaneously so powerful as to be inherently dangerous and so common that they are essentially unavoidable. For example, many cultures require persons who have been in physical contact with the dead to engage in a ritual cleansing. Many cultures also 15)circumscribe physical contact with a woman who is 16)menstruating—or, less often, a woman who is pregnant—because she is the 17)locus of extremely powerful reproductive forces. Perhaps the most familiar resolution to this taboo is the Jewish practice of bathing in a 18)mikvah after menstruation and parturition.
除了上述的情况，禁忌所象征的危险可以通过仪式来化解。这常常适用于那些目的在于保护群体和个人的禁忌，因为某些生灵或在某些情况下可能造成的威胁极大且太过常见而基本无法躲避，而人们相信这些禁忌可以保护他们免受伤害。例如，许多文化习俗都要求那些接触过尸体的人参加净身仪式。还有许多文化习俗限制人们解接触月经期的妇女，或者孕妇（这种情况较少），因为她们身上蕴含了极强的繁殖力。对此禁忌最为人熟知的化解方法也许是犹太人的习俗惯例，也就是月经和生产之后在浸礼池里沐浴。
Taboos that are meant to prevent the sacred from being defiled by the ordinary include those that prohibited ordinary people from touching the head—or even the shadow—of a 19)Polynesian chief because doing so would compromise his mana, or sacred power. As the chief's mana was important in maintaining the ritual security of the community, such actions were believed to place the entire population at risk.
避免俗人亵渎神灵的禁忌，还包括禁止普通人触摸波利尼西亚首领的头部，甚至影子，因为这会削弱他的“mana（神力）”。由于首领的神力对于维持部落的仪礼安全至关重要，所以人们相信，上述做法会危害整个群体（编者注：“taboo”一词源于波利尼西亚文化，所以有关“禁忌”的解释会与波利尼西亚文化里的一些现象联系，在此用与波利尼西亚文化相关的例子来讲明“俗人亵渎神灵被视为禁忌”）。
There is broad agreement that the taboos current in any society tend to relate to objects and actions that are significant for the social order and that, as such, taboos belong to the general system of social control. 20)Sigmund Freud provided perhaps the most 21)ingenious explanation for the apparently irrational nature of taboos, 22)positing that they were generated by 23)ambivalent social attitudes and in effect represent forbidden actions for which there nevertheless exists a strong unconscious inclination.
人们普遍认为，现今，各个团体的禁忌都趋向于与那些对社会秩序有重大影响的事物和活动挂钩，这样看来，禁忌属于社会管理的范畴了。对于禁忌那显而易见的非理性本质，西格蒙德·弗洛伊德的解释也许是最独到的——他假设禁忌源于矛盾的社会态度，进而表现为种种禁忌行为，而事实上，这些行为都存在着强大的无意识倾向。
