The following essay, which is based on the first half of my talk at the GDM conference in Potsdam 2017, should be read as a conjecture concerning mathematics education, intending to spur discussion and open up new pathways for research. I start by trying to show that present day mathematics education can be interpreted as a ritual, after which I indicate five distinct origins of this ritual. The reason why the second half of my talk is not included in this essay, is that an account of the explanatory framework presented there can be found in texts published elsewhere (Lundin, 2013; Christensen & Lundin, 2017)
