Contract

Literally the word means ‘to draw together’. A contract is minimally a token.
A contract is a type of ritual mechanism.
Breaking the contract is offending the rite.early 14c., from Old French contract (Modern French contrat), from Latin contractus "a contract, agreement," from past participle of contrahere "to draw together," metaphorically, "to make a bargain," from com- "together" (see com-) + trahere "to draw" (see tract (n.1)). U.S. underworld sense of "arrangement to kill someone" first recorded 1940.