RIGHT OF PASSAGE
Ceremonies of social transformation include all the life-cycle ceremonies, since these involve social transitions for the subjects of the ritual and also for other persons. A man or woman who dies, for example, assumes a new social role as a spirit that may be socially important to the living, the bereaved spouse becomes a widow or widower, and the children have an unnamed but changed status as lacking one parent. A vast number of rites of social transformation, such as rites of initiation into common-interest societies, have no direct or primary connection with biological changes, however.
These are abundant in the United States and in Europe, usually as secular ceremonies. Whether hereditary or achieved by appointment or election, assumption of important office in various kinds of societies is often observed by elaborate ritual. Any other events involving changes in social status tend to become the subjects of institutionalized ritual, which is then a prerequisite for the new status.
Common examples are initiation ceremonies of college fraternities, sororities, and honorary societies; adult fraternal societies; and social groups of other kinds centred on common interests. Other social changes of importance that apply to a substantial number of people but do not involve initiation into organized social groups are also given ritual attention. Common among these are graduation exercises, festivities marking retirement from work, and various kinds of award ceremonies.
Religious transformation ceremonies signal changes in religious status, which may be matters of the greatest importance to the people. Making sacrifices and offerings are rituals that may be required in the normal course of life; further, these acts may be regarded as conferring a new religious status or state of grace.
Sacrifices are a frequent feature of rites of passage, and important ceremonies like the coronations and funerals of rulers have sometimes required the sacrifice of many human beings. Among the laity, entry into a religious society or the assumption of any other new religious role is customarily an event celebrated by such rites as those of baptism and confirmation. Among professional religious personnel, the achievement of any distinct status of specialization is ordinarily observed by rites corresponding to the Christian rites of ordination —the rites through which religious functionaries become entitled to exercise their respective functions.
As with other rites of passage, these rites may be simple or complex, and their degree of complexity may generally be easily seen as reflecting the religious and social importance of the newly acquired status. A single element of an elaborate rite in one society, such as circumcision or the dressing of the hair in a distinctive way, may in another society be the central or sole event of rites of either social or religious transformation.
These ceremonies may, accordingly, be called rites of circumcision or be identified by the name of the style of hairdress. The term rites of passage is applied occasionally to institutionalized rites for curing serious illness and rarely to cyclic ceremonies like harvest festivals.
No new social or religious status is ordinarily gained by recovery from illness or participation in harvest rites, however, and these ceremonies have probably been included among the rites of passage because of similarities in their ritual procedures. In some societies recovery from a very critical illness is regarded as a divine sign that the erstwhile invalid should assume the role of a religious specialist, but rites of ordination are quite separate. Some elements of ceremonies pertaining to changes in the seasons may be seen as incorporating acts of separation and incorporation, symbolically saying goodbye to the old season and welcoming the new, but these are not customarily called rites of passage.
Divorce , although clearly denoting a change in social status, has rarely been regarded as a rite of passage. Festive observances at this time are perhaps common in some societies, but they are often informal practices of the individual or simple acts of local custom, such as discarding wedding rings, that are not institutionalized in the entire society. The absence of divorce from the conventional roster of rites of passage illustrates an outstanding characteristic of this class of rites: Rites of passage that signal the assumption of social statuses disapproved by society are both out of keeping with the prevailing interpretation of the rites as being socially supportive and would broaden them to cover such events as trials by jury and commitment to prison for serious crimes.
Nature and significance
Whatever their subclassification, elaborate rites of passage are commonly rich in symbolism that prominently includes representations of the states of separation and transition and, especially, insignia of the new status. Most common among these markers of new status are alterations and embellishments of visible or invisible parts of the body, distinctive garments and bodily decorations, and insignias corresponding to symbols of office. All parts of the body that may be altered or embellished without ordinarily causing serious disability have served as the symbols of social statuses and have been elements of rites of passage.
Outstanding among these insignias are special styles of hairdress, clothing, and ornaments; the filing, staining, and removal of teeth; the wearing of ornaments in pierced ears, noses, or lips; tattoos or their counterpart of scarification , which produces designs in relief; and circumcision or other genital operations see religious dress. Several motifs or themes of symbolism commonly recur among societies widely separated from each other geographically and culturally.
One such theme symbolizes death and rebirth into the new status.
Another common form of symbolism makes use of doors or other portals that signify entry into the new social domain. Success in passing the ordeals is customary and signifies mastery of the roles that are to be assumed. A universal feature of rites of passage is the proscription of certain kinds of ordinary behaviour.
Sexual continence is a common rule, as is the prohibition of ordinary work such as farming, hunting, and fishing. Many rites prohibit certain behaviour or prescribe the reverse of ordinary behaviour. Among Native Americans of the western United States, for example, a taboo against scratching the body with the fingers was common during ritual periods. In other societies, ritual behaviour required that the subjects of ritual sit in a remarkable fashion, wear articles of clothing inside out or backward, or wear the clothing of the opposite sex.
These acts all may be seen as dramatizations, by contrast, of the events that they celebrate, thereby making them memorable. The early work of the British anthropologists Victor Turner and Mary Douglas paid particular attention to ritual symbols. Turner investigated the use of symbols in rites of passage and other rituals. According to him, the symbols developed and employed within social systems represent oppositions, tensions, and cleavages that rites were designed to resolve. Rites of passage marking very important events customarily include all three stages described by van Gennep: A representative example is afforded by the traditional rites surrounding childbirth as these were commonly observed in Japan until the midth century.
Observances began when a woman learned she was pregnant. Partly for stated reasons of promoting health and partly for supernaturalistic reasons, she thenceforth abstained from certain foods and ate others.
Fraternities and sororities, like other private societies, often have codified initiation ceremonies as ritual separating candidates from members. The egalitarian society does not usually…. The population of a society belongs to multiple groups, some more important to the individual than others. Info What is a rite of passage? The Well of Grief.
During the fifth month of pregnancy she donned a special girdle, ordinarily procured from a Buddhist temple and supernaturally blessed. Relatives offered prayers for the well-being of the woman and her child. When birth seemed imminent , she was isolated from all other persons except the women who attended her.
She then remained in isolation for a fixed number of days after parturition. This period was most commonly 33 days, divided into stages proceeding from severe restriction of her acts to final complete resumption of all normal activities. At first she had to follow a number of special rules of diet and could not perform normal household tasks.
To avoid offending the sun goddess , her clothing and that of her child when laundered could never be hung in direct sunlight to dry but instead were placed in the shadows of the eaves of the house. For the same reason, she covered her head with a cloth when she stepped outside the house near the end of the period of isolation. Water and cloths used in washing the mother after parturition were considered polluted and were buried in the ground beneath the floor of the room of confinement. After a fixed number of days passed, the mother was permitted to resume bathing and again perform some, but not all, of her ordinary work in the house.
Other restrictions on behaviour were removed at fixed times. When the full period had passed, the mother and her female aides performed a ceremony of purification by sprinkling salt on the mother and on the floors of the dwelling. The beginning of a new, normal period free from pollution was also symbolized by kindling a new fire in the household cooking stove.
Now ready to return to normal life, the mother ate a ceremonial meal with other members of the family and resumed ordinary relationships with supernatural beings and other members of the community. In simple societies dependent for subsistence upon hunting and gathering, in which social groups are small and specialization in labour is limited to distinctions by sex and age, no social statuses may exist except those of child, adult, male, female, and disembodied spirit.
Among simple societies that are somewhat more advanced technologically and culturally, however, specialized groups based upon common interests appear, and these customarily require rites of induction or initiation. In culturally sophisticated societies with elaborate divisions of labour, social statuses of leadership and specialized occupation are multiple. If all societies of the world, preliterate and literate, are considered, the most commonly recurrent rites of passage are those connected with the normal but critical events in the human life span—birth, attainment of physical maturity, mating and reproduction, and death.
Rites surrounding the birth of a child are often a complex of distinct rituals that prescribe different behaviours on the part of the mother, the father, other relatives, and nonfamilial members of society with respect to the newborn. Observances may begin when pregnancy is first noted and may continue until the time of delivery, when the full rite of passage is observed, and for a variable period of time afterward.
In many simple societies, as in European societies of the past, the expectant mother is isolated from other members of society at this time for the stated reason that the blood that flows during childbirth has inherently harmful qualities. Where this belief is strong, the classic couvade may be practiced.
Regions of the world in which the couvade was formerly common include the Amazon basin aboriginal South America , Corsica, the Basque areas of France and Spain, and among various societies of Asia. Old ethnological writings created the impression that ritual attention is limited entirely to the father, but later investigations made it appear doubtful that the mother in any society is free from ritual requirements.
In many societies, rites that have been called the couvade are observed by both parents. The anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber — reported that among most of the many tribes of aboriginal California, rites at childbirth were much alike for both mother and father. A Celebration of the Tree of Life.
Right of passage
Change is in the Air. A Journey into Authenticity. On Being Welcomed into Womanhood. Gratitude for Gaining the Eyes to See. An Abundance of Interns and Energy.
Journeys takes on Social Media. An interview with Stan Crow. The Legacy of Cultural Pioneers. Adult Quest Reunion Event. An End of Summer Celebration with Journeys. Love Bubbles, A Poem. Salmon Song, A Poem. An Americorps Year with Journeys: My Rite of Passage into Adulthood. Working with Healthy Youth Passages.
Coming Of Age For Communities. Loving the Questions Themselves. An Interview with Chris Dishman. Meet Our New Team. Get to know our newest board member, Maria Garcia! New Programs for Interview with long-time supporter Mary Jane Marcus. Memories of Stan From Janice Wardrop. From Sandra Conant Strachan. From our friends at The School of Lost Borders. From Jack and Louise Ballard. From Melissa Gayle West.
From Eileen Morrill Howard. From Del Hunter Morrill. From Patricia Boivin Price. In Honor of Fred. Links Folks we have Trained.
Relevant Words and Authors. Make a Gift Thank You! Rites of passage have three phases: In the first phase, people withdraw from their current status and prepare to move from one place or status to another. For example, the cutting of the hair for a person who has just joined the army. He or she is "cutting away" the former self: The transition liminal phase is the period between states, during which one has left one place or state but has not yet entered or joined the next.
- Dream Castles 1913 (Princes of the North Book 5).
- Why Men Cheat: 12 Main Causes.
- 2012 International Conference on Information Technology and Management Science(ICITMS 2012) Proceedings;
- Professionnaliser : Construire des parcours personnalisés de professionnalisation (Ressources humaines) (French Edition)?
In the third phase reaggregation or incorporation the passage is consummated [by] the ritual subject. Re-incorporation is characterized by elaborate rituals and ceremonies, like debutant balls and college graduation, and by outward symbols of new ties: Laboratory experiments have shown that severe initiations produce cognitive dissonance. Initiation rites are seen as fundamental to human growth and development as well as socialization in many African communities. These rites function by ritually marking the transition of someone to full group membership. Initiation rites are "a natural and necessary part of a community, just as arms and legs are natural and necessary extension of the human body".
These rites are linked to individual and community development. Manu Ampim identifies five stages; rite to birth, rite to adulthood, rite to marriage, rite to eldership and rite to ancestorship. Rites of passage are diverse, and are found throughout many cultures around the world. Many western societal rituals may look like rites of passage but miss some of the important structural and functional components. However, in many Native and African-American communities, traditional rites of passage programs are conducted by community-based organizations such as Man Up Global.
Typically the missing piece is the societal recognition and reincorporation phase. Adventure education programs, such as Outward Bound , have often been described as potential rites of passage. Pamela Cushing researched the rites of passage impact upon adolescent youth at the Canadian Outward Bound School and found the rite of passage impact was lessened by the missing reincorporation phase.
In various tribal societies , entry into an age grade —generally gender-separated— unlike an age set is marked by an initiation rite , which may be the crowning of a long and complex preparation, sometimes in retreat.