How Different Cultures Conduct a Rite of Passage

Many different cultures around the world have traditions and rituals to celebrate milestones in life. According to Kottak (2011), These “rites of passage are culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another”(p. 354). These rituals can be performed individually or collectively. In traditional rites of passage quests, it usually involves A male moving from boyhood to manhood by being separated from his family and village and enduring periods of isolation and tough challenges to see if he can survive on his own and once he sees this vision that will become his guardian spirit, he then returns back to his village as an adult. According to Kottak (2011), “All rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. In the first phase, people withdraw from ordinary society and leave behind their old status, In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed a rite that changes their status. The second, or liminal, phase is the most interesting. It is the limbo or “timeout” during which people have left one status, but haven’t yet entered or joined the next (p.354)They mark a change in social status, place, condition, or age. . In this paper I will be discussing two rites of passage, one from a society in Brazil and one from personal experience.

Among the Kalapalo of Central Brazil, there is a rite of passage for boys that involves ear piercing. Most of the boys in this culture participate in this ritual. The Kalapalo call this ritual ipoñe and it is very important to them as it symbolizes the differences between men and women. The preparation for this ceremony beings two months before the actual event starts. Every day men and women of the village would prepare the boys for the ceremony by singing and dancing with them and applying an herbal infusion to their earlobes which is to prevent them from bleeding. By putting this herbal infusion on their earlobes, this is considered a liminal symbol, which marks the condition of this ceremony as extraordinary. With the dancing still being held, the fathers of the boys collect expensive ceramics so they can pay the ear piercers. Then, there is a date set for the ritual and only hosts and assistants usually attend the ritual itself, although other village groups are invited. Separation occurs when the decision is made by an anetu, which is a village representative, for a boy to enter puberty seclusion and is of proper age to get his ears pierced. There is a sponsor that is assisted by a non anetu, which is a common villager, who have sons between the ages six and nine and they also participate in this ritual.

On the first night of the ritual, as the boys continue to be danced around and sang around their liminal symbols are the cotton belts, shell collars, and yellow feather headdress worn during the ritual. On the second night, the boys are undressed from the decorations and the singing continues by the host village and the agifoñati, which is medicine used to help the bleeding, is applied. The participants go to bathe and immediately after the ear piercing begins. The boys sit on stools and the guardians begin to cut the participants hair and placing them on the mats that are in from of the boys and the hair is disposed in the forest. The fathers of the boys begin to place portions of food in front of their sons and instructs them to share the food with the crowd. There is a break in the ritual where the boys are allowed to relieve themselves so they will not urinate or defecate on themselves while being pierced. Once they return they have to go to the sponsor’s house where they are seated again and painted with soot and the ceramics that were given to the ear piercers and guardians are displayed for several minutes and returned back to the house.

The boys are put back into their original seating and the sponsor imitates the cry of the bird which the feathers for the headdress were taken. He hops on one foot to his house and from there he removes the ear piercing sticks and hops back to where the boys are. The ear piercing sticks are given to the ear piercers and they begin polishing and making instruments. As the instruments are being prepared the guardians stand behind the boys to hold them down for the ear piercing. Once the tools are done being prepared, the ear piercers hold a stick in their hand and the as the tempo and intensity of the chanting continues, they are given a sign by the sponsor that the ear piercing should begin. The ear piercers work quickly as in less than a minute the sticks have been jabbed into both ears of the initiate and tobacco smoke is blown on the boys’ ears to ease the pain. Although that the boys have their ears pierced, they still have not reached the third phase. Instead, they remain secluded for three months. During this seclusion, they can not leave and they can not be visited. The father can only give food to them through an opening. Also, they have to fast the first five days and during the first month they can only eat wild fruits. The second month they are allowed to eat anything except for fish and on the third month they are sent on a fishing trip with their father and other adults. On their return they are officially released from seclusion and are able to return back to their homes. This ceremony represents the coming of age and is one step towards manhood for boys. Two important symbols of adulthood are conferred by having their ears pierced. It enables them to wear toucan feather earrings, which is an important male ornament, and the acquisition of adult names.

A more contemporary rites of passage from my own experience would be graduation. It is a time where your social status changes from high school student to a high school graduate. After graduation, you have so many choices to make and figure out what you want to do in life such as find a higher paying job with more benefits, go to college, enter the military, and so on. In order to prepare for graduation, there are some steps I had to take in order to make it through this process.

The first phase begins by being withdrawn from ordinary society. After spending four years as a high school student, everyone gets dressed in their white or green cap and gowns, which are liminal symbols, for a ceremony known as graduation and are separated from the rest of the crowd who attends the ceremony and have to wait in a different area for our cue to come out and be seated. We were not allowed to sit with our families. Instead, all 500 of us had to be placed in our class ranking order according to gpa and sat accordingly.

The second phase known as the liminal phase, is the time where you have left one status, which is your high school student status, but not yet have entered the next status, which is high school graduate. While in the second phase, I had to spend the next two hours in the ceremony sitting by people I didn’t even know went to my high school and while in that chair, I sat and listened to the administration and faculty speak about our class and how proud they were and other announcements they had. I heard the school song being sung for the last time as a high school senior, which showed pride about where you were graduating from and speeches from the valedictorian and salutatorian about how far we have come. After the speeches are done, four of the faculty members begin to call out names by rank if you wore white, which means you had a 4.0 gpa or higher, and in alphabetical order if you wore green.

The third phase is when you have reentered society and have completed a rite that has changed your previous status. After your name had been called and you shook hands with the administration and faculty that were standing up there, you were now considered a high school graduate. After the ceremony many people would have graduation parties to celebrate this rite of passage of coming of age and changing the status of a high school student to a high school graduate. As a high school graduate you now have the right to apply and go to college, learn a trade, get a higher paying job with more benefits, volunteer, travel, attend community college, or join the military, and so on.

In conclusion, the length of the ritual of the Kalapalo and the length of my graduation differs greatly. My graduation was only about one to two hours compared to the Kalapalo, which lasted for months. The taboos that the Kalapalo faced were that only men can participate in ear piercing and while they were secluded for three months they were not allowed to leave and they were not allowed to be visited. Also, during the first month they were only allowed to eat fruit and on the second month they were not allowed to eat fish. Taboos that I had faced while participating in the graduation ceremony is that I had to attend rehearsal in order to graduate, I had to wear my liminal symbol, which was the cap and gown, and I had to sit in arranged seating by rank with my class instead of with my family. Both rituals had a collective experience, which the ceremony was done as a group rather than individual. It was more enjoyable knowing that your friends were graduating with you and that you were not going through this experience alone. Although the ceremony was tedious, I would rather share the experience and enjoy it my friends and family. A rite of passage is a valuable ritual event that marks a person's transition from one status to another and creates milestones in that person’s life. New or old traditions, they are important and valuable to many different cultures.