ritualand regeneration. While segregated apart from society in the bush or for-
est, the ordeals refer to bodily operations performed on the novices.
Among Native American Indians, Tewa Pueblo and Hopi novices are
whipped by a masked man impersonating a god, an act that signifies
the symbolic death of the novices, whereas the Bambara of Mali whip the
novices with thorn branches and flail them with burning torches. The
boys symbolically regress to an infant stage as a prelude to being reborn.
Among the Dogon of Africa, initiation involves circumcision because the
prepuce of the novice’s penis represents his female soul, which must
depart in order to free the novice from the element of femininity. The
Mukanda rite of the Dinka people of Africa is also a rite of circumcision
and is an absolute necessity because without the circumcision the dirt
beneath the foreskin is a permanent source of pollution and a boy is
considered lacking whiteness or purity. Among the Dinka, circumcision
is a symbolic death that reveals the hidden manhood of the novice.
There is a direct association between the transition stage and liminal-
ity, which is a time of withdrawal from normal modes of social action.
Liminality represents a threshold, a place and moment in and out of time.
Therefore, an initiate is between one state and another or on the periphery
of normal life because he/she is a liminal being. The liminal novice, who
is ambiguous and paradoxical, eludes normal classification because they
have no possessions or status.
Rites of incorporation refer to a return and adoption into one’s society.
The Bambara of Mali lead the newly initiated through a hole in the earth,
representing a burrow of a hyena that incarnates wisdom, toward the
sunlight at the end. Among some societies, incorporation rites may
include washing or fire that function to purify the initiate of his acquired
sacred power and protect members of society.
Further reading: Eliade (1958); van Gennep (1960)RITUAL
The concept originates with the Latin terms ritus and ritualis that are
connected to the structure of a ceremony and the text that defines the
structure. The concept is revived around the 1890s in conjunction with
the quest for the origins of religion when it stands for repetitive and sym-
bolic action. The revival of an interest in ritual coincides with the emer-
gence of anthropology as a scholarly discipline within a cultural
environment in which Protestants mistrust ritual.