However, going through initiation is very far from either attending
college or going to summer camp. The secret knowledge is more
often than not either vacuous or paradoxical. In many rites the candi-
dates are taught that the secret of the rite is precisely that there is no
secret at all, or that they will not be told what it is until they reach a
further stage of initiation. The rites seem to promote what anthropol-
ogist Fredrik Barth called an "epistemology of secrecy," a notion that
knowledge is intrinsically dangerous and ambiguous. The Baktaman
rituals of New Guinea studied by Barth comprise several different
stages, performed at a few years' interval, which should gradually con-
[244] vey to young men important secrets and the hidden key to various rit-
uals. But at each step the solution provided contains yet more myster-
ies that a further ritual should illuminate. The few who reach the end
of the cycle have not learned much except that secret knowledge con-
sists in a series of recursive secrets, a series that probably has no clear
ending. Although initiation is sometimes said to turn immature boys
into competent hunters or warriors, no real skills are acquired during
these long periods of seclusion. Military drills or strategy are clearly
not the most important aspect of the ceremonies. Indeed, many initia-
tion rites comprise long series of painful ordeals and episodes of tor-
ture that do not at first sight seem likely to much enhance the fighting
capacities of young boys. Making the penis bleed or dislocating toes
may have a great effect on the boys, but it could hardly count as prepa-
ration for serious engagement.^15
Indeed, anthropologist Michael Houseman has shown that para-
doxical events, which create a kind of cognitive blur, are central to
male initiation. In the Beti male initiation in Cameroon, studied by
Houseman, the boys are for instance told to wash in mud puddles. If
they oblige they are beaten up for getting dirty; if they refuse they are
of course beaten up for staying unwashed. The boys are told that if
they go through all the ordeals they will be rewarded with a sumptu-
ous meal of antelope's meat and fat. But all they get is a mixture of rot-
ting meat, semen and excrement. They are instructed to go hunt in
the forest but they are the ones stalked and attacked by the elders.
More generally, there is also a paradox in the overall organization of
the ritual. The men declare that they will take the children away and
secretly kill them to turn them into adults. Once the children are in
the camp, they are told that this is all a deception organized for the
benefit of naive women and outsiders; the truth is that there is no real
killing. Before the candidates can relax, however, they are thrown into
RELIGION EXPLAINED