Rites of passage
Thresholds, initiations and symbolic rebirths in ancient and modern cultures.
The ancient catechumenate: Christian initiation on Easter night
Years of listening, scrutinies, the Creed handed over, renunciation facing west and a bath on Easter night: Christian initiation in the early Church.
The Athenian ephebeia: the oath and two years on the borders
How a young Athenian became a citizen: enrolment in the deme, the ephebic oath and the two years of service on the borders as described by Aristotle.
Bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah: a history of Jewish religious majority
At thirteen for boys and twelve for girls: how Jewish religious majority arises and how, over the centuries, the ceremony that celebrates it took shape.
Birth in the ancient world: amphidromia and dies lustricus
The run around the hearth in Athens, the name given on the ninth day in Rome, the three gods of the threshold: how Greeks and Romans welcomed a newborn.
The Bemba chisungu: female initiation in Audrey Richards
In 1931 the anthropologist Audrey Richards witnessed the chisungu, the initiation of Bemba girls: songs, clay emblems and a month of rites before marriage.
Cybele and Attis in Rome: the Galli and the taurobolium
From the Great Mother's arrival in Rome in 204 BC to the taurobolium described by Prudentius: a cult of mourning, blood and symbolic rebirth in history.
Death and ritual lament: funeral weeping according to de Martino
From the lamenting women of Lucania to the weeping of Mary: how Ernesto de Martino read funeral lament as a ritual technique for crossing grief.
The dubbing of a knight: vigil of arms, sword and blow
From the simple handing over of arms to a rite with bath, vigil and blessing of the sword: how one became a knight in the Middle Ages and what it meant.
Genpuku and Seijin shiki: coming of age in Japanese tradition
From the genpuku of nobles and samurai, with headgear and an adult name, to Coming of Age Day in January: how Japan has marked the passage to adulthood.
The offering of hair and the first beard: hair as a threshold
Achilles and the hair promised to the river Spercheios, Nero's first beard in a golden box, the tonsure: why hair marks so many rites of passage.
Jewish mourning: keriah, shiva, sheloshim and the time of grief
The torn garment, the seven days sitting low, the thirty days and the year of Kaddish: how Jewish tradition paces mourning in gradual, well-defined stages.
The «little bears» of Brauron: the arkteia of Athenian girls
At Artemis's sanctuary in Brauron Athenian girls «played the bear» before marriage: the myth, the lines of Aristophanes, the vases showing ritual races.
Monastic profession: from the monastery door to the Suscipe
In the Rule of Saint Benedict the novice knocks, waits, is tested for a year and at last offers himself by singing the Suscipe: a rite of the threshold.
The mysteries of Samothrace: the Great Gods and the sailors
The sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace, its two grades of initiation, the Cabiri and the protection of sailors: what sources and digs let us say.
The oracle of Trophonius at Lebadea: the descent into the cave
Pausanias consulted the oracle of Trophonius himself and described every stage: purifications, two springs, a descent into darkness, the throne of Memory.
The Orphic gold tablets: instructions for the soul's journey
From Hipponion to Thurii, the thin gold tablets buried with the dead point the soul to the spring of Mnemosyne and the words to say to the guards of Hades.
Pilgrimage as a rite of passage: from Santiago to the ihram
Setting out, crossing, returning changed: pilgrimage read through Victor Turner's categories, from the scallop shell of Santiago to the ihram of the hajj.
Robert Hertz and the double funeral: death as a passage
In his 1907 essay Robert Hertz showed, from the secondary burials of Borneo, that death is a slow passage for the body, the soul and the living alike.
Roman funerals: ancestor masks, the Parentalia and the Lemuria
From calling out the dead person's name to the wax masks of the ancestors and the days of the dead in February and May: the long passage of death in Rome.
The Roman wedding: confarreatio, the flammeum, the threshold
From the eve with the offering of toys to the evening procession and being carried over the threshold: the gestures of the Roman wedding read as a passage.
The Spartan agoge: education, krypteia and the trials of Orthia
From age seven to the common messes: the stages of Spartan upbringing in Plutarch and Xenophon, with the krypteia and the trials of Artemis Orthia.
Toga virilis and bulla: how one came of age in ancient Rome
The bulla offered to the Lares, the bordered toga set aside, the procession to the Forum on the Liberalia: the rite by which a Roman boy became a man.
Upanayana: the sacred thread and the «second birth» in India
The Vedic rite of upanayana: the sacred thread, the Gayatri whispered by the teacher, entry into the study of the Vedas and the idea of a second birth.
Arnold van Gennep and rites of passage: the three-stage pattern
Separation, margin, aggregation: how ethnologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 gave a name and a structure to the rites that mark changes of status.
Victor Turner and liminality: the threshold and communitas
From the Ndembu of Zambia to the theory of liminality: how Victor Turner read the suspended time of rites and the bond formed among those who cross it.