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The ritual marks the passage from child to adult, each subgroup having its customs and expectations. A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society.
- Overview
- Nature and significance
- Classification of rites
rite of passage, ceremonial event, existing in all historically known societies, that marks the passage from one social or religious status to another. This article describes these rites among various societies throughout the world, giving greatest attention to the most common types of rites; explains their purposes from the viewpoints of the peopl...
Many of the most important and common rites of passage are connected with the biological crises, or milestones, of life—birth, maturity, reproduction, and death—that bring changes in social status and, therefore, in the social relations of the people concerned. Other rites of passage celebrate changes that are wholly cultural, such as initiation into societies composed of people with special interests—for example, fraternities. Rites of passage are universal, and presumptive evidence from archaeology (in the form of burial finds) strongly suggests that they go back to very early times. One aspect of rites of passage that is often overlooked by interpreters (perhaps because it appears obvious) is the role of the rites in providing entertainment. Passage rites and other religious events have in the past been the primary socially approved means of participating in pleasurable activities, and religion has been a primary vehicle for art, music, song, dance, and other forms of aesthetic experience.
The worldwide distribution of these rites long ago attracted the attention of scholars, but the first substantial interpretation of them as a class of phenomena was presented in 1909 by the French anthropologist and folklorist Arnold van Gennep, who coined the phrase rites of passage. Van Gennep saw such rites as means by which individuals are eased, without social disruption, through the difficulties of transition from one social role to another. On the basis of an extensive survey of preliterate and literate societies, van Gennep held that rites of passage consist of three distinguishable, consecutive elements: separation, transition, and reincorporation—or, respectively, preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages (before, at, and past the limen [Latin: “threshold”]). The person (or persons) on whom the rites centre is first symbolically severed from his old status, then undergoes adjustment to the new status during the period of transition, and is finally reincorporated into society in his new social status. Although the most commonly observed rites relate to crises in the life cycle, van Gennep saw the significance of the ceremonies as being social or cultural, celebrating important events that are primarily sociocultural or human-made rather than biological.
No scheme of classification of passage rites has met with general acceptance, although many names have been given to distinguishable types of rites and to elements of rites. The name purification ceremonies, for example, refers to an element of ritual that is very common in rites of passage and also in other kinds of religious events. In most instances, the manifest goal of purification is to prepare the individual for communication with the supernatural, but purification in rites of passage may also be seen to have the symbolic significance of erasing an old status in preparation for a new one (see also purification rite).
Other names that have been given to passage rites often overlap. Life-cycle ceremonies and crisis rites are usually synonymous terms referring to rites connected with the biological crises of life, but some modern scholars have included among crisis rites the ritual observances aimed at curing serious illnesses. Ceremonies of social transformation and of religious transformation overlap and, similarly, overlap crisis rites. Religious transformations, such as baptism and rites of ordination, always involve social transformations; social transformations such as at coming-of-age and induction into office may also bring new religious statuses, and life-cycle ceremonies similarly may or may not involve changes in religious statuses. It is nevertheless sometimes useful to distinguish the various rites by these names.
Aug 15, 2023 · Last Updated: Aug 15, 2023. Rites of passage are ceremonies or rituals signifying an individual’s progress from one stage of life to another [1]. This concept was first coined by ethnographer Arnold Van Gennep in his work “The Rites of Passage” (1909), where he identified these rituals as a universal phenomenon existing in all cultures [2].
Rite of passage is a celebration of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of rite de passage, a French term innovated by the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his work Les rites de passage ...
Sep 13, 2024 · Thus, rites of passage support the reasonableness of a particular worldview and lifestyle by seeming to attune human experience to the cosmic order. Rite of passage - Initiation, Transition, Separation: From its beginning, the study of rites of passage has attempted to account for similarities and differences between the rites of different ...
Feb 5, 2001 · Rites of Passage. A rite of passage is a particular type of ritual, conducted to mark an important transition in somebody’s life. These rituals most commonly follow people from the cradle to the grave. An initiation transforms a person from their current state to a new one. Rites of passage have multi-layered meanings.
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Sep 13, 2024 · In addition to serving as a means of allaying husbandly anxiety over the welfare of the wife, the practices of the couvade establish social paternity, which in turn promotes familial and societal solidarity. Rite of passage - Initiation, Transition, Separation: In simple societies dependent for subsistence upon hunting and gathering, in which ...
