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Rite of passage

Rite of passage: Encyclopedia - Rite of passage

A rite of passage is a ritual that marks a change in a person's social or sexual status. The term was popularised by the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957), in the early part of the twentieth century. Further theories were developed in the 1960s by Mary Douglas and Victor Turner. Rites of passage are often ceremonies surrounding events such as childbirth, menarche or other mile ...

Rite of passage, Pilgrimage

Rite of passage: Encyclopedia - Rite of passage

Rite of passage

A rite of passage is a ritual that marks a change in a person's social or sexual status. The term was popularised by the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957), in the early part of the twentieth century. Further theories were developed in the 1960s by Mary Douglas and Victor Turner.

Rites of passage are often ceremonies surrounding events such as childbirth, menarche or other milestones within puberty, weddings, menopause, and death.

According to Van Gennep, rites of passage have three phases: seperation, liminality, and incorporation. In the first phase, people withdraw from the group and begin moving from one place or status to another. In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed the rite. The liminal phase is the period between states, during which people have left one place or state but haven't yet entered or joined the next. It is a state of limbo.

The following would be a typical example of the "coming of age" lifetime moments for Western American, though the exact ages of course vary from person to person, or could not occur at all.

Age 2: First able to walk
Age 5: First day of School/Kindergarten
Age 6: First able to ride a Bicycle
Age 14: First Girlfriend/Boyfriend
Age 16: First got driver's license
Age 17: Senior Prom/High School Graduation
Age 18: First day of College/First day in dorm (on your own)
Age 21: First age to buy Alcohol
Age 22: College Graduation
Age 23: First time living on own/Purchase own apartment or house
Age 26: Marriage
Age 28: First child

Such rites include:

Coming of age
- First haircut
- Circumcision
- Gembuku among the samurai
- Prom/Graduation
- Pederasty
- Russ in Norway
- Backpacking (travel)
Religious and magical Initiation rites
- Baptism
- First Communion and First Confession (especially in Catholicism)
- Confirmation
- Bar mitzvah and Bat mitzvah
- Upanayanam amongst some Hindu castes.
- Dream quest(?) for aboriginals
- Rumspringa among the Amish
- Vision quest in some Native American cultures
Other Initiation rites
- Walkabout
- Freemasonry rituals
Naval (military and civilian) crossing the equator
Armed forces rites:
- U.S. Marine Crucible
- U.S. Navy: Battle Stations
- U.S. Army Victory Forge
- In the Spanish military service, new conscripts are subjected by "veterans" to practical jokes, ranging from taking advantage of their naivety to public humiliation and physical attacks.
- Soldiers and sailors may also be hazed again (e.g. in the stocks, paddled, bloodpinning...) on obtaining a promotion, a pilot getting his wings, etcetera
Academic circles (dorms, fraternities, teams) and other clubs practice hazing, ragging or fagging
- Entrance into Medicine and Pharmacy (University) :
  - White Coat Ceremony
- In Spanish universities of the Modern Age, like Universidad Complutense in Alcalá de Henares, upon completion of his studies, the student was submitted to a public questioning by the faculty, who could ask sympathetic questions that let him excel or tricky points. If the student passed he invited professors and mates to a party. If not, he was publicly processioned with donkey ears.