scholarly journals An Initiation Rite in Tibetan Historiography

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2021/1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónika Szegedi
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Initiation Rite ◽  
Snow White ◽  
Maternal Uncle

I shall investigate a quasi-historical event in the biographies of the second ‘Dharma King’ of the Tibetan Empire, Khri-srong Lde-btsan (Trisong Detsen). As the newborn heir to the throne, he was stolen from his mother by a rival queen; however, at a ceremonial event the still infant prince indicated his true descent by sitting on the lap of his maternal uncle. As Ruzsa (2016) noticed, the complex motif of the new ruler choosing his family by sitting on the lap of a male representative can be found in the Indian legend of Śunaḥśepa, embedded in a much richer structure. Following his reconstruction, by analysing further parallelisms in a wider corpus, it appears that the seemingly innocent story of a baby prince is, in fact, a remnant of an archaic rite. I suppose that originally this was a rite of passage, a special variant of puberty initiation: the consecration of the heir apparent. Furthermore, its relationship to the Indian legend of Śunaḥśepa connects it indirectly with the stories of Isaac and even Snow White and also with several rites of passage in ancient Greece. I will also suggest that some versions of the legend point to a probably even more archaic cycle of maternity rites with parallels in Solomon’s judgment and the Chinese Chalk Circle.

Atalanta as Model: The Hunter and the Hunted

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Barringer
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Male Perceptions ◽  
Material Record ◽  
Insight Into

Atalanta, devotee of Artemis and defiant of men and marriage, was a popular figure in ancient literature and art. Although scholars have thoroughly investigated the literary evidence concerning Atalanta, the material record has received less scrutiny. This article explores the written and visual evidence, primarily vase painting, of three Atalanta myths: the Calydonian boar hunt, her wrestling match with Peleus, and Atalanta's footrace, in the context of rites of passage in ancient Greece. The three myths can be read as male and female rites of passage: the hunt, athletics, and a combination of prenuptial footrace and initiatory hunt. Atalanta plays both male and female initiatory roles in each myth: Atalanta is not only a girl facing marriage, but she is also a female hunter and female ephebe. She is the embodiment of ambiguity and liminality. Atalanta's status as outsider and as paradoxical female is sometimes expressed visually by her appearance as Amazon or maenad or a combination of the two. Her blending of gender roles in myth offers insight into Greek ideas of social roles, gender constructs, and male perceptions of femininity. Erotic aspects of the myths of the Calydonian boar hunt and the footrace, and possibly also her wrestling match with Peleus, emphasize Atalanta as the object of male desire. Atalanta challenges men in a man's world and therefore presents a threat, but she is erotically charged and subject to male influence and dominance.

The Modern Boy’s Rite of Passage and the Lacking Component of Transcendental Death Acknowledgement

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-233
Author(s):  
Elias Hage
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Memento Mori ◽  
Insight Into

This article explores the historical tendencies of male rites of passage and the modern expression of rite of passage as lacking the central component of transcendental death acknowledgement (Memento Mori) as seen for years past in various cultures. This article examines the necessity of developing an attunement toward objective transcendentalism among youth upon which an understanding of death may be appropriately developed. Without such a foundation, Memento Mori formulates hopelessness and fear within the boy, stunting his rite of passage into manhood. After offering cultural examples of death acknowledgement, we shall enter an analysis of Memento Mori on today’s cultural relativistic subjectivism to underscore the importance of objective transcendentalism before the incorporation of death acknowledgement within the rite of passage of the boy. This article concludes by offering insight into modern incorporation of Memento Mori within local communities.

scholarly journals Rite of Passage and Psychotherapy

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
E.G. Grebenyuk
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Movement Therapy ◽  
Analytical Psychology ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Life Changes ◽  
Dance Movement ◽  
Transcultural Psychotherapy

Anthropological notion of the rite of passage and its stages are viewed. Different psychotherapeutic approaches (psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, trauma, transpersonal and transcultural psychotherapy, dance movement therapy, narrative approach and community work), which address to the structure and symbolic meaning of the rites of passage, are compared. Systematization of client requests and corresponding psychotherapeutic objectives based on the rite of passage as a metaphor of life changes is proposed. Opportunities of using metaphor in modern society are analyzed.

Coming of Age, Peer Groups, and Rites of Passage

2009 ◽  
pp. 280-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Calame
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
The Individual

In comparing the symposium to a Männerbund (brotherhood), this article reflects on its role as a backdrop to the discourse of social ‘initiation’ in a broader discussion of ‘rites of passage’ – rituals that more or less explicitly sacramentalize and define the development of the individual as a social being in ancient Greece, as in other societies. It discusses the rites of passage for groups of adolescents, initiation processes for young people, choral education for young girls, and narrative logic and aetiology.

Manhunts

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégoire Chamayou
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Initiation Rite ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
The Middle Ages

Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, this book takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, the book examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous simply for existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable. The book begins in ancient Greece, where young Spartans hunted and killed Helots (Sparta's serfs) as an initiation rite, and where Aristotle and other philosophers helped to justify raids to capture and enslave foreigners by creating the concept of natural slaves. The book discusses the hunt for heretics in the Middle Ages; New World natives in the early modern period; vagrants, Jews, criminals, and runaway slaves in other eras; and illegal immigrants today. Exploring evolving ideas about the human and the subhuman, what we owe to enemies and people on the margins of society, and the supposed legitimacy of domination, the book shows that the hunting of humans should not be treated ahistorically, and that manhunting has varied as widely in its justifications and aims as in its practices. The book investigates the psychology of manhunting, noting that many people, from bounty hunters to Balzac, have written about the thrill of hunting when the prey is equally intelligent and cunning. An unconventional history on an unconventional subject, this book is an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence.

Rites of Passage: Jewish Representations of Children and Childhood in Contemporary Cinema

2021 ◽  
pp. 170-187
Author(s):  
Nathan Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Television Studies ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Bat Mitzvah ◽  
Contemporary Cinema

Despite the great importance Judaism places on children, childhood is a curiously overlooked topic in Jewish film and television studies. This chapter proposes to begin filling the gap by exploring how the universal theme of childhood has been represented in more specific ways, focusing on Jewish cinema specifically. By exploring a series of representations of children and childhood (sometimes Jewish, sometimes not) up to and including the age of 13, it examines films dealing with the child en route to adulthood through the key rite of passage of bar/bat mitzvah; the child as vulnerable and in need of protection, but whose childhood is brutally cut short during the Holocaust; and films in which childhood is not explicitly Jewish but can be read thus. Such representations consider the condition of children and childhood as a comment on the Jewish condition in contemporary society.

Traveling a Hard Road: Rites of Passage to Adulthood for Females of Haitian Descent Living in the Dominican Republic

2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110148
Author(s):  
Ida Salusky
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Spanish Caribbean ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Adult Identity ◽  
Adult Role ◽  
Global Discourse

This article examines the rites of passage for poor girls of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican context, preparation for and the transition to wife and mother historically served as an important rite of passage to an adult identity. Industrialization and the global discourse surrounding young motherhood increasingly challenges this culturally sanctioned practice. No research has examined how perceptions around rites of passage to an adult female identity are evolving across generations within the Spanish Caribbean. The author conducted an ethnographic project that included the use of in-depth life history interviews with 42 participants. She interrogates the narratives of three generations of adolescent girls and women of Haitian descent using modified grounded theory to (a) describe current culturally acceptable pathways to becoming an adult woman and (b) examine shifts taking place across time regarding acceptable pathways to womanhood. Findings suggest that, increasingly, younger generations no longer perceive marriage and motherhood as the singular rite of passage to adulthood. Yet, additional skills and characteristics that the participants identified as important to effectively transition to an adult role are either very difficult for the poor to attain, or are acquired through the experience of marriage and motherhood.

Death as a rite of passage: the iconography of the Moche Burial Theme

Antiquity ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 72 (277) ◽  
pp. 528-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Hill
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Rite Of Passage

The application of van Gennep's Rites of Passage structure to iconography and mortuary contexts in the Late Moche period of Peru offers an original means of exploring prehistoric concepts of death.

scholarly journals The Genealogy of the Political. The Age of Heroes and the Revolt of Youth

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-73
Author(s):  
Raimondas Kazlauskas
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
The Political ◽  
Youth Groups ◽  
Educational Structure ◽  
Social Communities ◽  
Basic Model ◽  
Historic Development ◽  
Western Civilisation

The article discusses the genesis of the political by treating this phenomena as a distinctive interaction between political and religious factors. The aim is to carry out the reconstruction of the premises of the political of ancient Greeks, by distinguishing its particular historic development features, exclusively characteristic for the Ancient Greece context. The rites of passage of Greek social communities are analyzed in order to understand why its youth initiation structure, formed during the Greek Dark Ages, became the basic model for Western Civilisation. The role of youth groups, the phenomena of Greek heroes, the educational structure of the young soldier class (ephebeia), and the first ever political revolution, initiated by Lycurgus, are examined by reconstructing the genealogy of the political.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document