ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rites of passage as periods of margin or liminality as an interstructural phenomenon subject to taboo using mainly the work of van Gennep (1960), Eliade (1958, 1969), Turner (1964, 1969), and Goodwyn (2016) in the creation of meaning in the space at the margin of ‘betwixt and between.’ Meade (1995) and Bell (1992) suggest that the radical dismantling of institutions, boundaries, and belief systems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, through two world wars and interregional upheavals, have left cultures bereft of the capacity to handle death and embrace life fully. Pain and suffering increase without meaningful ritual containers to structure and aid such difficult passages. In this chapter, I examine the rites of passage of indigenous people as they navigate painful separations that occur at birth, puberty, and death. In such initiation rites, a person is structurally defined as a transitional being or neophyte; hence they are invisible, tabooed, and hidden. They have no status, rank, personal clothing, or kinship position to demarcate them. As they are no longer classifiable, the symbols that represent them are drawn from the biology of death, decomposition, and other physical bodily taboos. I argue that such painful tabooed rites of passage, particularly at birth, puberty, and through all status changes, including death, give meaning and courage to endure such separations that can facilitate regeneration.
