ABSTRACT
This chapter examines ritual processes and the Ogo society. It highlights how the initiation rites not only impact on the initiates, but also on their families and the community. The Ogo society has initiation processes for both the boys' and adult groups. The gender dimension is also brought into focus, in order to demonstrate the complexity of gendered religious roles within the society. The complex initiation process into the Ogo society is compelling and evocative and its continuance rests on the conviction that the process transforms boys into men, thereby giving them a higher degree of indigenous knowledge and power. One difficulty in analysing the data is how to determine the stages at which the different phases of the ritual take place. As such it is argued that while the three-phase structure of the ritual introduced by Van Gennep and advanced by Victor Turner is helpful, the processes in ritual especially initiation into the Ogo society are characterised by fluidity.
