Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage

Cover
University of California Press, 29.06.2000 - 393 Seiten
Over the past two decades, North Americans have become increasingly interested in understanding and reclaiming the rites that mark significant life passages. In the absence of meaningful rites of passage, we speed through the dangerous intersections of life and often come to regret missing an opportunity to contemplate a child's birth, mark the arrival of maturity, or meditate on the loss of a loved one. Providing a highly personal, thoroughly informed, and cross-cultural perspective on rites of passage for general readers, this book illustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions.

The work of a major scholar who has spent years writing and teaching about ritual, Deeply into the Bone instigates a conversation in which readers can fruitfully reflect on their own experiences of passage. Covering the significant life events of birth, initiation, marriage, and death, chapters include first-person stories told by individuals who have undergone rites of passage, accounts of practices from around the world, brief histories of selected ritual traditions, and critical reflections probing popular assumptions about ritual. The book also explores innovative rites for other important events such as beginning school, same-sex commitment ceremonies, abortion, serious illness, divorce, and retirement.

Taking us confidently into the abyss separating the spiritual from the social scientific, the personal from the scholarly, and the narrative from the analytical, Grimes synthesizes an impressive amount of information to help us find more insightful ways of comprehending life's great transitions. As we face our increasingly complex society, Deeply into the Bone will help us reclaim the power of rites and understand their effect on our lives.
 

Inhalt

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Rough Passages Reinvented Rites
1
Celebrating New Life Ritually Nurturing the Young
15
Pulling up My Skin for Laces
21
You Have a Compass within You
29
Children Are Not Born but Made
36
Male Mothering
45
Married Already or Not Yet?
186
Old Enough to Be the Father of His Bride
191
Passing the Torch Blessing the Bride
196
From Blessing Marriages to Making Them
198
Alternative Weddings
205
Reinventing Marriage Rites
210
Living with the Dead Exiting Gracefully
217
Good Ways to Die
221

Begreasing and Bespewing Poor Infants
49
Churching and Gossiping
55
Appropriate Craziness Extravagant Praise
57
Cosmic Fetuses and Bundle Babies
59
Kneeling on the Earth
63
A Birth Well Attended
71
Nurturing Ritual Sensibilities
74
The Dove Still Travels with Me
76
Reinventing Birth Rites
83
Coming of Age Joining Up
87
Initiation as a Global Problem
91
The Reality of My Own Body
94
Patterns of Initiation
100
Initiation around the World
107
Initiatory Fantasy
111
The Improved Order of Red Men
117
Betwixt and Between
121
Debt Payments Whippings and Washings
125
Bartering a Traditional Celebration
127
Initiatory Wonder
131
Initiatory Disenchantment
136
He Emerged as One of Them
138
African American Rites of Passage
145
Divining Mates Making Kin
151
Wedding Preparation Wedding Aftermath
156
The Purity of an Angel the Sweat of a Human
159
Reaching through the Veil
163
Like a Horse and Carriage?
169
The Most Splendid Couple in All of Japan
172
The Sacred Fire Was Our Witness
177
Dying Scenarios
227
It Took Two Funerals to Bury My Brother
230
A Coffin Lined with Paper
236
A Cloud of Earth for a Pillow
240
Living with the Dead
243
The Release of a Hungry Ghost
251
Dancing with the Dead
254
The American Way of Death
258
Dead He Presides Over Us
261
Mortal Acts
270
Cyher Ritual and Death on the Web
273
Reinventing Death Rites
275
Passages Troubled and Uncharted
285
The Spilling of Boys Blood
289
Female Genital Mutilation
294
Ritual Criticism and Widow Burning
299
Satanic Ritual Abuse
302
Never Instead of Always in Addition to
307
Ahortion Rites in Japan
310
Until Grief Leaves the Forefront of My Being
315
The RollerCoaster of Joy and Woe
320
Cutting the Cord of Employment
323
Beyond Passage
335
Crying in the Night
337
Boiling Energy
340
Bahettes Feast
344
Notes
347
Sources Cited
359
Index
369
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Autoren-Profil (2000)

Ronald L. Grimes is Professor of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of Marrying and Burying: Rites of Passage in a Man's Life (1995) and editor of Readings in Ritual Studies (1996), among other works.

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