Coming of Age Rituals

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Recommended: Human development stages

Coming of Age: The Passage to Adulthood
Rituals around the world all teach valuable lessons that help initiates see the value and importance of life. Each culture has different rituals that provide experiences for their youth to learn these valuable lessons of life. Many coming of age rituals are intense procedures. The Amazon's Satere Mawé youth enter adulthood through the bullet-ant glove initiation, teaching courage and endurance, and the crocodile scaring ritual that the men from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea participate in teaches them pain and accomplishment.
Bullet Ant Glove Initiation
The Amazon tribe, known as the, -Satere Mawé, practice the bullet-ant ritual that young men participate in enabling them to enter adulthood. Beginning around age 13, young men are expected to endure the bullet ant glove, in order to be considered a man of the tribe. Neil Griffin (2012) describes this ritual:
“Becoming a Satere-Mawe man involves getting up close and personal with the bulletant. At the time of initiation, the group will locate a bullet ant nest and waft smoke over it to knock out the ants. The unconscious ants are collected, and carefully – I’m guessing very carefully – woven into a glove made of the leaves. The end result is a leafy green iron maiden. Shaped like an oven-mitt on the outside, the ants are embedded within the leaves with their stingers facing inwards. The man-to-be then slips the glove on, and must keep it on for ten minutes. At the end of ten minutes the glove is removed, although generally not by the boy, who is usually busy being paralyzed and/or convulsing. The boy will generally recover within a week – but the ritual can be fatal. Unfortunately, even for the survivors, once is not enough to prove ...

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Works Cited

Cruickshank, B. (2012). “Growing Pains.” Ethos. Retrieved from http://ethosmagonline.com/archives/15467.
Griffin, N. (15 November, 2012). “Becoming a Man, The Satere-Mawe Way.” The Canadian Naturalist. Retrieved from http://acanadiannaturalist.net/2012/11/15/becoming-a-man- the-satere-mawe-way.
Inghem, A. (2008). “When men become crocodiles: Extreme Tribal Scars.” Environmental Graffiti. Retrieved from http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/when-men- become-crocodiles-extreme-tribal-scars/1261.
Oti the Lis, . "Bullet Ant Ritual." Is this enough to prove you are a man?. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr 2012. Retrieved from http://www.otithelis.com/initiation/bullet.php.
The Travel Lust. (2010). “Deep Skin Cutting rituals of Blackwater Sepik River.” Retrieved from http://thetravellust.com/2010/11/18/papua_new_guinea_sepik_river_blackwater

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