A rite of passage ia ritual that marks a significant change in a person’s life, often puberty, or manhood. We might be used to baptisms and bar Mitzvahs, but other cultures have much stranger rites. Here are 6 of the strangest rites of passage.
1. Bullet Ants
Image source - antstuff.net
The Satere-Mawe tribe of Brazil have their tradition that marks the transformation from boy to warrior. The tribe weaves a glove and fills them with the bullet ant, the insect with the most painful sting–often compared to being shot by a gun and a single bite can cause cardiac arrest.
A glove is typically filled with about 30 ants, and the boy must have his hand inside the glove for 10 minutes, suffering hundreds of stings. This process is repeated dozens of times in the following months, until the boy is truly a man.
2. Three trials
Image source - ronwalker.org
To be worthy to hunt in the Amazon Jungle’s Matis trail, boys must face three trials:
1) Poison squirted into their eyes to improve vision
2) Beatings and whippings, to prove their resilience and manliness.
3) The poison of the Phyllomedusa bicolor frog etched into their skin. The poison alleged increases strength, but has its side effects include violent vomiting and nauseating lightheadedness.
3. Cow jumping
Ethiopians of the Hamar tribe who wish to marry must complete the cow jumping rite. The boy must jump over the cow at least 4 times–a rather deadly and difficult task. He is traditionally naked, symbolic of the childhood he is about to leave behind.
4. Drug trip
Image source - med.wayne.edu
Boys of the Quebec Algonquin tribe are given “wysoccan”, an incredibly hallucinogenic drug, 100 times more powerful than LSD. The boy spends the next 20 days in a small cage, hallucinating like crazy and suffering extreme side effects like amnesia.
The idea is for the boy to forget everything about his past, and become a man. This includes language, his family–everything. If the boy shows signs of recognition, he is often drugged again.
5. Crocodile scars
Image source - wallpaperandborders.co.uk
Tribes along the Sepik river in Papa New Guinea have the incredible painful manhood passage of scarification. The boy is cut several hundred times down his chest and back, creating an intricate pattern resembling that of a crocodile.
The wounds are treated, but the scars remain and the pain is long-lasting.
6. Male isolation
7 year olds in the Mambia tribe of Papua New Guinea are taken away from their mothers and placed in male-only houses for the next 10 years. They are taught about the “contamination” of women, and the boys must purify themselves by vomiting and through skin piercings.
