Essay On Rites Of Passage

In almost every society and culture there are multiple things that are deemed as extremely important. The Aztecs considered sacrifices to be very important, those who practice Hinduism have a strict importance on reincarnation etc. While those are important to particular cultures, one of the major significant factors in one’s life is one’s “Rite of Passage”. In our drill we learned that rite of passage is defined as, ceremonies that mark important transitional periods in a person’s life, such as birth or puberty. Although everyone goes through multiple rites of passages throughout their lives, the idea of marriage as a rite of passage is what I’m primarily going to focus on throughout this paper. With rites of passages, there are three key stages that have to occur, those stages are separation, transition, and reincorporation. Each stage is very important in the whole process. I have participated in many rites of passages throughout my life so far, such as: birth, puberty, and graduation. Another rite of passage I had the pleasure of being involved in is when my younger brother Justin got married this past summer and I was invited and took place in the wedding. Marriage is a very important rite of passage …show more content…
Therefore, Gennep helped coin the term rite of passage when he studied the transitional period of people. It is not just another transitional period for someone, there is now a special word to describe this transition thanks to Gennep. Rites of passages are also seem sometimes as ritualist. Another definition for rite of passage is “ a life cycle ritual that marks a person’s or group of persons’ transition from one social state to another” (Welsch and Vivanco 360). This just being another way to describe the process, and explaining the term ritual in its