PASSAGE RITES. The social and religious orders are con cerned with, interpret, explain, and exploit the facts of the bio logical order. Man passes from one stage of life to another con tinuously. Yet there are breaks, moments of discontinuity. All the various moments of discontinuity in the social life are the oc casions of passage rites. Time and place, age and status, social ideas, determine their detail, but all exhibit a common form because all serve a common purpose. What is new is dangerous.
What is new may be necessary or inevitable, f ore-ordained and foreseen. The nearest source of strength for the individual is found in the solidarity of his society. The cake of custom con strains and protects him. All passage rites consist of a period of separation marked by formal acts of severance, physical or sym bolic. This is followed by a period of delay, sometimes of some length, and is completed by a series of rites uniting the individual to his society; indeed they make him a member of his society.
Other ends may be served by subordinate ancillary rites which often acquire such prominence as to obscure the primary purpose. Thus marriage rites contain various elements but as a whole are typically passage rites. Birth rites, naming rites, initiation rites, marriage rites, and funeral rites, exhibit these essential features. The common purpose is to effect and to mark a change in the status of the individual, to affirm and to confirm the solidarity of society, and to protect the individual at the moments when by social or physical necessity he is subjected to abnormal emotional stress, and therefore dangerous.
See the articles CONSECRATION, MANA, MARRIAGE, RITUAL, TABU.