Many different cultures around the world have traditions and rituals to celebrate life's milestones. According to Kottak (2011), these “rites of passage are culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another” (p. 354). These rituals can be performed individually or collectively. In traditional rites of passage quests, it usually involves a male transitioning from childhood to adulthood being separated from his family and village and enduring periods of isolation and difficult challenges to see if he can survive on his own and once he sees this vision that will make him become his guardian spirit, then returns to his village as an adult. According to Kottak (2011), “All rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. In the first stage, people withdraw from ordinary society and leave their old status behind. In the third stage, they re-enter society, having completed a ritual that changes their status. The second, or liminal, phase is the most interesting. It is the limbo or “timeout” during which people have left one status, but have not yet entered or joined the next (p.354). They mark a change in social status, location, condition or age. . In this article I will discuss two rites of passage, one from a Brazilian society and one based on personal experience. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Among the Kalapalo of central Brazil, there is a rite of passage for boys that involves ear piercing. Most of the kids in this culture participate in this ritual. The Kalapalo call this ritual ipoñe and it is very important to them as it symbolizes the differences between men and women. Preparation for this ceremony takes place two months before the actual event begins. Every day the men and women of the village prepared the boys for the ceremony by singing and dancing with them and applying an herbal infusion to their earlobes to prevent them from bleeding. By placing this herbal infusion on the earlobes, this is considered a liminal symbol, marking the extraordinary condition of this ceremony. While the dancing is still going on, the boys' fathers collect expensive pottery so they can pay for the ear piercers. Then, a date is set for the ritual and usually only guests and attendants participate in the ritual itself, although other groups from the village are invited. The separation occurs when an anetu, who is a representative of the village, decides that a boy enters seclusion during puberty and is old enough to have his ears pierced. There is a sponsor assisted by a non-anetu, who is an ordinary villager, who has children between the ages of six and nine and also participates in this ritual. On the first night of the ritual, as the boys continue to dance around and around which they chant their liminal symbols are the cotton belts, shell collars and yellow feather headdress worn during the ritual. On the second night the boys are stripped of decorations and the songs of the host village continue and agifoñati, a medicine used to help bleeding, is applied. The participants go for a bath and immediately afterwards the ear piercing begins. The boys sit on the stools and the guardians begin to cut the hair of the participants, place them on the mats in front of the boys and the hair is disposed of in the forest. The boys' fathers begin to place portions of food in front of their sons and order them to share the food with the crowd. There is a pause in the ritual where the boys can relieve themselves inso as not to urinate or defecate on themselves while being pierced. Once they return they must go to the sponsor's house where they are again seated and painted with soot and the ceramics that have been given to the drillers and guardians are exposed for several minutes and brought back home. The boys are put back in their original places and the sponsor imitates the cry of the bird from which the feathers for the headdress were taken. He hops on one foot to his house and from there takes off the ear piercing sticks and goes back to where the boys are. Ear piercing sticks are given to piercers and they start polishing and making tools. While the instruments are prepared, the guardians stand behind the boys to hold them still for the ear piercing. Once the preparation of the instruments is finished, the ear piercers hold a stick in their hand and as the rhythm and intensity of the singing continues, they are given a sign by the sponsor that the ear piercing should begin. Ear piercers work quickly as in less than a minute the sticks are driven into both of the initiate's ears and tobacco smoke is blown into the boys' ears to relieve the pain. Despite the boys having pierced ears, they have not yet reached the third stage. Instead, they remain isolated for three months. During this isolation they cannot go out and cannot be visited. The father can only give them food through an opening. They must also fast for the first five days and during the first month they can only eat wild fruits. The second month they can eat anything except fish, and the third month they are sent fishing with their father and other adults. Upon their return they are officially released from isolation and can return to their homes. This ceremony represents coming of age and is a step towards manhood for boys. Two important symbols of adulthood are conferred by pierced ears. It allows them to wear toucan feather earrings, which is an important male adornment, and to acquire adult names. A more contemporary rite of passage in my experience would be graduation. It's a time when your social status changes from high school student to high school graduate. After you graduate, you have so many choices to make and figure out what you want to do in life, like getting a higher paying job with more benefits, going to college, joining the military, and so on. To prepare for graduation, there are a few steps I had to take to get through this process. The first phase begins with withdrawal from ordinary society. After spending four years as high school students, they all dress in white or green caps and gowns, which are liminal symbols, for a ceremony known as graduation and are separated from the rest of the crowd who attend the ceremony and must wait. in a different area for our cue to come out and sit. We were not allowed to sit with our families. Instead, all 500 of us had to be placed in our class rank order based on GPA and seated accordingly. The second stage, known as the liminal stage, is when you have left one status, which is your high school student status, but have not yet entered the next status, which is high school graduate. While in the second phase, I had to spend the next two hours of the ceremony sitting next to people I didn't even know had gone to my high school and while I was in that chair, I sat and listened to the administration and teachers talk about our class and how proud they were and other announcements they had. I last heard the school song sung when I was a senior in high school, showing pride in the.