{"id":9059,"date":"2010-02-21T22:53:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T04:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artofmanliness.com\/?p=9059"},"modified":"2025-12-12T11:38:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T17:38:13","slug":"male-rites-of-passage-from-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/featured\/male-rites-of-passage-from-around-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Interesting (And Insane) Male Rites of Passages From Around the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the heart of the modern crisis of manhood is the extension of adolescence, a boyhood which is stretching on for a longer and longer period of time. Once thought to end in a man’s 20s at the latest, men are extending their adolescence into their 30’s and in some especially sad cases, their 40’s.<\/p>\n

But in some ways it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of a culture in which rites of passage<\/strong><\/a> have all but disappeared, leaving men adrift and lost, never sure when and if they’ve become men. Today’s men lack a community of males to initiate them into manhood and to recognize their new status.<\/p>\n

Across time and place, cultures have inherently understood that without clear markers on the journey to manhood, males have a difficult time making the transition and can drift along indefinitely. Thus, rites of passage were clearly delineated in nearly every culture as one of the community’s most important rituals.<\/p>\n

While almost every culture had a rite of passage ritual, there existed a great diversity in what these ceremonies consisted of. The common thread was an experience that involved emotional and physical pain and required a boy to pass the test of manhood: to show courage, endurance, and the ability to control one’s emotions.<\/p>\n

The following are a few of the interesting (read:insane and crazy) rite of passage rituals that existed (and in some cases still exist) around the world. While they be quite offensive to our modern, Western sensibilities, each was born of different cultures’ beliefs of what made a man, a man. And you thought your Bar Mitzah was stressful.<\/p>\n

Vanuatu Land Diving<\/h3>\n

\"Tribal<\/p>\n

Bungee jumping is for wusses\u2026 at least compared to the men who live in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the middle of the South Pacific. Here the men take place in a yearly harvest ritual called Land Diving.<\/p>\n

Around April or May, villages will build crude wooden towers reaching heights of 100 feet or more. After the tower is completed, a few men will volunteer to scale it. The men then tie a vine first on a platform on the tower and then around their ankles. Summoning all the courage they have, the men dive from the platform headfirst. The divers reach speeds of 45 miles an hour as they plummet to the ground.<\/p>\n

The goal of the jump is to land close enough to the ground that the diver\u2019s shoulders touch the ground. Any miscalculation on the length of the vine means either serious injury or death.<\/p>\n

Land diving among the Vanuatus goes back nearly 15 centuries. The purpose of the ritual is twofold. First, it\u2019s performed as a sacrifice to their gods to ensure a bountiful yam crop. Second, it serves as a rite of passage to initiate the tribe’s boys into manhood. Boys as young as five years old will take part in the ritual which is often preceded by circumcision<\/a>. The boys start out jumping low, but will work their way up as they get older. The higher a man goes, the manlier he is considered by the tribe.<\/p>\n

Watch the divers make their plunge into manhood:<\/p>\n