It is not easy to make a selection of the strangest social rituals in the world, if you delve a little deeper into the subject you will notice that the planet is populated with very different customs than you are used to, many people practice curiosity and even terrifying rituals.
Social rituals serve the purpose of celebrating the most momentous moments of community life, especially births, deaths, the transit from childhood to adulthood and marital union, are moments that change everything and therefore end up being the subject of ritualization.
- There are also Western rituals that may seem very strange to these communities that we will talk about below.
- In fact.
- We’re more alike than we look.
- The shape changes.
- But not so much the background.
As we make this reservation, we will then see the 5 strangest social rituals in the world, at least in our Western eyes.
What is a ritual?, said the little prince. Is this also something that has been forgotten for a long time,” the fox said. Is this what makes one day different from any other day?. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry-
Initiation rituals, especially those related to children, often involve cruel or very difficult practices to overcome. One of the strangest social rituals in the world is precisely that of initiation. It takes place in the Satere-Mawé tribe, a community located in the Amazon. and recently known for our Western civilization.
You may never have heard of Satere-Mawé, but you probably know the “guarana”. It was they who discovered their properties and scattered Guarana in the accident, so in this community there is a ritual for a child to be accepted as a man He has to pass a very difficult test. You have to put on gloves full of bullet ants 20 times in a row and for 10 minutes.
Bullet ants produce very painful stings, which some compare to touching a hot iron. During the ritual, many people faint. Recovery takes several weeks, but the prize must be accepted as an adult within the tribe.
Death is another circumstance that results in the formation of very strange social rituals around the world. The Yanomami, people who live in the jungle of Venezuela and Brazil, have a very curious ritual. When someone dies, the corpse is exposed for a day. The next morning, women should paint their faces black to express their pain. They must cry, too.
Next to the deceased they put all their belongings and belongings, then they burn all, if things do not burn completely, it means that the person has done something that cannot be forgiven, the next month the person’s family must return, collect the ashes and place them in a banana soup. Everybody’s got to eat the soup. It’s a way for the deceased to stay with those who are still alive.
The Dani tribe lives in Papua New Guinea, it is another community that maintains one of the strangest social rituals in the world, and this also has to do with death, it turns out that when a man dies, the women and children of his family must allow the amputation of one or more of his fingers. The man in charge of doing this is a priest.
The priest observes the reaction of women and children at the time of amputation, if they resist and do not show much pain, do not amputate one, but several fingers, with the amputated parts make a necklace, which is placed in the dead before burying him. They have yet to convince the Danis to abandon this cruel ritual.
Birth is another time when there are often strange social rituals; one of them has existed for 700 years in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka in India and is linked to the superstition that there will be health and prosperity if babies are thrown from a height of 9 meters so that they can be picked up by an elongated leaf.
The authorities have obviously banned this ritual, even if the inhabitants guarantee that there is no risk to the little ones. Despite the restriction, the ritual is still performed in many places. Superstition is stronger than the laws of reason.
Marriage union also gives rise to several very strange rituals around the world, one of the most curious occurs in some places in Scotland, just before the wedding, the groom and the bride are wrapped in sticky foods, others bathe them in tea and lay raw eggs, butter, pudding and local food.
Then the bride and groom have to go for a walk in the village, completely covered and smelling bad. As they say, this public humiliation prepares them so that no marital problem is worse than this ritual.
All these rituals, in one way or another, aim to celebrate or mark the most important moments of life, this may seem difficult to understand, but for each society, they have a special value, whose function is to make sense of the most remarkable. experiences we have.