4 - Cosmogony and the state

Summary

The two previous chapters examined single rituals apparently carried out for specific purposes: the Orokaiva ritual was carried out in order to initiate a group of children; the Dinka sacrifices I discussed were intended to overcome specific problems; Buid spirit mediumship and sacrifice were concerned with defeating or encouraging spirits. However, in each case the analysis moved away by almost imperceptible degrees from the instrumental aspect to a general discussion of the processes which these rituals represent as animating society. This slippage actually reflects the way the rituals operate; in all three cases the rituals dissolve the particular purpose into a general idiom of societal regeneration.

In his book Iteanu is rightly insistent that the Orokaiva initiation ritual is only one part of a wider interconnected ritual system which includes mortuary rituals and marriage rituals (Iteanu 1983). Even more revealing is the way the initial movement ot the initiates from the village to the seclusion hut in the bush and back again is envisaged as being only a part of a general oscillation between these two locations. This back-and-forth movement involves all adult members of society throughout their lives and can also be imagined as involving the dead, who regularly reinvade the village as masked spirits, later returning to the bush to begin the process again at the next ritual. Orokaiva initiation ritual is revealed as part of a general image of an ordering movement, both cyclical and creative, which involves all society for all time regardless of particular actors or the particular stages in which their lives are implicated.