cts as though they were new-born children. At the end of
twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not
comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the
forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their
heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry.

Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new
name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are
danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the
Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row
cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out.
The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of
each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of
spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the
society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house.
The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood
relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe.

Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or
represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it
is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called
Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings
them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or
rite of swallowing we are not told.

In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to
grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus
among the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or
Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a
bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four
days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to
find him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ ("Come on, Bear") and he answers
with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at
last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and
there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first
appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in
initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same
object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to
another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and
other ceremonies,