AUSTRALIA
The Unambal Aborigine Tribe of North West Australia
A very important event in the life of a young male Aboriginal is the initiation ceremony which makes him an adult man, and is performed at the first signs of puberty. These initiation ceremonies consist of circumcision and the incision of scars on his chest, shoulders, arms and buttocks. The wounds are filled with sand in order to produce larger scars.
In the case of a young girl the initiation ceremony happens at the onset of the first menstruation, when scars are incised on their buttocks. She is then deflowered by members of her own marriage class, after which she can cohabit with all young men who are classed as possible husbands.
For the young man circumcision is followed by subincision when his beard starts to grow. The young man is seated on rock while his penis is split open with a stone knife along its full length on the underside. The penis, once split open, is pressed flat against the rock on which the young man is sitting. The Aboriginals explained that this is done in order to make it “lighter and more beautiful".
A red blossom is placed in the wound because the penis is to be as red as possible on the inside. After the young man has been initiated in this way he is allowed to make stone spearheads. The Wandjina cast the first bolt of lightning by splitting open his penis and in this way was able to discharge fire and lightning from it. The Wandjina created fire by turning the red inside of his split penis outwards so that fire could come out. The Wandjina can direct lightning by taking his penis in his hand and with his club show the lightning the direction it is to take.
In this way he can strike his enemies with lightning or shatter trees to get firewood for himself. I have often observed the aboriginals in thunderstorms trying to follow the Wandjina's example of directing flashes of lightning, and no amount of failure was able to shake their belief. The aborigines decorate their spear-throwers with a yellow serpent to represent lightning.
Ngaatjatjarra Circumcision ritual
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Meanwhile other men have retired to a point in the bush where they cannot be observed directly. Using sharp, pointed sticks they reopen their own subincision would and line up in a semicircle on the dance ground facing the singers. They perform a series of hoping dances backward and forward directly in front of the novices, while the blood from their penis wounds splashes on their thighs. Then they too stand for a while by the fire to let their wounds dry. Immediately following this series of dances, I noticed some younger men running individually among the song circles. Each would dart in and stand in front of an older man lifting him up under the arms and embracing him tightly. According to Tindale, who witnessed a circumcision ceremony among the Pitjantjara Aborigines of South Australia, in this practice the younger man’s embraces the man who held his penis during his circumcision. It is a mark of public courtesy and appreciation by the younger man and is expected of him on this occasion. This ritual is followed by another hopping dance involving freshly reopened subincision wound and an episode in which each of the novices is taken by a group of his classificatory brothers and tossed into the air (I was told that this was to let everyone see the boys) while everyone else in the gathering wails. After this the boys are hustled back under their blankets and the singing resumes.
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Ngaatjatjarra Subincission ritual
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He is grabbed by several men and held tightly as he is tilted backward exposing his penis. The operator, an older man, steps forward and using a sharp stone flake, cuts open the man’s urethra from the meatus to a point about halfway to the scrotum. This is a fantastically painful operation, said to be even worse than circumcision, and the victim nearly passes out. But he sustains the operation without a murmur or cry and is quietly praised afterward for his fortitude. Afterward the victim stands close to a fire for a while to let the wound dry and then sits quietly off to one side for the rest of the day.
In Norman’s [Tindale’s] 1933 motion picture of subincision among the desert aborigines one can see an event that will never be photographed again. One boy, well past the normal age for initiation, disqualified till then for being an obviously genetic homosexual (physical anthropologists who maintain homosexuality is entirely cultural may write rude words here in the margin), is accepted on the special plea of his father. But the boy cries out, screams in agony, and sits sobbing long after the deed is done. The father, suffused with shame, tries to make light of the blasphemy. Norman told me the boy was kicked about and ultimately speared to death for having rubbished the sacred ceremony.