The initiation spirit

Orokaiva · numen · Orokaiva traditional religion; continuing · numen

In Orokaiva male initiation the novices are secluded and delivered to a spirit said to swallow and then disgorge them, so that the boys die as children and are reborn as men. F. E. Williams recorded the rite in Orokaiva Society; its imagery of a devouring being echoes the cannibal Totoima, and the myth of the ogre's death is told as the origin of the tree-spirits impersonated in the ceremonies. Sources vary in how sharply this initiation-spirit is set apart from the wider host of sovai, the spirits of the dead who otherwise dominate Orokaiva belief.

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