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, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which
seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is
explained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a
passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in
every rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you
carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is
a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded,
under a _taboo_.

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