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This chapter draws a comparison between male cults in a specific part of Papua New Guinea and in a limited region of Amazonia, considering the myth of matriarchy, the exclusion of women, and physical ordeals for boys. It focuses on the rebirth dimension of men's cults, as they appear among two Anga groups and in two related societies of the Vaupés region. The male cults in these two areas have much in common; the elements are acted out, the goals are assigned to them, and the discourses people have in respect to them are quite similar. However, there are certain differences in the representation of the rebirth of the boys during initiation rituals in the Anga and the Tukano areas, which may be related to differences in the ideas the respective populations have concerning the origin of the cosmos and of the living species.

This chapter discusses recruitment to the Pandit household via birth and adoption. It covers the physical, supernatural, and cultural factors in childbirth; attitude toward sons and daughters; rituals and ceremonies connected with childbirth rules of adoption; consequences of adoption; the parent–child relationship; genetic and moral aspects; the nexus of religious rites; ritual initiation of boys; economic rights and obligations; and grandparents, parents and children in domestic life.

This chapter explores the relationship between male friendship and the transformational aspects of Freemasonry's initiation, known as the “apprentice ritual” (rite d'apprenti). Drawing from more than twenty different manuals used by brethren to perform the apprentice ritual, dating from the 1740s to the French Revolution, the chapter reconstructs what an apprentice candidate likely experienced once he stepped into a French lodge. More specifically, it examines the initiate's multiple encounters with lodge members and spatial zones and how these interactions fit into the wider pedagogical project of symbolically breaking down the candidate's egoistic self. It shows how the initiation ritual generated a form of “ritualized friendship” that was anchored in the moral foundation of an ecumenical Christianity. The chapter argues that Freemasonry's apprentice ritual symbolically recast the neophyte into a new form, emptying him of specific undesirable psychological elements which otherwise would have made friendship a problematic, unstable relationship.

This chapter continues with the initiation rituals of a young woman named Virtudes in the Palo Monte Mundo Nuevo Guinda Vela praise house of Guanabacoa. Her blind walk exemplified the path to initiation faced by all ngueyos—one enters Palo ignorant and approaches its forces in a position of exquisite vulnerability. She was on the verge of losing her job at a hotel, accused of stealing money and sharing it with a superior, with whom she was rumored to be having an affair. Her madrina had advised her that the only way to counter the coming misfortune was to enter Ocha/Santo, but first through Palo. Ocha/Santo would steady her, and Palo would counter her enemies. It is best to join a Palo society of affliction before committing one's fate to an Ocha/Santo sovereign.

The ability to speak the words of the spirits (kongsu) is central to shamanic practice, and the opening of a prospective shaman's “gates of speech” (malmun) is the central task of an initiation ritual. This chapter tells the story of a bashful, reticent initiate, Chini, and the initiating shamans' struggles to open her gates of speech. The analysis of hours of video, and the opportunity to discuss the outcome of this kut with Chini, her initiating “spirit mother,” and the other participating shamans has brought the author as close as she has ever been to understanding what a shaman is supposed to experience during kut and how shamans balance performance skills and inspiration to manifest their gods.

While this book has followed Richerson and Boyd in positing an evolved tribal social instinct, it is argued that societies require further symbolic means to instillprosociality in the course of development. The muting of sexual reproduction and the creation of symbolic kinship through shared culture helps achieve this. The origin of prosociality in individuals is traced to attachments formed during the lengthy mother-infant bond, leading to affect hunger that persists through life. This is redirected to wider social groups in the course of development; illustrative cases offered are the Kaingang and the Ache. The prevalence of childbirth symbolism in initiation rituals, and the role of genital surgery is discussed. The symbolism of Nuer ox sacrifice is discussed and analyzed in some detail.

Our Machiavellian abilities for reverse dominance have made us into animals capable of symbolic communication. Ritual emerged as collective intentional action against would-be dominants. The ritual–speech coevolution model implies that evidence for earliest ritual also indicates the origins of speech, permitting us to make testable predictions against the archaeological record. The chapter outlines two sexually selected processes of ritualization in hominin ancestors, one involving male coalitionary display, the other female coalitionary display. Each process results in different signalling outcomes in ritual performance. The Female Cosmetic Coalitions hypothesis predicts that red cosmetics will be foundational to human symbolic culture, and proposes a timeline related to the late phase of encephalization in Homo heidelbergensis to Homo sapiens. It generates a hunter-gatherer configuration of bride-service, initiation ritual, and cooperation between genders and kin groups, embodied by playful ritual ‘battles of the sexes’.