Ongoing series on male cults

Should any man, Halimink warned me gravely, confide to a woman or an uninitiated lad anything of what went on in the Hain [men’s lodge], both he and the person to whom he had spoken would be killed—E. Lucas Bridges, The Uttermost Part of the Earth, 1948.

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For the last five years or so I have been doing research on male cult secrecy in small-scale societies. This work did not begin with any particular interest in or knowledge of the topic, but simply reading ethnographies of various societies and coming across certain persistent patterns which I did not understand. It has now grown into a broader interest, and I have covered quite a bit on the topic over the years, which I will give a short overview of here.

My first post on the topic, On secret cults and male dominance, provides some background and focuses on a few functional dimensions of male cults, mostly in terms of male reproductive competition and preparation for warfare. The piece is a bit broad, and probably overly focused on selective functional elements, as I was not aware of just how widespread and diverse male cults were when I wrote it.

The next post, Why headhunting men’s cults develop in lowland riverine rainforest areas, discusses the role socioecological context plays in the development and persistence of certain kinds of warrior cults. Environmental context helps incentivize or constrain particular cultural practices, and this is a too easily and commonly neglected dimension.

I followed that up with Notes on Nggwal, a piece exploring some facets of the tambaran men’s cult of the Ilahita Arapesh of New Guinea. The piece was my first to touch on the topic of homicide costumes, which I also delved into in The Assassin’s Footprint, Leopard Society and the Man-Leopard Murders, and Notes on the use of Homicide Costumes. See also my paper Disguises and the Origins of Clothing published in Human Nature.

“Masks from the Kina hut”. From Gusinde (1937) TheYahgan: the life and thought of the water nomads of Cape Horn: “[E. Lucas Bridges] mentions “the wigwam called Keena, [which] is wholly set apart for celebrating religious ceremonies and superstitious practices. It is in these places that the youths receive their severe training, which is to introduce them to the privileges of man's estate, and every young fellow has to undergo it”. Bridges explains the customary and frequent masking on this occasion as follows: The men “also portrayed half-dramatic, half-religious embodiments of various evil forces, but these performances, which to them were a source of excitement and amusement, took place only when a large number of them were assembled. The performers put on their masks in separate buildings which the women and children were not permitted to approach, and they were expected to show great fear of the things performed in front of them by the demon, during which he threatened them with all kinds of violence…The men would be occupied in the keena, painting and variously disguising themselves with bark hats, and smearing themselves with blood, procured by pricking the inside of their noses, to represent various characters. Some would appear as an evil being called Chinoogoo, others as another evil spirit known as Tanoowa, others again represented Ushoomeena, and others Laiacakeepa, a female demon. When all was ready, the women and children being seated outside their wigwams, these variously disguised men, unrecognizable even to their nearest relatives, would rush forth with club, spear or bow in hand, dancing and leaping about frantically, threatening the women with their weapons…In the keena they would rest and, amidst roars of laughter, discuss the merits of the different actors. All dances and amusements were accompanied with singing or chanting for the varieties of which they had special names, derived from birds and plants”

I touched on some of the artistic and musical elements involved in Sexual Selection Through Mate Choice Does Not Explain the Evolution of Art and Music, The Bullroarer, and Some Uses of Musical Instruments in Hunter-Gatherer Societies.

I discussed some of the initiation aspects in The Creation of Men and Women in Hunter-Gatherer Societies, the evolutionary dimensions in my Quillette article A Girl’s Place in the World, and deception and male control of desirable occupations and resources in Sacred Metal and Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and the 'Loving Deception' of the Mountain Arapesh.

I considered women’s own ritual practices in Women’s secrets, while my most recent post, Shame and cult secrecy, gets into the role of the emotion of shame in both the maintenance and destruction of male secrecy.

This is an ongoing project, and I plan to update this page as I continue to work on it.