Australian Mardudjara Aborigines: Rites of passage ceremony

This gruesome rite of passage consists of two parts the circumcision and sub-incision. the ceremony starts when a young boy of the tribe turns of age usually about 15 or 16. upon this happening the boy is lead to a fire and is told to lie down next tot he fire while tribe members sing and dance around him and a special group called the mourners wail and cry as the ceremony takes place. a tribal elder then sits upon the boys chest facing his feet and with the help of two other men wielding special ceremonial knives the tribal elder removes the foreskin of the boy. The boy is then told to kneel on a shield and let the smoke "cleanse him" finally while in this daze the boy is told to swallow a piece of good meat which is actually his freshly removed foreskin. He is told he has now eaten a piece of his own body and that it will grow in him and make him strong. At this point the ceremony is not over in a few months time the boy is surprised and again lead to the fire with the same setting again the tribal elder sits on the boy this time with the help of a few other men the sub-incision is performed. The process for this is to shove a stick up the urethra to act as a backing then a knife is used to split the penis from the underside. once this process is completed the boy is then told to stand over the fire and let his blood fall upon the flames. At this point the boy is a man and the ceremony is complete. One of the reasons that it is thought that this ceremony is done is so men of the tribe can sympathies with the women of the tribe and from the point this sub-incision is complete the boy will forever have to squat when he pees further forcing him to sympathies with women.