The word initiation implies a new beginning, as the Latin initium suggests. By means of a rite of passage or transition, a person is separated from one social or religious status and incorporated into another. From a religious perspective, initiation may be seen as an encounter with the sacred. The transition is therefore a profound one, with the initiand emerging from the passage changed not only socially but existentially and spiritually as well. This radical transformation is almost universally symbolized by images of death and rebirth. One is not simply changed; one is made new.

The study of initiation in general, particularly in primitive society, has been almost synonymous with the study of men's initiation in particular. This situation exists, in part, because the vast majority of ethnologists, anthropologists, and even untrained observers were male and, therefore, had greater access to the...