4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

actuals 37
Eliade does not define reactualization. Instead he gives examples of
it. An initiation is a ceremony in which “a new generation is
instructed, is made fit to be integrated into the community of adults.
And on this occasion, through the repetition, the reactualization, of the
traditional rites, the entire community is regenerated” (Eliade 1965:
40). The actualization is the making present of a past time or event.
Eliade describes a puberty initiation of eastern Australia called a Bora.
The initiates are surprised at home and “kidnapped,” held at the place
of initiation. There, secluded, they are instructed in the lore, dances,
and songs of their tribe. This schooling lasts for months. During it, the
initiates are kept under strict discipline. The ceremonial area is a “sacred
space” within which ordinary time has been abolished and dreamtime
is. Dreamtime is the time of the first initiation rite performed by
Baiamai, the supreme being. Finally, amid dancing and singing, the
initiates are circumcised: their bodies irrevocably marked with a sign of
their belonging to the tribe. The Bora ground is Baiamai’s first
camp and the initiators are those who were with Baiamai when he
inaugurated these ceremonies. This reintegration of time and place is
not peculiar to the Australians. It is true
for the entire primitive world. For what is involved here is a fundamental
concept in archaic religions – the repetition of a ritual founded
by Divine Beings implies the reactualization of the original Time when
the rite was first performed. This is why a rite has efficacy – it participates
in the completeness of the sacred primordial Time. The rite
makes the myth present. Everything that the myth tells of the Time of
beginning, the “bugari times” [Dreamtime], the rite reactualizes shows
it as happening, here and now.
(Eliade 1965: 6) 9
This is true not only of compact rites but of those which are narrative
and of long duration. The Elema of New Guinea celebrate a cycle
called the Hevehe, after the majestic 30-foot-high mask-spirits whose
appearance and dances are the climax of a process that takes from 6 to
20 years or more to complete. The masks are built in the men’s ceremonial
house, the eravo, which is lengthened and heightened to
accommodate the painstaking work. A number of ceremonies mark the