A ceremony or event marking the passage from one social status or developmental state to another.

The Belgian anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, who first coined the term early in the 20th century, noted a three-part pattern in transitions between life stages: 1) an initial phase, during which the individual is isolated from the community; 2) a period of disorder or confusion (called the liminal period), during which his or her former identity is broken down; and 3) the individual's reincorporation into the community once he or she has made the passage to a new stage of existence and a new identity.

One of the most important transitions in the life cycle is the passage from childhood to adulthood. Ceremonies marking this event were common in pre-industrial societies and are still practiced in a number of non-Western cultures, whose coming-of-age or initiation rituals generally follow the pattern outlined...