Editing Sexual ritual (section)

==Rites of passage==
{{See also|Sexual rites of passage}}
Part of the [[rites of passage]] of growing up are what have been termed "rites of separation from the asexual world... followed by rites of incorporation into the world of sexuality".<ref>Arnold van Gennep, ''The Rites of Passage'' (1977) p. 67</ref> These may be formal or semi-formal—"for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the ceremonial dances of the [[whooping crane]]"<ref>Northrop Frue et al, ''Northrop Frye's Writing on Education'' (2000) p. 92</ref>—or take the form of a more private induction: "formal and artificial... the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figurs and ''papier-mâché'' trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare".<ref>Antony Powell, ''A Buyer's Market'' (1981 )p. 267-8</ref>

[[Freud]] was particularly interested in [[Ethnology|ethnological]] accounts of "the 'ceremonial' (purely formal, ritual, or official) [[coitus]], which takes place" in connection with "the [[taboo]] of virginity".<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''On Sexuality'' (PFL 7) p. 268-9</ref>

===Wedding as orgy===
Freud also noted that in "numerous examples of marriage ceremonies, there can be no doubt that people other than the bridegroom, for example his assistants and companions (our traditional 'groomsmen'), were granted full sexual access to the bride".<ref>Freud, ''Sexuality'' p. 269n</ref> To his followers, "the ''wedding as orgy'', with the bride taking on all the men present, is the clear historical reality behind the modern jokes... and the climactic line-up or 'gang'-kissing of the bride, by all the men present".<ref>G. Legman, ''The Rationale of the Dirty Joke'' Vol II (1973) p. 90-2</ref>

In such a view, "other examples of sacred or permitted public coitus of all women with all men do survive, in similarly modified 'kissing' form", as under the [[Mistletoe#Culture, folklore, and mythology|mistletoe]] "to revive the dying sun at the winter solstice, when the strongest human 'life-magic', namely ritual intercourse, is to be deployed".<ref>Legman, ''Rationale'' p. 90</ref>