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Anthropology of religion
Basic concepts Afterlife Animism Augury Communitas Comparative religion Divination Divine language Evolutionary origin of religion Fetishism Great Spirit Henotheism Initiation Laying on of hands Liminality Magic Mana Monotheism Nympholepsy Oracle Pilgrimage Polytheism Rite of passage Ritual Sacred language Sacred–profane dichotomy Sacred site Shamanism Soul dualism Superstition Theories about religion Totem Transtheism Veneration of the dead
Case studies Magic Coral Gardens and Their Magic Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants Neo-Paganism Ritual Angakkuq Babaylan Bobohizan Bomoh Bora Dukun Miko Jhākri Pawang Slametan Wu Revitalization movements Cargo cult Ghost Dance Handsome Lake
Related articles The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Purity and Danger Myth and ritual Archaeology of religion and ritual Poles in mythology Lived religion Elite religion
Major theorists Augustin Calmet Akbar S. Ahmed Talal Asad Joseph Campbell Mary Douglas Émile Durkheim Mircea Eliade Arnold van Gennep René Girard E. E. Evans-Pritchard James Frazer Fustel de Coulanges Clifford Geertz Robin Horton Claude Lévi-Strauss Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins Melford Spiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco Anthony F. C. Wallace
Journals Anthropological Perspectives on Religion Folklore The Hibbert Journal The Journal of Religion Oceania
Religions Ethnic and folk religions Afro-American religion Alaska Native religion Anito Atua Böö mörgöl Chinese folk religion Hanitu Hausa Kejawèn Native American religion Noaidi Shindo Shamanism in Siberia Shinto Tengrism Traditional African religions Buddhism Mahayana Nichiren Pure Land Shingon Theravada Tiantai Tibetan Vajrayana Zen Christianity Adventism Anglicanism Armenian Apostolic Church Baptists Calvinism Catholic Church Coptic Orthodoxy Eastern Orthodoxy Ethiopian Orthodoxy Greek Orthodoxy Lutheranism Methodism Nestorianism Oriental Orthodoxy Pentecostalism Protestantism Quakers Russian Orthodoxy Hinduism Hindu denominations Shaivism Shaktism Smartism Vaishnavism Ayyavazhi Islam Ahmadiyya Ibadi Mahdavia Non-denominational Quranists Shia Sufism Sunni Yazdânism Judaism Conservative Haredi Hasidic Haymanot Karaite Orthodox Reform Jainism Digambara Śvetāmbara Sikhism
Social and cultural anthropology

Bora is an initiation ceremony of the Aboriginal people of Eastern Australia. The word "bora" also refers to the site on which the initiation is performed. At such a site, boys, having reached puberty, achieve the status of men. The initiation ceremony differs from Aboriginal culture to culture, but often, at a physical level, involved scarification, circumcision, subincision and, in some regions, also the removal of a tooth.^[1] During the rites, the youths who were to be initiated were taught traditional sacred songs, the secrets of the tribe's religious visions, dances, and traditional lore. Many different clans would assemble to participate in an initiation ceremony. Women and children were not permitted to be present at the sacred bora ground where these rituals were undertaken.^[1]

The word Bora was originally taken from the Gamilaraay language spoken by the Kamilaroi people who lived in the region north of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales to southern Queensland.^[2] It was then adopted broadly to describe similar ritual sites and the ceremonies associated with them performed throughout Eastern Australia.^[3] Many other terms exist across Australia^[1] to denote similar initiatory rites on a ceremonial ground, such as burbung (Wiradjuri), and kuringal (Yuin).^[4] The specific word is said to come from the belt worn by initiated men.

The appearance of the site varies among cultures, but it is often associated with stone arrangements, rock engravings, or other art works. In the bora rites of southeastern Australia, two circles were drawn, connected by a pathway, a schema which appears to replicate a sky Bora, or the configuration of a series of positions in the Milky Way. Typically, bora ground comprised a larger circle with a diameter of between 20–30 metres, and a smaller ring around 10–15 metres in diameter. The former was a more public space while the latter was sacred, and restricted to male participants who were either the instructing male elders or the initiants.^[5]

In south-east Australia, the Bora is often associated with the creator-spirit Baiame. In the Sydney region, large earth mounds were made, shaped as long bands or simple circles. Sometimes the boys would have to pass along a path marked on the ground representing the transition from childhood to manhood, and this path might be marked by a stone arrangement or by spirit footprints (mundowa),^[6] cut into the rock. In other areas of south-east Australia, a Bora site might consist of two circles of stones, and the boys would start the ceremony in the larger, public, one, and end it in the other, smaller, one, to which only initiated men are admitted. Robert Hamilton Mathews (1897) gives an excellent eye-witness account of a Bora ceremony, and explains the common use of the two circles. One very fine example of a two ring bora ceremonial site used to exist in Alberton, Queensland till it was destroyed, and made way for a pineapple plantation in the late 1950s. The smaller southern ring contained a dolmen-like structure.^[7]

The rings are joined by a sacred walkway. While most are confined to south-east Queensland and eastern New South Wales, five earth rings have been recorded near the Victorian town of Sunbury, although Aboriginal use has not been documented.^[5][8][9]

Bora rings in the form of circles of individually placed stones are evident in Werrikimbe National Park in northern New South Wales.