The whipping ritual originated as an ordeal-of-passage tied to fertility rites

Evidence

This is, probably, the original form of the ritual. Probably. Note the qualifier. Xenophon is our earliest complete description, but he is already writing about something with deep ritual roots — the cheese-stealing motif almost certainly connects to older fertility rites of Artemis, the goddess of liminal transitions. The cheese is food being taken from the goddess. The whipping is the goddess defending her food. This is, in scholarly terms, an ordeal-of-passage — a ritual through which boys prove they are ready to cross a developmental threshold, by physically taking something the goddess physically defends. — , The Rod and the Child, 302

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘ordeal-of-passage’ as a coming-of-age threshold-crossing ritual within a global typology.
• XREF: Connects to Eliade, Turner, and Bonnechere’s work on initiation rites, paralleling other sources on ritual threshold-crossing. — connects to: Panopticon intake was staged as an initiation ritual — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 18