Word: paganisms
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...reforms stirred little controversy until Tombalbaye ordered the revival of an ancient pagan tribal custom known as Yondo, a grueling initiation rite practiced by the Sara tribal groups of southern Chad. The ordeal -Tombalbaye himself underwent it as an adolescent-is known to involve floggings, facial scarring, mock burials, drugging, and ingeniously gruesome tests of stamina, like crawling naked through a nest of termites. Tribesmen who have been raised in the bush do not always survive the ritual, which suggested that it is even more difficult for urbanized Chadians to endure. When Tombalbaye decreed that high government officials, regardless...
Although Chad's 52% Muslim majority, as well as its 5% Christian minority, condemn the pagan rites, no effective opposition has been organized. A secret meeting of Chad's church leaders was held in August. So far, they have not dared to speak out for fear of reprisal: the 130 assassinated churchmen were apparently killed for preaching against the rites. Until the dictatorial Tombalbaye can be persuaded to soften his drastic decree, many Chadians will have to choose between possible death from undergoing Yondo and certain death for resisting...
...southern England, he is a skeptical practitioner of Freudian exorcism. He is a devotee of reason yearning for Dionysian revels. He has a loveless marriage with a wife he has not even kissed in six years. He pores over pictures of Greek gods and tries to get close to pagan worship on vacations in the Peloponnesus...
...felt lacquered from head to foot, like that naked ephebe, the bright clou of a pagan procession, who died of dermal asphyxia in his coat of golden varnish...
...onetime shrink), takes a fairly gentle view of procrastination. "To many people," he says, "doing something, confronting, is the moment of truth. All frightened people will then avoid the moment of truth entirely, or evade or postpone it until the last possible moment." To Georgia State Psychologist Joen Pagan, however, procrastination may be a kind of subliminal way of sorting the important from the trivial. "When I drag my feet, there's usually some reason," says Fagan. "I feel it, but I don't yet know the real reason...