tribal mark

76:2.8Cain’s life in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had not been ex­actly happy since he was in such a pe­cu­liar way sym­bolic of the de­fault. It was not that his as­so­ciates were un­kind to him, but he had not been un­aware of their sub­con­scious re­sent­ment of his pres­ence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neigh­bor­ing tribes­men who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some re­morse, led him to re­pent. Cain had never been in­dwelt by an Ad­juster, had al­ways been de­fi­ant of the fam­ily dis­ci­pline and dis­dain­ful of his fa­ther’s re­li­gion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spir­i­tual help and guid­ance, and when he hon­estly sought di­vine as­sis­tance, an Ad­juster in­dwelt him. And this Ad­juster, dwell­ing within and look­ing out, gave Cain a dis­tinct ad­van­tage of su­pe­ri­or­ity which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

70:7.10The pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mony usu­ally ex­tended over a pe­riod of five years. Much self-tor­ture and painful cut­ting en­tered into these cer­e­monies. Cir­cum­ci­sion was first prac­ticed as a rite of ini­ti­a­tion into one of these se­cret fra­ter­ni­ties. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion; the tat­too orig­i­nated as such a badge of mem­ber­ship. Such tor­ture, to­gether with much pri­va­tion, was de­signed to harden these youths, to im­press them with the re­al­ity of life and its in­ev­i­ta­ble hard­ships. This pur­pose is bet­ter ac­com­plished by the later ap­pear­ing ath­letic games and phys­i­cal con­tests.

68:1.2As­so­ci­a­tion early be­came the price of sur­vival. The lone man was help­less un­less he bore a tribal mark which tes­ti­fied that he be­longed to a group which would cer­tainly avenge any as­sault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fa­tal to go abroad alone with­out some mark of group as­so­ci­a­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion has be­come man’s in­sur­ance against vi­o­lent death, while the pre­mi­ums are paid by sub­mis­sion to so­ci­ety’s nu­mer­ous law de­mands.