The author quotes Van Gennep on three major phases of each 'rite of passage': separation, transition, and incorporation. Rites of cutting (umbilical cord, foreskin, the first haircut) are generally rites of separation. But cutting off or mutilating any part of the body automatically incorporates the subject into a defined group whose members share similar ineradicable traces. Pollock speculates that certain rituals which are occasionally found in conjunction with circumcision indicate a mourning of the separation from the mother's body, which the circumcision completes symbolically in a group participation activity.