Desire and the Inner Quest

[yezida]

[More from my ongoing project]

People write to me periodically about the problems in their communities with people wanting initiation into this or that, and there not being enough initiates to go around. I wrote a whole article for Thorn Magazine (no relation!) on this subject regarding the opening of the Mystery in all of its variety and glory.

Comments

Ins and Outs

[anonymous]

What is initiation? I think there's more than one way to consider it. Most of the conversation seems oriented towards a ritual - a culminating ceremony by which a community recognizes an individual as "one of us"... and so they do act as "Credentials." Take the typical graduation ceremony. It's an "outer" thing, and it has a place in communities. It says that the individual is bound to a set of expectations, a contract if you will - purporting that those initiated share a common body of knowledge.

Internally, though, an initiation may be considered an entire ritual cycle. For most Americans, "high school" is an initiation into adulthood; it doesn't even require the commencement ceremony. As Thorn says, it's an internal process.

In some rites of passage, the "initiation ritual" may confer an *experience*, and I think that's what a lot of people crave. I initiated myself to the Goddess - a solo ritual - and it was a powerful experience for me. It didn't earn me any social status, any power in some community, but what it did was demonstrate to myself where I stood. It served as "proof" to my Self of who I was, though it certainly didn't guarantee any particular outcome of what I would do with that self-knowing. I've also been initiated by a community, and that too was a moving experience, for it showed me (with surprises!) where my place was within this group of people whom I loved quite deeply. Certainly this is a form of power, but it doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with "teaching" or even leadership.

Whether performed individually or in groups, an initiation may be consider as a three-fold message: The initiate is not only the transmitter of "the message", not only the receiver of said message, but also *becomes* the message sent and received.

~ Jane ~