Ritual, Ceremony and Elders

[qos]

I started reading King, Magician, Warrior, Lover today, in part because Bruce Tallman based a significant part of Archetypes in Spiritual Direction on it, and in part because it was a gift from _storyteller_. I got through the first few chapters during lunch (they're short) and am already fascinated by one of the basic premises in the book.

Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette are writing specifically about men when they make these observations, but I think they can easily apply to women as well.

They assert that one reason why there are relatively few maturely masculine men is that the rituals don't exist in Western culture to transform a Boy into a Man. There is no ritual which symbolically kills the Boy and gives birth to the Man, in the company of other men. Many of the "rituals" that exist are actually pseudo-rituals, which reinforce Boy psychology.

The dearth of meaningful rituals of initiation is probably not news to most people reading this, as it was not news to me. But what I did find interesting was the contrast the authors made between ritual, which is a holy and transformative experience of power, and "empty ceremony." They argue that most of our "rituals" are actually empty ceremony.

Which certainly gave me a different perspective on my own problematic relationship with "ritual." How much of what I expect to be ritual is actually mere ceremony? (The theatrically inclined can turn to Henry V, Act IV scene i at this juncture.) If I had had more experience of authentic ritual in my life, might I feel less resistant to it?

The second observation hit even more close to home: that in order for an initiatory ritual like this to take place, there have to be authentic Elders to preside, and to welcome the newly-made Man (or Woman, or Adult) into the company of other Men/Women/Adults.

As I look back over my life, I can't remember being formally-ritually welcomed into the company of Women, or even of Adults. There were pseudo-rituals, of course: a couple of graduations and a marriage being the most obvious. But I did not experience the kind of transformation of identity that Moore & Gillette argue is so important to leaving behind archetypal Childhood. (Which is not to say that the Inner Child is left totally behind. There's a place for her/him. But it is not the inappropriately dominant aspect of the person.)

The closest I've come to a ritual of initiation that might have led to a change in identity/status was my oral defense of my Masters thesis. I had expected to be grilled by the committee, but instead I found myself taking part in a collegial discussion. My professors had questions about my topic, but they were posed as one scholar to another, with me being the expert in the field. When I was invited back into the room after their deliberation, my advisor reached out to shake my hand as he drew me across the threshold and congratulated me. (I've never been entirely sure if he was deliberately using such a powerfully symbolic gesture, but this was the Religion department, so it's a good bet he was fully aware of the significance.)

Unfortunately, that experience was not reinforced with ongoing fellowship or support. I graduated and was on my own again, not socialized into a new status within the tribe.

More later, as it's getting late.

Comments

Ritual

[http://users.livejournal.com/_storyteller_/]

My only coming of age that could hold up to the parameters in the book was my military service. Basic training was a time that killed the self and made me a member of something larger. It was overseen mostly by men who welcomed me into the fold. One of the most significant moments of my life was not graduation from training, but one week before that. I was presented with my Airman's coin and was allowed to call myself an Airman instead of a trainee.
More significant to me becoming an adult was me completing NCO training and going from being an Airman to being a Sergeant. I was no long just expected to be responsible for my own actions and fulfillment of the mission, I was now expected to be responsible for others. I really took to the mentor/guide role of being an NCO. Combined I can say that overall military service was a 5 year trial for me and one that I encourage.

Re: Ritual

[qos.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about how you felt your military experience factored into this.

As you know, Moore & Gillette believe that the military often only provides a pseudo-ritual of Manhood. What struck me about your response was the element of responsibility for others, and the seriousness with which you took accepted that responsibility.

That seems to be a significant element of the Man, as opposed to the Boy, who so often manifests as the selfish, demanding Tyrant.

Re: Ritual

[vsmallgoddess.livejournal.com]

I believe that the most important part of ritual is that the initiate believe in it. Everybody needs a mentor and not just an elder. For some this becomes a collage professor, the parent of a friend or even a total stranger met on a long bus or train ride. Some people will have many mentors that can include lovers or spouses or people the same age or younger than yourself who have simply had different experiences. What matters is that the mentor is close enough to and respected by the initiate enough to leave a serious impression and hopefully to provide each other with continuing support as that relationship matures.
My point being that if you believe that what you do is meaningful ritual, no matter how mundane it might be, then it is life affirming.

[don-negro.livejournal.com]

royalbananafish recently quoted me the best definition of ritual that I've ever heard. (paraphrasing) 'a ritual is a symbolic expereince that changes you even if you don't understand the symbols.' ("paging Dr. Jung. Dr. Jung, you have a call on line one.") And there are a number of them in our society. (Confirmation, marriage, graduation, initiation into certian mainstream esoteric organizations, etc.) What we as a society almost completely lack is a collection of rituals which change other people's perceptions of you even if they don't understand the symbolism involved. So any change that our rituals accord us is likely to be localized and/or short-lived.

Ironically, the closest thing we have to a ritual ordeal is childbirth, and that is the defining experience which (in my experience) has the greatest across-the-board impact on other people's perceptions. I guess the wholesale reordering of priorities is such that you can't help but expect it.

Sleepy. More later.

[qos.livejournal.com]

My three top initiatory experiences were not accompanied by ritual, and only childbirth included assistance in integration by an Elder (my mother).

I didn't expect or welcome the transformation into a Mother. It was one of the toughest ordeals I've ever experienced (from pregnancy through the first two years of my daughter's life). If I hadn't received tremendous support from both my parents and from my then-husband, it might have proved fatal for myself or my daughter. (And that's a slight exaggeration, but reflects how it felt then.)

The thing about giving birth that makes it truly initiatory for me is that once you've done it, there is no going back to the person you were before. Whether the child lives or dies, or is adopted by someone else, whether you're a good or bad mother, whatever happens, you are changed because of that child. And since I'd never particularly wanted to be a mother, that was bitter knowledge for a long time.

But becoming a Mother is not necessarily a transition into adulthood. I didn't feel more grown up, or more a Woman, because I had a baby. Mileage varies, of course, but that's how it was for me.

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, I was struck by an eerie sense of unreality associated with just about every wedding I have ever attended. The reason, I thought, was that in every case, the couple being married had been co-habitating for at least a year, and often much longer, before the ceremony. Which meant that their lives after the wedding would look exactly like their lives before the wedding. Any pretense that the ceremony marked a transition or the beginning of anything was obviously just that -- pretense.

I suspect that to have any real emotional power, ritual must mark a genuine, substantial change in one's day-to-day life.

I wonder too whether our culture's relatively flexible and fluid set of roles and statuses diminishes the possibilities for effectual ritual. Without rigid role and status boundaries, there are fewer genuine transitions to mark, and those that do occur are comparatively low-impact.

Finally, I notice that most of our role changes occur in the context of new social groupings. For example, when we get our first jobs, our co-workers have never known us as anything but co-workers. (Family businesses are a little different, of course, but there the border between family-member and co-worker is often blurry: your parents and siblings rarely start treating you differently on your "first day" of work.) So when our roles change, we usually don't experience the emotional disruption of having long-standing emotional and social relationships radically re-arranged.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Interesting observation about weddings. Some people have the experience that a wedding does change things, but my sense is that they are a minority. The Ex and I did not cohabitate before the wedding (although we did sleep over frequently), so that was a big change for us.

I suspect that to have any real emotional power, ritual must mark a genuine, substantial change in one's day-to-day life.
Exactly. And that doesn't happen very often.
Graduation comes close, but I don't believe that my parents or anyone else in my life treated me any different after my high school or college graduations than they did before. They marked a milestone of achievement, not a true life transition. To become a 'new person' I had to leave those societies behind -- but I did so without any actual shift in my sense of self.

Without rigid role and status boundaries, there are fewer genuine transitions to mark, and those that do occur are comparatively low-impact.
Also a good observation, and perhaps one of the inherent problems in seeking/defining ritual transitions in our own culture by starting from the patterns of tribal culture? I'm going to have to ponder that for a while.

[bookchick.livejournal.com]

RE: weddings. Although I tend to agree about the ritual being so much empty ceremony, I have to say that, personally, it did shift me on a day-to-day level - one that most people looking from the outside *did* notice. Yes, we lived together before marriage, but the act of getting married required such a shift in paradigm for me (and had quite a bit of internal backlash, as you know), that it definitely had a deep ritual feeling. Much more than becoming a Mother, even.

RE: ritual in our own culture. Ah, but aren't you supposing that, as a society, we *want* to have ritual to become "Men" and "Women"? I would propose that we've actually fetishized youth to the extent that these 'pseudo-rituals' DO have meaning to those who partake - that they allow people to hang onto the youth that even 40 years ago people were trying to let go. I think that, when gender and heirarchical roles were more rigidly defined, our culture may have had some strong, but not obvious, rituals of this type. Unfortunately, rather than being re-defined, they were thrown out with the bathwater, in some ways.

RE: the military. Perhaps the difference is the person who enters the situation, rather than the ritual itself. While respecting _storyteller_'s experiences, I have also known a great many men who've NOT experienced it as an initiation into a form of elderhood. Rather than becoming confident, they've become cocky, rather than becoming respectful, they've become narrow-minded. And maybe that's part of the difference now in our culture - not that the rituals don't exist at all, but that they've become so individualized that others *can't* recognize them. (ie, _storyteller_ might obviously had grown from his military experience, while Joe Schmo might just as obviously become more of a frat-boy mentality - the casual observer might dismiss the ritual itself in favor of the idea that it all boils down to the individual and his/her experiences).

Another aside: I specify men in the above paragraph because the few women I've known who've entered military service tended to experience it more like _storyteller_ did.

This is something the H and I have discussed a lot, but it's obviously making no sense on just one cup of coffee. Sorry about that.

[femalegamer.livejournal.com]

I notice most posters are talking about ritual, but I was thinking about this from the other direction - was there a major thing that delineated when I stopped thinking of myself as a kid and started thinking of myself as "grown up".

It could be considered ludicrous, but I think it was when I was at the mature age of 10. My parents had a messy, messy divorce then, and I was drug through all of it. My mom had been back to work for two years, and after that she obviously started working a lot more (as a waitress), so I started to make my own dinners, or my brother did. I started reading more fiction designed for adults (though it would be two years until I started plowing through the Incarnations of Immortality, or Lord of the Rings and things like that).

Oddly enough, I can think of two deliberate initiations into something in my life. The first was, of all things, marching band, with its good natured hazing of freshmen. (Absolutely nothing physically harmful, or even taxing, but plenty of humiliation.) The second was when I became a knight in my re-enactment group, and I plan on making even more of a production when I'm elevated to a second level (we have three levels) knight. I suppose the power of THAT ceremony depends on how seriously you take oaths to be a lamp of chivalry and such, though, when you're swearing under a fake name.

Re: the comments about weddings and previous cohabitation. My husband and I didn't live together, and so I can't say for certain that shared living arrangements change the impact, but it feels like it should.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I believe I would have benefitted from a ritual welcoming me into the company of women...the celebration of a girl's first period and her entrance into the Red Tent in the novel by the same name is a good example. However, I doubt any ritual that celebrated womanhood would have satisfied me, as the definitions of what it means to be a woman have always left a bad taste in my mouth. I chafed at the fact that we Girl Scouts did not have so much physical activity requiring brawn as Boy Scouts did. The most physical thing we did was carry our things to the cabin at camp...and camping has never been my idea of a good time. I was bored with the sewing and other "girly" things that made up Girl Scout activities back then. I wanted to do something that required me to be bold and brave and physically active...running, perhaps, or doing chinups or learning how to carve a block of wood into something interesting. I doubt any rituals that celebrated womanhood would have had me involved in such things. It probably would have resembled the charm school my sister went through or the Purity Girl classes we went through in our church: lectures on how to walk and stand and wear frilly dresses and be "ladies". Ick.

I have had to come into a sense of womanhood/adulthood on my own. I first began feeling like an adult when I bought my house in the spring of 2000. I did it without my parents' knowledge--they didn't know anything until I told them the seller had accepted my offer--and without a spouse. I got an inkling of that when I bought my first car eight years earlier, but it wasn't until the house that adulthood really hit me like, "Wow: there is no turning back, now!" I began celebrating my womanhood when I switched to cloth menstrual pads and reusable sponges. These weren't rituals and there was no one on the other side to say, "Now you are a part of US," but there was a definite shift in my self-perception in both cases.