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Ritual, Ceremony and Elders
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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_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.
_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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.