The world is changing, and man remains a social being. The ability to coexist in a certain structure means to be your own in it. From almost ancient times, almost all nations on earth had a ritual of initiation. He walked hand in hand with the ideology of the era and was essentially a technique of initiation into a new elite social group.
From the neophyte to the princes
Initiation is a procedure for initiates to acquire a new status. The neophyte becomes a supporter, changing not only externally, but also internally. Religious rituals are divided into three cohorts. Almost everyone passes through the first. It is committed by adults when a boy or girl grows up. It can be a group initiation or individual.
The second cohort is for the elite, those who considered themselves wise enough to join the fraternity. The third cohort is elitist. From ancient times, exceptional people belonged to it, who developed special qualities and individual traits in themselves: shamans or priests.
According to the laws of nature
Initiation is just the stages that a person goes through during the natural periods of growing up. We are talking about spiritual growth, which in a harmonious person correlates with physiological changes. Adolescents aged 12-13 begin to demonstrate antisocial behavior, turning into a new, previously unfamiliar personality. The rite of initiation was designed to return the youth to a human face, however, endowing him with mature experience, introducing new values into the subtle world. In ancient times, the names of the gods were revealed to the teenager, they revealed the meaning of legends and introduced them to the holy traditions of the tribe. As a result, the young man had to grasp the connection between the "world of the living, " the memory of the ancestors and supernatural manifestations. Today this process is left to chance, parents either suppress the changes in the child, or completely leave it to themselves. A person can not always go through this process independently.
Temporary death
Initiation is a ritual death. A significant part of initiations involves symbolic dying, oblivion of the former, but the person is necessarily resurrected. Death prepares birth for a better life, of a different meaning. In an ancient tribe, for example, only after a sacred ritual did a young man acquire the status of a member of society. After that, he received equal rights with adult men and carried new responsibilities. Thus, the cult is important precisely because of its unique life experience, which we all must get in order to reveal a new meaning of values and meanings. Very often in ancient societies adolescents underwent a ceremony of military and sexual initiation. These rituals are preserved in a number of African tribes.
For intercourse with a woman, the young man passes the test, after which he receives the first sexual experience, changing the idea of the opposite sex and making it possible to create full-fledged relationships.
In turn, the loss of innocence for a girl can also symbolize a "small" death. Now a woman has new sensations and understanding of her body.
Traditional technology
The initiation process has the same pattern in all traditions. These are three stages: the person is expelled from society (isolation); liminal or borderline stage (initiation); initiation into a new team.
Insulation
Going through initiation means going through all the steps in order. Before the event, a person passes the test of loneliness. With the same stage, isolation in a prison or a madhouse is associated, when a person who changes personally, acquires new qualities for a powerful breakthrough in later life. If we are talking about a teenager in modern society, the child often destroys old friendships, moves away from parents. He is no longer interested. Strong new relationships cannot yet arise, because their values are still incomprehensible.
Purification or transformation
The main point of the process is to return part of it to the “other” world. A man is born into the world "unclean", not free. The first step that cuts it off from the world of the dead is to name it. Further, this initiation into adulthood, again through death and purification.
In addition, rebirth helps to free oneself from the ballast alien qualities that were instilled as a result of insensitive education. Initiation is like clarifying the route of your path along the compass needle.
In the transition to a new quality, for example, from an apprentice to a master, death means overcoming a peculiar wall, an obstacle that cannot be overcome in the usual way. The previous person did everything to be near this section, and now she can die, then the transformed person will be born on the other side and continue his path of spiritual development.
The obstacle insurmountable by traditional methods is the difference between a layman and a warrior, a servant and a sorcerer, a bride and a wife, a squire and a knight, a free man and a lord.
Rebirth
From a psychological point of view, moral death is a stage that relieves a person of childhood fears and complexes. After all, with this load it is impossible to move on through adulthood, where there is much more responsibility. If you do not go through the ritual, then moving on will be very difficult.
A person is freed from the past, emptied, becomes empty, so sometimes the next stage - filling with new values - is a long time. So the hero grows in schemes of initiation, fairy tales. Preserving his person and transforming his personality, a person begins to create new strong and interesting relationships, to integrate into a new environment.
Ritual plots
Each nation has its own heroes, symbols that fill the rite of initiation. Getting acquainted with the ethnos in legends and legends, from this point of view, the subjects where the main character dies and resurrects are of interest. The world heritage has a huge number of myths and legends, where a god or demigod goes through this reincarnation, like a phoenix. Based on the goals of the ritual, they choose a plot and stylize it for the context. You can write your own script or combine several.
The story is played in an altered state of consciousness in order to go into the beyond, where there are no boundaries. This is achieved through special music, dances, products. At the liminal stage, a person makes a breakthrough, the personality is transformed, gaining new qualities.
