Alex Wildwood shares his perspectives about male initiation in the UK
(from
http://www.sacredhoop.demon.co.uk/HOOP-10/INITIATION.html )
ALEX WILDWOOD outlines the ideal process of male initiation, talks about his own experience as a man, and suggests a new vision of network support
The term 'rites of passage' was first used by the Dutch anthropologist Van Gennep in 1908, when describing the ceremonies tribal people used to mark and manage important stages in their life journeys. He suggested these ritual events involved three distinct phases: separation, transition and incorporation. In the middle - transition - phase, the individual is neither in nor out of society, they exist in what he called a 'liminal' state, (limen being Latin for threshold).
Rites of passage include these times of passing through a gateway, when we are led by circumstances or traditions beyond our personal control, to re-assess our lives, to ask ourselves the big questions about who we are.
In traditional initiation rites, the individual was taught their entire web of relationships - to family and kin, to the temporal powers of their society, and as human beings to the whole cosmos.
Through rites of passage an individual acquires a body memory of their kinship with the whole of life. Rites of passage happen to individuals and to whole societies; today we're facing the need for a global shift in consciousness where humanity either comes of age, or dies out through nuclear war or ecocide.
Although rites of passage occur throughout our lives, there seem to be
certain key 'windows' of opportunity when we are most susceptible to an
in-breaking of Spirit - to the power that actually initiates us. For example, in
childhood our native sense of awe and wonder makes us more sensitive to the
mysteries of the natural world, whilst in their 'mid-life crisis' many men find
themselves asking questions about life's meaning and purpose. For the past eight
years I've been offering Men's Rites of Passage through the 'Everyman' programme.
These began when three of us - a storyteller/musician, an anthropologist, and a
therapist - started from our personal recognition of the lack of any significant
initiation in our own lives.
We soon found we were not alone in feeling that we'd never quite grown up, that we were secretly boys with the bodies and appearance of men. These early forms of Men's Rites of Passage have since evolved into six-day events.
Through the experiences of participants and the influence of my co-leader, Ron Pyatt, we've combined the anthropological, social sense of life transitions with a more contemporary, psychological emphasis of personal growth and awareness.
We've taken rites of passage to mean any significant shift of identity - such as being welcomed into the world at birth, becoming an adult, making commitments in or ending relationships, becoming fathers, changing jobs, or coming to terms with serious illness or death.
We've acknowledged that for men today, 'coming of age' is a much more individualistic and privatised process than it is for tribal peoples. Yet we've found there is still an archetypal need for collective rituals that place us in the wider scheme of life.
What we've done in these groups actually follows the 'classic' three-part model quite closely, though we didn't sit down and plan it that way!
We invite small groups of men to spend six days in the wilderness. This separates us from the wider culture, our everyday sense of self, family roles, etc, and also from our routines and 'props' - the personal habits and distractions by which we insulate ourselves from the insights and teachings of Spirit.
By consciously leaving our 'comfort zones' and sleeping under canvas or in places used for ceremony, the whole environment - natural and man-made - begins to play a part in disturbing the identity of the participant so that they become more open.
These events combine three elements: groupwork, time in nature, and ritual. Men tell their stories and no matter how diverse the group seems, there are always strong areas of identification.
When everyone's history has been heard by at least one other man, participants then tell their stories as mythic tales, as heroes' journeys or traveler's yarns. The men also spend time in nature, often journeying silently alone away from the camp.
We set these events in wilderness to humble men, to remind them of the Greater Reality to which we all belong, for in our daily work-lives we can slip into the dangerous conceit that we are separate from and 'above' the rest of nature.
On these events we aim to contradict the pioneering masculine tradition of going into nature to subdue or control it. We hope to rekindle men's sense of awe, remind them of their evolutionary journey and begin to heal the split between little self: the 'mind-ego' and the greater self: the 'body-nature-'Spirit-in-the-world''.
The groups next enter the 'liminal' phase. We create together personal rituals, vivid physical experiences, in which men surrender their ordinary awareness and identity and let a deeper, more intuitive wisdom guide them.
These rituals are always rooted in bodily experience. They may be very quiet and gentle - such as receiving tenderness from others; or they may involve physical challenge, literally moving through some obstacle or facing a real fear - symbolised by crossing a mountain stream, or remaining awake from dusk to dawn.
There is a literal, bodily sense of a movement from one state to another, of facing an unknown and finding within ourselves a receptivity, courage, or integrity we didn't know we had. Through these rituals men develop and ground their individual visions, they gain clarity about decisions they must make or choices they face. Often they choose to commit themselves, in front of witnesses and in the awareness of Spirit, to a chosen course of action. In this ritual space, all of us, group leaders included, are challenged by a wisdom far beyond the conscious awareness of any individual present. But there is a human level of challenge too. We place a great value on authenticity and each man speaking his truth. As leaders taking responsibility for the welfare and safety of the group, as they go through this risky process, we have to be honest if we are feeling tired or 'off' in any way. This is why we always work with at least two leaders in a group of about twelve participants.
As leaders we too are required to deal with the issues that arise from these rituals. Like many men, the unfolding of the stages of my life has not happened in the classic, 'right' order. For example, I became a father years before I had any clear sense of myself as an adult man, before I had a clear sense of life direction or purpose. In a traditional society that could never have happened.
For me, personally, it's important to find links between earth-based spirituality and the Christian tradition of this land. Whilst intellectually I reject the Christian dogmas, I feel drawn to honour the transparency to the divine that Jesus seems to have embodied.
Rituals challenge everyone who enters that liminal space; so to keep entering it is to keep being challenged at deeper and deeper levels. As the leaders of these groups, we would submit ourselves to the process of going through a personal ritual whenever it felt right to do so.
Through the Men's Rites of Passage I've discovered major issues I need to address and I've needed to stop to find appropriate ways to do that. I also want to follow up with the men who have done rites of passage and find out how the rituals that seemed so affective at the time, have effected them months and even years later. What I've learned is that rites of passage are deeply bonding events - they can involve as deep a commitment to one another as a business partnership or a sexual relationship, whether we're conscious of that or not.
Having shared the intimacy of creating ritual space with so many others, I need to honour my relationships to those participants in some way and pay attention to the lessons thrown up for me personally.
One of these is about money! Clearly there is a lot of hard work involved in creating and containing ritual space, but offering rites of passage commercially seems to involve a contradiction I personally haven't resolved. Essentially I see this as heart-work, a gift of Spirit I can only pass on, I cannot own, or sell. But I haven't yet got the balance right between nurturing myself - getting adequate financial return and recognition for the work I feel called to offer - and not turning ceremony into a commodity, with customers instead of fellow-travellers.
And this is linked to issues of training and supervision. Where are the elders we can learn from, who understand the Western psyche and the differences between our participants and those in traditional cultures?
Personally, I work very intuitively and eclectically, so where are the safeguards, for me and for the participants? There can be very dark forces released in ritual space and I don't want to be naive about creating ceremonies with people I don't know well, just because they've paid to come on an event.
I also find myself asking to what extent is it possible - or appropriate - to do such rituals with people who don't share a community, either over time, or in a locality? Part of the fragmentation of our culture seems to be that we share incredibly deep and powerful experiences with comparative strangers on weekend workshops.
The healing that rites of passage offer leads us, inevitably, from our present isolation and individualism into forms of community. I now feel drawn to do similar work with a group of people who have made a commitment to share real life celebrations and rites of passage over many years. My vision at the moment is of a mixed group offering each other the rites of passage we need, seeing each other through transitions we are facing, which we need to have witnessed by both men and women. I've reached a point where men-only work feels limited. I think single-gender space is really valuable and necessary, but I feel drawn to the wider forum of where the genders meet and dialogue, where we share our pain and anger and healing.
In the groups I envisage, some of us might need to be witnessed just by our own gender, some by mixed witnesses and some of them by the other gender only. The other gender participants might be either silent witnesses or active participants, depending on what the focus person chose. I think it would throw up some of our deepest fears and longings. Right now the priority for me is creating the sort of community where this would be possible and finding what I need for my own growth and healing. All I can offer others at the moment is these travellers' tales.