by Two Eagles
I have participated in two boy to man rites-of -passage. The first time, it was at a weekend long summer solstice gathering there near Spokane, in a previous incarnation of SPA.
We had gathered on a square mile of woods that was under the care of one of our members. Two young men were involved, close friends. Toward midnight, five of us older men, aged early twenties to forties, ritually kidnapped the boys from their womenfolk. We took them to a tipi, where we stayed up all night, and kept the two young men awake, with our five different versions of what it meant to be a man, our sage advice <smile>, and other meanderings.
We also gave each boy a small tattoo on the arm, each a design of their own choice. Then, as soon as it started to get light, (pretty early at summer solstice), we led the young men down to a wetlands area and with prayers and offerings cut willow saplings for a Sweat Lodge.
We went back to the camp and built the lodge, again with prayers and offerings, and explaining to the young men exactly what we were doing. Then we did a Sweat Lodge ritual, with lots of prayers for the two young men. Later we welcomed them into the company of adults, and feasted.
More recently, for one young man, he and his mother and I spent part of an evening in ritual recalling his childhood. She told him what it was like for her, he told her what it was like for him. This was his seventeenth birthday, I believe. Throughout this, they held the two ends of a ribbon. When they were both done, we ritually cut the ribbon, severing the mother/child relationship. Now they would have to forge a new relationship, adult to adult. The next afternoon, four of us older men and the young man met around the Sweat Lodge. While we built the fire and waited for the rocks to get hot, the four of us talked with the young man about our experiences and understandings about becoming and being men. Then we all Sweat, again with many prayers for the young man.
He had fasted all day, and after the Sweat, he hiked out into the nearby woods, with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing, and spent the night alone and unprotected out in the woods. He had lived nearby when he was younger, so he was in familiar territory.
Later the next morning he came back. He told me some of his experiences, and then I led him to a gathering of his mother, his family, and several members of the community there. I presented him formally to them as now a man. They cheered and welcomed him as a man, and then we all feasted.
There are any number of ways to do these things. Essentially, rite of passage rituals consist of three steps. The first is to acknowledge the current state (pre-transformation), ending with a severing, and ending of that state. Next comes the cocoon stage, the transforming stage, the retreat into a non-ordinary reality where transformation can take place. Some cultures had the youth act out death, or even face real death, and pain. Often times there was some body modification to plainly mark for all the transformation. Then comes the emergence into the new state, and a welcoming and acknowledging by the community of the transformed person.
Blessed Be, Two Eagles