Rite of Passage Journeys
Chapter I: Why a Rite of Passage?
WHAT IS A RITE OF PASSAGE?
We live in a time when it is confusing to be a youth. In
former times, things were simpler. People were
expected to grow up faster and take on adult
responsibilities sooner. There was, in most societies, a
clear pathway by which children and young people
moved to adulthood. It began with the first childhood
tasks they were given and concluded with the
conferring of adult status by representatives of the
larger community, usually in a ceremonial way.
A RITE OF PASSAGE is a
ritual or the ritualization of a
transition or passage.
A rite of passage is such a ceremony and marks the
transition from one phase of life to another. Although
it often refers to the tumultuous transition from
adolescence to adulthood, it can refer to any of life’s
transitions. There are many passages in our lives if we
choose to mark and celebrate them. We use the word
‘passages’ to refer to the significant transition points in
our lives.
TYPES OF RITES OF PASSAGE
There are many types of passages that we experience
in our lifetimes. Dr. Angeles Arrien who is a cultural
anthropologist, author and educator and has studied
rites of passages extensively and cross-culturally sees
them as falling into four main types: BIRTH,
INITIATION, PARTNERING, and DEATH.
BIRTH refers to those transitions that signify new
beginnings. These can include starting a new business,
moving to a new city or into a new home, bas well as
the birth of a new baby and becoming a parent.
Beginnings: Birth, First Day of
School, New City or New Home,
First day on a New Job, First
Date, First Child, First
Grandchild
INITIATION is about learning and testing. One can be
initiated into various new stages of life and takes on a
new social role. The most common form of initiation
happens as the community helps young people
transition into adult status at puberty. This kind of
initiation requires significant effort on the part of the
initiate to master the knowledge of the culture and
demonstrate they are ready to assume the role of adult
Initiation: Puberty Rites,
Coming of Age, Confirmation,
Bar or Bat Mitzvah, Cotillion,
Quinceaneros, Gang Initiation,
Intern or Apprentice,
Elderhood
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in that society. But initiation can be useful at other life
transitions as well; for example, as a child moves into
adolescence or an adult moves into elderhood.
PARTNERING passages take place when things come
together. Starting a new business partnership, a
merger of organizations, and collaborating on a
significant project are examples, along with the coming
together of two lovers or the blending of two families.
Partnering: Engagement,
Marriage, Business
Partneshipr, Community
Organization
ENDINGS is a time of finishing or letting go. Retirement
and divorce are two ending passages we as a society
must find more appropriate ways to mark.
Endings: Death, Retirement,
Being Fired, Divorce, Empty
Nesting.
WHAT IS AN INITIATORY RITE OF PASSAGE?
At Journeys we are most concerned with initiatory rites of passage. Initiation is
defined in the dictionary as “the rites, ceremonies, ordeals, or instructions with
which a youth is formally invested with adult status in a community, society or sect.”
Rites of Initiation have always been rooted in the community; that is, they are
something that are done by the community for its members. Their intent was to
shift the perception of youth toward their roles in the community and the
perception of the community toward their youth. More importantly, however,
initiation was about the creation, maintenance and continuity of the community.
When a young Maasai initiate stood before the community, allowing himself to be
circumcised without flinching, he was participating in an ancient ritual that assured
that warriors would protect the village with all of their being, not turn to run or give
up if they were injured or in pain. Initiation rituals also bonded the men of the
village in a way that created the teamwork necessary for the hunt or the war party.
In several cultures, when young women were taken away to the encampments of the
women’s societies to learn the traditions of the tribe and the secrets which allowed
women to maintain their power base in the community, the culture was being
transmitted to the next generation and a similar bonding took place.
Initiation is therefore fundamentally about the maintenance of community. In
initiation, roles are defined and redefined. The stories that carry the values and
history of the community are retold and learned so that they may be told again.
Adults become elders as youth become adults, and the familiar (family) bonds are
forged and tempered. As Michael Meade said, “Stories are the oldest school for
humankind.”
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Initiation is about finding one’s home-–knowing who one is and where one comes
from. Personal history is founded upon a unique genealogy passed on by parents,
grandparents, aunts and uncles. In a true community, all people develop through
active relationships. One’s personal cosmology is built upon that of those who have
gone before. The experience of the elders and the ancestors has value because it is
one’s dowry –- life tools which have worked for one’s forbearers and will continue
to work into the future.
A true community begins in the hearts of the people involved. It is not a
place of distraction but a place of being. It is not a place where you reform,
but a place you go home to. Finding a home is what people in community try
and accomplish. In community it is possible to restore a supportive presence
for one another. . . The others in community are the reason that one feels the
way one feels. The elder cannot be an elder if there is no community to make
him an elder. The young boy cannot feel secure if there is no elder whose silent
presence gives him hope in life. The adult cannot be who he is unless there is a
strong sense of presence of the other people around. This interdependency is
what I call supportive presence.
--Malidoma Somé in Ritual: Power, Healing and
Community
STAGES OF RITES OF PASSAGE
There are three stages of a Rite of Passage that are commonly identified:
1. Severance or Separation is the time of stepping away from the old, from
what one has been before, and may require a physical separation from one’s
“old life.” During this stage one begins to shed old ties, old roles, and old
ways of being so that one can be open to what is yet to come.
2. Threshold or Transition is the actual time of leaving all else behind and
standing fully in an unfamiliar place where one must rely on one’s inner
resources to find one’s way forward. This stage is also referred to as liminal
space or liminality, the place of “no longer and not yet.”
3. Incorporation is the time to process the experience of the threshold and
relate what one has learned to the world one will re-enter. This stage is about
integrating those learnings into one’s life so that one can bring them back to
the community.
WHERE ARE THE MODERN RITES OF INITIATION?
With few exceptions, children today do make the transition from youth to adult. So,
what’s the problem? Why are we so concerned?
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Historically and cross-culturally, the purpose of initiation is to keep the youth
connected to his or her community. In this century, in North America, we have
almost lost this tradition, leaving youth often to initiate themselves. Gang initiations
are an obvious example of how destructive self-initiation can be. In a gang
initiation, the youth separate themselves from the community in a dramatic way,
often including random acts of violence against the community, and consolidate
their new role working against the interests of the community.
Consider, also, parents who have fallen victim to an impossible-to-fulfill story called
the Nuclear Family. Whether a couple or single, parents are expected to give all
guidance, discipline, values and support to their offspring while working and
commuting 50 to 60 hours per week. How are they to initiate their own children and
into what society? In the past, parents would have turned to community elders but
our modern society has become stratified; we have relegated the elders to
insignificant, non-community related roles. Their life experience is ignored, and
their participation in the rearing of children is sometimes even seen as
objectionable. In former societies, the elders were those who cared for the society
by initiating the youth and were seen as the wisdom keepers for the community.
Now mostly we are unsure how to properly initiate our youth. Even our youth are
confused: When we ask them how they will know when they are adults they give a
shocking range of answers: driver’s license (the most common answer; the rest are
in no particular order), graduation and moving to college, marriage, owning their
first home, first sexual relationship, childbearing (sometimes a result of the former),
and turning 21 (along with the right to consume alcohol and vote).
What we find in these answers is that the story is slightly different for every youth
because there is no clear culturally supported answer. We aren’t exactly sure what
makes us adult, even those of us who are supposed to be adults. This hodge-podge of
answers place our youth in ‘liminal space’ for a span of 15 years or longer, leaving
them in a prolonged and difficult space for an undetermined amount of time.
Besides being unsure of what rite of initiation really marks our transition into
adulthood, our contemporary rites do not easily reach across social and economic
lines. Not every youth can get their driver’s license and car at 16 and not every
youth can move away to college or sometimes even graduate from high school. What
do we do for the youth that cannot access these rites?
Many of us who are doing Rites of Initiation work are doing so with the future of the
larger community in mind. This task, however, is far too big for us. The larger
community must once again assume the task.
When youth (and adults) are left without a conscious marking and exploration of life
transitions, they are unable to create positive change and growth in their own lives,
not to mention taking that positive change into the world around them. Providing
rite of passage experiences strengthens individuals, families, and the community as
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a whole. The individual learns what it means to be a responsible community
member while exploring unique, personal gifts that can be used to serve others.
OUTCOMES FOR THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY
What are the anticipated outcomes of an intentional initiatory rite of passage?
When we design rites of passage experience, we work to assure that initiates come
out of the experience with a new and empowering story that will help them take
responsibility for the decisions that set the course for their future. We help initiates
create the story of who they are and the kind of life they want to build that is based
on an exploration of their own values. We also help them find the story that
connects them to the community in which they will be actively related. Finally,
integral to the story are the tangible symbols, artifacts of the journey, whose
presence reminds and rehearses the decisions made while on the transformational
journey.
Initiates emerge with a stronger sense of personal responsibility to all aspects of
themselves and their lives–-their families, communities, and the larger world of
which they are a part, both the human world and the natural world. Having a sense
of personal responsibility helps the young person relate their life story to that of the
world and begin to extend their emerging sense of responsibility into the world.
In this way both the community and the initiate benefit from the rite of passage. An
intentional rite of passage experience provides the space for the community to
transmit its core values and confer the role responsibilities appropriate to the
initiate’s stage of life, thus insuring cultural continuity, a sort of knitting together of
the generations.
But that is only half the story. Through a rite of passage, the culture (community)
and the individual enter into a reciprocal relationship. When the culturally
transmitted values interact with the empowered story or the initiate those values
are renewed and enlivened – and as the initiate lives his or her life story in
meaningful relationship with the community, the community is revitalized. The
initiate makes the values his or her own, internalizes them and lives them out
through his or her life. But if values are transmitted but no renewal or revitalization
occurs, the culture begins to die or at least becomes unhealthy because the
individuals are no longer carrying the culture in their hearts. We can think of this
dynamic between the individual and the culture in this way:
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The form and substance of a rite of passage experience communicates, cultivates
and reinforces important cultural values. And, to the extent to which they engage in
a meaningful way with the individual, they call forth the individual to use his or her
power, gifts and passion in service to the community. When an individual takes on
the responsibility to be all that he or she can be in service to the greater good, the
culture is renewed and remains healthy and vibrant.
It is important to remember this dynamic in designing rite of passage experiences
and to make it an explicit part of the ‘curriculum’. We always remind adult questers
that they are questing both for themselves and for their communities and ask them
how they will carry their “vision” back to their communities--how they will use what
they gained through their experience in service to their communities. With
Journeys’ Coming of Age program that culminates with a Parent’s Weekend (for
youth ages 12-14), we ask youth and parents to consciously and intentionally renegotiate their roles, specifically by talking about how privileges and
responsibilities will be shifting over the next several years.
It is important to note that when we are conducting rite of passage experiences for
real people in the real world, outcomes may not be readily or immediately apparent.
Often participants may just gain a glimpse of their authentic selves, an intimation of
their future lives. Answers to the questions they ask of themselves may be elusive.
It is important that we as guides or designers of these kinds of experiences hold the
question of outcomes lightly; that is that we don’t try to impose pre-determined
outcomes on participants, but rather understand that we are trying to help
individuals find their own paths of growth and development within a supportive
community. We are asking them to begin or further a conversation with themselves
about who they are and what role their can play in the on-going work of renewing
and ensuring the health of their society and culture.
THE HERO’S OR HEROINE’S JOURNEY
Central to the work of creating and conducting
“…Furthermore, we have not
ever to risk the journey alone,
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initiatory rites of passage for youth and adults is the
recognition of the archetype of the hero (and heroine)
and the hero’s journey. The Hero’s Journey as an
archetype was explored and described by Joseph
Campbell in his book, Hero with a Thousand Faces,
first published in 1949.
Through the Hero’s Journey, we are called to see
ourselves as the hero or the heroine of our stories,
abandoning modern media distortions about who and
what we should be in favor of finding and becoming
who we really are. Such a re-imagination of what it
means to be a human being is not to nurture our egos
or to inflate our importance. Rather, it provides us with
a framework through which to view our lives that help
us see more clearly the importance of taking personal
responsibility for the decisions we make and actions
we take along the way and the personal courage
required to do that.
for the heroes of all time have
gone before us. The labyrinth
is thoroughly known. We have
only to follow the thread of
the hero path, and where we
had thought to find an
abomination, we shall find a
god. And where we had
thought to slay another, we
shall slay ourselves. Where we
had thought to travel
outward, we will come to the
center of our own existence.
And where we had thought to
be alone, we will be with all
the world.” Joseph Campbell,
The Power of Myth
The “Hero’s Journey” is best understood as a cyclical
process. Linear presentations fail to recognize the
spiral nature of the motion by which it can move
through our lives. Central to the story is a picture of a
journey “between two worlds.” There are those who
are prepared to risk the leap from this world into the
other world where new experiences, new challenges
and the unknown live. Potentially it is a fearful place,
guarded by ogres of human anxiety and filled with the
promise of uncertain reward. No one leaves this other
world quite the same person as they entered. It is in
this other world that the rite of passage happens.
The following is a simplified image of The Hero’s
Journey that Joseph Campbell mapped through his
explorations of thousands of myths and stories from
around the world through human history. It offers us
a way of understanding the process by which one
becomes who he or she has it in them to be.
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In this map there are six distinct stages, two of which are thresholds between
worlds. In the real world, participants of intentional rite of passage experiences
may zigzag between stages, and the journey may never reach a definitive point of
resolution. However, for simplicity’s sake, the spiral image depicts a pathway of
heroic progression and triumph. These stages are as follows:
1. The Call to Adventure is a call to release the daredevil in each of us, to reach out
for the next stage of our lives. The call is the mysterious and intoxicating voice that
calls us from the sleep of our routine lives--a charismatic call from within to risk and
discover what comes next.
2. The Threshold of Ogres is the bumpy crossing into the ‘Other’ world. In the same
way that Hades greeted the ancient Greeks on their journey into the Underworld,
the hero or heroine will encounter the ogres of their individual mythology. There
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are ogres of exhaustion, thirst, estrangement, indecision, responsibility, growing up,
and so on. The Threshold of Ogres involves a complex process of letting go and
opening up to receive the new. It is where our resolve is tested and courage is
needed.
3. The Road of Trials and Finding Allies stage is tricky to manoever because it
offers many deceptions. The experience of the trials may distort the vision so that
allies are cloaked in a misty haze. The hero or heroine must sustain the momentum
of the quest; yet still find the time to stop, look and listen. The earth and the animals
may have important messages or clues. Sources of help are unpredictable and
frequently appear in such a way as to challenge assumptions or prejudices,
indifference or fears.
4. The Magic Flight is a fluid stage that weaves magic into the journey of the hero or
heroine, a melodic dance in which the hero or heroine is the charismatic leader and
pivot of inspiration. Magic flight celebrates a spontaneous and acute connectedness
with personal power. It is a place in the imagination where individuals become
confident in their abilities and released from pre-conceived notions of self. Magic
Flight holds the promise of all things possible.
5. The Return Threshold marks the transition out of the ‘Other’ and back into this
world. Although ogres leave the crossing unchallenged, it still holds a certain
trauma. What seemed easy in the surrealistic realm of magic flight may be difficult
to implement in everyday life. During this stage the individual decides either to
integrate their otherworldly experience into a daily reality or to abandon it as an
abstract dream. This stage is crucial to the journey.
6. The Master of Two Worlds is coming back into the world with the recognition
that they “did it!!” They set out to achieve, encountered trials and challenges and
pushed through them. Here is an experimental ground for testing their ability to
make things happen on their own. The keys to remaining the “Master of Two
Worlds” are self-discipline, determination and integrity. There is barely a chance to
climb the mountain and breathe the fresh air before the process starts all over again.
The call is relentless and insistent.
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