Reawakening the Ancient Practice of Male Initiation
In death comes rebirth
If you’ve come here after viewing my YouTube channel, you’ll be familiar with the core themes of this piece. These themes - death and rebirth, personal and collective evolution - are central to how I see things developing in the future West. We are getting closer to a crisis point, we all seem to sense that in one way or another, yet while some see this as a moment of ‘civilisational exhaustion’ and collapse, I am proposing it may be a moment of great renewal. A time when a new order develops from the looming contemporary chaos.
Chaotic times are messy, frightening and confusing, yet on review, we often need such times to go through a period of reawakening. The development of ‘liminal space’ sees us enter a time when we jettison old, useless baggage that’s been dragging us down, and reacquaint ourselves with the essentials of life that drive our culture forward in a healthy manner.
This process must be collective, yet it begins with individual men as they find a new resonance within that renders them leading lights for a new generation.
This brings me to the forgotten practice of male initiation, something only spoken about on the fringes of political discussion these days. Initiation is something I’m relatively well-read on, so in this piece, I’ll explore what this vital practice entails and why it’s so important for our collective cultural and spiritual development.
What is Initiation?
Initiation is the process of an initiate joining part of a greater order. There are spiritual initiations, cultural initiations and male initiations. The latter is the main subject of this piece, yet in truth, an authentic male initiation takes elements of all three dimensions.
Despite being virtually unknown today, initiation has been a common practice for men cross-culturally throughout time. Tribes, ethnic/religious groups, and nations saw this practice as vital in aiding a man’s (which also meant the broader group’s) journey into an evolved state of being. By embracing feats of pain endurance, challenge and fear, a man could take up the role of tribesman/tribe elder.
Initiations vary in their content, yet aim at the same core tenets:
A journey from boy to man
A challenge that sharpens the spirit (see example below)
An introduction to the traditions of a given culture/group
A spiritual union with a ‘higher order of Being’
The above example shows a tribal man in Africa willing to face the threat of death as part of an initiation.
The famous comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote a great deal on initiation, and the below quote from him points to initiation as an exclusively male activity, specifically with regards to a father, be that literal or metaphorical, as the driving force in initiating males and rejuvenating the tradition in a new generation.
“The father actually plays the educator to the spirit, he transmits the goals of the society, he informs the child of the adult role he… is expected to assume. The mother gives birth to the physical body; the father, to the spiritual.” (1)
When Campbell speaks of the ‘spiritual’ here, he does so in the perennialist sense, that is, a blend of metaphysical ‘knowing’ beyond the limits of the individual ego—this is the introduction to ‘God The Father—along with the unique traditions of a given culture that represent that revealed wisdom.
An example of this in practical terms is Christ’s teaching to 'Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.’ In the highest spiritual sense, this is a clear distinction between the worldly and Godly powers, the essence of the teaching being that there is a world of true justice and peace that your soul resonates with. That leads to the realisation ‘I and the Father are One’. Yet in the applied institutional Christian and post-Christian tradition, this teaching is read as a justification for the separation of Church and state. The notion is that we have a private, personal relationship with God, yet one also adheres to worldly systems of power where necessary, all held together via the moral frame of the tradition.
This is why Campbell stated the following: “Maturity is the condition of living within the bounds of the cultural traditions. You become the vehicle of the moral order. You enforce it. You believe it. You are it.” (2)
Initiation, then, is a revolution of the male self. The journey from the ‘material’ world of the feminine, the realm in which we’re born after being naturally tied to the mother, on to the world of men - that is the ‘spiritual’ world that lies beyond the immature ego, where mind melts in the waters of deeper spiritual wisdom and re-manifests as the ancient cultural traditions of a given group.
The Hero’s Journey
The above diagram is an outline of Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’, a model for understanding the processes of initiation after he explored cultures from around the world, seeking to discover their uniqueness, though incidentally discovering the ‘monomyth’ that made him so notable as a scholar.
Whether we’re exploring an untouched tribe in Brazil, or the culture of the Catholic Church, Campbell found that human societies each have their unique take on the monomyth, while the essence is always the same, as articulated in the above diagram. This implies there’s an inbuilt structure to reality, and that structure defines how a man evolves and how a given culture perpetuates its vitality through the initiation of men.
As you can see, we begin with a ‘Call to Adventure’ in the ‘Known’ world, and it is by answering this call a man finds new challenges and guides waiting for him. Soon he enters ‘Unknown’ space, a time of facing brutal challenges in a strange world before hitting the ‘abyss’ and going through the process of death and rebirth.
By going on this journey men transform and evolve, ultimately bringing ‘the gift of gold’ back to the ‘Known’ world to rejuvenate and replenish the society and culture they inhabit.
Once we understand the monomyth, one can see why the descent into chaos we’re facing in the Western world may well be a huge opportunity to grasp this time as one of potentially huge spiritual and cultural evolution. For this to occur, it’s necessary for Western men and Western culture at large to experience a period of ‘darkness’.
"The first threshold is in the crossing over from profane space into sacred space... this harrowing time may seem like time in the underworld... before you can finally pass back over the second threshold back into the ordinary, profane world known as ‘structure’”. (3)
- Robert Moore
As the great initiation writer Robert Moore states above, we may have to experience something of an ordeal, yet this is essential to reacquaint ourselves with the core truths of life we’ve lost in the materialist convenience of liberal modernity.
On the surface, liberal modernity has been a great success for the West, yet all around us now we see the signs of decay—the breakdown of marriage, birthrate collapse, mass immigration and cultural erosion, materialism, addictions, nihilism… The situation Western man faces has led many to embrace an older, earthier way of life, whether that’s a promotion of traditional values and identities or young men returning to the Church/esoteric spiritualities in search of a deeper meaning to life.
The aforementioned searching stems from the male soul yearning for adventure, meaning and order. The ‘Father’ in symbolic language. Yet the numbers are still quite low. Worse still, the Church and Western elders are largely ill-equipped to satisfy the yearning, truth be told many don’t understand it. This says to me the West will have to collectively face a moment of breakdown before we can embrace the breakthrough. We will have to let go to the ‘birth pangs of a new era’.
As Moore stated: “The person who must always be in control and autonomous will not be able to access healing and transformation. If you cannot submit, you cannot die, and if you cannot die, you cannot get reborn.” (4)
Is this really possible?
Two major criticisms of modern ideas of initiation are as follows:
This all sounds quite magical and unrealistic, and
Would this be possible in this day and age?
Regarding the former, the language of initiation, death and rebirth, monomyth and so on can sound like notions from a bygone era of spiritual and religious delusion. Yet this is a jumping-off point for Western man. Part of the healing of Western culture is in embracing the heart, soul, body and mind. It’s only in this holistic understanding that we can access transforming powers and the true depth of our tradition.
In essence, Western man must open himself up to the notion that there’s more to life than the modern God of science. The intellect is a powerful tool, yet that power, when imbalanced from the rest of the human, can become an endarkening force fast. Man only tends to overcome intellectual pride in times of challenge, that is when a window of opportunity presents itself for deeper understanding. No civilisation has been born without its central spiritual mythology, a narrative that runs through a culture, rejuvenating and initiating decade by decade. We would be wise to remember this. The return of initiation and the reawakening of the West depends upon the re-entrance of the symbolic and spiritual orders in our experience.
Regarding the second point, it is true that a traditional initiation would be outlawed today, the initiations of old are just too violent, too scary, too raw for the modern palate. However, as we see cultural decline grip the West, I believe that initiatory experiences will spring forth organically as new generations of men hear the ‘Call’ and go on journeys of deep evolution.
Until that time, the West will continue to labour on in its stupor, although that doesn’t stop the instinct of men to initiate. While they may seem silly to some, and scary to the liberal-left types, the contemporary ‘initiation ceremonies’ into universities, sports teams and men’s clubs show that the drive is alive and well in modern men, it’s just that this drive is yet to meet any real form of true initiation. But that time will come.
Embracing the ‘Dark Times’
"In liminal space, we choose the chaos of the unconscious over the control of explanations and answers. Thus, the language of initiation is the language of darkness not of light, desert not garden, silence, not words." (5)
"Nothing fresh or creative will normally happen when we are inside our self-constructed comfort zones." (6)
- Richard Rohr
It would seem, then, if I am right, that the Western world is entering a chaotic state, a time when it will reawaken and journey on in new vitality, or continue with its slow degradation into nothing.
However, I hope this short piece has done something to buoy your spirit and reconsider the future of the West in a new light. We so often hear about the impending collapse of the West, and we rarely see people feeling positive about the future, but what if that same collapse was the predecessor to a new dawn?
If you’d like to explore these topics more, feel free to reach out to me personally, I am planning groups/events on these themes in the future, as well as offering some personal work for men seeking to enhance their personal and spiritual evolution at what is a challenging time. You can reach out by clicking the below:
References
1 & 2: Campbell, Joseph. 2004. Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. California, USA. New World Library.
3 & 4: Moore, Robert. 2001. The Archetype of Initiation: Sacred Space, Ritual Process, and Personal Transformation: Lectures and Essays. USA. Xilbris.
5 & 6: Rohr, Richard. 2005. Adam's Return - Five Promises of Male Initiation. USA. Publish Drive.