Adulthood Initiation Journey

In our modern world, becoming an “adult” is often marked with pseudo-rituals such as high-school graduation, and coming “of age” now able to vote, drive and consume alcohol.  However, these rites do nothing to actually prepare one psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, and culturally for the true tasks of adulthood. Thus, we live as individuals in a culture of collectively delayed human development. This keeps us perpetually stuck in adolescent psychology with a world-view that is immaturely built around consumerism, ego-gratification and death-phobia. 

True Adulthood initiation rites of passage were an ancient pan-cultural phenomenon found in every indigenous and ancestrally intact culture across the globe. These initiation rites were what allowed the self-absorbed state of adolescent ego separation to — like a caterpillar entering its chrysalis — be held in a structure, where it can melt and die, only to be reborn as an entirely different cosmological possibility, one truly capable of serving and sustaining culture.

Indigenous peoples across the world knew that initiation rites were the central key to cultural renewal, and thus, these initiation rites often were fiercely protected against the tides of colonization, some surviving to this day only in hiding. 

Perhaps it could be said that initiation rites were what connected the human being to the greater Mystery.

 Initiation demands resiliency within uncertainty — and thus, the mystery of life becomes a wave to continually ride, rather than something to figure out, or a problem to solve. 

Most modern humans cannot bear any measure of uncertainty, and thus our current global-cultural crisis can, at its roots, be understood as uninitiated humans continually grasping for control, in a universe, on a planet, which fundamentally is wild, alive and emergent.

As humans in the modern era, we are the inheritors of eons of internalized colonization, disconnecting us from our own maturation and the sources of true power. We need initiation more than ever - and to do that - we need to be held within a cultural container that can support us to truly face our shadows, enter - what Author and Mythopoetic leader Robert Bly calls - “The Womb of our Wounds,” so that we may transform our places of deepest (and often unconscious) struggle into the gifts we are meant to give to this Planet. The Adulthood Initiation journey seeks to remedy this need for a transformational chrysalis that supports the alchemy of our adolescence into the full embodiment of our adulthood, grounded in the Earth and the wisdom of the ancestors. This shift, witnessed by community, held in accountability and celebration, allows the blossoming of an integrated and experienced member of the planetary community, able to offer their unique medicine to the world that’s been waiting for them to take their place in the web.