What Is Initiation? Everything You Ever Wanted To Know But Was Afraid To Ask

Last updated on: March 14, 2018 at 9:31 pm by River Enodian

What Is Initiation? Everything You Ever Wanted To Know But Was Afraid To Ask 2018-03-14T21:31:13+00:00 River Enodian

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Initiation is one of those things either discussed in hushed, mysterious tones or off-handedly in a manner which suggests that absolutely, positively everyone knows what initiation is and if you don’t know, you must be…well, not one of the initiated.

It’s actually not all that mysterious, and there are plenty of secular examples of initiation. Passing your driver’s test and getting your license, graduating from school, turning twenty-one and ordering your first legal drink, any and all of those are fantastic examples of initiation. Any rite of passage is technically an initiation.

All initiation means, is to begin. In the context of mystery schools and traditions, it means to be brought into that group and made a member through some sort of ritual or action. When you look at that in the context of, say, getting your license, you passed a test and were brought into a group of people who knew how to drive, could prove it, and therefore could legally do so.

Naturally in a more esoteric or spiritual context there’s more going on than a ritual and being brought into a group. The initiation itself is frequently meant to have an impact on a person spiritually and alter their very lives from the inside out, a process of transformation which is often referred to as spiritual alchemy. Some groups have multiple levels of initiation, each with a different intended purpose and effect, and those initiations are meant to be had in stages of development so that you are brought from one point in your life to another.

The Eleusinian Mysteries is a very famous example of one of these types of mystery schools and initiations, and we know that it had at least two tiers: the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries. Also in ancient times among the Greeks were the Orphic and Dionysian Mysteries and among the Egyptians, the Osirian Mysteries. Sometimes people were initiates of more than one mystery tradition, one famous example being Plutarch who had been initiated into both the Dionysian Mysteries and the Osirian. He comments on both Osiris and Dionysos being in the same in his essay Isis and Osiris.

In the modern world, there are many mystery schools: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, OTO, A.’.A.’., the various initiatory witchcraft traditions that inherit from either Alex Sanders’ or Gerald Gardner’s groups, Aurum Solis, Freemasonry, and many others. All of them have their own philosophies, traditions, and intention behind their initiations, but they all owe a great deal to the ancients and their own initiatory traditions for their existence and their ultimate influence.

Can one be initiated without attending a mystery school? Most certainly; anyone can have a transformative experience which brings them into a new stage of their life and changes them on a fundamental level, no matter how subtle. After all, in the end the gods are the initiators, not the people. Spiritual alchemy is meant to change you on deep levels, and who better to change you spiritually than the gods.

But what is alchemy? I’ll tackle that in my next blog post. 🙂

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