https://therayfield.com/why-youre-weari ... mation/ampthe pagan ritual of transformation Julian Huxley once wrote that the basic elements in cultural transmission and transformation are psychological. This is how we change. Since time immemorial, high rituals have been performed to transform reality.
Ritual is a spiritual psycho-drama of consciousness; a deliberate action taken to facilitate change; changes to the whole of the environment people exist in, starting with the mental landscape of the people themselves; “the place where our reality exists is first born in a dream.”
Artist Sharon Devlin once bluntly described the true purpose of ritual as being a:
“… method to alter one’s mind. It’s a sacred drama in which you are the audience as well as the participant. And the purpose of it is to activate parts of the mind that are not activated by everyday activity.”
Ritual facilitates the mechanics of change through specific mechanisms; a rhythm to sync to; to merge and flow with; a magnetic draw, drawing one on the path toward transmutation.
Rituals are vehicles driving home those ideas; the information, the data, the symbols which upon transmission create the language by which new society members communicate after they are initiated.
This new language imparts a new understanding through definitions that the ritual generates.
A ritual initiation introduces and inducts one into “the way”; a new way of life or world view; a program to guide beliefs and actions, enabling the initiate to become a full and true member of the new society.
Note that ritual isn’t always a conscious action. Not everyone partaking in a ritual is made explicitly aware that they are participants. And yet, still, new patterns of thoughts, of significance, are drummed in; conscious or not of the ritual in which the initiate is partaking.
the pagan ritual of transformation The three stages of an initiation ritual
An initiation ritual typically involves three stages.
Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar to you.
The first stage is isolation for purification.
In this stage, the initiate is separated from the mundane. Did you know that mundane literally means “of the world?”
The initiate is largely removed from the otherwise familiar persons, places and things that they’re used to in order to be “cleared” of them.
An initiate is forced to become detached and insulated, purged and “purified.”
An essential element of this separation from one’s typical environment is the suspension of the normal rules of living that one is used to; the normal way.
Most of the initiate’s senses will become commanded and regulated at this time. In other words, the majority of what the initiate sees, hears, smells, touches and tastes, is deliberately controlled.
In the ritual, these senses may be bombarded, modified, limited or deprived. But, regardless, perceptions and experiences are ultimately overseen by the high priest and priestesses directing the ritual’s performance.
The ritual enables new light to shine through a newly opened window of thoughts.
With nowhere else to go except the places that we’re “allowed,” the insulated, isolated, initiated may be forced to confront his or her own reflection and inner shadows that have been ignored or buried somewhere deep beneath the average day-to-day.
These things suddenly become unavoidable.
Triggers are detonated; another purge.
Just as they involve surrender, initiation rituals also involve sacrifice; both the tangible that can be held in the hand, and the intangible, such as behaviors, must be given up by requirement.
After all, for something to be “given,” something must also be taken; a token of submission, an ounce of blood; a pound of clay to be remolded.
Whether dramatically overt or deceitfully subtle, the ritual reinterprets reality; a new definition of reality is given. Training in the form of new behaviors and knowledge, including myths and codes are introduced.
Things necessary for new members to function properly in the society they’re being inducted into are all imbued during this time.
Repetition is typical, as its use helps hammer home the spell on the initiates. The wearing of masks for the initiates
The wearing of masks during an initiation ritual is almost always required. Masking has traditionally played an important role in the rituals of these kinds.
People say they all want the truth, but when they are confronted with a truth that disagrees with them, they balk at it as if it were an unwanted zombie apocalypse come to destroy civilization.