Anthropology and Mysticism in the Making of Initiation: A History of Discourse and Ideas for Today 9086863450, 9789086863457

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Anthropology and mysticism in the making of

i n i t i at i o n

A history of discourse and ideas for today Andy Hilton

Wageningen Academic P u b l i s h e r s

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation A history of discourse and ideas for today Andy Hilton

Wageningen Academic P u b l i s h e r s

Buy a print copy of this book at www.WageningenAcademic.com/initiation

EAN: 9789086863457 eEAN: 9789086868964 ISBN: 978-90-8686-345-7 eISBN: 978-90-8686-896-4 DOI: 10.3920/978-90-8686-896-4

First published, 2019

©Wageningen Academic Publishers The Netherlands, 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned. Nothing from this publication may be translated, reproduced, stored in a computerised system or published in any form or in any manner, including electronic, mechanical, reprographic or photographic, without prior written permission from the publisher: Wageningen Academic Publishers P.O. Box 220 6700 AE Wageningen the Netherlands www.WageningenAcademic.com [email protected] This publication and any liabilities arising from it remains the responsibility of the authors. The publisher is not responsible for possible damages, which could be a result of content derived from this publication.

Contents Acknowledgements 9 Preface 11 Introduction 13 Part I – Where did we get to? The late twentieth-century peak of interest in initiation Chapter 1. Myths of men, issues with gender and the adult-spiritual divide 23 Robert Bly, men and loss 24 Sex and gender 27 Divisions and categories of initiation 32 Part II – How did we get there? Origins of the rites of passage Chapter 2. Modern foundations of initiation 43 Ethnological origins in Australia 44 Back in the motherland 48 Histories of initiation histories 53 Chapter 3. Mysteries in the New World 57 Encyclopaedias 57 Missionaries in the New World 60 Lafitau and the mysteries conception of tribal practice 62 Chapter 4. Ethnology and freemasonry 69 Initiation in freemasonry in ethnology 70 Currents and cross-currents 76 American freemasonry, ethnology and native fusion 82 Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Part III – From whence? A history of mystery Chapter 5. Mystic histories: esoterica and the ancients 91 Rosicrucian and Renaissance esotericism 94 Millennia of mysteries literature 99 Ancient texts and rituals 102 Chapter 6. Christian mysteries 111 Appropriation and suppression 112 Early Christian initiations, initiation in Christianity 115 A complex and paradoxical history of discourse development 119 Chapter 7. Shamans, death and rebirth 127 Historical contexts 128 Shamans: outer Russia, out from Russia 131 Mircea Eliade 135 Part IV – So, where did we get to again? Reassessing the mainstream Chapter 8. Anthropology: the core thesis 143 Arnold van Gennep 144 Victor Turner 150 Chapter 9. Conventional history, contemporary studies 157 The primary thesis of decline and demise 158 Realities and representations today 170 Part V – Where then, where now? Expanding the vision for a contemporary, integrated approach Chapter 10. Beyond anthropology 177 Education and Turnerian extensions 178 The ritual perspective 188 Chapter 11. Psychology: development and depth 199 Developmental lifespan studies 200 Initiation as life-stage 207 Analytical depth psychology 211 6

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation

Chapter 12. From mysticism to cosmos 225 Modelling spiritual initiation 227 Cosmic initiation 237 Further considerations 249 Postscript – Awakening, ascension and the rebirth of initiation 259 Conclusion 263 A story of discourse 263 A potted history of initiation 268 Contemporary maturity initiation 272 Reviewing mystery 274 Appendices Appendix 1. The emergence of initiation studies in British anthropology (1872-1899) 281 Methodology: article categorisation issues 282 Appendix 2. Usage of ‘initiation’ and selected terms in published works (1820-2008) 285 Appendix 3. Extract from Phaedrus, by Plato 287 Note on three texts/translations 288 Appendix 4. Six chronological schema for a staged lifespan (adding initiation) 291 Appendix 5. A model for mysticism as template for initiation 293 Note on the meaning of ‘god’ 294 References 297 Index 327

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Acknowledgements To Anna-mata. To heart-poet Sevgi and star-sister Karen. …to kindred travellers, initiators... To Youle, C.J. and T.T. I thank four people who have made specific contributions to the realisation of this book: Claudia Michele (testimony), Joost Jongerden (publication, translation, sources), Lucas Thorpe (review, sources) and Sotiris Mitralexis (translation). And I share my appreciation of writers whose work has filled this. A couple have been kind to me, but the rest I only felt through words to which they once committed.

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Preface This book is the not unsurprising outcome of a slowly evolving and ever-changing labour of love and despair and disinterest revived that began in England in the late 1980s and has ended in Turkey three decades later. The work was repeatedly put aside and eventually abandoned, wilfully and quite happily deserted, only to recently return with a renewed and urgent claim for completion, which this time was met. Prompted originally by an unfolding process of what, during that process, I came to know as a ‘spiritual initiation’, it draws on hours spent in libraries in Brighton and Oxford and later online. The premise of this work, then, is the experience of spiritual initiation as an aspect of the coming of age. It is presented from the initial perspective of the peak of interest in initiation in the 1980s, which is a fortunate conceit that elides the public expression with a personal journey. The subjects covered here are several. They may be listed as including (aspects of ) youth and gender, colonialism and early ethnology, Christianity and freemasonry, analytical or depth psychology, lifespan or life-course studies, spirituality and the history of ideas. The principal areas of interest, however, capturing the sense of magico-religious experience in the process of youth’s maturation, are anthropology and mysticism. The subject of initiation is a timeless one, as an aspect of the human condition, but very much also a cultural production, with its own history and potentials. Situating that past while identifying contemporary issues and yet eternal truths has not been a simple task. Still, the final presentation of the material – itself in a complex format – remains an inevitable concession, insofar as a closure must be made at some point to bring any project to fruition. The work itself is always unfinished and for that reason alone quite imperfect – but there are also other reasons for that, of course. For example, there is the unevenness likely of any enterprise that would cover such extensive ground in so few pages yet also investigate to some depth. Which is to say nothing of the author’s personal limitations by way of this appologia. Regardless, the final result is a text pitched at different levels and degrees of analysis but primarily focusing on a critique of the discourse, on the creation and recreation and continuing relevance and development of the idea of initiation, with a focus on the spiritual aspect of this. From the historical revisiting, a contemporary approach is advocated. Interestingly, this comprises a review and revision proposal for a subject that is no longer in vogue, which indicates a retrospective. The life’s work becomes yesterday’s drama already. Well, indeed. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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But yet, a new vista is opening. This completing has combined with another personal regeneration, and so also does there appear to be a rebirth of initiation ongoing – but as ‘awakening’ now, and ‘ascension’, wherein the human science could be quite different and the spiritual, though featuring strongly, is quite rarely referred to as such. Which is not without irony, since one argument of this book is that the field here named ‘initiation studies’ has been defined as much by what was omitted as included. But it is true that the old words may become a limitation and develop a so-last-millennium sense, not very unlike the ‘Victorian’ of the subject’s nineteenth century ‘making’. In that case – assuming and insofar as that is the case – it behoves us to see where we have come from, for a fuller appreciation of where we are and may be going. Indeed, initiation is always an ending as well as start. But it is not entirely the case. ‘Initiation’ and ‘spiritual’ are not actually terms that have fallen into disuse or are likely to yet for a while. Andy Hilton Istanbul, 2019

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Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation

Introduction It is usual to name a field of study by using a term for the subject of interest followed by the word ‘studies’. Initiation is one such field, a rich and productive one that has offered up some major concepts employed today in the humanities, liberal arts and popular culture – notably rite of passage, death and rebirth and liminality (related to marginal). Indeed, considerable attention has been accorded the subject of initiation, especially in the context of twentiethcentury anthropology. Yet, there is no standard name for it as a subject in its own right. The term ‘initiation studies’, that is, was never taken up, it was never adopted and employed as the name for a field of study and academic discipline, or sub-discipline. Even if for no more than historical reasons then, this might be rectified. Let us speak of initiation studies. As a modern subject or field of scholarly endeavour, not only has initiation studies been grounded in anthropology, but the histories of these two have run quite parallel, sometimes entwined. This suggests the story of the modern idea of initiation from the 1800s as determined by anthropology, or the ‘making’ of initiation. A story that is largely untold. There are a few likely reasons for this omission. One concerns the history of history-making generally in twentieth-century anthropology (essentially, as the lack thereof ); another might be the subject’s complexity (it involves some tangled themes and ancient roots); a third would be the linkage to the realm of mysticism in spiritual initiation (which is in equal measures incorporated in the field and yet unconsidered, demarcated as outside); while a fourth reason would involve that very lack of recognition of the subject as noted (histories tend to be produced of things that are already named). Indeed, even to talk about that which is unnamed, the conversation first has to be imagined into existence. Summarising, the boldest claim and hope for this book would be that it works towards an initiation of initiation studies – historically, but also in a contemporary mode. The first need identified is for a consideration of the emergence of the modern, primarily anthropological notion – rooted in the nineteenth century – to be followed by a movement into the present and a more integrative notion. This involves tracing the development of what was to become the modern conceptualisation or contemporary discourse of initiation – in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – and then critically bringing that up to date. So, the programme for this book has recent, current and forward-looking (present-future) considerations as well as backward-looking, historical ones – the making of initiation in the title refers both to a making in the past and now, to another, new one, or a re-making. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Regarding the latter, the work starts with a review of what was left out during the twentieth century in the limitations of the disciplinary model, or the ‘capture’ of initiation by anthropology, or the disciplinary determination of discourse. The restriction implies the need for a fundamental broadening, or integration of approaches omitted. In this regard, anthropology has already recognised its own limitations in fixing to the social during the main part of the twentieth century, but not very much in respect of its initiation studies. For the backward-looking considerations, getting at the origins of the discourse takes us back through time into history – or rather histories, and histories of histories, to the various makings of initiation and discourse – which once done, but only when done, enables us to move forward again (back to the present and future). This, therefore, gives the shape to the book. Roughly, the first seven chapters start from the recent present and go back to the foundation of initiation studies. Then, the remaining chapters move forward for an assessment of the development and potential of this. The focus here is first on the nature of the discourse as determined by its own history in terms of a decline and disappearance of initiation today, a direct result of its primary application to tribal contexts. Assuming an anthropological perspective in the narrow sense of an ethnology of the other, the concept of initiation was always discursively fixed in the developmental past, even though the fruits of this discourse have been applied to the present (primarily through the notions of passage rites and liminality). It is possible that that may be changed, through a revised, expanded notion of initiation, thus its studies. The late nineteenth-century foundation of the modern study of initiation in anthropology provides the fulcrum for this book. The earlier chapters look retrospectively to the past and then past historic, to tell the story of the making(s) of initiation, or ‘initiation’. This is identified along three dimensions. The first dimension is place – Australia, Britain, and North America (with input from France), mainly, as well as South Africa and Russia (with Germanic contributions). The second is time – moving backwards and forwards chronologically, as indicated, both within those territorial frameworks and also as directed by the cultural framing of the Western tradition and its periodisations (of the modern and pre-modern, Enlightenment and Renaissance, the classical and ancient). The third is by theme – including the representation of initiation in written texts (and their translations), the esoteric and occult (and dynamics around Christianity), and the formal institution of initiation studies (in the prominent Anglosphere, British mostly, anthropological organisations and publications). Notwithstanding the impact of (Mircea Eliade’s) death-and-rebirth, the discursive fulfilment of modern initiation studies was observed in its twentieth-century notions of passage rites (developed by Arnold van Gennep) and liminality (Victor Turner), dubbed here the core thesis of initiation studies. This was defined by two cultural ‘moments’, located in the decade or so after the turn of the twentieth century (when the term ‘rites of passage’ was coined) and in the 1960s-70s (when ‘liminality’, as the heart of the rites, was explored 14 

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and developed). Following the anthropological development and institution of initiation studies (which can be dated in the 1840s and 1870s-80s, respectively), the two moments were times when the idea of initiation was popularised and then re-vitalised, with upturns in interest that can in turn be linked in turn to broader, socio-cultural changes. These were our relationships first, to religion (meaning a sea-change in the West regarding Christianity after the Victorian period of sciencisation), and second, to authority and tradition (referring to the post-war development of ‘counter-culture’). They warrant a brief note here. First, the fundamental shift regarding the place of Christianity in Western culture may itself be characterised as itself more profoundly expressed as a move from religion to spirituality. In this respect, the twentieth century marked the emergence of spiritual initiation named thus. This occurrence may be regarded as a paradoxical impact of the secularising effect of the sciencisation of initiation as performed by its anthropologisation (or, more properly, the sciencising anthropologisation of initiation studies, or discourse). Essentially, anthropology dropped the mysticism from initiation, which thus separated out a mystical or spiritual form, or grouping. This was predicated on, expressed through and marked by the modernist terminological dropping of ‘the mysteries’. Tribal boys (and girls) were no longer initiated into the mysteries, as of old, but into society – into their tribe or their clan or into a ‘secret society’ or other social organisation. The anthropological de-mysticisation of initiation signalled by the terminological death of ‘initiation into the mysteries’ was yet a rebirth, as and of ‘spiritual initiation’. This spiritual initiation took various forms, notably the inner growth of the person and the development of occultish magic (in contemporary culture, the mysticism retained) and the induction into specialist work (in tribal societies, as ‘shaman’). Second, the 1960s linkage of initiation studies to the counter-culture – and then 1970s ‘alternative’ culture, to be incorporated in the 1980s as ‘complimentary’ – situated the discourse in a dynamic, vibrant and procreative present. At this juncture, the notion of the sacred was reintroduced, one might say, into the mainstream of the anthropological discourse through the emphasis on liminality. The anthropological framing at the core of the discourse of initiation was thus established in the nineteenth century as reductive of mysticism but softened in the second half of the twentieth to allow it, although not obviously or in a religious form. Over recent decades, since that peak of interest in the 1970s to 90s, the passing of time in general and especially as marked by the swing to the right in political life has leant a sense of passé to the subject. Initiation studies and the distinctly radical slant they had taken are no longer in fashion – although this is partly due also to their success. For indeed, the language of initiation (‘rite of passage’, ‘liminal’, ‘marginal’, ‘rebirth’, ‘age set’) has now been incorporated and integrated into daily and academic life. The discourse has been dyed quite deeply into the cultural fabric of our times. This book returns to the late nineteenth-century foundation moment of the modern study of initiation in anthropology to review how we got to this point, what was lost along the way and how initiation studies may move forward. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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 Roughly, then, the present work addresses the making and development of initiation studies in anthropology. It looks at the history of the discourse of initiation and the current meaning of initiation, and it does this with a special consideration of the spiritual dimension and mysticism. Essentially, it presents a deconstruction and then reconstruction. To open, Chapter 1 starts at the high point of interest in the subject, with an overview of gender issues and the divisions of initiation. This is done through a focus on Robert Bly’s work on men, when theory and practice were combined in gender politics and popularised for a New Age therapy aimed at healing the male psyche. Then, the narrative moves to the history of the construction of the discourse of initiation on which this was based (or which it utilised, in a partial manner). The word ‘narrative’ is deployed here with full intention, for this presentation of the construction of a discourse is equally itself a representation of that, told in the form of a story, with various interweaving characters, plot lines and settings. It follows a fairly well-worn structure, insofar as it starts with the problematic, a predicament (the recent situation), and then goes into flashback, returning to show how this arose, which constitutes the main action – although complicated by a flashback within that – before returning to the past and then the present for denouement and reconciliation (and tacking on an ending for the future possibility, unknown and to be continued). This is a story of human invention, of the making and remaking of initiation, of the evolution of an idea. That means, of course, that it is also itself a creation, another mythology. We set out with by recognising that even offering the possibility of an integrated initiation studies is again a production, already legend, the contemporary form, in fact, of an old paradigm. Below, there follows the plan of the book. First, there is a brief explanation of a five-part sectioning of the whole. Then, the chapters are briefly described. In Part I – ‘Where did we get to?’ – comprising just the first chapter, the aim is to establish the problematic way in which interest in initiation peaked. Intended as a stepping off point for the retrospective, this is framed in terms of a fundamental division between ‘adult’ and ‘spiritual’ Then, the question addressed by Part II – ‘How did we get there?’ – considers historical and geographical origins of the anthropology of initiation. These prepared the ground for the later focus on social considerations and societal perspectives as encapsulated by the notion of ‘rites of passage’ during puberty and adolescence (named here ‘adult’ initiation). Part III – asking ‘From whence?’ – investigates the pre-history of spiritual initiation in which the later anthropology was grounded. From a history of secret societies and recovered knowledge, ultimately going back to the mysteries themselves, it then returns to look at the development of this, eventually as an adjunct to the emergence of passage rites (the paradoxical corollary to the hollowing out of mystery in the sociological reading). Then, in Part IV – ‘So, where did we get to again?’ – the narrative returns to the twentieth century, back to the beginning, as it were, for a review and reassessment of the 16 

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anthropological mainstream. This prepares the ground for a reconstruction of the core ideas of initiation studies as determined by the human science and what has been written into the discourse of its histiography. Finally, Part V – ‘Where then, where now?’ – looks to expand the vision for a contemporary, integrative initiation studies. This reflects on what has been omitted and introduces possibilities around a new paradigm, finally with a return to mysticism. So, Chapter 1 starts with the sex-gender issues raised – and not – by reference to the men’s initiation movement and the work of Robert Bly, as mentioned, moving thence to related issues and the fundamental division of adult from spiritual initiation. Chapter 2 investigates the modern identification of initiation as practiced by the indigenous (aboriginal) peoples of Australia in the 1840s and the translation of this over the next half century into modern (British) ethno-anthropology. Then, Chapter 3 takes the story backward in time again, going first to the roots of anthropology in the New World – with ‘initiation into the mysteries’ as a way of understanding and naming tribal practices in the early eighteenth century – before moving forward, back into the nineteenth century, for the modern application of this to the Indian tribes (i.e. Native American). Returning to Britain, Chapter 4 looks at the role of Freemasonry and also Christianity and the broader milieu in the nineteenth century foundation of a modern discourse, paying particular attention to the usage and idea of ‘admission’. Next, seeking the origins of the esoteric and religious history – a discursive lineage – Chapter 5 traces a route back through the centuries and millennia, through esoteric currents and Renaissance rediscoveries, to the mysteries of ancient Greece, arriving at last at the ‘Great Mystery’. Chapter 6, moves forward again, to the period of early Christianity, depicted as both incorporating and reducing the practice of the mysteries but also as producing the texts that were later translated in production of the modern discourse. Chapter 7 takes up the construction within that modern discourse of ‘shamanic’ initiation and its major initiatory symbol of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth. Finally, then, back at the twentieth century, Chapter 8 reconsiders the core thesis of initiation in anthropology, with its three-stage modelling and development of ideas on the middle stage – so, critically reflecting on the contributions of Van Gennep and Turner. Next, Chapter 9 moves further toward a reconstruction, with a critique of the discursive narrative, with its (implicit and explicit) histiography of the actual demise of initiation, and also overviewing the discourse application in classical studies; in fact, it is argued, initiation is ongoing today, certainly as mode of representation. Then, by way of a reconstitution, the subject of the discourse is reviewed as no longer restricted by the historical terms of that discourse. In Chapter 10, this implies an extension of the subject ‘beyond’ anthropology, with argumentative considerations of ‘education’ and ‘ritual’. And in Chapter 11, psychological aspects are introduced – so a ‘covert’ coverage reviewed – that of the discipline of life-course studies, which leads to the development of a new model, itself filled out by a survey of analytical and depth psychology. The final chapter Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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(Chapter 12) considers spiritual initiation and related issues around mystical experience, including a taxonomic conceptualisation by ‘inarchical’ continuum and also introduction of ‘awakening’ as the name for a new mode. The conclusion recaps the history of initiation studies through a standard histiography of initiation in simple, chronological form and adds summaries of the idea for contemporary initiation and a related history of mysticism. Five appendices are added. These comprise a data-based study of the institutional emergence of the discourse (through the main anthropological journal in Britain); a data-based presentation of terminological usage over time (using a standard Google search); an extract from Plato’s Phaedrus (with a note on three translations); a presentation of lifespan schema (including initiation); and a model for conceiving mysticism as a template for initiation (with a note on the meaning of ‘god’).  Regarding restrictions, two points should be made. First, only material evidence currently accepted within the mainstream of academic thought is employed, which is primarily to say two things. First, possible pre-ancient origins for the mysteries are not considered. There is no inclusion here of conjecture about ‘alien’ involvement in human history, such as in ancient Egypt, or of advanced but destroyed civilisations, like Atlantis, and their possible relationship and input into the history of initiation and its study (e.g. in the form of initiatory representations of a lost and reclaimed knowledge). Relatedly, a standard, materialist research methodology employed, focusing on written texts for a discursive analysis. This defers on issues around the comparative validity of various immaterial and alternative techniques, such as through clairvoyance/channelling and remote viewing. Which is to say that any information or perspectives gained through alternative techniques is simply ignored. In summary, and notwithstanding its mystical bent, this book is very much a conventional work. The second restriction stems from the context as set throughout by the here-and-now of the author’s, my own, personal perspective – meaning the Western tradition, focusing on English-language traditions and texts, especially British. Actually, given the developmental surge of the West, in which Latin-world cultural expansion and British then American industrialisation and dominance have played such a leading role, this is not so unreasonable. Indeed, it was the adventurism and greed and conviction of the modern European imperial period that made possible the evolution of a genuinely globalising perspective on Man as the human science of anthropology. Relatedly, though, the occasional employment of non-English language sources here should not be taken to indicate any great appreciation of them, let alone knowledge of the languages themselves. On the contrary, I am indebted to friends who have helped reduce my mistakes. Manifestly, this second restriction results from a natural prejudice and lack of personal skills, as compared to the first, which is more by way of a decision made. That decision is 18 

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extended by a reluctance to go into detail on the future beyond a few speculative remarks. It is, nevertheless, from the perspective of a possible ‘death and rebirth’ of initiation that the book is concluded. Thus, this critical review of initiation studies may also be regarded as a contribution to that new history, of ‘awakening’, as presently termed. Finally, two details. The original publication date is given for citations in the main text where this was significantly earlier than the publication used. The reasoning for this is that a dated citation indicates the year in which the ideas and words cited were published, which is sometimes important while the particular copy used is not (and the standard citation system takes away from that). The References at the back follows the standard form, though, with another explanatory note added there. Second, several in-text cross-references have been added. This is intended to aid reading by connecting ideas.

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Part I – Where did we get to? The late twentieth-century peak of interest in initiation

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 Kobuaka nzoto (lit. ‘throw away the body’) – Bantu (Lingala) term, used in transnational migration (for the journey, before arrival at the destination). 

Chapter 1. Myths of men, issues with gender and the adult-spiritual divide The gathering wave of academic and popular interest in the subject of initiation that had steadily built during the 1960s and 70s finally peaked in the 1980s. We can identify its lapping along the Western counterculture of that time, and we can see it crashing into mainstream culture at the end of the 80s and early 90s with the work done by Robert Bly promoting the idea of a ‘men’s initiation’. This, he argued, had been lost in the historical process of modernisation and especially the twentieth-century industrialisation, to terrible effect today. Its reclamation (after a fashion), could be a panacea (of a sort, so it seemed). The idea certainly touched a nerve and captured the imagination. Bly’s effort and the activities of that part of an associated men’s movement involved the development of male initiation workshops, expanding internationally into networking self-help groups, multiple publications and ultimately crossover into the mass media as a major theme in a hit TV series.1 Of its time and fast fading into the past now, this idea and its social expression has nevertheless also maintained a certain position and even progressed in recent years – notably through programmes of engagement with imprisoned men convicted of crimes and serving jail sentences. In characterising his subject very clearly as male initiation, Bly separated it off from the female, and also from the spiritual. Thus, he set out with the assumption (declaration, in fact) of a trinary division that included a binary for the sexes and, moreover, a special argument for the need for the male form in particular, starting with a deep recognition of its loss. Investigating this, leads to a critique not only of the argument – which was always questioned, often misunderstood and sometimes ridiculed – not only of that, but also of the underlying theory. We are required to problematise the primary, analytic divisions in which the men’s initiation movement was framed. This, in its way, stands as a critical review of the whole history of the study of initiation, speaking at once to its intuitive call as an ever-present siren through the ages and yet also of the imperialistic, patriarchal and mystique-shrouded heritage that that came with. 1 Bly’s

advocacy was aired weekly on prime-time TV (1991-1999), role-played by the neighbour of the main character in the ABC sit-com Home Improvement (created by Finestra, McFazdean and Wlliams) – where the title, punning on DIY, gave away the real focus of the show (the domestic context in which the male initiation advocacy was placed).

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Chapter 1. Myths of men, issues with gender and the adult-spiritual divide

Robert Bly, men and loss Bly presented his ideas in a Jungian framework and as a response to what may be termed feminism’s capture of the cultural fire and its energising force for change. ‘Women in the 1970s needed to develop… Kali energy,’ wrote Bly (1991: ix, 27), referring to the sometimes wrathful Hindu deity for the dynamic political drive of the women’s liberation and feminist movement. Now, in order to ‘survive’, men – post-feminist men, that is, or ‘new men’, in the terminology of the time – men needed to ‘make a parallel connection’ through contact with a dormant ‘Zeus energy’, a ‘Dionysus energy’ embodied in the figure of the ‘Wild Man’ (a medieval figure from a Grimm brothers’ story, used here archetypally). In order to rediscover ‘positive leadership’, relearn the ‘value of the male mentor’ and find a ‘second father’, we needed to ‘start seeing the Wild Man and to look again at initiation’ ­– for, without this connection, as told in ‘all initiation stories’, we were ‘suffering… young men especially’. Not only did men in touch with their feminine side (anima) n ­ ow need to reclaim an inner masculinity (the male animus, perhaps, uncivilised man), but this was to be achieved through its representation as and in and through initiation.2 Commencing with a ‘descent’ into ‘grief ’, the identification and expression of pain otherwise unfelt (unconsciously repressed in the patriarchal disconnection from emotion), the inner journey of personal transformation crucially included the mythology of a ‘longing’. This longing was essentially a grief for the absence of initiation, that male initiation which would locate and release the Wild Man, the natural, animal masculine within. The idea of male initiation thus operated both as vehicle to emote a loss and as object of that loss; it represented a cure for the malady through its own rediscovery, the way out through what had been lost. Indeed, and as indicated by the subtitle of Iron John – A Book about Men – this was folk story deeply committed to psycho-social programme. The remedial mythology of initiation that was advocated, however, itself comprised a myth of initiation; it involved the re-creating of an initiation that was already mythologised. Iron John employed a stylised anthropology in which male initiation as an actual practice was occasionally referenced and casually assumed as historical fact, even though much of the work on initiation in the US previously, through the 1960s and 70s, had been just as much based on its non-occurrence. Simply, initiation ceremonies had been identified as performed in many tribal societies but not all, and the reasons for this had been investigated. A variety of markers were posited as causal to explain the occurrence of (mostly male) initiation. These were partly grounded in early twentieth century psychoanalysis employing evidence 2 The call to arms may have been urgent, but it followed an already well-furrowed path – such as by Alexander

Mitscherlich (1970 [1963]) in Society without the Father – and it was, moreover, very much of a kind: noting the ‘startling resemblance’ of the way American men were dealing with the ‘current malaise’ to their ‘responses over the course of American History’, Michael Kimmel (1996: ix; 2011) detailed the late nineteenth century as a period when the US male ego had been similarly beleaguered, with waning Victorian virtues and the emergence of the ‘new woman’, and similarly, before that, the late seventeenth century as a time when masculinity in England experienced ‘crisis’.

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Chapter 1. Myths of men, issues with gender and the adult-spiritual divide

from anthropology. Theodor Reik’s thesis for Sigmund Freud was an early and notable example. Completed in Europe shortly before the outbreak of WWI, this was translated and published in the US in 1931 – as a consideration of ‘The Puberty Rites of Savages’, although Reik’s first English language work on the subject had first appeared in article form a decade previously: The puberty rites [initiations] of the savage tribes represent actions which are intended to aid the generation which has just reached manhood to overcome their unconscious desires for incest and murder. Simultaneously with the initiation into the totemistic religion the younger generation is in these rites introduced into the community and the male cults. (Reik, 1921: 87) Freud’s own view of initiatory circumcision as castration substitute – modelled per Darwin from the alpha-male leadership characteristic of primates – was expressed in a footnote at the end of Totem und Tabu, also written just before the War and afterwards (during the War) translated into English: The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big role in disturbing the relations to the father in the case of our youthful neurotics… When children learn about ritual circumcision they identify it with castration… The circumcision which was so frequent in primordial times among primitive races belongs to the period of initiation in which its meaning is to be found. (Freud, 1913: 253-254, note 87) These ‘unconscious desires’ and the ‘fear’ would, presumably, apply to all young males. In 1928, however, Margret Mead used her own research into the Coming of Age in Samoa to suggest the particular male need for initiation after an infancy spent in a female domestic setting – the implication of this being that alternative arrangements lead to different needs, so, not initiation, or not necessarily, anyway. Later, after WWII, American anthropological works went on to employ a comparative analysis of (tribal) societies using the worldwide, cross-cultural data mainly developed and collated by George Murdoch (1957, 1967). Thus, various psycho-social rationales for the appearance of (mostly male) initiation were argued for. These included, among others, a long post-partum taboo and exclusive mother-child sleeping arrangements, male solidarity in society separating them from women, and the control of resources by unilinear-descent kin groups (i.e. generally the male line); factors indicating the lack of female initiation were also investigated, including matrilocality (when

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Chapter 1. Myths of men, issues with gender and the adult-spiritual divide

couples live near the woman’s parents), women’s contribution to subsistence activities and, indeed, the performance of male initiation.3 The point here is that however much doing it might help – because contemporary conditions mirrored those listed in various ways, meaning that it was socio-culturally indicated (thus prescribed) – there was no necessary loss of initiation for today’s boy-men in the West as such. Similarly, any longing in this respect expressed as a deep psychological deprivation or bereavement may be misplaced. Indeed, there was also here something of a faux grief – as captured, for example, in the subtitle of a paper on ‘Male Initiation’ by Diederik Janssen (2007): ‘Imagining Ritual Necessity’ (emphasis added). Implying that men’s need for initiation is supposed and not necessarily a real one, this alluded also to the wider theme of a felt absence more generally in our materialistic lives of a spiritual dimension and, specifically, a (non-)embodiment in rite. Bly’s thesis, that is, drew from and played into a wider critique of contemporary socio-culture as voided of spirituality, dramatically expressed through ritual (the lack of ). This spiritual lack as perceived was linked to the decline first, of bodily performance in formalised religion (historically, the move to Protestantism), and then, of the performance of any formalised religion at all (irreligiosity, atheism). Thus James Roose-Evans (1994: 2): ‘The virtual disappearance of rites of passage from our culture, together with a decline in the respect accorded to sacred ceremonial, has disconnected us from archetypal imperatives which seek to transform our lives, and has left us without a mythic context to give them meaning’. The critique may or may not have been more or less valid then and now, but it was a big ask to use that to contextualise the urgent need for a psycho-social production (of initiation ritual) itself only variably performed (in some societies but not others) to compensate for absent fathers (and suchlike). Another problem with Bly’s approach was his employment of initiatory models. The male initiation that Bly invoked was impressionistically drawn from the Western study of pre-industrial and pre-agrarian tribal practice; or, more harshly, it was simply cherrypicked for an idealised alternative as the way forward. Bly’s mentor model of a fiercely challenging yet protectively nurturing ‘male mother’, for example, omitted any consideration of initiation’s darker side, ranging from, on the one hand, the historical recording of unintended consequences – such as, in Australia, where the harsh application of traditions in contemporary conditions led to ‘the health of many young men’ being ‘utterly destroyed’ so that ‘many even come by their death’ (Taplin, 1879a: 18) – to, on the other hand, the deliberate and commonplace, systematic (institutionalised) functioning of initiation to maintain power for the older men (giving them priority in access to meat, girls/women, etc.) – and now, in recent revivifications in southern Africa, a litany of abusive practices, many fatal.4 3 See

Vizedom (1976: 25ff.) and La Fontaine (1985: 105ff.); also Schlegel and Barry (1980), and below.

4 E.g. over 5,000 hospital admissions of young male initiates were reported in South Africa in the nine years

2006-2014 (involving some 200 amputations) and around 550 deaths (in 2006-2013) (CRL, 2017: 17, 19).

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The concern is not just with an effective denial of major issues in actual initiatory practice but also and more profoundly with the idea of transposing practices across cultural contexts, the suspicion being that it is precisely this that facilitates the idealised simplification. Clearly, the meaning – thus action, function – of a social practice in one developmental framing will tend not to be the same as it is in another – at least, it cannot be assumed thus. A ritual form that produced men in historical, tribal situations may not and perhaps should be expected not do that in contemporary, (post-)industrial ones; and any such attempts, moreover, may be quite inappropriate generally, as well as individually harmful. They may tend toward reproducing the past as a fixed form and thereby act as a brake on present-day socio-cultural dynamics deemed to represent a healthy progress. This was in essence the feminist critique of Bly – and actually, also, the deeper issue with his work on its own terms of the fundamental divisions.5 Sex and gender The anthropologically based modelling of initiation that Bly drew from largely began with an identification of the ritual with males. Although there were reports of and attention given to female initiation through the history of its occasional recording and then formal study, at least from the mid-nineteenth century, these tended to be relatively minor. Underlying this was the greater observation of male ritual and the assumed explanation that females did not need the social institution of rites of initiation at puberty since they had menarche (bleeding, first menstruation). European travellers, colonists and suchlike sometimes witnessed male initiations but rarely female ones, the inference being that girls naturally became women, whereas boys had to be made into men. Gradually that changed, particularly with the twentieth century increase in women researchers writing on the subject during the periods of women’s suffrage and liberation and then feminism, when the identification of initiation with males was directly challenged. In Mead’s Coming of Age (1928), a landmark publication in sex-gender studies and the influence on social norms of the cultural environment – so of nurture, as opposed to nature – the Polynesian adolescence investigated was both male and female – but mainly female. Then, reporting a quarter century later on about what she had witnessed at a similar time (in 1931) in sub-Saharan Africa (today’s Zambia), Aubrey Richards (1956) wrote a whole book focusing on a single girl’s initiation (chisungu). Then, drawing from her 1964 doctoral 5 This

notwithstanding the beauty of its mythic form and non-intension of regressive consequences resulting from distortions of the original idea – Bly himself was wary of the development of a ‘movement’, which implied a ‘doctrine’ (Gaines, 1991: 127); Harry Brod’s (1995: 95) comment on the ‘immobilizing and conservative ways’ of such ‘male nostalgia’ (in a volume given over for Profeminist Men to Respond to the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement) chimed tellingly with Loren Pedersen’s (1991: 140-141) observation that ‘the mythology of Zeus’ – which Bly sought to invoke – ‘prevents the possibility of the emergence of self-reflexive consciousness… incorporating the anima in spirit and thereby depriving her of fertility, of the capacity for becoming pregnant with revolutionary children’.

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dissertation in her booklet Rites and Relationships, Monika Vizedom – 1960 co-translator into English of Arnold van Gennep’s Rites of Passage, the most well-known and influential book on initiation – compiled data for three peoples from each of five cultural world areas showing there to be no clear preponderance of such ritual as specified by sex (female and male adolescent rites were both found to be standard in 10 of the 15 societies covered (Vizedom, 1976: 36-37). With such a small number of societies, the risk of sampling error was high. Indeed, this was found to be the case, but not because girls were less widely initiated than boys. Using Murdoch and White’s (1969) listing of 186 societies representing the world’s regions (as categorised), Schlegel and Barry (1979) established a significantly greater proportion of societies featuring female initiation than male (46% as opposed to 36%, respectively). Notably also, they found that in nine out of ten female initiations, just a single girl passed through the rituals, as opposed to a group (the figures for this were evenly split for boys), and almost a half of the girl’s initiations involved only the immediate family (which was the case for only one in eight for boys, the remaining seven-eighths slightly favouring large over small groups, so essentially a mirror opposite of the situation for girls). Whatever the natural (biological) circumstances, the social fact of girls’ initiation was simply not less common or widespread than boys’ – in fact, the reverse was the case.6 A disputed thesis of matriarchal society as the original state of society was advocated especially during the period of second-wave feminism, including by archaeologists and anthropologists, such as Marija Gimbutas (1974). In some cultures, woman (still) had strong roles and prominent positions, and certainly that was the case according to the anthropological record. Previously arguing this thesis extensively, Robert Briffault (1927: 530, 695) had held that women worldwide were the first holders of supernatural power, in the role of ‘witch’ and priestess’, with ‘magical powers’, in ‘religious associations’ and related to ‘resurrection’ – including ‘among the Aborigines of Australia’, through the imagery of the serpent linked to the moon, which controlled the ‘rites of initiation, or “boras”’. Briffault indicated that women were the first and sometimes the most important shamans, citing a Polish anthropologist at Oxford, Maria Czaplicka. In her chapter on ‘Shamanism and Sex’ (i.e. gender), Czaplicka (1914: 198) had reported evidence from the Yakut that woman was the ‘original black shaman’, drawing for her part on the Evolution of the Black Faith by Vasily Troshchanski (1895: 119).7 Nevertheless, the thrust of the new thinking was toward a diagnosis of women’s initiation as having tended to be historically omitted from the record, through non-observance. This 6

Methodological issues come into play with this type of statistical analysis – involving, for example, the extent to which the data may reflect significant relations of cultural borrowing and common descent rather than evolution. Thus, one conclusion drawn has been that ‘“evolutionary” relations account for the presence of particular adolescent rituals for girls, [but] not for boys’ (Eff, 2004: 158). 7 Troshchanski had been exiled in Yakut territory during the late 1880s, when he learnt the local language and (pre-Christian) culture.

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was not just an effect of mostly men doing human science in the mostly masculine world of male academic endeavour;8 it was also and perhaps more importantly due to the style of women’s initiation itself. Female rites of passage were understood as mainly for individuals in the home with the family rather than socially organised groups in the ‘wild’ – so inside and intimate rather than outside and ceremonially dramatised – which made them intrinsically less accessible, less visible, less seen – and especially so to outsider (white) men, of course. This implies a conception of initiation that genderises ways of being out of social (public) space during initiation – by removal, en masse, geographically outside (the village, for men) or by withdrawal, staying inside (the hut, for women). Male initiation was situated outside of society and female within it; or, both male and female initiations were located beyond society (and thus made sacred, disruption contained, etc.), but while the sacred space of ritual (the transformative container, the ‘crucible’) was defined as exterior for male initiation (beyond public space as external to it, in a territorially defined ‘wild’), for female initiation it was positioned as interior (beyond public space as internal, enclosed within it, ‘domestic’). Thence, parallel to Sherry Ortner’s (1974) presentation of the equation Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?, the new initiatory paradigm could have been expressed as female: male::interior:exterior.9 The material application of such abstract analysis, however, may become problematic. Bly’s male initiation, for example, was assumed as a going out, to this ‘wild’, as the locale in which to contact the Wild Man – who was actually within. And it derived equally from an imaginative of initiation, in the context of a relatively simple society (the agrarian bucolic of a romance mythology, in fact, as much as the tribal forms of classical anthropology). The ascription of a male yearning could work insofar as men today needed to go out into the wild – to contact with the primal for a bio-physical source of unalienated empowerment (vitality, virility, the Zeus energy). However, in the contemporary context of urban life, any lack of contact with nature, as with ritual, was not particular to men. Like the argued for loss of (meaningful) ritual to sacralise important changes and key moments in individual and social life, this perceived absence and thus need for the wild does not appear gender specific. Thence, we are moved to review the distinction in initiation of male versus female.  Manifestly, the categorisation of male and female initiation assumes a dyadic functioning, either male or female, leading to the idea that a primary function of initiation was to produce men and women. This involved the preparation of males and females for heterosexual relations in society (leading to marriage). Thus, a paradigm was invoked of sex-defined 8 See

e.g. Rossiter (1982: 70ff.).

9 There is also a dynamic contrast of mobility in this model, with male initiation related to a major movement

first to and then in the (expansive) external, and female as a smaller movement toward containment and (relative) immobility – thence the parallel binary of ejection:incarceration.

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initiation as maintaining the means of social reproduction (the institution of family, especially) through the context of biological reproduction, wherein gender and social relations more broadly were reproduced. And the sex dyad of initiation also operated at a symbolic level, with male and female as genders matched not only to human qualities in society as either masculine or feminine but further to cosmological dualities. As Jean La Fontaine (1985: 118) commented in her book Initiation: The rites form part of a complex cosmological and social order, in which the opposition between male and female is linked to other dualisms in mutual reinforcement.10 The oppositional form may be said to have been paradoxically teased at, however, by male initiatory forms that in some way copied or emulated female experience, thus subtly undermining the distinction through its very expression. In the psychoanalytic tradition, Bruno Bettelheim (1955) drew from observations of youngsters at a special school in Chicago who spontaneously developed their own rites of bloodletting when one of the girls began menstruating to suggest that circumcision might operate as a form of ‘womb envy’ (in contradistinction to Freud’s ‘penis envy’). In addition to this drawing of blood, as Bettelheim’s chapter on ‘The Men Women’ indicated, there were also tribal mythic histories of men as having stolen from women the sacred shirt, the magic flutes or the power masks, and an initiatory theme of male cross-dressing.11 Further to the emphasis on and this subtle undermining of male and female, attention turned also to non-binary sex-gender statuses, biologies, roles and practices. During the 1980s, with the evolution from feminism of gender studies more generally, there developed a queering critique of the simple opposition in anthropology, which importantly included research into and analysis of initiation. The category of berdache (‘twospirit’ androgyny in North America) was long observed. Now, Gilbert Herdt considered the male (homo)sexual (fellatio) initiation rites of the ‘Sambia’ in Papua New Guinea and then Sambian intersex (pseudohermaphrodites) (Herdt, 1981; Herdt and Davidson, 1988), before going on to edit the volume Third Sex, Third Gender. The ‘third’ form here was intended as ‘emblematic of other possible combinations that transcend dimorphism’, emphasising ‘those traditions in which male, female and third categories are posited as part of the reality of nature and culture’ (Herdt, 1994: 20).12 These included, for example, a study of the hijra, a 10 See

also pp. 139, 164. may be related to the phenomenon of ‘couvade’ (from the French, ‘hatchling’) – men’s pregnancy experience (male pre-partum symptomology), originally borrowed as a term already employed by Tylor (1865: 288), and the subject of the opening piece (‘Couvade and the Psychogenesis of the Fear of Retaliation’) in Reik’s (1919) volume; see also Devereux (1950), D’Andrade (1967) and Hogbin (1970). 12 Roscoe (1994) referred to ‘multiple genders’; Martin and Voories (1975) had employed the term ‘supernummary sexes’; a more radical reworking from the notion of fluid (provisional, multiple) identities generally, including those of ‘sex-gender’, developed as ‘queer theory’ (from De Laruetis, 1991). 11 Which

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quadratic hermaphrodite/eunuch category in India comprising both born and ‘made’ males and females with, in Hindu lore, castration as the central initiation rite (Nanda, 1994). Although unstated as such, the introduction of this ‘third’ category implied three categories of initiation: male, female and third.13 In fact, even in dimorphic sex-gender contexts, some tribal and native peoples’ initiation rites were shared affairs, with both males and females involved and/or (importantly) undistinguished. A range of examples problematising a strict divide were collected in the online listing of worldwide initiation/passage rites developed by Janssen (2005), under the (third) category of ‘ambigender’ rituals.14 In fact, there have been (were/are) a few tribal initiations of boys and girls together, unseparated (until the end, at least) – including the katsina initiation of the pueblo Hopi of New Mexico and Arizona (White, 1932: 70). There, boys who had taken part in earlier children’s (mixed-sex and boys’) initiatory practices would remove themselves from and no longer be included as they became ‘men-towomen’ (berdache, two-spirit), and non-discriminating practices were discontinued for the completion of male- (and female-)only initiations. Similarly, children were/are sometimes initiated together into an association – such as the rigorous three-month entry passage into the voluntary and secret Kondi association of the Moba in northern Toga (Kreamer, 1995). There have also been some instances recorded involving a combination of both shared and separate practice – such as the Manyago in Lindi, southern Tanzania, where a distinction is only made at the end, when boys alone undergo the final ritual practice (of circumcision) (Lerise et al., 2001: 21-23). And others again have (had) sex-specific initiations but employing the same structures, practices and symbols, and themes, thus rather emptying the distinction of significance – such as the parallel age-grading and mask-making, shared mask performances and common initiatory language of the Voltaic Bwa in Mali/Burkina Faso (Roy, 2007: 50-52). This is to say nothing of the experience of the initiate. In terms of sexuality, for example, a homoerotic reading problematises any conception of the normative masculinity purportedly produced by male (only) initiation. Indeed, simple sex-gender identities are assumed here as (if ) existential fact – so fixed. In Herdt’s third-category volume, however, Bessnier (1994) refers to the ‘permeability and permutability of gender categories in Polynesia’. This can be appreciated as pertaining particularly for young people, during the growing period when sexgender, like other identities, is not yet established – which we may well recognise today, in the West and elsewhere. Such blurry, multi-vocal and dynamic sex-gender conceptions introduce 13 A recent analysis of the contemporary literary presentation of Hijras – ‘as the central figure of otherness…

depositories of deviance, constantly associated with naturalised marginality, anti-sociality and hypersexuality’ – presents initiation as including castration but also as a more generalised sexualisation of [the] body and as ‘what it means to be hijra’, which is ‘to be nothing’, even outside of subjectivity’ (Newport, 2018: 126, 130, 244). In this sense, the production of a third sex-gender may be that of a de-subjectification, or non-identity (or the identity of no-identity). 14 Janssen discontinued the ambigender category when re-presenting his material; the site remains, however, a rich repository of related information.

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(yet) another dimension of complexity into the subject. Evidently, a range of deep issues are involved in the sex-gender defined basis of initiation that complicate and undermine any strongly generalising categorisation, including that of the traditional bifurcation into just (simply) male and female. Divisions and categories of initiation Moving from the sex binary of male-female to the broader initiatory trinary of male-femalespiritual takes us to the relationship of a third sex-gender category with the realm of the other. There is an obvious sense in which both the spiritual (e.g. ascetics) and the third (nonheterosexuals) may be distinguished from (in opposition to) the hegemonic of heterosexual life, insofar as these groupings are both characterised by a life outside of the social standard of family and the biologically based reproduction of society. Analytically, the conceptual opposition of spiritual to material/physical parallels that of the third to male-female – and is linked (in sex-gender hegemonic terms) as unnatural to natural (hence ‘queer’ to ‘normal’). And we do find third category initiations that involve the assignation of ‘spiritual’ qualities and roles. In Nanda’s Indian hermaphrodite/eunuch category, for example, the initiation by castration is named ‘nirvan’, known as ‘the opening of the eye of wisdom’.15 In identifying initiations on the basis of their function to reproduce society and social relations through genderisation and the normative production of sexualities, therefore, the following two-stage move may be made: first, the dyad of male-female becomes a triad of male-female-third, and then, the third is aligned (or even conflated) with the spiritual. This suggests insights into, for example, the identity/role of ‘outsider’, when we are structurally positioned as marginal – by ourselves as agents and/or by society as other. Indeed, anyone undergoing any type of initiation may be regarded by definition as marginal, insofar as they are beyond (within/outside of ) society (albeit a marginality that is constructed through the wider phrasing of the collective, e.g. with community rituals). This sense of the marginal ­– a point of departure for Victor Turner’s work drawing from Van Gennep (see Chapter 8) – was employed by Bessnier (1994) in the context of the third category as ‘genderliminality’. For Herdt (op. cit.: 80), it straddled and organically – almost magically, one might say – smoothed power relations to determine socio-cultural reproduction: ‘the seed of inversion, structural superiority, flowers in the third sex-gender power in ritual space, the liminal context, when it acts as mediator in the unequal opposition of male and female’ (here, the allusion is also to Turner’s emphasis on initiatory inversion, wherein usual power roles are inverted). Thus, we now develop a structural linkage at the conceptual level between initiation, nonheterosexuality and the domain of the spiritual. To the extent that these are all importantly situated in some way outside of the societal norm and thereby go together – or resonate, we 15 So,

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material/physical:spiritual::male-female:third(::natural:unnatural).

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could say – then they have a ‘natural’ connection. Such a connection is not limited to these, of course. Extending the logic that connects initiates with marginality, we can ally initiation to any non-hegemonic (alternative, minority, subaltern, etc.) as marginal and spiritual – and see it manifested, moreover, so not just as an abstract relationship operative in the realm of ideas and ideation, but also as materially played out in daily life and in ritual life, including initiatory practices. At the emotive level, there is the shared experience of otherness as a commonality of marginalisations, wherein community becomes fraternity, politicised in ‘resistance’ as ‘solidarity’. This is related to initiation by Turner as a ‘communitas’, which has a spiritual dimension – insofar, for example, as it involves a profoundly human connection (among individuals stripped of social status, or rather, with the societal status of having no social identity, power, etc.). Thus, while the starting assumption here has the spiritual as an independent analytical category in initiation, apart from and structurally equivalent and opposed to sex-gender, this need not be the case. On the contrary, an intimate linkage between the two (and more, not just these) may be perceived through the concept of othering in social relations and the societal ordering of power. Somewhat similarly, the concept of the spiritual may itself be introduced into the sex-gender based categories and thus categorisation of initiation – as an aspect of the dyad (male-female) or triad (male-female-third) – or any other, for that matter. Then, it is argued, there are male and female (masculine- and feminine-toned) spiritualities – with the third uniquely expressing the two as a fusion (cf. Bessnier’s mediating role, see above) – and all sex-gender defined initiations have a spiritual aspect (which is intrinsically involved in the becoming adult). Alternatively, treating spiritual initiation as a category – distinct from the hetero- and homo- and any other sex-gender-making – suggests that any and all sex-gender specifications of initiation may be treated as subsidiary to an umbrella category of adult initiation, separate from spiritual initiation. Therefore, there is adult initiation and there is spiritual initiation. The fundamental division of initiation is now represented as a binary, with the sex-gender dyad or triad subsumed under this (as one side of it). These are different ways of thinking initiation and its relationship to spiritual. Each has its place, offers a perspective, affording insights and understanding – which indicates the freedom of choice about which to adopt. Indeed, any focus on one or other of these initiatory types – such as the male – is a choice made and expresses a preferential interest. As such, it becomes an act of gender politics. This is revealed clearly by the identification of a dynamic blurring between and separate categorisation straddling, as it were, the standard sexgender binary as a ‘third’ way or form. It follows, therefore, that, contrary to Bly’s masculine response to the challenge of feminism for men, we may instead wish to promote the third way, arguing for this as a better reflection and expression of the contemporary dynamic. Taking a long view, in terms of the periodisation of human development, a feminist anthro-historical view emerged in the 1970s holding that the natural divide of the sexes grew into the gender inequality of patriarchy during the agricultural period (unto the apogee of Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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‘civilisation’). This occurred principally for reasons related to the changing socio-economic needs for and arrangements of collective labour (wherein the bio-physical differentiation of the sexes was culturally compounded). Thereafter, however, with industrialisation and then further modernisation into the present – and the expansion of the tertiary (service oriented) economy of the ‘post’ period – the sustenance provisioning basis of the sex-gender division declined in importance. Thus, the span of our history is conceived in terms of first a growing and then a narrowing of the male-female division, which increasingly becomes reduced and irrelevant – thus, softened and blurred – or else just outmoded. In the words of Sheila Rowbotham (1976: 119), credited as having produced the first manifesto for women’s liberation in Britain, ‘the very same forces of industrialisation which had originally increased the division of labour between the sexes have since tended to whittle away at the economic and ideological basis of patriarchy’. In an overview of The Female of the Species that culminated in five chapters on ‘Woman the Gatherer’ and ‘Women in Horticultural [Agricultural, Pastoral and Industrial] Society’, Kay Martin and Barbara Voorhies (1975: 367, 370, 406) summarised the same line of thought thus: The adaptive advantages of the male-provider and female-domestic roles were greatest at the agricultural stage of cultural evolution… [T]he industrial revolution in Europe initiated gradual but permanent trends toward sexual equality and sex role convergence… The major trend for men and women in the future… is that gender roles will become increasingly unimportant… [and] be seen to be increasingly dysfunctional. In the anthropological literature of initiation, the Schlegel and Barry research provides some support for this view through the differently gendered linkage to subsistence economy. They found that the female ritual numbers for girls in the subsistence-type development of societies from food-gathering to agriculture declined drastically (nearly halving), while those for males did not (and actually rose a little).16 Thus, while this is taken as evidence for the hypothesis that the occurrence of adolescent (generally pubertal) initiation ceremonies indicates the ‘significance of gender as a marker of adult social classification’ – because the overall figures decline – this is primarily linked to (because of ) a fall in the ‘high evaluation of females, who are given social recognition and possibly magical protection, as well’ Schlegel and Barry (1979: 711).

16 Initiations recorded in food collecting (gathering, fishing, hunting) societies: girls 32/45 (71%), boys 14/45

(31%); in (incipient, extensive, intensive) agricultural societies: girls 48/123 (39%), boys 40/123 (33%), using Murdoch’s (1967) Ethnographic Atlas data (Schlegel and Barry, 1979: 701). Focusing on initiation in Melanesia, Lutkehaus and Roscoe (1995: xiv) largely confirmed the Schlegel/Barry findings with a 30-40% incidence of male individual initiation rites in tribal societies there as opposed to 50-60% for female, and a 30% incidence of male group initiation rites for men as compared to 10% for female.

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Instead of a male or female initiatory revivalism, therefore, a contemporary politics could advocate a de-genderising emphasis. And this also would be a political engagement, of course, not just objective assessment of the flow of history. Again, the issues at play are acutely demonstrated through the space of the third, presently with the cultural war around transgenderism (exquisitely expressed as bio-cultural value in terms of civil law through the US public provisioning of restrooms). The issue of sex-gender difference quickens the pulse most especially of those with a conservative view. Indeed, this is to be expected when set against a background of the reduced distinction and thus the decay of a traditionalist ethic (or positivistically, the advance of liberalism). To thus argue is not at all to imply that binary sex-gender division of initiation is misguided per se. Quite the reverse, it does have its basis in the empirical observation of socio-anthropologists. Simply, it is stated, initiations across the world and throughout the stages of human societal (or technical) development have always tended in general to separate and distinguish by sex, and they still do. Initiates are either one or the other, not both or neither: ‘all [initiations] proclaim a fundamental distinction between male and female’ (La Fontaine, 1985: 117). Accepting this – albeit with major reservations as over-generalising – a parallel can be drawn and similar position reasonably adopted for the adult-spiritual division. That is, there is a grey area between the adult and spiritual forms of initiation that undermines but does not radically refuse the distinction. A nuanced view here has a range between poles, with the difference manifesting as a clustering away from the middle. Thus, for example, male initiations may be graded as more or less ‘masculine’ (or ‘feminine’ or a-sexualised and a-gendered) – and adult initiations may be more or less ‘spiritual’ (and vice versa). Most simply, however, these are just different categorisations; one is one and the other the other (either male or female, either adult or spiritual).  There is another difficulty with the categorisation of the fundamental division of adultspiritual initiation, however, in that some initiations do not obviously fit into this model. Inductions into some institutions – fraternities and (other such) ‘secret societies’, for example – may be known as ‘initiations’ because of their ritualistic qualities and intrinsic religiosity (per cult or sect) and yet as male-only institutions (generally) function equally and obviously in the production of gender. They are both and yet neither, or something else. The situation is similar in respect of investitures into social roles or positions – like ‘shaman’ or ‘king’ – which, again, are variably (more or less) prosaic and profane. In (sociological) fact, such positions are societally instituted and are thus themselves social institutions (which becomes clear when the initiation comprises acceptance into an order as an honoured member with given title and address, like ‘knight/sir’). The process of transformation by which an individual becomes a member, takes on a role and adopts an institutional position may involve both adulthood and spiritual aspects, suggesting that this fundamental division also Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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is not necessarily an exclusive one. Simply, there is more than one way in which we can draw and demarcate our basic categories. Membership, roles and positions – and genders – are the products of initiations. Initiations function to produce these, like they do also the individuals who are initiated. They produce initiates, in the technical, (grammatically) perfective sense of those who have been initiated, whose change is completed (as opposed to initiands, who will enter or are still going through the transformative ritual, and ‘initiates’ more commonly as a term connoting both of these). But initiations also have other functions, such as strengthening social relations and the bonds of community or handling the various abreactions as indicated through the psychoanalysis of various sex-gender-characterised family and communal arrangements. Unsurprisingly, this is achieved in different ways and to varying degrees. A girl’s home-based initiation may be most bound up in and securing of family bonds, for example, especially those of the women relatives, while the exercise of a secret pageantry invokes a very different social ordering. And then to these – product and function – there are other dimensions to add, such as the content and/or style of a ceremony, its internal logic of symbols, and more. Thus, the specification of an initiation as spiritual may be determined on a scale (by extent) in a binary or more complex relationship of divisions but also as according to product or function or content or style or any other of the analytical perspectives employed to determine initiatory type. When attempting to prepare an ‘encyclopedic and bibliographic review of “initiation” and life course rituals’, Janssen (2008: 1) observed ‘a number of indexing problems’, which he adjudged sufficiently problematic to ‘compromise any comparative approach’. This did not prevent him from attempting and well-enough completing his listing task, but it did, nevertheless, highlight a difficult starting point, In fact, as he stated, this was to be expected as ‘an inevitable corollary’ of such ‘semantically convoluted concepts’ (indeed, a genealogy of the convolution is investigated here, in the histiography of the following chapters). The semantic issues cause problems for any attempt to develop a taxonomy. James Redfield (2003: 258) argues against even attempting this, because of the ‘overdetermination of rituals’. Since rituals require major investments of energy, more than is necessary for any one function, they are not limited to and cannot be contained within or usefully defined by that function. Therefore, ‘rituals should not be classified but explored’. His suggestion, of course, is made in response to people who have classified, and the resulting disagreements. For example, Mircea Eliade (1965) identified three main types of initiation, as presented at a 1964 conference dedicated to the subject – by the conference organiser and editor of its proceedings, Jouco Bleeker (1965), whose own paper distinguished six types.17 Eliade’s categorisation followed his (1958: 2) structure, in which a part-subdivided bivalent made a tripartite. In this model, the most basic (bivalent) distinction rested on whether initiations were obligatory (into adulthood, affording recognition by the tribe), or voluntary 17 Eliade

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himself could not attend.

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(including secret society and ‘mystical vocation… of the medicine man or the shaman’). The anthropological research cited (above) would further divide the obligatory rites by age/lifestage location (as pre-pubertal, pubertal, adolescent) and sex-gender (male, female, third sex-gender), with additional dimensions such as size (individual, small/large group), and location (domicile). Later, a multi-level subdividing was introduced by George Weckman (1970). This analysis was derived through his deployment of a definitional organising principle: the determination of ritual form as effecting an ‘ascent in status from one social and ontological level to another’. Thus, ritual entry was a status ascent that delineated a hierarchical typology with four dichotomies. This produced five types of initiation. First, initiations were defined according to whether or not they were into a ‘level of being that transcends the human condition’; then, those that did feature this transcendent character were subdivided, and that subdivision divided and then again. These initiations were characterised as into ‘puberty’, ‘religious functionary’ (e.g. shaman), ‘religious group intermixed with nonmembers’ (e.g. ancient mysteries, Christian baptism) and then the ‘separated religious groups’ of ‘utopian community’ and ‘monastery’. Similar to the idea of an organising principle but not obviously productive of types is the identification of key features as characteristic or defining markers of initiation. La Fontaine (1985: 14, 159, 188) – who assumed a ‘common sense’ binary of secret society and adult initiation – arrived, among other features, like ‘secrets’ and ‘tests’, at the ‘authority of experience’. This emphasised the ‘self-validating’ effect of initiation rites as a ‘direct confirmation of the elders’ ability to conduct them… equating [ritual] knowledge with power and [thereby] supporting legitimate authority’. Thence, there developed internally sanctioned societal systems of ritual power and right, based on age or a mythic structure specifying the secret knowledge and tests, which interlinked with other societal systems of power and right. La Fontaine’s idea of an experiential authority ties in well with Weckman’s ‘status ascent’ – the ascent is to a position of such authority. Indeed, La Fontaine (ibid. 185) stated that the ‘expressed aim of initiation is simple, to change the status of individuals’. Her change was clearly also to a higher status – of secret-knowing test-passers (successful initiates were those who had gone through and gained the experience, so the ritual experience itself was the secret that ultimately empowered and authorised). This thereby constituted an ‘ascent’, indicating the initiatory transformation as a step up or step forward, as progress (and hence its developmental systems of grading and hierarchies). Although Eliade, Weckman and La Fontaine used different classificatory systems and approaches, a level of commonality may be discerned. Primarily, they all identified age-based adulthood-oriented initiations. Second, they identified some form of spiritual (mystical or mysticising) component which was distinct from that. Eliade’s was mystical vocation (and the death-rebirth trance-ecstasy that characterised this), Weckman’s was transcendence (specifically of the human condition) and La Fontaine’s was secret knowledge (and the Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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mysticising power of authority this afforded). There were differences in their treatment of that adult-spiritual distinction – in how the two components related logically – which was clarified in their explications, mainly of the spiritual element. And this then characterised the sense in which non-adult initiations were of the type ‘spiritual initiations’ (and the ways in which adult initiations had a spiritual dimension). But ultimately, they all had a sense of spirituality, loosely defined, as over-arching (linked to ritual). La Fontaine treated the spiritual from a modernist, anthropological view, as instituted by the ritual function or product, which fundamentally separated the secrets of secret societies from those concerned with gender-making (they were different types of secrets, so she gave them different chapters). Thus, her division rather much paralleled the adult-spiritual one, in effect, even though adult initiations had the spiritual (mysticising) element of the secret of ritual knowledge. Weckman approached the subject from a religious studies perspective. In making the transcendent function fundamental, he grouped social role and organisation initiations together with those at puberty, but as ‘under’ or lesser than, which was different from La Fontaine. However, adult initiations were in turn separated from the spiritual as types or a specification (of how the transcending functioned, what it produced), which was like La Fontaine. Non-adult transcendence was only minimally considered (to be presumed as conceptual or religious and worked out elsewhere). Eliade sided with Weckman in distinguishing his stance as that of the ‘historian of religion’ rather than the ‘sociologist’. Yet, he had his basic division of obligatory and voluntary initiations as dividing adult rites from others as different but equal, which was nearer to La Fontaine. Mystical vocation and secret society entry rites were thus joined for Eliade, equating to a type of spiritual initiation category. However, like La Fontaine and Weckman, he also subsumed the whole subject of initiation under spirituality, in his case through a notion of death and rebirth. Essentially, adult initiations are always clear in these models, and there are non-adult, spiritual initiations and dimensions distinguished, even where this spirituality, or a spirituality, encompassed them all (all initiations, all types). Thus, although there may be good reasons not to distinguish a binary opposition along the adult-spiritual line, that is, in fact, what has occurred, in various expressions. Or at least, such a perception, of a fundamental divide, is well-founded. This book also assumes that fundamental division, although based not on an analysis of the initiations themselves so much as on the way they have been treated. The main subject of this book concerns the historical and modern development, current situation and future of initiation, but especially as represented in written works. Thus, it looks at initiation studies, understanding by that the sum total of publications on initiation and especially those taking the subject as a main focus. The historical development is understood and presented on the basis of the adult-spiritual binary framing, which is also employed for a reconsideration of the current situation. So, the concern is less with the fundamental division of initiation itself than of the idea of initiation as expressed through that division. By tracing a history and pre-history of the idea – which includes the words and phrases (lexis, lexical items) used to 38 

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express that idea – various implications can be drawn regarding its present and future. At this level of analysis, sex-gender issues become relatively unimportant, relegated to a subproblem of (one side of ) the fundamental division. The notion of ‘spirituality’ is no less problematic than that of ‘initiation’, however, so a direct treatment of that is left to the end (Chapter 12), after looking at initiation more generally. Thus, the following chapters (Part II-IV) look at the ‘convoluted concept’ by investigating how it developed and critiquing its construction, aiming towards a reconstructive conclusion (Part V). And this all pinned to the adult-spiritual distinction. We begin (again) with the emergence of the adult.

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Part II – How did we get there? Origins of the rites of passage

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Chapter 2. Modern foundations of initiation In anthropology, initiation has mostly been about making adults. It has generally been assumed as the (tribal) ritual practice (rites, ceremonies) that produces adults – hence the name ‘adult initiation’. Rooted in the notion of ‘primitive’ (prior to ‘civilisation’), the notion of ‘tribal’ implies a small, simple society (cultural unit of kin groups), but it has been used in ways that conflate this with peoples and ethnicities and may extend to include systems of great socio-cultural and political complexity. Hence, the reference is to ‘bands’ and ‘clans’, as well as tribes, and to tribal groupings, or ‘nations’. This ambivalence is more recently smudged over by resort to a notion of technology (low) and the related means of subsistence (pre-industrial as a minimum). The notion of ‘rites’ is referred to by various other terms, including ‘ritual’ and ‘ceremony’, ‘custom’ (in the past) and ‘practice’ (as a generalisation or abstraction). Initiations are rites, so a sub-class of the wider category. Rites have been paired with ‘myth’, as the active component of religions and religious practices, analysed as social action and characterised as routine performance, extending from daily procedures to major expressions of a communal ethos. In the context of adult initiation, ‘rites’ principally refers to the various fixed (scripted), social behaviours directed ultimately at the object of the drama, the person or persons to be initiated. It becomes a problematic notion in the final sections of this book with an attempt to reconstruct initiation for a contemporary application, but until then is assumed in the most common sense of the term. The term ‘adult initiation’ is mostly used here (for the intentional product, adults), but in anthropology it has historically been more often specified as ‘adolescent’ or ‘pubertal’ (or ‘pre-pubertal’), since it is mainly during this biological period of growth into physical (sexual) maturity that it is performed. La Fontaine (1985: 14) introduced the term ‘maturity rites’, to cover all such initiations performed not only during but also ‘before or after… physical puberty’ – in other words, ‘all those which mark the passage from childhood to maturity’. It is adult initiation on which anthropology has most focused and which has thus largely characterised the initiation discourse – meaning by ‘discourse’, approximately, the totality of the usage of words and phrases for concepts and the ways these are used within a domain itself conceived through naming (e.g. as ‘initiation’), and then the meanings of all this as established through dynamic relationships to and in the wider cultural network of other words and phrases (lexis) and ideas. The distinction of ‘discourse’ from ‘material’ as Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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applied to ‘initiation’ is an important one. The latter refers to the practice of initiations, the actual doing of them, while the former refers to how we verbalise, what we think and say about them. The former tends to be physical, involving actions, while the latter is mental, involving concepts. This book is mainly about discourse and much less so about the things themselves. The phrasing, ‘spiritual initiation’ is not a term much used in anthropology – and anthropology has had an uncertain relationship with the idea. By way of example, Norbeck et al. (1962: 472) noted that Whiting et al. (1958) rather much discounted as a significant initiation the Native American (Ojibwe) vision quest (in which the young person goes out alone to the wild to receive spiritual guidance), probably because it did not suit their subject. They observed that Ruth Benedict (1923: 49-51) had previously considered such practice to often be assumed by researchers as a form of initiation – although, in her judgement, that was not always appropriate. And they themselves (ibid.: 480) suggested it might operate as no more than a ‘functional substitute’ for a rite of passage. The suggestion seems to play at a distinction between ‘initiation’ and ‘rite of passage’. This employs the former in a mystico-spiritual sense (transcendent experience and/or inner growth, one might say), and the latter for the achievement of adult identity (successfully performing the socially ordained tests and tasks, among other things). Thus, the idea of a functional substitute is that one can operate as (if ) the other. This distinction was never standard, though. Rather, the passage into adulthood became the central focus of studies on initiation in anthropology as a discipline in the broader field of social studies (generally ‘social anthropology’ in the UK but just ‘sociology’ in the US). Nevertheless, anthropology certainly was concerned with spiritual elements of initiation and spiritual initiations as well as and included in its investigation of the adult. ‘Shamanic initiation’ as identified in anthropological studies is the obvious example (see Chapter 7). What emerges is the outline of a new intellectual endeavour coming to grips with its subject matter in a way that redefined that subject. Our quest then becomes a journey of adventure in search of the origins of the idea of adult rites of passage! An investigation of the meaning and usage of the term ‘initiation’, that is, indicates a voyage of return, deep into the history of this human science. In order to learn how we arrived at the zenith of interest in initiation with the contemporary, practical expression as a programme of psycho-social action advocated for men – so that we might reconsider where we came to and how to move forward again – we need to go back. We need to set off into the past, to embark on a study of the modern history of the would-be, unnamed anthropological discipline or sub-discipline of initiation studies. Our journey first leads to Australia. Ethnological origins in Australia Dividing initiation according to the spiritual and sex-gender trinary and focusing on the male and seeking models for the proactive energy of a masculine post-feminism, Robert Bly 44 

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referred to ancient practices like the knocking out of front teeth. This was a motif woven into the fabric of the study of initiation in the continental island of Australia (like its warping to male rites, too). During the period of the European ‘discovery’ and then claiming, mapping and settling of New Holland, as Australia was previously known – first by the Dutch (hence the name) and then by the British – initiatory practice was long observed and recorded. The missing teeth were mentioned in maritime journals throughout this phase of the Age of Adventure, starting from William Dampier’s (1703: 464) record of his voyage in January 1688. It was then that the Somerset-schooled buccaneer-explorer noted of the ‘Inhabitants of this country’ that ‘the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, young and old’.18 Sailing a century later, in 1788, under Governor-designate Arthur Phillip with the ‘fleet’ carrying the first batch of 800 ‘felons’ aiming to establish a penal colony at Port Jackson (now Sydney), was one David Collins, third son of an officer of the marines. Collins was educated at Exeter grammar-school (to the age of 14, most probably), and later commissioned Deputy Judge Advocate and made responsible for the establishment of the legal apparatus of the new colony. There, in his late 20s, he attained the rank and position of LieutenantColonel overseeing a small island. Collins eventually returned to London where he wrote an apparently well-received two-volume Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (ADB, 1966-1967). To this Account was appended a long section on ‘the natives about Botany Bay’, in whom Collins had a ‘compassionate interest’ (he had tended to side with them in his legal judgements on their clashes with convicts). He wrote of these natives that ‘Between the ages of eight and sixteen, the males and females undergo the operation which they term “Gnahnoong”, viz. that of having the septum nasi bored, to receive a bone or reed, which among them is deemed a great ornament’, and that ‘Between the same years also the males receive the qualifications which are given to them by losing one of the front teeth’. It was through this ‘operation’ or this ‘ceremony’ or these ‘mystical rites’, he stated, that ‘boys’ or ‘youths’ were ‘made men’ (Collins, 1798: 563-565; emphasis added). Collins employed several pages (the main part of an ‘Appendix on Customs and Manners’) for description of the tooth extraction as well as a weapon ritual (throwing a spear) that he was able to witness, accompanied by a ‘person well qualified’ to make series of eight engravings. This was an ‘extraordinary occasion’, to which ‘the term… “Yoo-lahng erahba-diahng”’ was applied (compounded from the name of the place and the verb ‘to throw’, as in throwing the spear). At the end of the throwing, Collins (ibid.: 581-583) concluded, the boys ‘were now received into the class of men’. This meant that they ‘were privileged to wield the spear and the club, and to oppose their persons in combat’ and that they ‘might now also seize such females as they chose for wives… a qualification which they were to exercise 18

Previously, in the Philippines in 1679, (Dampier, 1697: 32, 339) had observed boys with a tortoise-shell decoration worn from age 13-14 in a hole made in the bottom lip and an apparently tribal-Islamic composite of male, group, age-set (occasional/periodic) circumcision.

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whenever their age and strength should be equal to it’. So, perhaps they were little men rather than big men, but enabled to become big men at any time. Regardless, the making of boys into men in Australia was clearly well enough described by the turn of the nineteenth century and referred to, at least in passing, as ‘ceremony’ and ‘mystical rites’. In the 1837-1839 mapping expedition of northwest Australia undertaken by HMS Beagle under George Grey, the assistant surveyor to that expedition, John Lort Stokes (1846: 58, 72, 92, 393), again referred to ‘the custom of extracting a front tooth’. Stokes explained that ‘with some tribes… [this was] a distinction of manhood’. He also mentioned that his Aboriginal help’s breast as ‘deeply scarred’. In fact, he reported, ‘this custom of cutting stripes upon the body, as other savages tattoo it, by way of ornament’, was found ‘universally to prevail throughout Australia’. In Grey’s (1841: 343) own journal, meanwhile, the ‘Custom of Circumcision’ headed a small section, where ‘this remarkable rite’ was noted especially for its observation ‘in two points on the continent… separated by a distance of about twelve hundred miles’. Clearly then, there was a developing conception of these ‘customs’ (or ‘rites’ or ‘mystic rites’) as a whole – and as mostly male. The term ‘initiation’ was not yet employed, however – nor its other forms (‘initiate’, etc.) – so the subject remained at what may be characterised as a pre-discursive stage. Then, during the mid-1840s, a full description of adult initiation suddenly blossomed in these reports from Australia (and published back in London). In his two-volume Journals of inland expeditions, Edward John Eyre gave around two thousand words to the custom of ‘initiatory rites’ (emphasis added, here and below). Eyre was an English vicar’s third son from Bedfordshire, grammar-school educated, settler-cumexplorer made local magistrate and then South Australian Assistant Protector of Aborigines. Working from discussions with Mathew Moorhouse, whose notes he used, Eyre (1845: 332ff.) described a ‘youth’s passage to manhood’, with its ceremonies whereby the boy was ‘entered’, or ‘initiated’ (i.e. into manhood). Moorhouse was an English medical practitioner, appointed in 1839 as the first permanent Protector of Aborigines (sic), a position that effectively established the rule of British law in the territory of South Australia (i.e. over the native as well as immigrant populations). His various ‘notes’ printed as Colonial Government Reports, found their way into Missionary Vocabularies and even into House of Commons papers. Eyre, meanwhile, in his ‘Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines’, focused particularly on circumcision and tattooing, with one page added at the end for the equivalent tattooing of girls’ backs. Clement Hodgkinson also appended observations on the indigenous human culture of ‘the Natives’. In his case, this was when reporting the geological and other survey findings (related to raw materials and farming) from an exploratory expedition northward to Brisbane along the western, Gold Coast, going inland along the rivers. An engineer, surveyor and later vice-president of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, Hodgkinson (1845: 230ff.) added a sizable final section to his account of Australia from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay on ‘Manners and Customs’, with well over a thousand words on one particular ‘grand 46 

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ceremony’. This was performed ‘[w]hen a tribe has determined on initiating their youths into these rites... as the boys approach the age of puberty... to inaugurate them into the privileges of manhood’. John MacGillivray, eldest son of an eminent naturalist and ornithologist, was a medical student at Aberdeen University when, in 1842, he was himself made naturalist, to another (hydrographical) voyage, around the Australian coast and New Guinea. This appointment led to his living (and dying) in Australia, where he wrote and published his two-volume Narrative of a second voyage (ADB, 1966-1967). There, he logged his (1849) observation that ‘a group of natives were being initiated in the mysteries of the Jew’s harp’ (MacGillivray 1852 [1]: 221). The colocation of ‘initiate’ with ‘mystery’ is underscored in a later (paragraphlong) subsection on ‘Initiation to Manhood’ (at Cape York, the northern tip of Queensland, by the Torres Strait), which details the ‘custom of undergoing a certain mysterious ceremony prior to being admitted to the privileges of manhood’. MacGillivray (1852 [2]: 14) also explains how, at night, the boys ‘retire to the men’s camp’ since ‘they must on no account be seen by a woman’, on pain of death – the woman’s – a rule that held ‘during the whole time of their novitiate for about a month’.  Thus, we see the vocabulary of initiation entering into the British accounts of the ‘encounter’ with native peoples in Australia during the one and a half centuries though the 1700s to mid-1800s. The development of a discourse emerges as a function of time and also education (of the observers, writing and publishing). It developed from simple recording (the teeth) to extensive reporting (whole sections with many pages), and through limited classification (as ‘ceremony’, ‘rite’, ‘custom’) with local words (such as “Gnah-noong”) to more interpretative specification (including ‘mystic’). Then, in the 1840s, the discourse was established (through naming, as ‘initiation’, mostly for males) in extended, dedicated texts. This involved other, associated words (‘entered’ and ‘admitted’, ‘boys’ and ‘youths’, ‘puberty’ and ‘novitiate’, etc.), including lexical combinations for more complex characterisations (‘made into men’, ‘passage into manhood’, ‘initiation in mysteries’). As well as characterising the events and process by name and function, such phrases indicated duration (‘about a month’), features like tests (‘throwing the spear’) and bodily inscription (‘deeply scarred’, ‘circumcision’) and distinctions of status and rights (‘class of men’, ‘privileges of manhood’, ‘the men’s camp’) – et cetera – and all, of course, in the colonial context (‘natives’, ‘savages’). The work in Australia seems to have been quite in advance of the field generally, at least in English language texts. There was nothing quite like this in the United States yet, notwithstanding home-produced developments that were afoot, and despite a long history in North America of British and French observations there (see Chapters 3 and 4). Since the authors of these ‘Australian’ texts were Brits travelling and working in a colony, however, they were not unique, and the discourse hardly came into the world already fully formed. In the Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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late 1830s, for example, the Reverend William Ellis had used ‘initiation’ in an anthropological context when reporting from Madagascar. Mainly employing ‘materials… collected from the Missionaries on the island’ (a Protestant mission there had been established in 1818), Ellis included a dozen-page treatment of circumcision of boys in Madagascar. This was a ‘somewhat… religious rite’, Ellis (1838: 176-177, 185) wrote, but without ‘moral considerations’ (or, we could say, it was not a spiritual initiation). Rather, it was ‘essential for manhood’, having to be performed before ‘a youth’ could form ‘any domestic establishment’ – and of such significance that in 1825 it had ‘occupied the attention of the inhabitants’ for three months with a ‘vast expenditure of time and property’. The process as a whole itself went unnamed by Ellis, but he did go on to consider it in term of initiation, as like one: The time of performing does not depend on the age of the child… All depends on the sovereign, as the ceremony is, in some respects, an initiation into the rank, privileges, and obligations of the members of the body politic, and, in a sense, transfers the subjects form the jurisdiction of the parent to that of the king. The precise sense of ‘initiation’ is not entirely clear here. Although the usage appears metaphorical, the word itself may well refer just to entry (using the wider meaning of ‘start/go in’), rather than to ritual (the narrow meaning), or even both, at the same time (ambiguously). Regardless, this is a quite striking insight. It could easily have been written a hundred years later, when British anthropology was developing its functional approach to such matters, analysing how social structures operated in ‘primitive’ societies, e.g. how initiation worked to maintain the social order. According to this view, one function of the initiatory ceremony was integrative, at the societal level. It did not operate just at the individual level to make boys/youth into men, that is, but also transferred them as a category into the wider social realm – and thus from the family to the (hierarchical) organisation of power. Nevertheless, such examples as this from Madagascar tended to be exceptions. We may state, with due caution, that the birth of the modern, anthropological initiation discourse occurred in the 1840s, primarily in Australia. Back in the motherland The institutional development of the initiation discourse in Europe was altogether retarded, a slowness on the uptake perhaps reflecting the difficulties that the study of man was having in establishing itself as a science but also the sometimes sluggish movement of the centre as compared to the more mobile periphery. In France, the Société des Observateurs de l’Homme, founded in Paris in 1799, had assisted in the preparation of an expedition, also to Australia, which included a young doctor, François Péron, taken on board specifically as expedition anthropologist. Péron (1809) wrote up the main part of the expedition’s report, Voyage de 48 

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Découvertes aux Terres Australes, which was soon translated into English. The expedition ran from 1800 to 1804, after which Société activities ended. In that time, however, the Société had supported the publication of a listing of topics for the expedition, an early move to determine the nature of and effectively standardise ethnographical recording.19 An extensive questionnaire was compiled by Joseph-Marie de Gérando, or ‘Citizen Degréndo’, and it did include a recognition of life-course ceremonies as among the considerations of ‘the individual… in his relations with his fellows’ (Degréndo: 1800: 88, 100). However, the Various Methods to Follow in the Observation of Savage Peoples had nothing interposed between birth and marriage. In southern Africa, a German-born and raised magistrate in the Dutch Cape Colony, Lodewyk (Ludwig) Alberti, was interested in such matters and generally guided by the Methods – but he was obviously responding to the local evidence a decade later when recounting Xhosa initiations in his Kaffirs on the South Coast of Africa, Their Nature and History Described.20 This was a work of colonial administration that is also sometimes regarded as the first ethnological monograph (book) – and in which Alberti gave the main part (around ten pages) of a chapter on ‘Childrearing’ over to the coming-of-age process. First, at 10 to 12 years old, ‘real life begins’, when the children are introduced to ‘household and social tasks’ – fetching/gathering and cooking/sewing (girls), herding and spear-throwing (boys). For boys, there is circumcision, when the ‘youth reaches the marital age’. He ‘undergoes a major change in his life, because he will be accepted among the men’ (after the operation, the expression ‘He has become man’ is used). In small groups, boys are covered in white clay (renewed daily), which is finally cleaned off after the wound has healed. Their old clothes are burnt, and they receive new ones from their parents along with spears and clubs (instructed that they will now have to act like men) and join a feast (where they should show restraint). For girls, ‘nature determines the age when they leave childhood’. When a girl ‘reveals the monthly cleansing for the first time’, she is ‘separated from the tribe’ and taken to a ‘specially constructed hut’. There, she is served by the (pre-menarche) girls, who celebrate (eat and sing and dance) with her. She rubs oil and red soil onto her body

19

Advocating for the science (and his involvement in the expedition), Péron (1800) prepared the booklet Observations sur l’Anthropologie, ou l’Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme – ‘anthropologie’ was used then in France, not ‘ethnologie’, as in Britain (the former implying a naturalist approach to physical bodies in their environment, the latter to peoples in society, although, in fact, both were considered). Degréndo advocated learning the local language in anthropological studies; Société members ranged from naturalists and doctors to antique dealers and Orientalists (Stocking, 1964: 137; Chappey, 2000: 50; Vermeulen, 2015: 397). 20 De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika, Natuur en Geschiedkundig Beschreven; in English as Account of the Tribal Life and Customs of the Xhosa (Alberti, 1968); a French translation was published in 1812 and the original German in 1815, as Die Kaffern auf der Südküste von Afrika nach ihren Sitten und Gebräuchen aus eigener Ansicht beschrieben (The Kaffirs on the South Coast of Africa, Described from Personal Experience According to their Manners and Customs) (Huigen, 2013: 231).

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and receives coral and other jewellery. When the girl leaves the hut, she joins the women, and they eat together. Thus, she is ‘adopted into the society of women’.21 As pertaining to a herding society, these practices are marked by rites around cattle – including animals to herd (for boys, at the outset), a slaughter for meat (for the interned girls), proscriptions and prescriptions around drinking milk (both sexes) and a gift of a hide, to make clothes (for girls, on becoming women). Similarly, we learn of various socio-political practices involving initiatory relationships to the leader and his sons/wives (e.g. the early chores are an ‘education mostly performed in the service of the chief of the tribe’). Thus, there is a quite rich portrayal here, in what was one of the first depictions of initiation to be presented in the overtly ethno-anthropological sense of making adults. Yet, no init- forms are used, and neither ‘ritual’ nor ‘ceremony’. Although reported as performed for religious rather than practical reasons, no insight into or further conceptualisation of this is forthcoming, either from the author or as reported by the people themselves, and the treatment is merely of a traditional practice: ‘If one asks why something is like this and not otherwise… people say “This is the custom”’.22  The omission in the Various Methods (its lack of questions for the period between birth and marriage) was eventually rectified by the Societié Ethnologique’s (1841) listing of topics for ethnologists to address – but barely, with just a single acknowledgement of the possibility of ceremonies (for either sex) at puberty (prior to marriage), made simply through a question enquiring as to whether there were any.23 The situation was similar in the British listing of ethnological topics published in the same year. This compiled a total of 89 Queries on the Varieties of Human Race for the attention of ‘travellers and others’, administered through the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) and prepared (in 1839-1840) by

21

‘[W]el tusschen de 10 en 12 jaren, begnit het eignlijke leven… worden de kinders van beide sekse zorgwuldiglijk onderrigt in alle die bezigheden, welke tot de huishouding of maatschappij behooren’ (Alberti, 1810: 72); ‘Bij deze besnijding… wanneer de Jongeling huwbaar wordt… ondergaat de Jongeling eene voorname verandering sijn levens, want alsdan wordt hij onder de Mannen aangenomen… de kaffers deze handeling met eene onderscheidende spreekwijze kenmerken: ‘Hij is Man geworden’ (ibid.: 73-74); ‘[B] epaalt de natuur het tijdperk, wandneer het Meisje den kinderlijken kring verlaat… Zoodra zich bij een meisje de maandelijksche zuivering voor het eerst openbaart, word zij, op eenigen afstand van de verblijsplaats der Horde, in eene tot dit oogmerk biijzonderlijk gebouwde dezen toestand niet verlaten… [H]et meisje… is… in het gezelschap der volwassene vrouwen aangenomen’ (ibid.: 78-80). 22 ‘Jongens en Meisjens genieten dit onderwijs meestal in den dienst van het Opperhoofd der Horde… Vraagt men naar de reden, waarom het een of ander alzoo en niet anders geschiedt, ontvangt men… slechts een zelfde antwoord: ‘het is de gewoonte’ (ibid.: 72-73). 23 ‘Lorsque l’individu de l’un ou de l’autre sexe est arrivé à la puberté, y at-t-il quelque cérémonie qui le constate, et quelles sont ses occupations jusqu’à ce qu’il se marie?’ (Societié Ethnologique, 1841: viii).

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a committee composed mainly of prominent figures in the Ethnological Society of London (referred to henceforth, in its different incarnations, just as ‘the Society’).24 The listings of Queries were dispatched and widely distributed throughout the Empire – including Australia, where it was printed in full in a Port Phillip (Melbourne) newspaper in 1845 (Urry, 2016: 13). After opening sections on ‘Physical Characteristics’ and ‘Language’, the focus of the Queries moved to ‘Individual and Family Life’. This was organised around the individual life course, from birth to death. There, following questions on the age that ‘puberty take[s] place’ and the ‘menstrual period’ and ‘time of utero-gestation’, came Question 31 – ‘Are there any ceremonies connected with particular periods of life?’ – before and thus distinct from Question 34, on ‘ceremonies and practices connected with marriage’ (BAAS, 1841: 452-453). The implication was clear, but it remained that, just an implication. In fact, as mentioned, the Australian works from the mid-1840s were available in London – published by the brothers Thomas and William Boone of 29 New Bond Street, whose subject areas included ‘Rare Voyages and Travels’. Yet the formal progress of initiation studies in the imperial centre continued to be really quite slow. The queries remained fundamentally unchanged when repackaged a decade later as the Manual of Ethnological Inquiry (BAAS, 1853). Indeed, no init- form (‘initiate’, ‘initiation’, etc.) at all was used in BAAS or Society publications for another decade, even though several sentences and even paragraphs were given over to the subject in various articles in the Society’s main publication, the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (henceforth, under its various titles, ‘the Journal’). And even a decade after that, in the expansion and revision of the Manual – again through the Society (now the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, hereafter ‘the Institute’) under the auspices of BAAS (1874) and renamed the Notes and Queries on Anthropology, for the Use of Travellers and Residents in Uncivilized Lands – initiation was still only recognised by the barest of entries. While other sections included explanations, the one on ‘Initiation Ceremonies’ was elaborated merely by ‘Account of, causes of ’. Thus indicating just the most basic of information on initiation requested by scholars in the homeland – the proverbial ‘armchair anthropologists’ – it was actually the shortest entry in the whole volume. The Notes and Queries listing was much expanded across a handful of editions over the years. Ostensibly, it detailed information requested – and, indeed, it did serve that function, sometimes followed closely, like a form being completed. It may be regarded further, however, as both (proactively) developing the focus of empirical and theoretical work and (reflectively) summarising the state of the art for the subject as a whole, as well as for any one domain within it. It was both ‘behind the curve’, formalising what had already been established, and yet also setting the course, by specifying general subjects of concern and, within these, particular topic areas (the questions themselves). Thereby, the disciplinary 24

The Society was supported in the BAAS by Charles Darwin, who was named leading author of the committee’s report that first housed the Queries.

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curriculum and syllabus was instituted, and the development of Notes and Queries effectively presents a series of snapshots recording the (British) evolution of anthropology – and initiation. Thus, the next edition of Notes and Queries, the first of two in the 1890s, represents an important landmark in this history, since it finally provided confirmation of the meaning of initiation. According to Hercules Read (1892: 158), this was ‘the period when lads cease to be children, and take their definite position in the community as responsible members of it’, and the ‘analogous ceremonies [for girls]… usually on their attaining the marriageable age’. Read had entered the field via employment at the British Museum, became Secretary of the Institute when the 1892 volume of Notes and Queries was published and was made President in 1899, when the second volume of that decade came out. The section he wrote on ‘Initiatory Ceremonies’ followed the standard format of a short introduction and then the listing of questions, or question topics (30 in total).25 In the years preceding and following the 1892 Notes and Queries, articles in the Society’s Journal included accounts of initiation from around the world, most notably provided by Alfred Howitt and by Robert Mathews in Australia. It was Howitt who supplied the first Institute paper to be entirely dedicated to the subject. In ‘On Some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation’, read to the Institute by Edward Tylor, Howitt (1884: 432-433) not only stated his aim – to ‘fill a gap in the literature’, as it might be expressed nowadays, with a ‘detailed account’ and ‘explanation of the meaning and intention of the ceremonies themselves’ – but also indicated his methodology. For this, he employed what anthropologists and sociologists would today call an ‘informer’ and ‘qualitative’ approach with ‘participatory observation’: My account will be drawn partly from that which I have witnessed and taken part in as an initiated person [into the Kurnai], and partly from conversation which I have held with blacks as to the ceremonies of their own tribes.26 The study of initiation in Australia was really quite modern, anticipating developments in the field. Indeed, we can read a history of initiation studies also as a history of anthropology, since the two were mutually entwined. Previously, the institutionalisation of ethnology, as expressed through the foundation of dedicated organisations – the Societié Ethnologique (Paris, 1839), American Ethnological Society (New York, 1842), the Society in London 25

Again, in Australia, the situation was more advanced. Following a suggestion from Wilhelm Bleek to replicate the listing approach taken up in South Africa, ‘Initiation’ had been the named subject (under the heading ‘Questions on Aboriginal Folklore Etc.’) of the final three of a list of 48 questions prepared there in 1874 (when the first Notes and Queries was published with its minimal entry) (Taplin, 1879b: 7). Three years prior to the second (1892) edition of Notes and Queries defining ‘initiation’, a listing compiled by the famous anthropologist James Frazer used by Australian researcher T.V. Holmes (Frazer and Holmes, 1889: 432) had included 12 questions under the heading ‘Puberty’. All these question sets produced in Australia and England, incidentally, mentioned the knocking out of teeth. 26 Mathews, like Howitt, also seems to have been initiated, though he did not state it (White, 2002).

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(1843) – had coincided with the emergence of modern descriptions of initiation in Australia (during the 1840s). And now, it was in the very same year as Howitt’s first piece in the Institute’s Journal (1884) that the BAAS finally recognised the (not so) new science with its own, dedicated Section (H) in the Association (it had previously been housed under other subjects, like Geography) – when anthropology ‘finally came of age’ (Sillitoe, 2004: 13, BAAS, 1885: 898ff.). So, anthropology was itself initiated in Britain in the 1880s contemporaneously with its own initiation of the study of initiation. And thus, we can say, was formally established the discipline of initiation studies (see Appendix 1).27 Histories of initiation histories During this period, the work of the ‘Australian anthropologists’ was utilised also in the establishment of the subject for a histiography of initiation, wherein the conceptual logic was empirically reversed for a narrative of diminishment and decline. First, the idea of initiation in old and ancient texts was employed for presently observed ritual in aboriginal societies – ‘initiation’ was, after all, a word derived from Latin and referring to Roman and previously Greek ritual practices. Then, the contemporary (extant tribal customs, named ‘initiation’) was placed as having developed prior to the historical (pagan cults, the GrecoRoman mystery religions characterised by rites of initiation). Finally, the narrative was established of an original practice fading though the ages, from the extensive tribal through the limited classical to a modern extinction, one that we were able to trace through its various ‘survivals’ (Tylor, 1871: 16). Essentially, the story of the rise of man was at the same time that of the fall of initiation. Andrew Lang (1884: 32-33) stated simply that the ‘Greek mysteries’ were effectively ‘a survival from the savage mysteries’ – referring to the practices of present-day tribal peoples, assumed thereby as (pre-)historical relic. Then, he explained this, arguing that ‘mysteries and initiations… tend to dwindle and lose their characteristic features as civilisation advances’. In Lang’s eyes, ‘The less the civilisation, the more cruel and mysterious the rites’. Eventually, as the rites dwindled and softened, only ‘the rites of confirmation and baptism’ remained in the society of ‘civilised, modern man’, with these now blended with ‘religion and morality’, ‘open to both sexes’ and not ‘secret and hidden’. Thus, the story of socio-cultural evolution as from savage to Christian was told in the purification of initiation, as a kind of process of distillation.

27 The Society had formed, grown, withered and cleaved under slightly different names with related journals

before reuniting (as the Institute) and then flourishing for half a century until finally achieving its full acceptance in the BAAS (Stocking, 1971). A contemporary initiation studies might examine its own evolution within and as related to that of anthropology – e.g. vis-a-vis wheel vs. hegemonic vs. interactive models as well as in respect of the development of reflexivity and cultural relativism (e.g. see Gardner and McConvell [2015] regarding Fison and Howitt [1880]).

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In 1889, William Robertson Smith (1901: 328, 357-358) went on to explain that upon losing ‘political significance’, when it became ‘purely religious’, initiation did not need to be ‘deferred to the age of full manhood’ – hence the development of Jewish and Islamic neonate and pre-pubertal circumcision. And he went further, implicating initiation itself in the civilising process, with the advance from ‘religious societies’ (into which people were initiated), which had been based on ‘natural kinship and nationality’, to those organised (and initiation enacted) through ‘voluntary association’, which were thus ‘no longer the possession of particular kins’. This paved the way for the emergence of transnational monotheisms, through the ‘resuscitation of obsolete mysteries’ among the ‘Northern Semites of current Turkey’. Thus, a revived ‘mystic initiation’ led to the ‘first rise of the mystical cults’, which came to ‘spread their influence over the whole Graeco-Roman world’. As a result, a major move forward in human civilisation was facilitated by the development of ‘religious societies of voluntary association and mystic initiation’. Then, we are informed, [As] manners become less fierce, and society ceases to be organised mainly for war, the ferocity of primitive ritual is naturally softened, and the initiation ceremony gradually loses importance, till at last it becomes a mere domestic celebration, which in its social aspect may be compared to the private festivities of a modern family when a son comes of age, and in its religious aspect to the first communion of a youthful Catholic. This argument developed an idea expressed a century and a half previously. In the words of the lawyer made bishop, William Warburton (1738: 143), the ‘Mysteries… were instituted for the Service of the Sate’. According to the nonconformist (Presbyterian) minister John Leland (1749: 206-207), meanwhile, initiation had acted to facilitate political as well as socio-cultural development: The mysteries seem to have been originally designed to tame and civilise the rude and barbarous people… [and] bring them to a greater awe and veneration for the laws and religion of their country. Thus was initiation conceived during the third quarter of the nineteenth century and instituted with its own histiography in the fourth. James Frazer (1890) used a initiatory motif to structure his Golden Bough, still one of the most well-known works in the history of anthropology (see pp. 99-100.), and initiation studies themselves moved to a new level with Spencer and Gillen’s turn-of-the-century (1899, 1904) books on the Tribes of Central Australia, which contained a total of four chapters with over two hundred pages devoted to ‘Initiation Ceremonies’. The internationalisation of the new discipline was confirmed when in Germany, Heinrich Schurtz’s (1902) Altersklassen und Männerbünde (Age Sets and Male

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Bonds)28 surveyed men’s societies worldwide. Organised by region, this work used Spencer and Gillen (1899) for the Australia section. In the US, Hutton Webster’s (1908: vii) Primitive Secret Societies focused on ‘the initiation ceremonies and secret societies found among many savage and barbarous communities throughout the world’. Webster lamented his lack of a timely knowledge of Schurtz’s work but gave Howitt (1884) as his first citation, and Spencer and Gillen after that. And in France, Van Gennep’s (1909a) Rites was published. Van Gennep’s seminal work of initiation studies presented a characterisation of the ritual as a tripartite structuring the life course through a social definition of adulthood (with rites of separation followed by a middle, marginal stage of liminality, and then a (re-)joining, or incorporation – or recorporation).29 It not only bequeathed a synonym for initiation in ‘rites of passage’ but also a established a three-stage model that was later to prove a major contribution not only to the study of initiation in anthropology but also to sociology and intellectual development more broadly. During the course of the twentieth century, Van Gennep’s cultural contribution, which only slowly made its mark, was to be followed by other key works in the field of initiation that were important also for human thought in general, notably Eliade (1958) on shamanism and death and rebirth, which emphasised psychological and mystico-religious dimensions, and Victor Turner (1969) on ritual inversion and liminality, which delved into the very heart of Van Gennep’s process and its resonance for the psycho-cultural forms of contemporary society.30 Thus, the body of work by Van Gennep, Eliade and Turner may be taken as comprising the core corpus of Initiation Studies, as a formally named area of study or discipline in the humanities, grounded in but by no means limited to socio-anthropology. Initiation studies took as its primary focus one phase in the course of life – that in which youths become adults – which it investigated from various perspectives. Initiation now had its modern discourse, fixed to the rites of passage (see Appendix 2).31

28 Author’s

(non-standard) translation. one sense the initiate leaves and returns so is re-incorporated, but in another the person who left is not the person who returns, so the initiate is just incorporated, not re-incorporated; ‘incorporation’ is standard, but ‘recorporation’ is introduced here, to get at both senses (and also alluding to ‘recuperation’). 30 Van Gennep’s use of ‘le marge’ also may well have been the origin of ‘marginal’ as a standard sociological term that also entered popular culture; at least, it seems to have been an early usage. 31 Eliade’s place in this was discourse was always somewhat tangential; Van Gennep was brought to the centre around 1960, partly through Turner’s uptake. See note 108. 29 In

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Chapter 3. Mysteries in the New World During the second half of the nineteenth century (approximately), the modern sense of initiation as a rite making adults (mostly men) was born and then instituted (in the colonies and the European centre, respectively). A discourse was established, which, through the following (twentieth) century was to prove culturally fertile. Yet the original conception of this history remains obscure. Quite how had initiation as known from Greco-Roman ritual developed into initiation as observed among the ‘savages’ in modern-day ‘primitive’ and ‘simple’ tribal societies – or, why was the latter (contemporary adult) named after the former (ancient cultish)? What exactly was the connection between these two, presumably quite different ‘initiations’ that they should be equated thus by name? Or, what was the genealogy of this anthropology? Encyclopaedias In the early eighteenth century, Ephraim Chambers’ two-volume Cyclopaedia (1728: 389), one of the first English-language works of its kind, included an entry of around two hundred words under ‘Initiated’ – as ‘being admitted to… the sacred mysteries’ of the ‘ancient heathens’. William Warburton (1738: 134), making copious use of init-forms in his argument for the sanctity of Mosaic writings (as in Moses, so the Jewish Torah, i.e. the biblical Old Testament), described initiation similarly – as admitting entry to a ‘Secret Worship [that] was termed the Mysteries… the most sacred Part of Pagan Religion’. The Encyclopaedia Britannica had had no init- entry in its first (three-volume) edition, published in the early 1770s, a situation rectified, however, by its third (18-volume) edition, a quarter century later (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1797 [Vol. IX]: 236), with a few lines under ‘Initiated’, mostly borrowing from Chambers. By this time, on the other hand, Samuel Johnson’s (1792) Dictionary of the English Language included entries under ‘Initiation’ and ‘Initiate’ that covered the wider meanings of entry (hence of ‘a newcomer into any art or state’), instruction (in the ‘rudiments of an art’, hence the adjectival ‘unpracticed’) and performance (of ‘the first rite’). Thus, it would appear that at the start of the eighteenth century, ‘initiation’ referred mainly to the ancient pagan mysteries, and by the end it had developed a range of wider, more general meanings – including, also, one of baptism and entry into the Church (see Chapter 6). Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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During the early 1800s, several other multi-volume encyclopaedic publications were produced in Britain. Compiled by John Wilkes, for example, the Encyclopaedia Londoninensis (1812: 58) had five entries for three init- forms (‘Initiate’, ‘Initiation’, ‘Initiating’), focusing on the general meaning of beginning but including also ‘admission into a new society’ – which would become important in anthropology – as well as mention of Christianity and baptism and various quotations (from Shakespeare, Locke, etc.) supplying a context of usage. The init- entries in other encyclopaedic productions were similar to these. In the (Presbyterian) Reverend Abraham Rees’ (1819) Cyclopaedia, a 39-volume endeavour published over the first two decades of the nineteenth century, for example, the entry under ‘Initiate’ in Volume XIX (1811) was close to the Londoninensis in range of meaning – although the other entry, under ‘Initiated’, further included a few lines on ‘being admitted to the sacred mysteries’ of the ‘ancient heathens’, like Chambers’ Cyclopaedia and the Britannica. Overall, the range of forms and meanings for init- entries appears to have been gradually widened, at least partly in tandem with the expanding size of these enterprises, which had become extensive and culturally important. Two further points are apparent. First, these encyclopaedic init- entries were all quite short, just a few lines, even in the multi-volume editions of the early nineteenth century. This is highlighted by the Britannica and Rees’ Cyclopaedia entries, which both concluded rather abruptly with the pointer, ‘See Mystery’ – since it was there that we find the main entries, comprising several pages of detailed explanation, in fact. There were fully twenty pages under ‘Mysteries’ (pluralised) in the third-edition Britannica (1797 [Vol. XII]: 577-597), which provided an extensive monograph on the Greco-Roman rites and theology, while the Britannica’s short entry for ‘Initiated’ was to remain unchanged up to the 1824 [sixth] edition). In short, initiation was conceptually subsumed under the mysteries. Like Chambers’ 1728 Cyclopaedia, the 1797 Britannica also had a separate, entry under ‘Mystics’ for Christians following the ‘doctrine of the Platonic school’ (today, ‘neoplatonic’), which was somewhat approving. Its monograph on the ancient, ‘heathen’ practice of the mysteries, however, was cast in a strict, moralising judgement – in which regard the approach taken in Rees’ Cyclopaedia was quite different. There, the (1813) entry for ‘Mystery’ (singular) clearly linked the pagan to the Christian. Setting out from the meaning of ‘secret or hidden’ as ‘primarily used of certain truths revealed in scripture’, this moved to the ‘mysteries of faith… or Christianity’, of which Christian works (e.g. of the Apostles) were ‘an epitome’, before continuing with ‘religious ceremony or rite’ before getting to ‘heathens’ who ‘also had their mysteries’. There then followed well over 2,000 words on the mysteries of the ‘Pagan gods’ – mostly outlining the views on these held by Warburton (1738) and Leland (1749) – and thereafter some 3,000 words on ‘Mystery, in Scripture Language’ (as well as an expanded entry for ‘Mystics’).32 32 For

its part, the Encyclopaedia Londoninensis (1819: 466-470, 473-474) started with ‘Mystagogical’ as related to an ‘initiation into the mysteries’, used the same text as the Rees Cyclopaedia for ‘Mystery’ and finished with an entry for ‘Mystics’ that drew from the Britannica but added a sharp critique.

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Essentially, the wider religious meaning of ‘mystery’ (singular, in Rees’ Cyclopaedia) incorporated Christianity and took an ostensibly neutral tone, while ‘mysteries’ (plural, in the Britannica), narrowly referring just to the ancient pagan, was pejorative. And, evidently, this was a contentiousness subject, with a political subtext bearing on a deep socio-cultural fault-line of the day, specified by resistance to change in an identifiable Age of Reform that involved enlightened accedence – or not – to nonconformist (Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, etc.) pressures and Catholic Emancipation in the context of the French Revolution. Regardless of the argumentative positions taken, however, the basic structure in all these works was the same in respect of the relative weighting of the init- and myst- entries. The few lines of the former were but a fraction of the several pages of the latter. Even the comparatively short Chambers (1728: 611) text had a myst- entry that was four-to-five times longer than that for init-. In other words, ‘initiation’ was relatively little used and named a relatively unimportant idea at this time, while ‘the mysteries’ was loaded with meaning related to the religious politics of the day (and fraught, even, linked to upheaval, rupture and schism). In the signification of the phrase ‘initiation into the mysteries’, therefore, it was the latter, ‘mysteries’, that did the conceptual work and it was there wherein dispute was engaged (with the issue of naming – the pluralisation – already representing the divide). The second point to note is simply that nowhere was there to be found any reference at all to the coming of age. Yet, half a century later, as we have seen, ‘initiation’ and its different forms were being used thus – at least in Australia. And during the second half of the 1800s, this became commonplace, a new standard meaning emerged – aided internationally, no doubt, by the Latinate root making the English written forms identical to the French (it was adopted in German, as ‘die Initiation’). That said, it was not until the twentieth century that this fully worked through as a cultural convention. The anthropological (adult) meaning remained unstated in the entry under ‘Initiation’ that was eventually included in the 11th (1910) edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, even though tribal rites of initiation were included.33 Thus, just as the ceremonies of manhood were not picked out as ‘initiations’ until the 1840s, so also was that modern linkage of initiation to adulthood generally made only as a gradual process, stretched over decades, in fact. The reasons for this lagging may have included the time taken for new academic ideas to filter into the public consciousness due to a slower speed of cultural change based on the speed of communication. Since this was by now the age of the telegraph and telephone, however, with fast fashions and a recognisable metropolitan modernity with professional journals and photographic magazines, such an explanation is unconvincing. Thus, we may turn also or rather to the issue of academic source. Since the new idea of initiation was very 33 The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910: 569-570) recorded the ‘process of formally entering, and especially the

rite of admission into, some office, or religious or secret society, &c’ as general definition, before concentrating on ‘initiatory rites’ among ‘nearly all primitive races’ (with examples from around the world of their ‘bloody character’) and adding a final paragraph for ‘religious brotherhoods in antiquity’, the ‘secret societies of all ages’ and some contemporary examples.

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much an expression of the new ethno-anthropology, acceptance and inclusion of the one went with the other. And that, as we have seen, took time – roughly the same time for both, in fact, the second half-century of the 1800s. As indicated, the study of initiation and the discipline(s) of ethnology and anthropology had journeyed together from the start, with the interest in categorising and detailing indigenous peoples itself integrally tied to the context of empire. The imperial role in the institutionalisation of the study of Man (and initiation) was underscored by the Society’s alliance with the BAAS, which sought to ‘promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science in different parts of the British Empire’ (BAAS, 1833: ix).34 Combining empathy and enlightened visions of commonality with arrogance and a much darker strain of ultimately genocidal eugenics, human science rather much assumed a comparative perspective – on other peoples, other bodies – for a notion of a whole (the social species). Inevitably, it rode on the back of travels and colonies. Thus, for the germination of initiation studies, we should look to the history of European concerns with other sociocultural contexts generally, to the roots of this anthropology. These are commonly identified as beginning with the Italian Renaissance investigation of its Greco-Roman heritage and then developing with the major discovery of the time, the Americas, which really did usher in a New World. Missionaries in the New World A general understanding of mankind in Europe, it is argued, developed in the new Humanism of the Renaissance. This set out with a recognition of the ‘cultural and linguistic differences between classical antiquity and what was then the present’ – so that later, ‘[w]hen the problem of describing contemporary non-Western cultures arose, there were Renaissance studies of Roman customs and institutions to serve as precedents’ (Rowe, 1965: 1, 16; emphases added). Essentially, then, in the exploration of the New World, the comparison across (European) time moved across (Atlantic) space – adding to the present-and-past periods of European history the here-and-there lands of hemispheric geography. The contemporary New World was importantly conceived in terms of the historical Old World. The massive geo-temporal shift involved in the transportation of this comparative conceptualisation may be observed in the mid-sixteenth century work of the Dominican friar Bartolome de las Casas, an acquaintance of Columbus and Cortés and nowadays dubbed the ‘father of human rights’. In his Apologetic History of the Indies, De las Casas (1552) presented one argument in the form of a descriptive chapter title, thus: ‘The Indians Possessed more 34 Similarly,

in the first half of the twentieth century, British anthropologists and anthropological institutions sought to facilitate improved management of colonial relations, especially in Africa – such as through the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, linked in the initiatory context to Aubrey Richards and later to Max Gluckman, Victor Turner, and others (cf. Brown, 1973); sometimes, such as in Gluckman’s case after WWII, this was to involve political engagements that went well beyond the ‘colonial encounter’ (Cocks, 2012).

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Enlightenment and Natural knowledge of God than the Greeks and Romans’. Of course, neither present-day natives nor the people of classical antiquity were to be compared to the contemporary Europeans – except, perhaps, to show difference (lack of development) and indicate the primitive need for our Christian intervention. Yet they could be usefully compared to each other, and shockingly so, even, in terms of the judgement of distance (regarding which were the more otherly and which the closer to us). In such thinking was the Western encounter with indigenous American ritual practice also grounded, in part, at least. The mendicant (begging, ascetic) or missionary orders were deeply involved in the European imperial development of the Americas. After Cortés, from the 1530s, Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians originally all made the journey and established missions. Regarding the indigenous people(s) thus in terms of the possibility of their salvation (conversion), missionaries would have to ascribe to them, at least implicitly, both a shared humanity (they were not intrinsically lesser beings, like animals) and also a certain innocence (they were not irredeemably ‘lost’). The latter may be regarded in terms of a linkage to the Enlightenment idea of the ‘noble savage’, but it was also related to a need at the time to show that although the American-Indian savage was a descendent from the family of Noah (as determined by the Bible), s/he was not a Jew. This argument was made the subject of Chapter 21 in Book I of José de Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies (Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias). Published in 1590 and soon translated into the main European languages, this work by a Jesuit priest – Jesuits also were active in the Americas from the 1560s – reasoned also that the Indians must most likely have traversed overland to the New World (rather than journeying across the ocean), at some place in the far north or south, in the polar latitudes (the Bering Strait was not to be discovered by Europeans until 1728). Essentially, the thesis was that humans had spread across the globe from the Holy land and reached the Americas. On the way, however, the original purity of the Word had gradually been defiled and the people were led by Satan to magic. This was practiced by sorcerers and the like, who were schooled.35 De Acosta’s work can be characterised as part proto-anthropology, yet looking most for a historico-religious context by reference to Plato, Aristotle and Pliny, along with the Church (Latin) Fathers St. Augustine and St. Jerome. Containing a broad outline of his first-hand experience and reports of knowledge he had garnered about the lands and the peoples of 35 The reference here to ‘Indians’ (los Indios) a century after Columbus was making an implicit claim to access

(through the naming of the lands ‘Indias Occidentals’, which extended Castilian [Spanish] territory to the present-day Indonesia). Further to this (re-)spatialisation – or erasure of the indigenous – the first two of the seven books in De Acosta’s Natural and Moral History were written in Latin (published in Salamanca, 1558, as De natura Novi Orbis libri duo), helping to establish the Christianising (liberation theology) context of the mission (Mignolo, 2002: xix, xxi). The final chapter (from the Seville, 1590 edition) established this divine fate, God’s plan for the entry of Christianity (‘ultimo de la disposicion que la divina providencia ordeno en Indias para la entrada de la Religion Christiana en ellas’) and thence the ‘triumph of the cross’ as accepted by the ‘Ministers of Sathan, Sorcerers, Magitians, and other Indians’ (‘los… ministros de satanas Indios hechizeros, y magos’) (De Acosta, 1604: 583, 588; De Acosta, 1591: 341, 344).

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the Indies (particularly in Mexico and Peru), the work was structured by an overall move from natural to social information, culminating with a political history. Here, the fifth of the seven books essentially gave the moral justification (perceived need) for the mission. This included, in the words of the early English (1604) translation, ‘how the devil hath laboured to imitate and counterfaite the Sacraments of the holy Church’ – such as baptism (ritual washing, or purification) – and ‘how the devil would imitate the mysterie of the Holy trinitie’ (emphasis added), along with details of the healing and divination activities of the ‘witches’ and ‘sooth-saiers’ and also various sacrificial and other ‘ceremonies’ and ‘customs’ that had, patently, age-stratified roles for the ‘Priests, young men, maides, and children’ (De Acosta, 1604: 391, 411, 427).36 Then, in Book 6, De Acosta concerned himself with presenting a more positive picture of the Indians and their society, presumably to balance the critique and give the impression of a work (the mission) worth undertaking. Relevant in the present context – further to a comment on the four highest ‘dignities’ (of the ‘Mexicaines’), divided among the ‘Noble men and lords’, which included the ‘circumcisers or cutters of men’ – Chapters 26 and 27 dealt with the ‘Orders of Knighthood’ and with the schooling of children. The latter involved those so inclined and ‘having attained to sufficient years… [being] drawne out of the colledge, and placed in the temple, in the lodging appointed for the religious men’. Thus, it was concluded that ‘without doubt Christianitie should florish much among the Indians’ (De Acosta, 1604: 485, 487, 490-491).37 There was quite a lot of coverage of initiatory topics here, but no mention of initiation as such. The idea of the mysteries, also, was only referenced once, with a metaphorical Christian sense (as quoted, the ‘mysterie of the Holy trinitie’). Lafitau and the mysteries conception of tribal practice A hundred years or so after De Acosta, in the far north-western region of the Americas, the establishment in 1681 of a French Jesuit mission at Onondaga, just south of Lake Ontario, began to develop as – in effect and among other things – a fieldwork site for a new and quite extensive proto-anthropology. Gaining for himself a stationing in Sault Saint-Louis (at Kahnawake, across the St Lawrence River from Montreal), Father Joseph-François Lafitau stayed at the mission for the six years 1712 to ’17. While he was there – and again, among other things, such as gaining fame for his discovery (for Europe) of ginseng – Lafitau studied the Iroquois Seneca. This, as it turned out, was in preparation for what was to be his major work. Written up and then published in Paris, 1724, this appears to have been rather ‘lost’ 36 ‘De

la manera con que el demonio… edar la siesta del Corpus Christi, y communion que usa la sancta Iglesia’; ‘como el demonio quiso tambien ymitar el mysterio de la Santissima Trinidad’; ‘Sacerdotes, moços, y moças, y de muchahos’ (De Acosta, 1591: 234, 245, 254). 37 ‘…cercenador, o cotador de hombres’; ‘…las Ordenes Militares [cavalaria]’; ‘…en sendo do edad los sacavan de la escuela, y los ponían en los aposentos del templo, que estavan para religiosos poniéndoles tambien sus insignias de eclesiasticos’; ‘…sin duda florecería mucho la Christiandad de los Indios’ (ibid.: 287, 290).

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until (re)discovered by writers like Van Gennep (Feest, 2001: 19), and even then remained relatively obscure and still untranslated into English until the 1970s. Lafitau’s two-volume work positioned an interpretation ‘Of the Religion’ of native peoples as the main part of a thesis on the Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times – where ‘Indians’ is a modern English translation of ‘sauvages’ and ‘primitive times’ means pre-Christian, so classical. In essence, Lafitau (again) set the natives as against the ancients, in this case arguing for a developmental equivalence (and thence for a comparable humanity, so potential for redemption). The wider intellectual context of this was to forward the interlinked doctrines of the worldwide dispersion, diffusion and degradation of man and the one true religion. Of the 350 or so pages of Lafitau’s Customs on religion (around a third of the work in total), the first 100 pages or so were introductory, covering subjects like cults, sacrifice and music. The remaining 250 pages looked first at the ‘religion of the ancients’, at their symbols, tests and magical ritual (theurgy); then, over the final 150 pages, the focus was placed on initiation. This was headed by a bridging section on ‘Initiations into the Mysteries’, introduced collectively as a ‘school’ for the ‘practice of Religion and virtue instituted by the Ancients to teach men to live according to the principles of reason and wisdom’ – with the term ‘Initiation’ thus signifying the ‘principle, the beginning and the entry into the life… of the spirit’.38 This was a native initiation, therefore, defined as spiritual, with the ancient mysteries as its source. Further to his own and others’ contemporary (ethnological) observation, Lafitau employed the Biblical book of Genesis as a primary source and works such as Plutarch’s (Latin) On Isis and Osiris and Strabo’s (originally Greek) Geography for the ancient (reported) past. He referred to the central position of the ’sacred Cult of Fire’ in the ‘Orgies of Bacchus the Mother of the Gods’, the ‘Lustrations and Purifications’ involved in ‘a type of rebirth and baptism in the Mysteries of Mithras, of Apollo, of Isis, and of the Goddess of the Eleusinians’ along with a ‘type of Initiation ceremony [as] among the Lacedaemonians [Spartans]’ involving ‘the flagellation of the young people entering the age of puberty’.39 In building his case for the effective identity of practice and thus application of the concept of initiation regarding the Iroquois and Huron, the French missionary referred also to similar practices worldwide, such as of the Indes-Orientales (in China, Japan, Siam [Thailand]), and went on to consider contemporary reports from the Americas – of the making of soldiers, sea-captains, horsemen and kings in Peru, Mexico, the Caribbean and 38 ‘Les

Initiations aux Mysteres étoient une Ecole, pratique de Religion & de vertu, instituée par les Anciens, pour apprendre aux hommes à vivre selon les principes de la raison et de la sagesse… [N]ous signifie le terme même d’Initiation, c’est-à-dire, le principe, le commencement, & l’entrée de la vie… de l’espirit’ (Lafitau, 1724: 222-223). 39 ‘Les Lustrations & les Purifications étoient comme une espece de Baptême… une espece de Régénération & de Baptême, dans les Mystères de Mithra, d’Apollon, d’Isis, et de la Déesse de l’Eleusine’; …une cérémonie d’une sorte d’Initiation chez les Lacédemoniens, que cette flagellation des jeunes gens qui entroient dans l’âge de puberté’ (ibid.: 271-274).

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Florida – as well as traditions in European chivalry. Thus, a wider concept of adult initiation emerged as implicit in Lafitau’s work. This was indicated also in his Jesuit sources. For example, he detailed the selection and nine-month (plus) period of induction of the Chief of the Guyanese in Cayenne (in today’s French Guiana) by quoting at length from a recently published contribution to the Jesuit journal, Mémoires pour l’Histoire des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts.40 Comprising two main ‘letters’ on the ‘Origin, Country and Religion of the Guyanese’ and a follow-up on their ‘Customs’, these Mémoires included (in the first piece) description of indigenous funereal rites, also by reference to Spartans – who ‘dance with all their strength in honour of the dead… Is it to testify their joy, like the Lacedemonians…?’ There was also a suggestion that ideas in the Guyanese legend of origin afforded ‘glimpses of our truths’ and that with further investigation it might be possible to detect ‘clearer traces of an ancient Religion’. In the follow-up, second piece, there were listed the ‘tests’ undergone by the ‘novice King’ – such as 24-hour burials up to the waist in an anthill – which were characterised as a ‘harsh novitiate’.41 Similarly, a couple of years before the publication of Lafitau’s and other Jesuit work, references to initiation were made in two of the ‘Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres’ written in September 1721 by the most renowned of the Order’s adventurous scholars in ‘New France’, Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix. Published two decades later in his Journal of a Voyage to North-America, particularly Canada, these letters were placed in a generally religious and in a specifically ‘shamanic’ context, as we might say today. First, although finding the native religious beliefs to lack ‘connexion’, as translated into English (another two decades later), De Charlevoix (1761: 143-144 [XXIV]) rhetorically questioned whether there was ‘any less contradiction in the theology of the Egyptians and Grecians… the first sages of pagan antiquity’. Yet he was frustrated in his attempt to gain further information on their beliefs from the ‘barbarians’ (sauvages), reporting their insistence that they had said all they knew, and indeed, that there were ‘only a few old men’ who that even knew that much – namely, those who had been ‘initiated in the mysteries’.42 In the second of the letters, De Charlevoix (ibid.: 170-171 [XXV]) considered the ‘magick’ of the people and the ‘mystery’ of the ‘jugglers’ who made the ‘evocations… by 40 Established in 1701, this journal printed its contributions anonymously (expressing a communal effort of the

Order), with a quality and coverage of texts on anthropological subjects that was akin to the British Journal and Society publications 150 years later; Rétat (1976: 170-173) analyses the titular ‘mémoires’ as referring to the empirical in the sense of eye-witness, implying erudition (with Histoire) but also directness, simplicity and humility. 41 ‘[I]ls dansent de toute leur force en l’honneu du mort... Est-ce pour temoigner leur joye, comme les Lacedemoniens…?’; ‘[I]l y a en ceci quelques lueurs de nos veritez… Peut-être qu’à bien examiner tous leurs usages, on y trouveroit des traces plus marquées d’une ancienne Religion’ (Pere de la Neuville Jesuite, 1723a: 116, 118 [448, 455]); ‘[I]ls éprouvent par un rude Novicat’ …[O]n l’enterre souvent jusqu’a la ceinture dans une fourmiliere pleine de ces grosse fourmis... [pour] vingt-quatre heurs… (Pere de la Neuville Jesuite, 1723b: 169-170 [670-671]; Lafitau, 1724: 302-303). 42 ‘Il n’y a même que quelques Vieillards initiés aux Mysteres, qui en ant sçachtant’ (De Charlevoix, 1744: 66).

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which they enter into a compact with the genii’ (basically, a ritual practice for divination/ prophesy with fasting, drumming, etc.). This he reported as concluding with a ‘kind of Bacchanalian festival with ceremonies… accompanied with such transports of fury, that one would imagine the devil took possession of their bodily organs’. And after giving an apparently impressive example of future-telling (of the exact day and hour when a French woman’s husband would return from a lengthy journey), De Charlevoix noted that he had ‘never heard whether such private person, who were inclined to possess such secrets, were under any necessity of passing any trial at their initiation’.43 Indeed, Lafitau took note of the work of his contemporaries in the Order and wrote from the setting of his milieu. And he, like they, would have been attracted to the initiatory conceptualisation also by their seminary experience. As a Jesuit, Lafitau would have already passed through the mainly scholastic-ascetic academic training (formation) – including a novitiate programme – probably one year of rhetoric and then four years of philosophy (in Paris) and presumably including a month-long initiatory retreat to focus on the Spiritual Exercises as designed by the movement’s founder, Íňigo López, Saint Ignatius of Loyla. We should surmise that it was this formative experience of their own novitiates along with their historico-religious erudition that prompted Lafitau and his fellows to so far extend the conceptual reach of initiation across centuries and continents to the social environment of indigenous peoples. The eighteenth century relationship forged between the mysteries and tribal ritual as grounded in their Christian formation of ancient practice was further indicated, moreover, in the particular – highly personal – interest that the missionaries would have had in their counterparts among the indigenous peoples, who literally embodied their God’s work to be done. Thus, for example, the (first) Jesuit Mémoires piece cited considered the ‘awful profession’ of the Guyanese Pyajas, a ‘kind of Magician Priest’ of the Ourkan (a devil that had to be placated).44 And so it is in this context that the focus of Lafitau’s chapter on religion finally turns to the initiation of the ‘soothsayer’ (le devin). This starts with a reiteration from the chapter on ‘How to make a Piaye, who is their Doctor’, taken from the mid-seventeenth century Voyage de la France Equinoxiale en l’Isle de Cayenne of Antoine Bier (1664: 385ff.). Previously a church pastor, Bier had also referred to the (three-year) procedure for this as a ‘novitiate’. Thereafter, Lafitau moves from soothsayer initiation to his final sections on religion, with reports of types of divination, the history and function of magic and ‘dreams’ and the idea of soul and suchlike, before a concluding reiteration of the main idea. Regarded as a whole, it is apparent that – regardless of other anthropological contributions made in the remainder of the book ­– Lafitau’s main argument is pinned to initiation. The title concerns the comparison of customs; the religious section is placed first and is 43

Again, the translation is faithful – relevantly, from ‘la magie… le mystere… les Jongleurs… évocations… Génies… espéce de Bacchnale… cérémonies… épreuve… initiés’ (ibid.: 93). 44 ‘…les Pyajas, espece de Magiciens Prêtres d’Ourkan, desquels la vie à quelque chose d’aussi affreux que leur profession’ (Pere de la Neuville Jesuite, 1723a: 117 [450-451]).

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the longest; and this comes to a climax in magic and the religious role, with sections on initiation, both historical (the mysteries) and contemporary (worldwide). Employing the mysteries for a contemporary application of the idea of ‘initiation’, therefore, this impressive and important study was not only derived from but ultimately focused on a conception of spiritual initiation – or, at least, on some of its spirit-related aspects. Cited as an early example of ethno-anthropology, Lafitau’s work was clearly a key text in the history of initiation studies. It developed the basic conceptual framework that structured the subject and went unrivalled in scope and depth until the reports of the nineteenth century Australians. The discourse origins of modern initiation, that is, were forged in the making of soothsayers (divination, religion), rather than men (adulthood, society).45 Evidently, to at least some of the highly educated (and religiously inclined) men of the eighteenth century schooled in the Platonic works of the Church Fathers (the Britannica’s ‘mystics’) as well as the Greco-Roman classics, the accounts of the mysteries occurred as equivalent to or explanatory of the practices they observed among northern American native (Iroquois) peoples. Their own novitiate experience naturally aided this connecting of one exotic location of the mind to another of the senses. And thus, tribal rituals of entry into a new social role, or position (named ‘sorcerer’, ‘soothsayer’, ‘magician’, ‘juggler’ and the like) became regarded as initiations. They were remnants of a global spread and degradation of the ancient religion, which was a kind of trans-Christian Christianity (always imminent, but only finally realised by the Lord through His Son). This only pertained to the religious and highly educated, however. During the same period – some two decades earlier, actually – it could not have occurred to the American-born (second-generation) Robert Beverley to compare cultures thus. On the contrary, Beverley (1705: III, 37-42) used a self-consciously plain style in his 1,500-word 45

However, like Van Gennep’s Rites (see note 108), Lafitau’s Customs has a somewhat obscure history. William Fenton and Elizabeth Moore (1969: 173, 179), Lafitau’s translators into English, judged Lafitau to have ‘profoundly affected thinkers of the Enlightenment’, yet been rarely cited; a somewhat revised view was later presented by Feest (2001, 17-21). Regardless, the observation of the lack of citation holds in initiation studies, including in the English language masonic works (which employed the same religious universalism [see next chapter]), in the late nineteenth century works of Lang and Robertson Smith (which similarly historicised the classical-primitive comparison, as the former developing from the latter) and in the French of Van Gennep’s (1909a) own Rites (notwithstanding his previous [1908: 267] recognition of Lafitau’s importance). A key to Lafitau’s absence from English language works and the lack of a English language translation at the time of its publication may be found in the encyclopaedic entries (above), since it was with precisely this kind of ‘Latin’ influence (French Catholic, generally liberal [Republican] and including Jesuit) that the Jacobin push-back represented here by the Britannica was concerned. Later, and in addition to these overtly political issues, Lafitau’s absence in the initiation studies literature may also have been due to a sidelining of Jesuit scholarship with the gradual (and secular) institution of French academia (so, preceding any language/translation impediment during the nineteenth-century extablishment of modern initiation studies). Eventually, by the twentieth century, translation would be damned by that primary construction of initiation in the disciplinary context of anthropology, which had largely lost interest in historical and also religious issues (from this perspective, in praising Lafitau, Van Gennep equally condemned him, since his work was so squarely sited in a sociological reading).

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History and Present State of Virginia, with its account of how the ‘Indians… Consecrate… Boys between ten and fifteen years of Age’. He pretended to ‘honesty’ rather than erudition – making a virtue of a necessity, since the latter was not greatly at the disposal of the Virginian native (or ‘Indian’, as he described himself in his book, written and published on a visit to London and soon translated into French). In one report, Beverley described what he took to be ‘an example of the Huskanawing… commonly practis’d once every fourteen or sixteen years, or oftener, as their young men happen to grow up’ as an ‘Institution or Discipline which all young men must pass, before they can be admitted to be of the number of the Great men, or Cockarouses of the Nation… [and thus] unlive their former lives, and commence Men, by forgetting that they ever have been Boys’. Notwithstanding the use of ‘consecrate’ and the poetic insight into the passage of life’s maturation, there was no reference here to the deities and ceremonials of the mysteries and no employment of the idea of initiation as such. Manifestly, the subject broached was very much in the province of the modern anthropological idea of initiation, but without its vocabulary. We might, therefore, refer to a nascent or pre-modern or proto-initiation studies, as distinct from the proto-anthropology of, in this case, the Jesuits. In contrast to the reference of literature to the mysteries, the connection here to coming of age would draw from everyman’s experience. Or at least, as something fairly recognisable (Beverley was clearly empathetic). A century before Beverley, in the early 1600s, grammar school-educated Captain John Smith had similarly told it as he saw it – not, that is, through classical eyes. In this sea captain’s Map of Virginia with its ‘Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion’ – sometimes used later (and corrected) by Beverley – there was an account of initiatory death, itself cited by Lafitau (1724: 282ff.), which Smith understood literally, as involving physical death. A one-time seaman turned pirate, Balkan fighter and Ottoman slave before becoming a New World colonist, Smith (1612: 77-78) spent close to 500 words on the ‘yearely sacrifice of children’ that was necessary to ensure the food supply (hunt and harvest). There, ‘Fifteene of the properest young boyes, betweene 10 and 15 yeares of age’ were ‘painted white’ and died, apparently, of the ‘beating... unmercifull blowes… while the women [did] weepe and crie out very passionately, providing mats, skins, mosse, and dry wood, as things fitting their childrens funerals’. A fellow adventurer, Henry Spelman (1613: 27) also recorded this ritual, as performed in the woods of Virginia and led by the ‘priests’, or ‘conjurers’, in an annual ‘offer of 2 or 3 of their children to be given to their god’. Thus, it appears that education level (and type) distinguished the different perceptions of the native rites, dividing those, on the one hand, whose work was informed by their lengthy (tertiary) classical education (i.e. studying ancient Greek and Latin languages and texts and in a religious context), from those who gone, at most, just to local schools, able to read and write but taught only to their early or mid-teens. Then again, while the Spanish Jesuit (for a while theology instructor) José de Acosta had occasionally connected the primitive to the classical, mostly he did not, so the distinction was only one of possibility (the highly Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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educated were at least in a position to make the connection, regardless of whether they actually did or not). Of course, given that De Acosta predated Lafitau by a century and a half, the gradual evolution of mental culture, was likely also a factor. De Acosta did not, for example, refer to Greco-Roman practice when commenting on the feasts that he saw as replicating the ‘mystery of the Holy Trinity’ (other than obliquely and unintentionally, through the use of the word ‘mystery’ itself ). Rather, he viewed the ‘innumerable ceremonies and rites’ that were ‘like ours’ as having a ‘likeness to the ancient law of Moses’ or ‘like those the Moors use’, while others again (such as washing, bathing and baptism) ‘approached the law of the Evangelical [the Gospels]’. Similarly, in his description of how the priests received a full-body anointment with an ‘abominable unction’, including the hair, which went uncut, again, the only parallel De Acosta drew was with the Gospels (being the devil’s work, this tribal practice was an imitation of what God had ordained); while in his appreciation of the ‘nurture and institution of youth’ in what functioned as ‘schools, or colledges’ in ‘their Temples’, he likens this to something ‘whereof Plato treates amply in his books’ – but no more than that (De Acosta, 1604: 399, 402, 407-408, 489).46 We may conclude that the history of viewing the tribal (as it was encountered) through the eyes of the ancient and classical (as described in Greek and Latin texts) had a sixteenth century pedigree, at least; and in the beginning of the eighteenth century, this became fully expressed for initiation (also by highly educated people, missionaries). So this was when the modern initiation discourse originated, or when a proto-modern or pre-modern discourse was conceived – yet not to be much deployed or developed in its modern form until the midnineteenth century – but then largely by people with a lower, secondary level of education, professionals, one might say, rather than scholars. This needs explaining. In fact, the direct application of a classical imaginative to the perception of events on the ground was by no means the only or even the main route for the reintroduction of the ancient, for the employment of ‘initiation’ as a category of the modern. The journey was also made in an indirect fashion, crossed over by other paths. And indeed, insofar as Lafitau’s work was unknown to later anthropologists (see note 45), the later (re-)application of the idea of initiation into tribal practice somewhat took the form of a wheel re-invented (albeit with a quite different design).

46 De Acosta (1591: 239, 243, 245): ‘el Misterio de la Santisima Trinidad’; ‘…innumerables ceremonias y ritos

de los Indios, y en muchos de ellas hay semejanza de las de la ley antigua de Moysén: en otras se parecen á las que usan los Moros; y algunas tiran algo á las de la ley Evangélica…’; ‘En la ley antigua ordenó Dios el modo con que so habia de consagrar… [H]abia… cierta composicion olorosa, que mandaba Dios… Todo esto ha querido Demonio en su modo remedar… Los Sacerdotes de los Idolos en México se ungian en esta forma: Untabanse de pies á cabeza y el cabello todo…’.

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Chapter 4. Ethnology and freemasonry The native rights advocacy of De las Casas failed to stem the effects of imperial endeavour, as we know, and by the turn of the nineteenth century the British anti-slavery movement was expressing a sense of sense of alarm. An 1817 ‘Essay on the Promotion of Civilization’ by Thomas Hodgkin warned of the imminent threat posed to the ‘uncivilised races’, both to the ‘traditions… still preserved’ and to the ‘truth of the early history of mankind’ – as later recalled in the second issue of the Journal by Richard King (1850, 14). King was Hodgkin’s one-time (medical) student and instigator of the idea for an ethnological society in London. Hodgkin was a founder both of the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) and then of the Society (the former spawned the latter), seeking to ‘guard against the fearful possibility’ that the ‘day may at length arrive, when not one of all their of all their race’ – referring to ‘our uncivilized fellow-men’ – ‘when not one of all their race will remain’ (APS 1837, xi). Mitigating thus with some urgency for the new human science in Britain, an appreciation of the endangered existence of native peoples was several times expressed in papers read to the Society during its early phase, roughly from the 1840s to 1870s. Lists comparing the numbers of females to males in a population and notes about the decline in numbers of a people following contact with the Europeans warned of perilous demographics. A subtext of decline and disappearance was written early into the modern imperial discourse of initiation, therefore, with a sharp appreciation of the loss of peoples and their pre-colonial ways of life and all the information that was presumed to have about our historical origins. Initiation was constructed by ethnology as a dying and dead phenomenon of the other, rooted in the perceived demise of the primitive (and no longer extant in advanced society, i.e. Europe).47 Another impulse to ethnology – as well, that is, as the desire to record for posterity and for an understanding of the Nature of Man – came from the ethnographic, the geo-historical desire to map peoples and trace the global dispersion. A present-day view might analyse the mapping as a mode of capturing the other through inscription. Dispersal, meanwhile, 47

Initiation was othered in the colonial othering rather than through ethnology per se, which also had imperial roots of land empires as opposed to maritime ones – so empires made of expansion into rather than distance and separation – wherein the diversity of peoples gradual changing across territory led to less clear distinctions; initiation, however, tended to be un-Christian (involving ‘magic’ or similar), so othered already on religious grounds.

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was biblically established by the building and collapse of the Tower at Babel (Babylon), the supposed epicentre of humanity’s radial movement, our outward migrations. Following the German Enlightenment development of ethnography and ethnology (related to initiation through shamanism [see Chapter 7]), this work was promoted in Britain by James Cowles Prichard. It employed a combination of linguistics (for language relationships) and anatomy (for physical types – hence the early ethnological (or anthropological) tendency for detailed bodily description and measurement. Regarded as the founding father of British anthropology, Prichard focused in turn on both of these in his papers read to the BAAS in the pre-Society 1830s, on the ‘Application of Philological and Physical Researches to the History of the Human Species’ and the ‘Extinction of Some Varieties of the Human Race’ – although history rather than extinction was always his first interest.48 In fact, it had been some two decades earlier, in 1813, that Prichard had organised for the publication in Bristol of his Researches into the Physical History of Man, which he went on to develop as a lifelong project. That also happened to be the same year as the reconciliation in London of a split within freemasonry (when two rival Grand Lodges came together as the United Grand Lodge of England), a coinciding that nicely highlights the relationship between the modern, ethno-anthropological uptake of initiation and its masonic context of what may be called the pre-modern mysteries heritage. This is a relationship that seems to have gone unobserved in the literature on initiation, and one that was not unimportant in the foundation of the discourse. Digging up the past for a conceptual archaeology of initiation affords several masonic finds – which are somewhat obscure to begin with but become clear. Among other things, they reveal a sense – and vocabulary – of admission, which helps to clarify the idea of society entry that developed with the notion of rites of passage. Initiation in freemasonry in ethnology The first modern descriptions of initiation in Australia were made using the idea of admittance (admission). Prior to init- forms, that is, admit- forms were employed, drawing on admissio (allow entrance), from ad+mittere (send/let go+to), rather than initio (beginning), from in+eo (go+in). This was standard at the time, with admit- forms used also for the mysteries (per the encyclopaedias, see above) – and in freemasonry. When, therefore, the settlermagistrate Edward Eyre (1845) and the naturalist John MacGillivray (1852) introduced init- forms (with ‘initiatory rites’ and being ‘initiated into’, respectively), and they also both wrote of boys being ‘admitted to’ manhood, they were establishing an initiation discourse 48 Read at the second meeting, Prichard’s (1832) first paper was published in the BAAS Report while the second

(read at the ninth) was not, but it was the occasion of the latter’s reading that garnished financial support for the Society from the BAAS – five pounds, towards printing the Queries (BAAS, 1841: 447-448). Prichard and Hodgkin were both on the committee with Darwin that produced the Queries (along with five others, mostly naturalists) and on the nine-man committee comprising the original BAAS Sub-section for Ethnology (Browne, 1995: 421; Malcolm 1850, 44).

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through oblique reference to freemasonry, among other things. That is, in employing the idea of admittance – of being ‘admitted to’ rather than being ‘introduced into’ or ‘accepted for’, ‘awarded’ or any other of the several alternatives – initiation studies in ethno-anthropology was borrowing or utilising a masonic terminology. Or at least, it was using a terminology that was already in the service of freemasonry… just as with ‘initiation’, indeed. Freemasons had applied admit- forms for to their rites of entry into (and passage through) the ranks of their secretive order from at least from the seventeenth and especially during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the craft exploded in popularity and its rites were developed and revised. As an early eighteenth-century reinvention (like freemasonry itself ), these employed traditions going back to Medieval times, originally developed for the admission of non-operative or ‘speculative’ masons (who did not actually work with their hands to craft stone). The modern rites varied (e.g. by country), but were typically graded as admissions or initiations into and progressions through medieval craft guilds – so with three ‘degrees’ perhaps, giving the membership status of ‘apprentice’, ‘journeyman’ and ‘master’. The closed (secret) ceremonies employed various ritual elements, including a question-andanswer ‘catechism’ to be memorised, the imparting of secret gestures, presentation of gloves, and so on. These would be performed in heavily scripted form – in the initiation room of a dedicated ‘lodge’, ideally. Where there were such premises, the room would be detailed with its own, symbolic elements, such as a black-and-white chequered tile flooring, indicating draughtsmanship and design, thus the Renaissance perspective – literally, the artifice of converging lines to a horizon point – and ultimately, the Grand Design itself (De Hoyos, 2014; Snoek, 2014). In their literature, during the rapid eighteenth-century expansion of freemasonry – in the Old World and New – publications about and associated with the brotherhood mostly used the vocabulary of admission (admit- forms). Among the earliest masonic publications in book form, for example, the first edition of the Old Constitutions (of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted MASONS), published in London in 1722, included ‘The Charges of a Free-Mason’, to be read ‘at the making of New Brethren’. This text contained four admit- forms (along with ‘[be] made’ and also ‘install’), but no init- forms (Cox, 1871: 73-74, 88). Similarly, the first book-form ‘exposure’ – revealing the catechism to the public (Anonymus, 1724) – had ‘installations’ in the title, ‘admittance’ in the introduction and ‘entry’ in the text, but no init- forms. The ‘official’ (new) Constitutions of the Freemasons was a major work comprising the History, Charges, Regulations, &c., to be read ‘At the Admission of a NEW BROTHER’. It was prepared on commission from the Grand Lodge by (Master and Grand Warden) James Anderson, published in London in 1723 and later in Philadelphia in 1734, by Grand Master Benjamin Franklin (init. Philadelphia, 1731). This contained nine admit- forms in the main text and no init- forms. Another early exposure, Masonry Dissected, by ex-Brother Samuel Prichard (1730), which had ‘Admission’ near the end of a descriptive sub-title, did

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have ‘Initiating’ after that; however, there were three further admit- forms in the preface and one in the main text, along with ‘[be] made’ – but no more init- forms. It was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that init- forms were properly established, although they still did not predominate. Selecting from the various London masonic journals, for example, the first volume (seven issues) of the Freemason’s Magazine (FM, 1793) had a marginally heavier init- than admit- usage. This preponderance was clearer by the time of the first volume of the Freemason’s Quarterly Review (FQR, 1834), but in the first half-dozen issues of the (mostly) weekly Freemason (1869), the preponderance was still only marginal.49 Tellingly, though, at the end of the nineteenth century – when initiation was established in anthropology – (Master) Conder (1894: 38) quoted Anderson in the Constitutions as having used ‘initiated into the mysteries’ when the original was actually ‘installed in some lodge’ (Knoop and Jones, 1947: 129).  In ethno-anthropology, a parallel but stronger development occurred with the uptake of init- and then virtual dropping of admit- usage through the second half of the century. Thus, there appears to have been a shared and somewhat parallel but staggered lexical development in freemasonry and ethno-anthropology in respect of the introduction of initiation discourse. First, init- forms were introduced into masonry and later they entered ethnology; as ethnology became anthropology in the modern, wider sense of the term (embracing as opposed to distinct from ethnology), admit- was largely dropped, and it receded a little in masonry, too. There was an interrelationship, it appears, with the masonic usage of init- forms being important for the uptake by the science and then that, in turn, effecting a small admit- decline in freemasonry. This need not be taken to imply a simple causality, however, that the increasing masonic usage of init- forms directly resulted in the similar development in ethno-anthropology, or, for that matter, that uptake of init- usage with the emergence of anthropology reduced the usage of admit- forms in freemasonry. Instead, or also, we may speak of a rise in frequency of init- usage as linguistic trend, with a more general explanation related to the developing culture of the times common to both masonry and ethnology. Regardless, we should reasonably conclude that there was an overall ideational evolution from admission to initiation expressed through the representation in admit- to init- forms that informed the discourses of the fraternal organisation and the human science and that moved in some sense from the former to the latter. This is supported, too, by the wider relationship of masonry to scientific and cultural development, including ethnology, and in various ways. Kevin Hetherington (1997: 101), for example, has indicated the importance of the craft in the eighteenth century to the gathering 49 Assuming the meaning of (ritual) entry/promotion in(to) the craft; the use of admit- in the everyday sense of ‘allowed in’ – to a lodge, on a particular occasion – was frequent, but is not counted here.

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Enlightenment in relation to the making of men – arguing, for example, that a ‘central element in the ordering of bourgeois male identity in the eighteenth century took place in the masonic lodges’, and that ‘through their desire for moral and social order, progress, the architectural reconstruction of society, and self-interest’, the lodges were the ‘main mediating form of sociation through which this identity emerged’. Paul Elliott and Stephen Daniels (2006) and Ric Berman (2012), meanwhile, have focused on the place of freemasonry visa-vis the development of eighteenth century scientific culture, and, continuing this line, Andreas Önnerfors (2013: 448) notes that ‘freemasonry in England not only promoted Newtonian science, but also Enlightenment antiquarianism’. Freemasonry had a natural linkage to antiquarianism, with its focus on old objects, and thence to ethno-anthropology. Hercules Read, for example, provider of the first Notes and Queries entry for ‘Initiation Ceremonies’, had been Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography and held his Society presidency together with that of President of the London Society of Antiquaries. The two fields were closely meshed. Meanwhile, the old objects themselves included buildings, so architecture, which was a shared interest for British antiquities with freemasonry. Regarding the latter, Christopher Wren was a freemason, and Solomon’s Temple was a key structure of its foundation mythology. British antiquarianism also regularly moved beyond its island shores in the investigation of foreign historical cultures, another significant overlap with the origins of anthropology as a history of man. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, the first volume of the antiquarian journal Archaeologia (1779: 117ff., 245) featured reports from (Roman) Italy and mention of the transportation to (ancient) Greece of Egyptian rites, principally concerning animals for sacrifice. In the first Proceedings of its modern society, for the years from 1843, there were references to, for example, ‘Asiatic’ inscriptions in India and Assyrian sculptures and reliefs in Iraq (PSAL, 1849: 124, 128, 131, 133). Before that, in 1838-1839, James Halliwell (1840: 9) had read to the Society of Antiquaries an extended ‘Anglo Saxon… essay “[O]n the Introduction of Freemasonry to England”’, which he reckoned as the ‘earliest document yet brought to light connected with the progress of Freemasonry in Great Britain’. Also at that time – as initiation was being written in Australia – the annual festival of the Antiquaries Society was held at the Freemason’s Tavern, in central London. Halliwell’s (1840: 6-7, 45) own History starts with an explanation of how ‘Jabal… and Jubal’ had created ‘geometry… [and] music… before the flood of Noah’, and then later, written ‘all the sciences’ on two ‘stones’ or ‘pillars’. After the Flood, these were found by Hermes, after which ‘the craft of Masonry flourished’. The front cover of the book indicates Halliwell to be a Fellow of the Royal Society and member of several antiquarian societies, including, in addition to London, those of Paris, Edinburg and Copenhagen – while on the last page Halliwell notes ‘how much yet remains to be investigated by one who is initiated into the mysteries of the craft’.

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The interweaving of associations goes back certainly to the seventeenth century, when the Memoires of the Life of that Learned Antiquary – the antiquary being Elias Ashmole – were copied out for printing by Robert Plot and published to mark the centenary of Ashmole’s birth. Plot himself was the first Oxford Professor of Chemistry and made first keeper of the museum Ashmole bequeathed in 1683, this following his earlier, popular book on the natural history and antiquities (‘quaers’) of England (organised by county). Plot had not long been awarded the position of Secretary of the Royal Society and he was soon to become the first to mention masonry’s (old) constitution. In his chapter on ‘Men and Women’ in the Natural History of Stafford-Shire, Plot (1686: 316-317) gave four paragraphs to the custom of ‘admitting Men into the Society of Free-masons’. This he found to be ‘spread more or less all over the Nation… but especially in the moorelands of this county’. He referred to a ‘large parchment volum they have amongst them, containing the History and Rules of the craft of masonry’, including its ‘charges and manners’ (emphasis original). Elias Ashmole himself was and remains best known as an antiquarian. The museum he founded is still the main one in Oxford – one of two major museums in the city, the other being ethnological – but he also gave his time to publications on astrology and alchemy. Like the craft, these were significantly involved in the sciences as well as the occultish in premodernity (as a proto-chemistry and astronomy). And in the history of the craft, Ashmole may be best lauded for a diary entry documenting his own initiation, later recorded in the Memoires that Plot copied out. In Warrington, 1646, at 12.30 pm, with another, and six men attending, as Ashmole recorded, ‘I was made a Free-Mason’ (Burman, 1717: 303).50  Initiation was soon enough tied unambiguously to freemasonry in the developing nineteenth-century science of ethnology. Shortly (ten pages) after his (unstated) consideration of initiation in Madagascar (see p. 48), Ellis (1838: 187), had noted ‘another popular engagement… that of forming Brotherhoods’, which might be ‘designated the freemasonry of Madagascar’ (except that its ‘rites and ceremonies’ were ‘not secret’, and it aimed to consecrate friendships rather than ‘constitute a mysterious and secret society’). Thus, masonry was used as a reference on which to hang tribal description – just as Lafitau had done with the ancient mysteries – and the connection with initiation as ceremony was made, again, almost – and then in Australia it was. The context there was established by a Melbourne-published booklet on the Australian Natives of New South Wales, written by magistrate Robert Hull. Previously an Assistant Commissary General and from a military background, he had received a classical education in Dorset (ADB, 1966-1967). Thus, when considering a cave in New South Wales daubed with human figures, Hull (1846: 29) suggested they appeared to be like those in Asia Minor 50 The impression is of a very plain induction in an unspecial place, but that may be a deliberate lack of detail.

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(Turkey), adjudged as ‘ancient places of the Worship of Cybele’ – or, he added, ‘the rites of a spurious freemasonry’. And in a text totalling less than 40 (small) pages, Hull included two citations of a work by a Scottish mason, Andrew Michael (‘Chevalier’) Ramsey (init. Westminster, 1730), and eighteen citations of four different books on freemasonry and related subjects written by George Oliver (init. Peterborough, 1801).51 Then, in an article written in the late 1840s by the one-time Chief Commissioner of Police in Sydney and published posthumously in Volume III of the Journal, William Augustus Miles (1854: 14, 33), possibly a royal bastard, suggested that the ‘mysteries of the Mithraic worship’ (or similar) as ‘performed in caves’ were now practiced in Australia, and he referred to the practitioners of the ‘mystic ceremonies’ as ‘magi’, indicating a Persian origin. This was in keeping with Oliver’s (1829: 1, 5, 71, 74) History of Initiation, which had devoted several pages to ‘Zoroaster’s cave’ as a key location in the development of the mysteries from the ‘pure ceremonies of Masonic ritual’ in a ‘period of remote antiquity’, before giving over a whole chapter to detailing the ritual sequence there (followed by another on related theology) – since ‘Every person who wished to attain a knowledge of the Persian philosophy resorted to the Mithraic cave for initiation’. Miles referred to two works by Oliver, including the History, in a section on circumcision. Prior to this, there had been four Journal articles mentioning tribal practices that would later be categorised initiations, one of which, in the very first issue, made the connection with masonry.52 This was written by William Freeman Daniell, an apothecary/pharmacist trader’s son from Salford, Manchester, later to become known for his identification of the pharmacological properties of the cola nut (Nickalls, 1986). In the ‘Natives of Old Callebar’ (the Egbo of the Bight of Biafra, present-day Nigeria), which he read to the BAAS in 1846, Daniell (1848: 217) reported on the ‘ceremonious observance’ of the masked parade, on the ‘mysterious’ and ‘fetish rites’ with their division into ‘grades’ that were ‘prevalent on the Gold and Slave coasts’, and on the ‘peculiar governing principle’ of all this – which appeared to be a ‘compound of a kind of freemasonry’. The entry ceremonies of the masons appear to have been just an obvious cultural reference point for the adolescent and similar tribal rites observed. At least, we must suppose that since Daniell published his first article upon return from his first trip to foreign parts about a part of the world without much of an English language textual history and on a subject with little formal history and in a journal without any history at all and with he himself just 21 years old or so when he left, neither highly educated nor, apparently, linked to the Brotherhood (there seems to be no record of such). It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that it was primarily through a generalised, popular awareness of freemasonry that the connection was made by Daniell. The basics of masonry and its major ritual were simply common knowledge, long since explained by its apologists and ‘outed’ by the exposures and 51 Ramsey

had also been cited in the Rees (and Wilkes) encyclopaedia entries for ‘Mysteries’.

52 The other three articles were by Richard King (1848: 151), Robert Schomburgk (1848, 269-270) and George

Ruxton (1850, 97-98).

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well-established in everyday life. As a result, the linking of tribal practice to the mysteries no longer needed the intermediary of a classical education.53 Society publications over the years continued to feature occasional mention in reference to initiation of masonry and/or the mysteries – so to the modern mysteries tradition, we may say. For example, Edward Sellon (1866: 271-272), a writer and illustrator of erotica, returned to India, the land of his own coming of age with various sexual encounters as an army captain, to provide a consideration of the tantric practice of ‘Sacteya rites’. In these rites, apparently, a young female took the role of embodying the Goddess, and a man or men engaged in sacralised sex with her. Sellon found the rites to ‘resemble those practised by ancient Pagan peoples’ and to bear a ‘very striking analogy’ to the ‘the mysteries of Eleusis’ (a comment he followed by reference to the ‘initiations of women’ as the earthly expression of a mystical union). Previously, a Society review of a book by Winwood Reade (1863: 20-22) had mentioned ‘initiatory rites’ in equatorial Africa as including ‘a custom resembling that of the vestal fire’. Reade (1861: 172ff.) had evidently himself been initiated into the craft but was also sharply critical of it in his (earlier) Mysteries of the Druids. In the (revised) report of his travels in Savage Africa, Reade (1864: 205, 207-208) described how ‘the young have to be initiated into certain mysteries’ – with boys being ‘taken into a fetich-house, stripped, severely flogged, and plastered with goat-dung; this ceremony, like those of masonry, being conducted to the sound of music’ and with girls letting out a cry that ‘reminds one of the Evoke! of the ancient Bacchantes’ – after which, at the end of ‘the novitiate which succeeds initiation’, explained Reade, ‘the initiated repair to the house, and a “lodge” is held’.54 Currents and cross-currents In his article for the third volume of the Journal, William Augustus Miles had posed the question ‘How Did the Natives of Australia Become Acquainted with the Demigods and Daemonia, and with the Superstitions of the Ancient Races?’ – on the assumption that the native peoples were ‘the lowest of the human races’ and thus must have been ‘in communication with the most early races… mentioned by Homer’. The earlier races, 53 Regarding Daniell, any personal connection that he may have had to the masons (an uncle in the fraternity

perhaps, a local lodge that he knew of, etc.) would only fill out and adjust the argument around common knowledge in this case, not undermine it. 54 The scare quotes around ‘lodge’ here applied to the tribal indicate it as a reference to freemasonry; indeed, a somewhat similar observation – or deconstruction – of lexical commonality among and development of discourses to that suggested for admit- and init- forms may be suggested for the term ‘lodge’, first, in its application to masonic structures (groups, buildings), including in North America, where the craft became famously well-established, and then to the dwellings and later initiatory structures of the native peoples there. Lafitau, for example, had preferred ‘Cabane’ (cabin) to ‘loge’ (lodge), almost ubiquitously, while a century later, Henry Schoolcraft (1821) preferred ‘lodge’ over ‘cabin’ by a ratio of 5:1 and yet, by two decades after that (1839: 122) had dropped ‘cabin’ almost entirely and was referring to a ‘customary little lodge’ as the site of a young person’s fasting and vision (on Schoolcraft, see pp. 83ff.).

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apparently, had been more advanced than their forebears, at least in this case. Again, therefore, the theme of dissolution. Miles referred several times in the article to Bryant’s (1774/1776) work on Ancient Mythology, which had mainly accounted for its subject in terms of events around Noah’s Ark, as a received recollection from the distant past of incarceration in the boat and then egress, which had then spread across the globe with man’s outward migration. According to this understanding, therefore, initiation was an Ark rite, the acting out of a collective (human) memory, which had gradually been degraded by repetition. The assumption of the Flood as marking the start of history, with Mesopotamia as centre of origin for the subsequent worldwide dispersal, diversity and decline of peoples was evident in several early contributions to the Journal. It invoked an essentially pre-modern mythography linking the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, one that framed the period immediately prior to the modern development of (ethno-anthropological) initiation studies, and in which capacity it also informed freemasonry. Conceptually underpinned, we can say, by the Christian idea of the Fall (paralleling or echoing it), the idea employed in freemasonry – again, as by Lafitau – was that as mankind moved across the world, he took with him the pure lore of original religion, which subsequently degenerated. Initiation, inevitably, had met with a similar fate – except and insofar as it was maintained through the safekeeping of freemasonry. The rites were reported as handed down and defiled through the ages following their original institution in ideal form. In Warburton’s (1738) Divine Legation, the original Legislator was Moses, per Judaic (so Biblical) history, while for ‘Chevalier’ Ramsey (1748: 13), this was ‘some antediluvian patriarch’, indicating a masonic claim to pre-history. Anderson’s (1723) Constitutions had pivoted the Golden Age of masonic pre-history around Noah, a rendition followed also in Oliver’s History, where we learn that ‘Initiation… passed through the hands of the antediluvian patriarchs unalloyed by any innovations’ until ‘after the Flood’, when they became ‘perverted’ (op. cit.: 4-5). Thence, ‘subsequent corruptions’ produced the Ark rites, which were further debased prior to the events at Babel leading to the dispersion. The ‘abominations’, as they had now become, were subsequently introduced by various religious figures into different regions of the world, starting in the East (with Brahma in India, Buddha in China and Japan and then Zaradusht [Zarathustra/Zoroaster] in Persia) before moving west (to Egypt, then Greece and eventually Britain and Scandinavia and later Mexico and Peru). These mysteries, according to Oliver (ibid.: 15), were ‘funereal’. They commemorated the Ark rite-based ‘mystical death and revivification of some individual’, with the ‘candidate, at his initiation… representative of the patriarch during his erratic voyage and subsequent delivery from destruction’. Indeed, the trope of death and revivification operated at different levels. Just as the individual/patriarch was saved, with the dissolution and redemption established Biblically, in the Fall (Genesis) and the Sacrifice (the Gospel), so also did the masonic work (maintaining initiation) confirm Man’s continuing potential – paralleling, thereby, not only the Flood and survival for a second chance, but also, as Oliver (ibid.: Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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12) put it, ‘the broad and glorious blaze of splendour that dissipated the unholy shades of idolatry in the person of Jesus Christ’. Symbolically, the Grace of our Saviour comprised the initiation of mankind.  The historical worldview shared by freemasonry and early ethnology was one grounded in Christianity and a common interest among all in the dissipation and devolution of religious practice and belief. Prichard’s (1838) Egyptian Mythology, which mostly looked at similarities between the Ancient Egyptians and the Indians and Other Nations of Antiquity, worked towards a final chapter on relations between the ‘Egyptian and Hebrew’, the latter referring to Moses, or ‘Mosiac ordinances’. Thus, filling a gap between Genesis and Exodus – or else undermining the Biblical continuity, depending on point of view – this divided the Egyptian-Mosaic comparison of ‘institutions’ into the theological (‘doctrine’), sociopolitical (‘regulations’) and ceremonial (‘rites’). Regarding the latter, Prichard (1838: 418419, 422) noted the ‘resemblance’ between Egyptian and Hebrew ‘rites of lustration’, the ‘ceremonials of ablution’ and ‘circumstances by which legal pollution was contracted’. All good initiatory fare! The final section of the (main part of ) the Mythology was given to the ‘Origin of Circumcision’. There, at the very end, Prichard (ibid.: 426-427) made the claim that just as baptism ‘had been used from time immemorial in Pagan temples’, so also was circumcision ‘a prevailing custom previously to the time of Abraham’, one that originated ‘at a very remote era, in some eastern country’, where, circumcision had been ‘connected with some idea of purity and fitness for religious service’, like ‘shaving the body and frequent ablutions’, and became the ‘generally received ceremony for dedicating men to the service of God’ – and to the true religion, we could add, for the common ground here between Prichard and the masonic historians like Anderson and Oliver is quite apparent. The roots of ethnology were planted where freemasonry also grew, so some entanglement, such as in the idea of initiation, is hardly surprising. Prichard’s focus on circumcision also indicates another route through which initiatory discourse was transferred and thus transformed into the ethnological. Later to become the primary glyph of tribal initiation – surpassing even the knocking out of teeth – (male) circumcision importantly involved a Biblical reference; and in their observation of the primitive, scholars were particularly concerned with the circumcision of Jewish males as the token of God’s covenant with Abraham, per Genesis (17: 10ff.). An example is found in Burder’s Oriental Customs, with its Illustration of the Sacred Scriptures applying the ‘study of Eastern Antiquities… to Theology’. Although Burder’s original (1802) work had not referred to circumcision, when expanded some fourteen years later, it was to include an interesting elucidation of a problematic line in the King James version (KJV) of Exodus (4.25) – with the words ‘a bloody husband thou art 78 

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to me’ interpreted as possibly referring to Zipporah, a son-in-law ‘initiated into [the] family by alliance’. Burder (1816: vi, 71-72) then suggests in his commentary that perhaps what is meant by this is that ‘it is I who have initiated thee in the church by the bloody sacrament of circumcision’. There is a lot going on here with the meaning of ‘initiate’, as metaphorical and/or literal, for entering/joining both a family and the Church (cf. Ellis, see above). The central point, though, is that by the first decades of the nineteenth century, there was a manifest concern with initiation by circumcision (in those terms) in an ethno-religious context (equated to baptism by Prichard) and incipient Biblical studies (as a sacrament for Burder). Later, during the birthing period of ethnological initiation, an illustration of the Englishlanguage work clearly linking initiation to both Christianity and freemasonry is found in the writings of Francis Barham. Married, like his father, to the daughter of a reverend, Barham’s scholarly work included his introduction and annotation of a new publication of Jeremy Collier’s early eighteenth-century Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1708-1714), along with some of the first English language translations of Cicero. He also developed his own, esoteric doctrine. In A Key to Alism and the Highest Initiations, Barham (1847: i-ii) laid out a ‘transcendent religion’ (Alism) from the ‘Philosophy of Schools’, ‘Theology of Churches’ and ‘Theosophy of Lodges’ – expressed, respectively, through their ‘disciplines… sacraments… and ceremonials’. This was to supply a ‘vast system of initiations’, overarched in God, the ‘Divine First Principle, or great secret of initiation’.55 Previously, in a commentary to his translation of Cicero’s Treatise on the Laws, Barham (1842: 189-191) had added a 700-word note on the ‘catholic system of theosophic and cabalistic initiations’ that had ‘prevailed in the oriental and classic nations from time immemorial’. There remained in existence, he explained, ‘one branch of theosophists’ that had ‘descended through all ages and nations… namely the Freemasons’ (then he cited Oliver). The translation draws our attention also to the fact that into the confluence of esoteric, religious and historical interests from which initiation in ethnology emerged should also be placed the vernacular renderings – so, into English – of Greek and Latin works. This continued at a pace throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, widening the references to old and ancient initiations and thus helping to embed the idea in the public mind. It represented a continued easing of access that occurred not only directly but also indirectly, through freemasonry, insofar as that drew upon the classical for its Enlightenment modelling of progress.56 Prior to his ‘Alist’ creation and Cicero translation, Barham had already expressed his religious inclination in the Ecclesiastical History edit. There, his preface emphasised Collier’s (1708-1714: [I] iv-v, 134; [III], 189) ‘grand theory of a catholic and universal Christianity’ 55 The

early use of ‘theosophy’ is interesting here, particularly as connected to ‘ceremonials’ (see note 177), and lodges (see previous note). 56 E.g. Bro. Stephen Michalak (2008, esp. Ch. 10) argues that Plato’s works were extensively employed in the eighteenth-century development of masonry and its (initiation) ritual.

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as expressing the ‘true foundation of both the British and Roman churches’. The notes he appended to this work used init- forms related to Christianity, the ‘transcendental mysteries’ and the ancient ‘theosophic lodges’. Barham further noted the likelihood of the figure of Arthur as real person mythologised by a ‘great secret society of initiates’, and he also indicated his appreciation of an ‘Italian’ work that traced ‘much of the connexion subsisting between the early ecclesiastical reformers and the secret societies of initiation, which so extensively influenced the destinies of young Europe’. That work was written by one Gabriele Rossetti (father of the painter), an Italian nationalist in exile and professor of Italian literature at London. Focusing on Dante’s epic, Rossetti had argued for the existence of a Middle Age anti-Papist tradition that had regarded the Church as ‘satanic’ and expressed this both openly and covertly. Rossetti (1834: 144, 146, 148) explained the heretical thesis as itself drawing on an esoteric tradition that he traced back to Plato, who, choosing discretion in view of the fate of Socrates (condemned to death by the state), ‘invented a language’ with ‘secret meanings’. In connection to this, Rossetti mentioned, among others, Cicero, the ‘Oriental nations… principally instructed by Zoroaster’ and the ‘Druids of the Gauls and Britons, who [would] by no means deliver their mysteries, to any except the initiated’. This was by way of introduction, to support his thesis that the ‘mystic doctrine, transplanted into Europe from the East, did flourish in Italy in Dante’s time’, which was then explicated with the support of several references to a book by David Bernard (1829) on masonic ceremonials.57 Another vignette indicating the general zeitgeist relating freemasonry to the development of ethnology in Britain involves Christian von Bunsen, a Prussian state representative (minister) in England but also a scholar with an interest in comparative philology, among other subjects. During his stay in London, von Bunsen was recruited by the Society as one of five people, together with Prichard, to address the BAAS with a paper relating ethnology to philology (Lecourt, 2018: 42). Bunsen (1848: 256) focused on the relationship of the Egyptian language to Sanskrit and Hebrew, which resolved into a question of whether the ‘Asiatic and European man’ was ‘a more favourably developed and perfected’ than the ‘Egyptian and African’. Six months later, at home with his family on a Sunday morning – it transpires from one of his daughters’ diaries, published in a memoir written by his wife Frances (Bunsen, 1868: 161) – Christian spoke on subjects that moved from healing and the ‘secret religions of the world’ to the ‘secret societies’ and the ‘freemasons’ – ‘upon whom he then gave… a most interesting account’. Apparently, their origin went back perhaps to the Knights Templars, and though ‘not (as most freemasons insist) up to the time of King Solomon’, certainly ‘to the time of Sir Christopher Wren’, with whom, apparently, the ‘idea 57 Giving

a sense of the reception given to Barham’s Cicero translation and Rossetti’s study, brief reviews of both appeared in the respected, rather conservative Spectator magazine; the former received short shrift, referring to the reader to the original (Latin) rather than the translation and his ‘lubrications’, which would not ‘attract the classical scholar’, while the latter was praised for its detail on a worthwhile subject (Spectator 1834: 21; 1842: 19).

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originated of forming a society, the members of which should be initiated with the greatest secrecy’. After explaining her father’s history of freemasonry, Frances Bunsen went on to note his memory of initiations into other (non-Masonic) guilds. Again, among the early contributors to the science of ethnology, an appreciation of freemasonry and initiation was part of the general knowledge of the day, and more than that for those whose interests so inclined.  Finally, here, religious politics must also be mentioned when considering the intellectual milieu during the development of the modern initiation discourse. Essentially, freemasons and ethnologists shared a certain outsider status. Although very different in nature, this may also have rooted connections and commonalities, with some form of, if not exactly, sense of a shared cause. It is certainly quite striking to compare the relatively frequent usage of freemasonry for both example and comparison in the early ethno-anthropological (e.g. Society) literature on initiation to the near complete absence of reference there, in that context, to Christianity. In the case of ethnology, the somewhat marginal status was a feature not just of the ‘new’ science in Britain, with its oppositional, anti-slavery (APS) origins and quest for recognition from the ‘establishment’ in the form of the BAAS, but also of its advocates and their non-conformist, professional backgrounds. Notably, Prichard and Hodgkin were both doctors from Quaker families.58 For its part, freemasonry had always stood in a certain tension with the Anglican Church. Developed during the post-Jacobite, Hanoverian era, the masonic charges of the new Constitution written by Anderson, himself an ordained Presbyterian minister, had headings that employed the form of Anglican Articles of Religion. The intention of this, it would appear, was precisely to ally the craft to the religio-political mainstream and thus, by implying association, distance it from the old Jacobite (so Catholic) cause. And yet, as Anderson (1723: 50) explained in the very first of the charges, on ‘God and Religion’, although it was the case in ‘ancient Times’ that ‘Masons were charg’d in every Country to be of the Religion of that Country or Nation, whatever it was’, now it was thought ‘more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves’. In other words, ‘Masonry becomes the Centre of Union’ (so not the Church). It was this heterodoxical positioning that had led to the schism in London, unresolved until 1813 (the nicely coincidental year used to introduce this chapter). It was Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, sixth son of the King (George III), who oversaw the merger of the rival Grand Orders. Thence having become Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England and establishing the Lodge of Reconciliation to synthesise ritual, Augustus Frederick (init. Berlin, 1798) also sought, over the following years, to de58 The

APS was rooted in a ‘crusade led by Evangelical and Quaker philanthropists’ (Stocking, 1971: 369).

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Christianise freemasonry. This ultimately prompted George Oliver to challenge him, and fail (Sandbach, 1988). Oliver, now also an ordained (Church of England) priest and soon to be Doctor of Divinities (his father was a rector), sided with the more conservative segment of the fraternity that supported the Anglican supremacy. Apparently, he had been shocked by the culmination of Catholic Emancipation in the Roman Catholic Relief Act, passed in the same year as his History was published. Thus, in an interesting comment published in a list of testimonies that opened that book, a brother mason from Liverpool averred that the author’s approach ‘strained… to make Masonry as connected with Christianity’, although ‘the history of our Order proves the contrary’ (Oliver, 1829: xviii). In fact, that straining was itself a feature of masonic history, evident also in the naming of the question-and-answer routines to be memorised by initiates for ritual entry – as the ‘catechisms’, the word used for the similar ritual requirement employed for entry into monastic orders (see pp. 119ff.). That linkage, though, was as much with the mysteries plural as with the Mystery singular, and thus, in the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution period, with progressive forces as opposed to the High Church. Contrary to protestations, such as from Oliver, freemasonry was profoundly wed to this para-Christian history, as it might be dubbed, and the neoplatonicesque, we could say, usage of ritual (initiation). Ethnologists, for their part, increasingly sought to study the ritual as located in a tribal-pagan (‘savage’) context, without prejudgement and even, in some cases, ‘going native’. This has already been noted for Australia with Howitt and Mathews (see note 26) – it was evident, too, in the development of ethnology in North America. American freemasonry, ethnology and native fusion Not only freemasonry but a host of other guilds (orders, fraternities, brotherhoods) flourished in North America, the former until the 1820s (when it was rocked by scandal and then organised opposition for several decades), the latter in a wide variety of forms. These included ‘paleface’ groups, loosely fashioned after indigenous practices. Born in 1818, Lewis Morgan, one of the most prominent of American, nineteenth-century anthropologists, became deeply immersed in the world of secret fraternities during his twenties – so again, in the 1840s, when, in the United States, the American Ethnological Society and the Smithsonian Museum were founded. Morgan developed a ‘fascination for initiation ritual’ (Carnes, 1989: 96), or ‘homosocial secrecy’ (Herdt, 2003: 4), or, in his own words, ‘the mystery of life in all its forms’ (Feeley-Harnik, 2001: 140). Morgan and his friends dabbled first with Greek-stylised groups – originally meeting at the local freemasons’ temple (Morgan’s father had helped establish the lodge) – before shifting allegiance to the native Indian, when he (co-)established what he later renamed the ‘Grand Order of the Iroquois’. Dedicated to the ‘study and perpetuation of American lore’ (Porter, 1901: 154-155) – meaning that of the federation of the Iroquois, or Seneca – the Order began mainly with ‘members of the local Freemasons’ (Fenton, 1987: 140) and grew 82 

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to number as many as 400 men (Moses, 2009: 41). It was during this period that Morgan met and befriended Ely Parker (Hasaneanda [Leading Name]), great-grandson to Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha [Keeper Awake]), who in 1794 had negotiated a land treaty with the US government. Trained as a lawyer himself, Morgan advocated for the Iroquois in a dispute over that same land, and, in 1847, underwent a ceremony of adoption (initiation) into the Iroquois (where he was named Tayadaowuhkuh [Bridging-the-Gap]). Then, he lost interest in such activities and settled down to marry, when he started writing. Intriguingly, in the history of North American ethno-anthropology, Morgan had also succeeded in adopting Henry Schoolcraft into his Order, whom he befriended and then corresponded with for many years. Schoolcraft is regarded as the first American exponent of applied ethnology – working ‘scientifically’ in the field, that is. As early as 1820, he had observed and recorded indigenous ceremonies in his Travels… to the Sources of the Mississippi River. Some of these involved ‘jugglers and prophets, who predict events, who interpret dreams, and who perform incantations and mummeries… [when] men and women are ceremoniously arranged around the walls of a cabin appropriated to these mysteries’ – of which the ‘most remarkable’ were the ’medicine dance’ (Schoolcraft, 1821: 90). Two decades later, (Schoolcraft, 1839: 122ff.) described the myth of the discovery of corn of the (northern Great Lakes) Odjibwa people (now Ojibwe or Anishinaabeg, previously also Chippewa). This was relayed to him as gained by a boy, Wunzh, in the form of a vision given by the Great Spirit during the seven days of his fast, named Ke-ig-uish-im-o-win. As Schoolcraft recorded it, this ‘solemn rite’ in the ‘customary little lodge’ was undertaken ‘at the proper age… to see what kind of a spirit would be his guide and guardian through life’. And a decade after that, Schoolcraft (1848: 213) mentioned how ‘names bestowed with ceremony during childhood were sacred’. But to this point in his written work, in the 1840s, there yet remained an absence of init- forms. Schoolcraft was greatly assisted in his research by his métis wife, Jane Johnston/ Bamewawagezhikaquay (Woman-of-the-Sound-of-the-Stars-Rushing-through-the-Sky), an important figure nowadays in early Native American poetry/literature (see Parker, 2007). Born into a prominent family locally, she was the daughter of a fur-trading couple, ScotsIrishman John Johnston and an Ojibwe chief ’s daughter from the western end of Lake Superior, whom son-in-law Schoolcraft (1851: 431) introduced as ‘Mrs. Susan Johnston… Woman of the Green Valley… O-shé-wush-ko-wá-qua’ (also rendered ‘Oshahgushkodanaqua’ [Green-Blue-Plains-Woman]). Oshahgushkodanaqua was a matriarchal figure in the family and community, particularly following the death of her husband. She ‘taught Ojibwa [language] and Ojibwa culture’ to Henry. And she had gone through her own, ten-day initiatory fast, probably somewhere around 1790, which took a similar ‘vision quest’ form to that of the boy Wunzh in the corn myth (White, 1999: 135, 146, note 39). Oshahgushkodanaqua’s vision quest is reported in a journal-type travel work, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, by the Irish-born London writer Anna Jameson (né Brownell Murphy, then in the process of separating before divorce). Jameson (1838: 114-115) Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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recounts how she first met with the Schoolcrafts on her ‘rambles’ and stayed at their island home near to where Lake Michigan joins Lake Huron. There, she learnt of the custom to ‘fast and dream’ for a ‘tutelary spirit or manito of the future life’. This was performed both generally by ‘the youth, or girl’, at ‘about twelve or fourteen’, and as in the mythic tale of the ‘Origin of the Robin’, where the fast was begun with a ‘sweating lodge and bath, several times’. After the island sojourn, Mrs Jameson proceeded to journey with her new friend, Mrs Schoolcraft ( Jane Bamewawagezhikaquay), off to visit her mother, Oshahgushkodanaqua, in Saulte Ste Marie, on the banks of the St. Marys’ River connecting Lakes Huron and Superior. At Saulte, Oshahgushkodanaqua informally ‘adopted’ Anna, and it was then that she told Anna the story of how she had ‘painted herself black’ and ‘for ten days… fasted… for a guardian spirit’. The spirit came to her as an inhuman voice in her dreaming and then as a ‘white stranger’, whom she later saw as John Johnston, and married. Jameson (ibid.: 198-200, 211-212) then went on to describe how she became, apparently, the ‘first European female’ to canoe the rapids there (well, courtesy of a ‘dexterous steersman’, but still, riding a ten-foot fishing vessel, without seats). Her exhilaration comes across very clearly here, and on account of this ‘exploit’, she states ‘I was declared duly initiated’. She was adopted into the family by her Neengai (mother, i.e. Oshahgushkodanaqua) and (re)named ‘Wah,sàh.ge.wah,nó,quà… woman of the bright foam’. Interestingly, Jameson (1838: 218) found the name for her (three-volume) account of the Canadian travels in a tale told by Oshahgushkodanaqua, ‘The Allegory of Winter and Summer’. She herself had gone to Toronto in winter (figuratively, in her personal life, as well as literally) and returned to London after the summer, in September. This could be taken as indicating her own perception of this period at Saulte as the apogee an initiatory journey of rebirth, going out to Canada and returning a changed woman – which was, indeed, replete with a second mother (per Bly) and the vision quest-type peak experience of the canoe trip. Such an interpretation may be supported by a comment communicated by the Schoolcrafts. In a letter to her husband, as he reported (Schoolcraft 1851: 563), Mrs Schoolcraft wrote that after the canoe adventure, Mrs Jameson had ‘insisted on getting baptized and named in Indian’. If that was the case, that she had insisted rather than these happening spontaneously (as is the impression from her own account), then she had seemingly fashioned her own initiation, as she expressed it (perhaps this was not very consciously done, but anyway, one presumes, it was after the sense of such a thing that she had developed in her mind, mostly during the travels). The making of initiation was performed in many ways, we may observe, including that which was culturally imbibed at the level of the very personal.59 Regardless, the casual init- employment by the Londoner abroad here – ‘I was declared duly initiated’ – stands as testimony to the idea of initiation in 1838, as sometimes employed 59 This reading of Anna Jameson’s self-narration might suggest a ‘spiritual’ bent on her part; back in England

– freed from the unhappy marriage and her literary career established by the successful publication of her Rambles – Jameson was later to establish a respected reputation for her series of works on (Christian) Sacred and Legendary Art (Thomas, 1976: 143).

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for ritualised admission or adoption into an organisation or society. But it was not yet used for entry into adulthood. Such was the situation also in the case of Pennsylvanianborn George Catlin, primarily an artist, who visited Henry Schoolcraft in Detroit after convalescing from a series of journeys he had made up the Mississippi, Missouri and other rivers over the course of eight years during the 1830s. Catlin’s journeys beyond the frontier contacting eighteen relatively untouched tribes eventually resulted in a large, very successful exhibition of paintings and sketches (which he took to Europe – as viewed by Anna Jameson – making a name for himself there, too). Also resulting from Catlin’s journeys were various written and engraved works on his encounter with the Indians. The first of these was a two-volume account on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. In this work, Catlin (1841: 36-37, 126) noted how ‘a boy, at the age of fourteen or fifteen years’ would ‘absent himself… from his father’s lodge… for some remote or secluded spot’ for a few days to envision an animal, which he would then hunt to place in a ‘medicine bag’. This ‘curious custom’ of the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi), in which the ‘supernatural charm or guardian’ was ‘instituted’, was characterised as ‘forming [the boy’s] medicine’, where the indigenous word for this was ‘synonimous with mystery or mystery-man’. Thus, Catlin stated, ‘The “medicine-bag” then, is a mystery-bag’, adding that ‘a man can institute his mystery or medicine, but once in his life’. This mystery-medicine translation equivalence is highly suggestive – but the use here of ‘institute’ also highlights once more the non-usage of initiation for coming of age. Since this was a general practice for boys, it did not make them medicine men, as such – just men, men with medicine, and init- forms were not used for this. Catlin does employ init- forms a few times over the two volumes of his Manners, Customs, and Condition, but metaphorically, as into the world of secrets and mysteries (in general). Only once is a (more) literal sense invoked, when the author himself was honoured with a feast. This featured a medicine man’s bestowal of gifts – ‘a doctor’s rattle, and also a magic wand, or a doctor’s staff ’ – upon which a dog was sacrificed and ‘hung by the legs over my wigwam’, and ‘I was thereby initiated into (and countenanced in the practice of ) the acana of medicine or mystery, and considered a Fellow of the Extraordinary Society of Conjurati’ (ibid.: 109). Initiation here is related to a ritualised entry, therefore, but still oriented to an abstract esoteric (the ‘arcana’). Schoolcraft, meanwhile, did use initiation to refer specifically to the rites of medicineman institution (thus, as into a social role). The first of his six volumes on the Indian Tribes of the United States was published in 1851, although originally conceived a decade earlier as a two-volume Cyclopedia Indianenis (Dippie, 1990: 78). Again, this mentioned initiatory events without using init- forms – such as puberty dances and fasting for boys ‘when approaching maturity’ and, ‘on the first proof of womanhood in the maiden’, internment, beating and washings with dancing and a feast. But initiation and its discourse is employed, for the tribal entry ceremonies of the ‘secret society’ of the ‘mediciners’ or ‘medicine men’ – by which ‘novitiates receive their call and are initiated into the order’. There also, it is stated,

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is ‘unmistakeable evidence’ of commonalities with ‘Free-masons’, including ‘secret signs’ and ‘different degrees’ (Schoolcraft, 1853: 286; 1855: 215, 426ff., 652-653).  Also published in 1851 was Lewis Morgan’s first book, League of the Ho-Dé-No-Sau-Nee, or Iroquois. This opened with the history and geography and then confederate politics of the (then) Six Nations (or Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse), leading to twenty-odd pages on social structure and family relations – which he later developed in an evolutionary context for his renowned Ancient Society (1877). In the second section of League, around a hundred pages was given over to the ‘Faith’, ‘Worship’ and ‘Religion’ of the native tribes. The only significant reference to initiation by name – other than the specification in the ‘Schedule of Iroquois Dances’, namely, an ‘Initiation for Girls’, classified ‘now obsolete’ – was a short paragraph on a belief that witches were ‘banded together in a secret and systematic organization… had periodic meetings, an initiation ceremony, and a novitiate fee’, the fee being the ‘life of his [the novitiate’s] nearest’ and dearest friend, to be taken with poison, on the eve of his admission’ (Morgan, 1851: 165-166, 290).60 Again here, the synonymous employment of ‘initiation’ with ‘admission’. The idea of adoption, on the other hand, is covered across several pages. This begins with a sentence testifying to his own adoption, as mentioned above (by way of a credential for his ‘credibility as a witness’). It is presented here in the context of a procedure for the ‘naturalization’ of ‘captives’ (giving them ‘the rights of citizenship’, taking them ‘into the family… with all the cordiality of affection’) – as the human face, as it were, and socialisation process of the confederation’s territorial appropriation (the land was taken and then the people assimilated). This involved, first, the ‘ordeal’ of a ‘gauntlet’ (men had to successfully pass through a ’long avenue of whips’ wielded by two rows of women and children, with failure resulting in torture and death); then, there was a renaming and ceremonial ‘War dance, Wä-sä’-seh’… adopted from the Sioux’ (this was also performed to institute the tribal leaders, the ‘ceremony of raising up sachems’) (ibid.: x, 268, 342-344). Morgan’s League was employed in the development of a similar society to his League, the Improved Order of Red Men. This enacted a ‘ceremony of Adoption’ modelled on that of the Iroquois (as described) and an end-of-century Official History that quoted Morgan at length and used his work extensively for its Iroquois information. Founded by former masons in Baltimore, 1834, and growing to number in the hundreds of thousands by century end, the Improved Order was specified as a ‘Tribe, not a Lodge’ – a denial that rather revealed the 60

Fifty years later, a revised edition extended this to a description of ‘Falsefaces… evil spirits or demons without bodies, arms or limbs’, on which was based a ‘regular secret organization’ active in ‘every Iroquois village… where the old modes of life are still preserved’, into which a person (man) dreaming he was a Falseface needed only to ‘signify his dream to the proper person, and give a feast, to be at once initiated’ (Morgan, 1901: 157-158).

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native-masonic fusion (and thereby its self-consciousness of a distinctly American heritage). The combination was quite apparent in the nomenclature, ‘Degrees of the Order’ (named ‘Adoption, Hunter’s, Warrior’s, and Chief ’s’) – and similarly in the Official History: ‘each paleface adopted a new name… used invariably when referring to the brother’ (Lindsay et al., 1893: 606-607, 611; emphasis added). While the early history of the Improved Order was dated from 1813, our coincidental year, its self-proclaimed pre-history was first and foremost that of the Iroquois, and then, from the 1760s, that of the ‘patriotic societies’ working for the ‘freedom and independence of the colonies’, which used the ‘forms and the customs of the Indians for their mystic ceremonies’ (ibid.: 48-49).61 The patriotic link between the two – the colonies and the Indians – was provided through freemason George Washington (init. Fredricksburg, Virginia, 1752): [N]o white man ever reached the heaven of the Indian… But an exception was made for Washington… [who] interceded on their behalf, as the protector of Indian rights. Later, Amendment 388 to the Constitution of the Order’s ‘Great Council of the United States’, read thus: ‘Initiation. The term is sometimes, but improperly used for adoption’ (ibid.: 200, 519). While formally recognising the init- usage for admission, the intention here was to affect a proximity to the indigenous, clearly since (Morgan's) ‘adoption’, not ‘initiation’, was the term recognised as pertaining to the Iroquois. Logically, the distinction rested on the sense in which the individual object of the ceremony was being recognised, as coming from within (the society, i.e. the Iroquois federation) or without (from another, a neighbouring society, or tribe). Such a semantics for an organisation like this (the Order) was more in the nature of a statement of aspiration than actual belonging. Members were not really being assimilated, and they would be free to leave. This was the would-be adoption of American natives rather than the enforced adoption of Native Americans. In fact, ‘initiation’ would have been more accurate.62

61 Lindsay

et al. (1893: 170) provides a lineage of these societies.

62 It also raises a problematic pertaining to any revivalist movement of this type – including freemasonry and

in relation to the men’s activities linked to Bly, at the level of intention (performance) and of critique (analysis) –which involves the conflation of initiatory practices with initiation (e.g. treating male initiation workshops as [if] initiations into manhood). Here, an awareness of the reading that was to develop through the twentieth century becomes appropriate, of initiation as a drama, insofar as the change is more acted (acted out, acted on) than enacted (realised in the ceremony). This goes to the distinction, or otherwise, of drama from ritual, which La Fontaine (1985: 181-184) regarded as clear, but Turner (1969, 1974, 1988) much less so (considered below also in terms of the distinction between ‘liminal’ and ‘liminoid’; see pp. 153-154).

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Part III – From whence? A history of mystery

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Chapter 5. Mystic histories: esoterica and the ancients The various senses of mystico-religious and sectarian initiation – regarded here as a primarily ‘spiritual’ type of or spiritually oriented initiation and which gave way to the modern notion of a rite of passage into adulthood – did not just drop out of and vanish from anthropology. Indeed, the living, lubricating role in discourse development that seems to have been played by freemasonry as a modern mysteries’ heritage continued to be indicated in the later scientifical historicising. Indicating once again the confluence of ideas (themes, discourses) in an intellectually receptive environment, the notion of ‘shamanism’ can be said to have been formally instituted in the US together with initiation and in a masonic context. In the Smithsonian’s First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in 1881, there was a mention of ‘death… by shamanism’, in which attention was called to the ‘description of the Midawan… a ceremony of initiation for would-be medicine men’. This cited Schoolcraft’s History of the Indian Tribes, in which there were ‘certain forms and resemblances which have led some to believe that the Indians possessed a knowledge of Masonry’ (Yarrow, 1881: 122, 158). By the Seventh Annual Report, published a decade later, a section on ‘Shamans’ led off an extended (150-page) consideration of the Medicine Society of the Midē’wiwin – which was still described, though, in masonic fashion, as ‘graded into four separate and distinct degrees’ (Hoffman, 1891: 164). Similarly, in Britain, not only did Lang (1884: 6, 11, 33) in his history-making employ ‘folklore… to examine… the usages, myths, and ideas of savages… still retained… by the European peasantry… [and among] educated peoples, in ritual, ceremonial, and religious traditions and myths’ and ‘seek to show that certain peculiarities in the Greek mysteries occur also in the mysteries of savages’ – but he also compared contemporary ‘sham masonic rites’ with the ‘Freemasonry of Australians, Mandans, or Hottentots’ and the ‘mysteries of Demeter or Bacchus’.63 It was well into the twentieth century that Robert Marett (1920: 246), founder of the Department of Social Anthropology at Oxford, rhetorically asked, ‘If we want to understand the psychological rationale of an initiation ceremony, should we not do well before we try to 63 In

other words, he did pretty much what is being done here, in this work, but treating it as material fact rather than abstract analysis, at the level of discourse (or, Lang’s was a modernist version of what is here rendered in a post-modern framing).

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determine the inwardness of savage rites… to seek entrance into a lodge of freemasons, and taste for oneself the feelings… to which the novice is wrought up, with more or less effect on the subsequent conduct of his life?’ And it was almost a decade after that, in his book on some 150 west-coast Africa Secret Societies, that Fredrick William Butt-Thompson (1929: 16) stated his belief that the ‘Mystic and Religious Societies’, one of four types he categorised, ‘approximate in organisation and purpose the Grecian Pythagoreans, the Roman Gnostics, the Jewish Kabbala and Essenes, the Bayern Illuminata, the Prussian Rosicrucians, and the world-wide Freemasons’.64 Even as Lang was writing at the end of the nineteenth century and initiation studies coming of age at the start of the twentieth – and parallel to the development of ‘shamanism’ – a new ‘occultist’ and ‘spiritual’ incarnation of the syncretic-esoteric was emerging. With its own history that can be identified as having one root in the development of spiritualism – also in the 1840s, and on both sides of the Atlantic – this was to be forerunner to a later (the recent, ongoing) New Age movement (in which the post-feminism of Bly was couched). Indeed, taking the discourse as a whole at that juncture, we might talk about the (late) Victorian rediscovery or (re)making of mystico-/spiritual initiation, in tandem with the contemporary (re)invention of initiation and (the introduction) of shamanism and drawing for all that from freemasonry. And we can point to the anthropological development of the idea of rites of passage as furthering and helping to effect this by throwing it into relief, precisely by focusing on social, non-mystical aspects and secularising (de-spiritualising) its subject matter, in this case of ritual. The Derridean thesis, then, is simple: adult initiation created spiritual initiation!65 Novel approaches to the timeless tradition around the turn of the twentieth century focused, among other things, on the development of practical and theoretical rites for entry into and succession through the ranks of mystic organisations. These were to facilitate or actually perform the Grand Plan (akin to or straight-forwardly stated as Heaven-onEarth, the Christ redemption realised in a final unfoldment and expression of the Creator’s Design). The ideal of a spiritual development beyond the traditional confines of religion (i.e. Christianity) was popularised, as the religious flowering of the Enlightenment, one might suggest. Involving a sense of global human advance, this development still applied to (was rooted and grounded in) that of an individual life, rendered in terms of ascension through planes of existence and karmic rebirth. The stages of growth were thus typically characterised by hierarchical levels of mystical attainment, also involving ‘initiations’. 64 Relatedly,

a more recent remark by Cambridge music professor Joscelyn Godwin (1981: 98): ‘Mithraism was the Freemasonry of the Roman world’. 65 This would be Derridean in style and in content; the former refers to the shock, or violence, of the presentation in the uncompromising confiscation or elision or equation of levels (i.e. with the level of discourse presented as (if) material fact, thus raising issues around reality as representation); while the latter refers to the reversal of the ordering, here with the temporally later expressed as the earlier (or, the metaphysically prior is recognised as epistemologically subsequent, and vice versa, thus raising issues around causation) (cf. Derrida, 1976).

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Prominent figures in this trend in Britain were Helena Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley. Co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Blavatsky (1888: 206; 1895: 250) focussed on ‘initiates’ – the term ‘Christos… was applied... to every Initiate at the moment of his second birth and resurrection’ – and she also developed a cosmological system collated from ‘exoteric works’. This comprised seven grades of initiation, four to the level of ‘adept’ (the second birth, perhaps, or parallel to it), and three thereafter. Aleister Crowley (1911), leading the Argenteum Astrum (A∴A∴), an incarnation of the Order of the Golden Dawn (which drew from masonic as well as Theosophical Society roots), wrote and led several theatrical performances of initiation in London. These were named after the most important and well-known of the ancient Greek mysteries, The Rites of Eleusis. In Magick, Crowley (1929: 491, 497) structured the A∴A∴ into eleven grades corresponding to the Qabalah Tree of Life, to be gained through (verbal) ‘examinations in every grade’ and which had ‘special meanings to the initiate’. Rather opposite in intention but somewhat allied in effect was the fin de siècle revisionism of Christian lore that, in Frazer’s hands, repositioned the would-be Saviour as another sacrifice for the harvest. Both the spiritualising and de-spiritualising approaches had the effect of diminishing the importance of the formalised religion of Christianity, albeit the first by going beyond and the later by undermining it. Thence, Pryce’s (1914: viii) assertion that most of ‘those portions of the New Testament that may be regarded as genuine are… plagiaries from ancient Greek sacred poems, the allegorical dramas forming part of the ritual in the Mysteries ancient Greek mystery plays’. Essentially, it was argued, the New Testament grounding of the Christian faith should be re-read as, or in terms of, initiation in its original form (i.e. as a mystery).66 And in the discipline of classical studies, the ancient mysteries were read as per Frazer and then as per Van Gennep et al. Thus, even as the conceptual transference from the mysteries of the ancients to the practices of the primitive was being completed with the establishment of an increasingly sociological anthropology, there was a resurgence of interest in and development of what may be considered the spiritual dimension(s) of initiation, through reference to the original practice and meaning of the mysteries (the Derridean thesis of construction). As indicated, there was a lack of major, direct reference to initiation into the Church or even an indirect reference to Christianity by way of example or simile in the emergent human science of initiation. This argument can hold up until its establishment, which also saw Frazer’s reassessment of the Christian resurrection and then Robertson Smith’s conclusion of initiation’s perfection in Christian rite (Robertson Smith was also a minister, of the Free Church of Scotland). The primary religio-spiritual references in ethno-anthropology prior to that – during its emergence – had been to contemporary freemasonry and to the mysteries. Thus, we should look to an esoteric history, to the pre-Masonic (pre-seventeenth 66 A later kickback against this, by now standard, interpretation rejected the idea of Christianity as essentially

a mystery religion (e.g., Nash, 1974).

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century) and (pre-)modern mysteries heritage, for the ancestry of the modern discourse. And we should delve into the pre-history of the sacred mysteries in classical and ancient times in order to know the genetic inheritance of initiation as (social) rites of passage into adulthood, to learn the origins of that idea. First, we go into the esoteric pre-history of freemasonry where initiation meant admission to secret societies and access to hidden knowledge – both in the sense of a mystical doctrine but also of forbidden information. Rosicrucian and Renaissance esotericism While the modern roots of freemasonry are traced back to the seventeenth century – masonic initiations are documented in Scotland from 1630 – its pre-history is reckoned now to date from the turn of the millennium (Stevenson, 1998: 36-37, 69).67 Stone craftsmen were important artisans in religious as well as other building constructions, and the idea of (speculative) masonry seems to have derived from this through the symbolism of construction, especially, as noted, of Solomon’s Temple (‘lodges’ were groups and their premises, also named ‘temples’, an idea linked in masonic lore to the returning crusaders of the Knights Templar). The primary claim of revivalist, pre-modern masonry, to the teachings and ritual passed down from the first patriarch, like Moses or Noah or Zoroaster, was identified as pre-Greco-Roman, so to a time before the roots of Enlightenment. And this was traced through a lineage regarded nowadays as a largely Renaissance concoction. Thus, we start with an esotericism already mythologizing its own past. In this masonic case, moreover, in order to claim a special dispensation against eighteenth-century restrictions on assembly, a period of sixteenth-century assemblies organising to push for better wages was deliberately represented as a history of gatherings in the ancient context of a mystical tradition. So, there really is quite a complex interweaving of histiographies here involved in the making of the modern mysteries.68 Broadly, the lineage of individuals constitutes a transmission genealogy characteristic of movements of an ‘Ur-tradition’ (App, 2010: 245ff.). This emphasises a legend of original sanctity (bliss, perfection), followed by the death-rebirth structuring of a degeneration through time and then subsequent regeneration, embodied by the always present-day revival and its promise of the paradise to come, just around the corner, with a return to the Golden Age (as in messianic myth, the Second Coming). The singular point-of-origin of this narrative form implies a founding unity, such as that expressed in the mid-eighteenth century by ‘Chevalier’ Ramsey (1748: 12, 80), who equated ‘all religions’ as identified by peoples ­(from ‘the Chinese’ and ‘Indians’ to ‘the Chaldeans’ and ‘Gauls’) through their 67

A contemporary history as well as overview of the fraternity along with some older, fifteenth century documentation (‘Antiquities’) was provided in the US by James Hardie (1819: Chs. I, XXIV). 68 ‘Modern’ (of the mysteries tradition) is used here in the epochal sense, as against ‘ancient’ and ‘Middle Ages’ (so Renaissance and after, roughly) – ‘pre-modern’ is used in the periodic sense (so seventeenth-and eighteenth-century, roughly, prior to the Enlightenment).

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‘first author’ or ‘Legislator’ (named Fohi [the Buddha], Zoroaster, Mercury, etc.) – stating that these were actually ‘all the same man’. He then specified a line back from Plato – which passed through ‘Socrates… Pythagoras… the Egyptians… Hermes Tristmegistus, and… the first Hermes’ to an ‘unnamed figure from the time of Noah or before’. As inheritor and expression of what Frances Yates (1972) coined as a ‘Rosicrucian esotericism’, freemasonry appears as rather clandestine organisation at root, only emerging into a quasi-secrecy when forced. Consequently, and notwithstanding the earnestness of some members eager to disavow outsiders of (supposed) misapprehension, it was threatened more than once with restrictions on its activities. Combining this with the intrinsically hidden nature of the esoteric, we may hazard that it was specifically this aspect of this fraternity that led to the anthropological uptake in its initiation studies of the formulaic ‘secret societies’. In fact, not until the latter part of the twentieth century was it clearly stated that tribal ‘secret societies’ were neither very secret nor exactly societies, or not unproblematically so. Rather, they were societal structures that maintained secrets – or ‘secrets’ (for ignorance could be feigned, the pretence itself a part of the drama) – and these were deployed for the structuring of power through the attainment and maintenance of status (gained and guarded through knowing the secrets), especially through initiation (La Fontaine, 1985: 38ff.). It is a convention of esoteric histiography now to identify a loose lineage of a certain type of secret society, of hermetic orders in the Western tradition. The narrative starts, say, in twelfth century Spain, with the development of brotherhoods associated with Judaic lore (especially the Kabala) and establishment of the crusader organisations of ‘temple’ knights, moving thence to the gradual emergence of brotherhoods associated with the Rose Croix and culminating with the ‘Rosicrucian movement’. Going beyond concrete organisations and lines of transmittance, Yates (1972: 276, 290-292) also developed the more nebulous idea of a ‘Rosicrucian culture’, with its ‘insistence on a coming Enlightenment’. This, she identified as a short but important historical period during the early 1600s. It foreshadows the linkage of freemasonry to the development of rationalism and science, including, of course, the human science of ethno-anthropology (and the connection to antiquaries).69 Tracing the history of the initiation discourse prior to the development of the social sciences follows a course back through that time, therefore – through the works and workings of the pre-modern mysteries, the ‘Hermetic-Cabalist tradition’ (Yates, 1964: 86) and its ‘currents’ and ‘notions’ and ‘transmission of knowledge’ (Faivre, 1998: 2, 3) constructed as the ‘methodology’ (Bogdan, 2007: 21) of Western esotericism – eventually going all the way back through Christian Late Antiquity to the Roman mystery schools themselves, when the word ‘initiation’ originated, and thence to their own forbears, known as Ancient Greek, and other (eastern) Mediterranean and Near Eastern sources. Picking 69 Here,

we should note the developments in Scotland, as Jacobite hub, centre of modern masonry in the early eighteenth century and leader of the then New Age (the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’) a few decades later (and continued, for example, by the publication of early Society material in Edinburgh).

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up on the masonic lineage of initiators – such as Ramsey’s, running to Plato – this history turns on the Renaissance rediscovery of the classical period of the ancients – especially its written texts – as the nourishing root of (European) culture, a development that can be said to have peaked with the influx of manuscripts from Byzantium prior to the fall of Konstaninopolis (Constantinople, Istanbul), in 1453. This involves a strong emphasis on the ‘Platonic tradition’ and the ‘secret’ doctrine of ‘spiritual initiation through the individual’s realisation of his own immortality’, as Marsilio Ficino understood it (Voss, 2001).  Employed by Cosimo de Medici to translate Plato into Latin, Ficino first became known for the 1471 publication of his translation of a Greek text newly arrived in Florence that was later to make up the main part of the Corpus Hermeticum (basically, the works accredited to ‘Hermes Trismegistus’). Partly due to the supposed provenance of the text, from the time of Moses (although later shown to be from the second or third century CE), the Hermeticum ‘launched a pan-European Hermetic boom’ – or, at least, a Renaissance discourse about (this) ‘Hermes’, which became (was inherited as) the ‘Hermetic tradition’ (Ockenström, 2013; Hanegraaff, 2015). In a preface (Augumentum) to the Hermeticum, Ficino detailed an initiatory lineage of the ancient theologians (prisci theologi) – namely, from Mercurius (the original Hermes) to Orpheus, by whom Aglaophemus was introduced into the ‘sacred mysteries’, who was himself succeeded by Pythagoras and then Philolaus, ‘teacher of our divine Plato’, which thus comprised a ‘path of ancient theology shared by six theologians in wonderful succession’. Later, Ficino continued the line through the (neo)platonists Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus (and introduced Zoroaster at the head of the list) (Salaman, 2002: 115-117). The actuality of (initiatory) succession was unclear. Ficino’s development of the prisca theologia itself followed the work of Pletho(n) (Georgius Gemistus), whose lectures had originally persuaded Cosimo (Walker, 1972), while his focus on the lineage, drawing on the Church Fathers, can be seen as an ‘attempt to revive the paradigm of the Neoplatonic magus and seer’ (Allen, 1998: 90). Indeed, the development of natural magic via Pico (della Mirandola) around this time may also be noted in respect of the masonic imagination (e.g. Rabin, 2008). For a historical source for this, we can go back to, for example, Gaius Plinius Secundus, Pliny the Elder. He explained in his Naturalis Historia – around 77-79 BCE (translated into English in 1601) – how the art of the Magi, the ‘magicus vanitates’ (empty/false magic), had first ‘insinuated itself among mankind as a higher and more holy branch of the medical art’. After that, apparently, it had ‘added the resources of religion’ and then ‘incorporated with itself the astrological art’ (referring especially to divination), there being ‘no doubt that this art originated in Persia, under Zoroaster’ (in Bostock and Riley, 1856: 421-422 [XXX: 1, 2]). Ficino’s later translation of the Egyptian Mysteries (De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum), attributed to Iamblichus, was also important to the Western 96 

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esoteric context. In addition to a wide-ranging explication of theurgia (cosmic structure, esoteric history, etc.), this included an emphasis on physical ritual and sacrifices in discussion of the ‘sacred rites’, as translated by Thomas Taylor in 1821. Taylor’s English-language rendition here alerts us also to his earlier version of the Hymns of Orpheus – as The Mystic Initiations. Here, in setting the scene for what was his first major translation, Taylor (1787: 10, 90-91) describes the first Orpheus (of five) as a historical figure living in Thrace (today’s European Turkey) who ‘introduced sacred rites and religion into Greece’ and thus ‘initiation in these mysteries’. This was supported by quotations – such as from Plotinus commenting on Plato, that ‘All the theology of the Greeks is the progeny of the sacred initiations (μυσαγωγιαι [mustagogia]) of Orpheus’ – supplementing this with a lineage – ‘the sublime theology descended from Orpheus to Pythagoras, and from Pythagoras to Plato’. Of note here is the translation of the Greek ‘mystagogia’ as the English ‘initiations’ rather than ‘mysteries’. An early work written by Taylor (1790: 2-4, 48-52, 159), A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchian Mysteries, invoked a neoplatonic esoteric with citations of Clement (on Pindar) as well as Proclus (on Plato) to portray initiation as the Christian perfective (a process of death of the impure soul and realisation of its ‘felicity’). This cited Plato through Proclus as specifying a ‘gradation’ of three stages and Theon of Smyrna (Izmir) as listing five stages, beginning with a preparatory ‘purification’ (from τελετη [teletē]). Related to the fifth-century BCE ‘teleín’ (τελεῖν), meaning ‘finish/accomplish’, ‘teletē’ mostly denoted the performance of ritual/religious acts (e.g. opening the Olympic Games) and from the mid400s BCE was used especially for ‘mystic ceremonials’, being a ‘favourite’ word of Plato’s for initiation (OCD, 1949: 882).70 Here, we observe the rendition of ‘telete’ for an initiatory stage and ceremonials more generally in a further fixing of the modern discourse, while ‘mysteries’ (‘mystic’, etc.) was being combined and conflated with and transiting to ‘initiation’ (‘initiate’, etc.), so mystforms with/to init- forms. The timing of this, the late eighteenth century period, coincides with init- forms becoming standard in freemasonry, and it was over the following decades, in the lead-up period to ethnological usage (for adult ritual), that Taylor (until 1835, when he died) translated and had published a large body of texts, both ancient and neoplatonic (including most of Plato’s works, along with Aristotle, Proclus and others), thus making these widely available for the first time in Britain (affordable and accessible to non-Greek [or Latin] language readers).71 In sketching the Renaissance origins of the (neo-)Platonic and masonic mythography of initiation and initiator lineage, we should remark also on the 1540 coinage of the term 70 Telete was also, variously, a daughter of Dionysos and goddess/spirit (daimona) of Bacchic initiation rites,

grand-daughter of Cybele-Artemis, and a girl’s name rendered ‘Mystic Initiate’ by Marguerite Rigoglioso (2009). 71 Taylor’s commitment to the classical and neoplatonic project – which directly influenced, for example, the Theosophists – is evident not just in his own works as well as the dozens of English-language translations, but also in the name chosen for his only child from his second marriage, ‘Thomas Proclus’.

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‘perennial philosophy’ by Agnosto Steuco drawing from Ficino – to ‘reconcile the ancients with Christianity’, as Leibniz (1687: 218) put it. In the tenth book of the Perenni Philosophia, Steuco referred to the lineage of ‘initiates, or alchemists’ as an ‘emerging chronology of divine men through whom “true philosophy”, in the traditional sense of the term, was expressed, or so it was believed’ (Faivre, 1994: 35). A similar lineage is found again in the probably Arabic, ninth-century collection of Greek alchemical texts, the Turba Philosophorum (Assembly of Philosophers), translated into Latin in the late sixteenth century and into English at the end of the nineteenth century, by Arthur Edward Waite, renowned for his Tarot deck, member of the Golden Dawn (from 1891) and later freemason (init. London, 1901). According to Waite (1896: 1-2) the esoteric inheritance had come to ‘Arisleus, begotten of Pythagoras, a disciple of the disciples by the grace of thrice great Hermes [i.e. Trismegistus]’, to which were added, as the ‘most commonly recognised chain of initiates,’ Enoch, Abraham, Noah, Moses and David – as well as Zoroaster, Orpheus and Plato – and the Sibyls and the Brahmins and the Druids.  The history of translations here – into Latin and into English – alludes also to a history of scholarship that, further to the special interest in things esoteric, also helped to establish initiation as an item in the public discourse generally. Overarching specifically esoteric concerns, that is, was the development of the intellectual tradition of the West as a whole, building – via Renaissance and upper- then to middle-class educations – on the foundations of the classical that introduced the idea of the mysteries and concept of initiation. Thence was the mysteries tradition and (increasingly) initiation developed as a generalised cultural expression, so not just with direct citation but also with allegorical usage, depiction and reference in artworks, and suchlike. In other words, the vehicle of Renaissance esotericism that eventually came to be driven by masonry as prime inheritor of the modern mysteries tradition – so, of initiation – took its place within the overall dynamics of an emergent cultural environment identified as ‘European’ (or ‘Western’) in which the idea of the mysteries and initiation into them became a part of the fabric of common knowledge and the popular imagination. One indication of this is in the common-language, metaphorical usage of the phrase ‘initiation into the mysteries of [an art, etc.]’ or a variation thereof to mean ‘learn (about) [that thing]’ or similar. The employment of such a lexical collocation functioning thus as a hidden metaphor of everyday language involves a conceptual normalising, where the original idea becomes so engrained in the language that it is unknowingly employed; we do not even realise we are using it. An obscure but pertinent example in the present case is supplied in Grey’s expeditionary journals, cited above (p. 46). There, ironically comparing the ‘woeful difference’ between the imaginary ‘remains of a venison pasty, a fat buffalo’s hump, or any other delicacy’ that travellers in novels had available and the rather harsher culinary reality 98 

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that he and his crew faced, Grey (1841: 9) wishes the novelists would ‘initiate us into the mysterious, nay, almost miraculous means by which [such] travellers, even in the most dreary wilds, always contrived to draw forth from their stock of provender such dainties’. Indeed, the researchers in the field and the drawing-room who developed the nineteenth century initiation discourse of anthropology already employed a vocabulary that formulaically coupled init- forms with myst- forms. In so doing, they employed an extended or metaphorical sense of ‘mystery’ that included but was not limited to the sacred and that then seeped and morphed into the sense of ‘initiation’, especially through the phrase coupling them, ‘initiated into the mysteries’ (or similar, so ‘[init]-[myst]’). This consciously and unconsciously referenced a plethora of cultural items, from specific details and current information, such as the subtleties of an art or the techniques of a craft (skills that had to be acquired, thus presenting as unknowns, so hidden), to vague impressions of historical phantasy, such as ancient lineages of secret knowledge or a timeless cosmos of sacred wisdom (ancient theology, true philosophy, the one religion). Thence, we can generalise about a nexus of meaning of initiation that gradually evolved with, through and from that of mysteries. Millennia of mysteries literature Going back through the history of literary as opposed to esoteric texts, initiation is directly linked across the millennia from the modern anthropological (Frazer) through the early Renaissance (Dante) to the classical Roman (Virgil) (cf. Ossa-Richardson, 2008). Frazer’s late Victorian, encyclopaedic Golden Bough was expanded between 1890 and 1906-1915 from two to twelve volumes and restructured as a compendium of global mythology for a geo-history of how human culture had advanced from primitive magic through agricultural religions to modern science. Yet, at its heart, it was always a single, small story, such that the whole edifice, eventually, in 1922, pared back to a single volume for popular consumption, could still be reduced to an account of the primary myth of the day in Victorian Britain, the Resurrection. Frazer was ‘the eldest surviving son of a God-fearing Glasgow pharmacist’ who seemed ‘without crisis, at an early point to have shed his own religious belief ’ (Stocking, 1996: xviii). Essentially, he came to interpret the Christ story as a version of the sacrifice (and replacement) ritual magically enabling the passage from winter to spring, an individual put to death for a seasonal rebirth – or, initiation as agrarian fertility rite. The section on the Crucifixion itself was removed as too radical for the general reader. However, in the final, abridged version, Frazer placed the section on ‘The Ritual of Death and Resurrection’ (making a specifically Christian reference to rebirth or second birth) at the end, just before the two concluding chapters (‘The Golden Bough’ and ‘Farewell to Nemi’). Positioned thus, it comes across like the climax of a film (before the final scene and credits). And this was also where Frazer (1922: 692ff.) placed his coverage of initiation, a short list with brief

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descriptions of tribal practices from around the world (going quickly to Australia and the ‘knocking out of a tooth’). Frazer spent decades gaining information on historical and contemporary tribal myths and rituals, not only through reading but also from reports actively sought from the field (including his own set of Queries; see note 25). He interpreted these accounts, including those of initiatory practices, as related in the ‘savage mind’ to mysterious dangers and misunderstood processes by the very same reasoning that led to the logic of kingly sacrifice (cf. Jesus) – which comprised the opening motif, the simple small story. His search, as he expressed it, was for a ‘fairly probable explanation’ of the sacrifice ritual, couched in terms of the ‘priesthood at Nemi’ (ibid.: 2). For the opening of his life’s work, Frazer confuscated two paintings by John Turner, The Golden Bough and Lake Nemi. This took the reader to a priest who was to be slain by his successor, at a sacred grove at Lake Nemi, south of Rome. The chain of mythical connections that Frazer made had this priest archetypically wed to the earth goddess, Diana of the Wood, incarnated in the tree at the centre of the grove (supposing ‘the sacred tree… [as] her special embodiment… the priest… [probably] embraced it as his wife’). There also, at the centre of the grove, according to ‘the ancients’, we find the Sybil (a prophetess, female oracle), at whose bidding Aeneas broke off the eponymous branch from the tree, the golden bough. In one version of the story, the person (a ‘runaway slave’) who did this would challenge the priest, to become ‘King of the Wood’, and thus recommence the fateful round of time. Aeneas, however, ‘essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead’ (ibid.: 3, 8). Frazer’s work refers back to the classical epic form. It does this both generally, through the twelve-volume format of its middle incarnation, and specifically, through its name and that reference to the ancients. These derive from the sixth book of the Aeneid by Publius Vergilius Maro, or Virgil (completed in 19 BCE, translated into English by John Dryden in 1697). There, we find Aeneas at the outset of a journey, although in a cave (Apollo’s temple) rather than a grove. Having performed the prescribed ritual duties of sacrifice and prayer, the hero is informed by the Sybil that he can only journey to the underworld after he has successfully performed the ‘holy rites’, namely, pulling off ‘the lurking gold upon the fatal tree… the double tree that bears the golden bough’ (line 296). As identified by Warburton (1738: 189, 194), this signified initiation as an allegorical ‘descent into Hell’: ‘Virgil, in this poem, was to represent a perfect Legislator, in the person of Æneas; but Initiation into the Mysteries was what sanctified his Character and Function’. And it was this same theme of descent into the netherworld – employing the conceit of Virgil as guide to lead the authorial first person down and then up and out, to redemption – that was used in the Commedia of Durante degli Alighieri, or Dante (completed in 1320, translated into English by the beginning of the nineteenth century). In the depiction by Virgil (lines 982-984), Aeneas is given the mystical knowledge that ‘one common soul / Inspires and feeds, and animates the whole… [an] active mind, infus’d thro’ all the space’, before he is shown a prophetic vision (the lineage of Rome and his own 100 

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future). In like fashion, so too does Dante, emerging from the Inferno by climbing the mountain of Purgatory, receive a beatific vision rejoining him to love or God (personified as Beatrice) and then rise through the spheres to Paradise. In Virgil’s conclusion, Aeneas exits through the ‘gate of ivory’ from ‘the silent house of sleep’, while Dante is brought back to Earth by his ‘mortal weight’ (Virgil: VI, 1235, 1241; Dante: xxvii). Thus, having been transported in initiation through the extremes of human experience (descent/ascent), they return, back to the realm of ordinary life, but changed. This, we can say, represents the proto-typical initiation of the Western literary tradition. It is very much a spiritual affair, in which the imagined outer journey represents the inner as lived, indicated in the narrative at the beginning, the daylight entrance, leading to the deep dark. And this was equally a journey into the mysteries: Æneas, having got this Bough… the Poet tells us he carried it into the Sibyl’s Grot… and this was to design Initiation into the lesser Mysteries… The Initiated into these were called Μύςαι. He is then led by the Sibyl, his Mystagogue, to the Scene of the Descent… And this signifies his Initiation into the greater Mysteries, where the Initiated are now called Έπόπίαι. The Time was the Night, as in the Mysteries. (Warburton, 1738: 195) Before he set out, when requesting Apollo to reveal the future, Aeneas had asked whether the ‘annual rites… shall be performed’ (lines 108-109). These are taken to be the rites at Eleusis, at (West) Attica, near Athens, into which several emperors were initiated. Augustus (Gaius Octavius Thurinus) was among them, patron to Virgil and to whom the author reportedly read the sixth book (cited in Kerényi, 1967: 12). The rites consisted of two stages, with preparatory and culmination gatherings and practices around March and September. Eventually, these became known as the ‘lesser’ and the ‘greater’, although they were originally quite separate (candidates did not go straight from one to the other in the same year and could have to wait several years before completion). The Eleusinian rites were mythically concerned with agriculture and death/rebirth through the descent into the underworld and emergence in spring of Kore/Persephone (abducted and returned by Hades), who was the daughter of Demeter (from ‘meter’, mother, an earth goddess related to fertility, grain, health). Mystically, the Lesser Mysteries, or ‘Closing of the Eyes’ (μύησις [Greek], myesis [Latin]), in March were linked to death and descent (cf. sowing) and thus to preparation for the redemption of rebirth (cf. harvest) in the autumnal Greater Mysteries, a ‘beholding’ (ἐποπτεία, epopteia). The climax of the process occurred at the great columned temple, the anaktoron, or telesterion (where telos, the aim, was attained, hence teleo for ‘[to] initiate’; cognate with teletē). There, a nine-day fast would be completed by a partaking of the drink kykeon – possibly a psychoactive brew that could ‘powerfully catalyse and amplify the religious Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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experience’ of the initiates – which was (likely) followed first by a symbolic revelation, by the priests as the officiating guardians of the rites and their secret knowledge, and then by a night of feasting, dancing and animal (bull) sacrifice (Perrine, 2000: 10; Willoughby, 1929: 43ff.). The mystae were thus the initiands, those who were in the process, undergoing initiation, having entered (the lesser), while the epoptai were those who had completed initiation, who had experienced, beholden (the greater). This implies a dual meaning also for ‘initiation’, as both into the lesser – so entry into the ritual performance, or programme, beginning the drama as a whole – and into the greater – which implied a profound experience, the revelation, of some sort. Ancient texts and rituals A generation or so before Virgil’s epic, in the second book On the Laws (De Legibus), written around 50 BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero had given credit to the Athenian mysteries for taking Rome out of barbarity and into civilisation. Acknowledging his own initiation, Cicero supported the need for the mysteries to be regulated. This was in keeping with the thrust of his work on jurisprudence that advocated a conservative code in relation to maintaining traditions by discouraging novel forms, prohibiting sacrifices and ‘nocturnal debauchery’ and preventing festivities for entertainment (sporting contests, circus shows, etc.). Here, Barham’s (1842: 104ff.) English language init- translations are in the Latin original, as received. The Latin does not, however, match the English collocating init- and myst- forms; in fact, the standard [init]-[myst] phrasal combination of ‘[init-] in/to the [myst-]’ – is not employed in the original (Latin) texts.72 In the generation after the Aeneid (around the turn of the millennium), Strabo (1856: 183 [II.iii.10]) gave over 3000 words over to the sacred rites during a consideration of the Curetes of Aetolia (mid-eastern Greece). He noted, for instance, that ‘The greater part of the Greeks attribute to Bacchus Apollo, Hecate, the Muses, and Ceres, everything connected with orgies and Bacchanalian rites, dances, and the mysteries attended upon initiation’ – according to the mid-nineteenth century English language translation by Hans Claude Hamilton. Actually, in the then recently published, Greek-language publication of Strabo that Hamilton used, the ‘mysteries that attended initiation’ could have been more precisely rendered as the ‘hidden/secret aspect [related to or of ] the rites/rituals’. Similarly, in the next sentence, Hamilton’s translation ‘of… initiations’ comes from the Greek for ‘of secrets’.73 Thus, we observe the discourse of initiation being insinuated into mid-nineteenth century 72 E.g.

‘…let none be initiated in the mysteries except by the usual forms consecrated to Ceres, according to the Grecian ceremonials’ comes from ‘Neve quem initianto, nisi ut assolet Cereri, Græco sacro’, and ‘I think it is but courteous to except these mysteries likewise, especially as we ourselves happen to have been initiated in them’ is from ‘Excipis credo illa quibus ipsi initiati sumus’; in both these cases, the indirect objects ‘in the mysteries’ and ‘in them [these mysteries]’ are additions (Barham, 1842: 104-105; De Leg. II. 21, 36 [at thelatinlibrary.com]). 73 From Kramer (1847: 377-378): ‘τὸ … περὶ τὰς τελετὰς μυστικόν’; ‘τῶν μυστηρίων’.

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translation – here from the Greek as well as Latin (as in the examples above, from Taylor and Barham), and from around the same time by now (the 1850s), as the introduction into ethnology. There are, of course, multifarious references to the mysteries in a range of ancient Greek texts – in inscriptions and epigrams as well as full works and the more or less extensive fragments thereof – notably in the canonical lineage of Aristotle to his teacher, Plato, and in turn, to his, Socrates, with Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, from around 385-370 BCE, being key works. Sometimes the references were to roots in Egypt (especially Memphis, or Inebu-hedj, at the head of the Nile delta). The oldest written account we have may be that of the mythical establishment of the Eleusinian rites in one of the Homeric Hymns – ‘Homeric’ in that they are stylistically similar in some aspects to Homer’s epics (and were once attributed to him), and ‘hymns’ from humnos, a devotional song or dedication to a god/ dess (sanctifying a festival before performance, of an epic, competition, etc.). The Hymns probably originate from around 600 BCE, perhaps earlier (Faulkner, 2011: 10), and they were cited sporadically from at least the late 400s (in Book III of Thucydides’ History) (Allen and Sikes, 1904: xliiiff.). The fullest ‘original’ version is a Byzantine (Greeklanguage) manuscript copied in Constantinople not long before the city fell in the midfifteenth century, later to turn up in a Moscow church (the Synod) library, where it was discovered in 1777 by the (German) Professor of Classical Studies at Moscow University, who then sold it to the library at Leiden. Known now as the Mosquensis (M version) and designated Leidensis BPG33H, this is the only text to have the complete Hymn 2, ‘To Demeter’ (long version, there is also a short hymn to Demeter). The following two excerpts are from a translation made by Lang (1899: 198, 209-210 [lines 270-274, 470-480]): ‘I am the honoured Demeter… let all the people [of Eleusis] build me a great temple and an altar thereby, below the town, and the steep wall, above Callichorus on the jutting rock... the rites I myself will prescribe, that in time to come ye may pay them duly and appease my power.’ Demeter of the fair garland… sent up the grain from the rich glebe, and the wide earth was heavy with leaves and flowers: and she hastened, and showed the thing to the kings, the dealers of doom; …she showed them the manner of her rites, and taught them her goodly mysteries, holy mysteries which none may violate, or search into, or noise abroad, for the great curse from the Gods restrains the voice. Happy is he among deathly men who hath beheld these things! and he that is uninitiate, and hath no lot in them, hath never equal lot in death beneath the murky gloom. [emphasis added] 

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Although archaeological evidence can support tentative pre-histories extending the past by a few more hundred years, this seems to be as far back as we can go in terms of the ‘hard’ evidence of written texts. Thereafter, we enter the realm of the received legend of ancient mystical mythology (e.g. equating the complex of Thoth-Idris-Enoch as the original initiated-initiator or God figure [Hauck, 1999: 22-25]), or we consider the suppositions of anthropology applying the context of contemporary (modern-day) tribal practice to Palaeolithic and Neolithic artefact remains (see Chapter 9). Yet, even the textual hope of using ‘To Demeter’ from the Hymns as a start-point, as a discursive ground zero for initiation studies, already overreaches a little. It may represent an original text in a temporal sense, but this is no original text. Which is to say that not only is it a copy several centuries after the fact, but also that the translation used here – by Andrew Lang – has the discourse embedded into it. Indeed, this translation emanates from the very heyday of initiata, or the modern making of initiation, during the still gathering first wave of interest when ‘initiation’ became fully established in anthropology. Comprising a standalone book, Lang’s translation of the Hymns was introduced with a lengthy consideration referring to ‘rites of analogous kinds’, of which the ‘closest of all known parallels to the Eleusinian’ were to be found ‘in a medicine-dance and legend of the Pawnees’ (an American, Great Plains people), as well as ‘other savage Mysteries’, including ‘Australian and African examples’. Lang (1899: 81-82) then argued against a contemporary view that historically connected the ‘rite of Demeter’ to Egypt (so, mythically, Demeter to Isis and Osiris). An (unreliable) source for that view, apparently, was Herodotus’ (440 BCE) History, with its description of ‘customs… the Grecians received from the Egyptians’. Here, Lang noted that ‘Isis is in the Grecian language Demeter’, citing the English translation available from the mid-nineteenth century (Cary, 1852: 115, 118 [II.51,59]), which had four instances of the [init]-[myst] phrasing. Although the provenance of the hymn and the import of the rites are undoubted – albeit quite uncertain in the case of the text – the turn-of-(twentieth)-century English translation comes replete with the late Victorian discourse of initiation already inscribed into it, rather literally. A more recent translation, for example, keeps just the first of the two (italicised) ‘mysteries’ from the excerpts quoted above, using ‘(holy) rites’ for the second, and it replaces ‘is uninitiate’ with ‘has no part in the holy rites’ (Athanassakis, 1976: 15). And even that single usage of ‘mysteries’ is interpretative; it is not, in fact, in the ancient Greek, which uses a generic term for sacred things.74 Broadly, in Greek, the myst- form most used was that rendered as ‘mystes’, meaning ‘initiate/initiand’ – so the person-noun rather than abstract name, the people involved in the 74 For ‘uninitiated’, the Greek has ‘ἀτελὴς ἱερῶν’ (lit. not having passed through/completed the sacred [things])’;

and for ‘the mysteries’ is first, ‘σεμνά’ (lit. [the] revered, august, holy) and second, a referent pronoun (for ‘they/those’). Thus, the three words in question – translated by Lang as ‘mysteries’ (twice) and ‘uninitiate (once) – are got at in the original just by words for ‘(the) sacred/revered’ (using the Greek in Evelyn-White’s [1920: 322] translation, which follows Lang’s English here).

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secret ceremonials; and the translation ‘mysteries’ would generally have been more closely done with terms such as ‘the hidden’ or ‘secrets’ (thence ‘rites’). Or else other words were used (not a myst- form), notably teletai (teletē) and other tele- forms, and also orgia, the latter rendered, of course, as the generally (Christian) pejorative ‘orgies’ and the former essentially lost or discontinued (unadopted in English). And again, terminology semantically tied to this was used, including that which was syntactically untied, so standalone words actually linking to the concepts and practices named by myst- forms and also other words. This produced an implicit or ‘technical’ vocabulary of terms understood as referencing the mysteries. Then, init- forms were a Latin introduction containing the idea of entry. And the combination of the two, Latin and Greek forms, with [init]-[myst], was sometimes used in Latin (so Latin and Latinized forms). These only became dominant more recently, in other languages – in French first and then later (and increasingly) in English. In other words, the discourse of initiation was very much one that evolved through historical layers of translations and was constructed through lexical choices made and normalised by practice (especially but certainly not exclusively in the modern period) (see pp. 114ff.).  The classical mysteries themselves, so-called, are generally known as relatively local cults around the eastern Mediterranean region that could become allied to the state and in some instances came to involve large-scale festival ceremonials (pageants, mythic dramas, etc.). They had their various, dynamic histories (of geographical spread, influence, synthesis, corruption, etc.), stretching for over a thousand years, from pre-historical and ancient times into the Christian era, along with, it appears, a broader, shared history of social formalisation and relative devivification leading eventually to demise. This was expressed in a process of unfoldment reaching down from the Archaic through the Hellenistic to the Imperial periods – until, as Yulia Ustinova (2018: 14) concluded, ‘in Rome… ecstatic cults… were supressed’. In a sense, the modern initiation discourse that was later to follow was modelled after this original trope of a temporally and territorially hugely uneven and variegated yet overall development and then decline and ending enforced.75 Contemporary scholarship divides the mystery cults as a whole from other religious forms in the region both negatively and positively. It specifies them negatively by their relative lack of dogma. They tended to have little in the way of a formalised belief system or moral codification, as can be judged from the lack of detail on this in the written sources. And they are characterised positively by the ritual practice of induction, typically administered by a priesthood. Proceedings at Eleusis were organised and headed by the Hierophant – 75 Although

this was not really a simple, uni-directional (d)evolution in the first place, since there was also a ‘projection of Greek or Roman realities [backwards] into an imaginary Anatolian, Egyptian or Persian past’ and the ‘ritual form of the mysteries, regardless of which gods they celebrate[d], remain[ed] distinctly Greek’ (Blakey, 2008: 3).

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mentioned in the hymn (line 154) – a position filled by someone from the Eumolpids family, so a kind of hereditary custodianship. In fact, this seems to have been the primary permanent feature, outside the site and its central mystery, for there was no standing order of devotees with classes of adherents. Although we cannot state this simply as a generalisation for other instances and expressions, mainly, there was just the initiation. In a meaningful sense, the mysteries were their initiations (no more than the rituals of ‘entry’). Individuals would be inducted into a ‘school’ at its sanctified site through the revelation of some sort of secret, and the whole process itself represented by and representative of a god/dess figure, with accompanying legend and mythic complex. Hence, an initiation into, for example, Demeter. The ancient bequest of temples and tablets, friezes and frescoes, ceramics and sundry comments littering the literature has enabled archaeologists to replot processional routes and piece together ceremonies in the context of the land and the varied remains of many sites. But for all the evidence and reasonings, these stay, for the most part, as suppositions, like pieces of a jigsaw that seem to fit but don’t have any picture printed on to be sure. Thus, the description of the Eleusinian climax above is hedged by words like ‘could’ and ‘likely’. The cultish religions remain yet imbued with a subtle but profound mystique – the mysteries really are mysteries, still. The inherent transience of the ritual form and the relative lack of fixed structures in combination with the distance in time must be part of the problem. Catering, perhaps, for great numbers of people over days of festivities, the ritual preparations could be extensive – but they came and went. Performances were fleeting – and crucially, barely recorded – while holy relics are long lost or unknown as such (insofar as there were any, which we don’t know). Thus, the overall effect of the essentially ephemeral expression of the drama combined with the lack of scripture and general emphasis on secrecy has been the bequeathal of a heritage of obscure textual reference and other, leading but ultimately unsatisfactory clues. Further to some textual indications of ‘the extraordinary experience’ of initiation, for example, Walter Burkert (1987: 91-99) could only find ‘piecemeal information… about the details of mystery initiations’ (essentially, five source-types for Eleusis and some textual evidence regarding initiations into Dionysus, Isis, Meter [Cybele] and Mithras). Indeed, modern scholarship in the classical studies tends to be rather circumspect about claims to knowledge of the past nowadays. With an appreciation of what is not known and coming through a period of post-modern relativism, there is an emphasis on distance. Statements are made couched in terms just of the text and its history with archaeological support, perhaps, but no more than that, and in the hypothetical mode.  The main issue for us here concerns that extraordinary experience, the secret or central mystery, and how it was kept by so many groups at widely dispersed centres over a period spanning several centuries (or, if the secrets were plural, then how they were all kept). Burkert 106 

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(ibid.: 90-91) located just three recorded violations of this ‘secret’, and none substantial. As indicated above for the Eleusinian example, it could be imagined as objectified, such as relics dramatically unveiled for magical effect (transformative affect). At the climax of such a scenario, we would suppose there to have been a revelation of the relic-itself god-figure – not just representing, that is, but numinously manifesting a mystical potentiality (in the eye of the beholder, at least). Further (as also indicated above), climactic rites may have been staggered to increase the emotive anticipation/arousal and susceptibility – a sacred-flame practice at night and the revelation of God/dess relics (heira) by day for instance. However, since the secret really was historically undivulged, one might expect a little more than this. We know that it was obligatory not to expose what went on at initiations and that no such exposure has survived, at least none that is sufficiently meaningful. And had the physical displays really been so vital, the truth would surely have outed. So, given that it did not, those displays must have been relatively trivial. Were they really to be taken as constituting the secret, then it seems that, in the final analysis, we would have to regard the whole mysteries phenomenon as little more than elaborate charade, however potent at the time and for those involved – like a case of the Emperor’s clothes (and with the nondivulgence itself as mythic feature). Although there are one or two small indications of this and there were surely sham and devolved or corrupted mysteries, it hardly seems likely as a viable explanation for the whole in the face of the contradictory evidence (texts indicating importance and profundity, the size and scale of some sites, etc.). The problem of the secret appears really quite profound, not just apocryphal or an over-generalisation. Above, the possibility of consumption of a psychoactive brew is also suggested, and it is known that such preparations and procedures were employed. Although the evidence is sketchy, entheogenic concoctions do seem to have been recorded as used to produce ‘frenzies’ and ‘ecstatic’ states. Plutarch mentions the leaves of henbane, for example, which we can guess were used in Dionysian rituals mixed with wine – or euphemistically referred to as ‘wine’ – and psychoactive honey, too, along with several other plants like ivy.76 Indeed, we can assume the reports of intoxication, euphoria and delirium and rapture, including and inducing ‘altered states’ of ‘non-ordinary consciousness’ (like ‘visions’, ‘speaking in 76

[T]he ivy, which the Greeks use to consecrate to Bacchus, is called by the Egyptians chenosiris, which word (as they tell us) signifies in their language Osiris’s tree... …women that were addicted to Bacchanal sports [possessed by Bachic frenzies] presently ran to the ivy and plucked it off, tearing it in pieces with their hands and gnawing it with their mouths, so that they are not altogether to be disbelieved that say it hath a spirit in it that stirreth and moveth to madness [mania], transporting and bereaving of the senses, and that alone by itself it introduceth drunkenness without wine to those that have an easy inclination to enthusiasm [that are precariously disposed towards spiritual exaltation]. From William Godwin’s (1878: [Vol IV] 97, [Vol, II] 263-264) revision (introduced by Ralph Waldo Emerson) of the late 18th century translation (from the Greek, late 16th century printing) of the 1st century Morals by Plutarch (Ploútarkhos from Delphim central Greece, renamed Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus upon taking Roman citizenship); the two square-bracketed additions in the second paragraph show significant changes made fifty years later in the Frank Cole Babbit (1936: 262) translation, including introduction of the word ‘spiritual’.

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tongues’, etc.). But how would this be a secret? Such things are well attested the world over in shamanic lore and literature, and special recipes could not have been so well concealed and protected. Then the secret of the mysteries becomes the lived experience itself. This would account for the incredible success over centuries in keeping the secret and why it was not recorded in texts anywhere. The secret of the mysteries was not revealed because it could not be, by its nature, since any experience is a private thing that has to be lived to be known. As Burkert (1987: 90) noted, this barrier to communication would hold if we did have a ‘fuller account, or even a filmed record such as modern anthropologists provide to document exotic customs’. The span of millennia passed is not an issue. Primarily, then, it appears that what we have is the intrigue itself, the importantly incommunicable initiation experience as the secret necessarily unrevealed. This is why the principal specification of the mysteries was not in terms of god-figure denoted by people and/ or territory and time – the (Phrygian) cult of Cybele (in south-western Anatolia [Turkey]), for example, or the (twelfth-dynasty Abdju) rites of Osiris, or just the Eleusinian rites, indeed. Although scholars may prefer such particularisation, it was as a collective grouped by the secret itself that these became most widely identified because it was the experience itself that was valorised. Or vice versa. The mysteries became known by that which was hidden as a way of getting at the experience itself, or the experiences themselves and the contexts for their production, thus rendered generically as ‘mysteries’. Crucially, the secret did not refer to just any experience – for it is also the case that episodes of ‘ordinary’ consciousness cannot be communicated. It had to be special and different (and sufficiently so, at least sometimes, in some rites, for some people). Thus, the sense of ‘mystery’ points ultimately to ‘mystical’ experience (as a real event), of the kind induced through ‘ecstatic’ ritual (and psychoactive preparations), and quintessentially of the untold because untellable secret, the type of ‘religious experience’ that is particularly or intrinsically uncommunicable or ‘ineffable’, to use the terminology definitively employed by William James (1902) (see note 198). Here, therefore, translation issues did not exactly interfere, insofar as the usage of (the Latin, French, English) ‘mysteria’ – ‘les mystères’ – ‘mysteries’ often enough only filled in for Greek language references to the secret and hidden. Yet they did suggest mysticism. This would have – did, does – have the function of mysticising (where the religious sense of ‘mystical’ equivocally incorporates the [pejorative] sense of unclarity for an ambiguous meaning). In the (positive) naming of material realities by a term referring to what was not known (a negative), those practices and their contexts were covertly rendered immaterial. Their very hiding was hidden! Further, as a nomination of the unknown (hidden, secret) precisely picked out and emphasised in the naming, the category specification points to a conceptual model or paradigm of the unknown, so an ultimate. Thence, the generalisation functioned – functions – as idealisation. It alludes, for example, to provenance (origination) making a claim for the authority of source for a framing of power (so, a Roman classification 108 

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of the Greek and the Greek for the Egyptian, etc., and a modern European citation of ancient roots). It shrouds initiated warriors in mystique. Eventually, in English, the word naming the category (‘mysteries’) became routinely augmented for historical importance and the idea reified by application of the definite article and also capitalisation: ‘the Mysteries’. And that had a further, confirmatory mysticising effect. It compounded the logical implication (and textual indication) of profound religious or spiritual experience, and clearly defined the category as applicable to actual practice in terms of that which could not be known about it. The empirically unknown was named as unknowable so declared thus, as a metaphysical reality, and rendered, moreover, absolutely thus, as the unknowable, so as truth. And initiation, finally, was the revelation of this. Thence, even though the ‘mysteries’ as a grouping may be disparate and problematic – ranging from one-off local healings to regular ‘international’ festivals – we can still take this meaning of revelation as fundamental.77 Examining ‘the nature of the knowledge... acquired [i.e. the secret and its revelation]… the extant sources suggest attainment of awareness of a sort’, in Ustinova’s (2013: 109) cautious wording. One such is included in an imagining by Plato (Πλάτων, Plátōn) of Socrates (Σωκρᾰ́της, Sōkrátēs) in his second speech given in the (c. 370 BCE) dialogue Phaedrus (Φαῖδρος, Phaidros). Here, there is a very strong passage on the ‘fourth… kind of madness’, in the words of a late nineteenth century translation by Benjamin Jowett (1875: 126). This part of the speech refers to knowledge/wisdom (philosophy) and love (Eros), the perception of beauty and the shudder and moistening and melting in the (re)growth of the wings of the soul – and to ‘he whose initiation is recent’ as having ‘been the spectator of many glories in the other world’ (see Appendix 3).78 This visionary transport, with its remembrance of youth’s initiation passage and the mystical passion of the central metaphor on the (re)growth, should be presumed to have extended – possibly (in fact) and logically (by implication) – to that ‘other world’, phenomenologically, to the realm of the gods, or ‘God’. That was the knowledge gained in initiation (and the wisdom of ‘philosophy’). Therein lay the psychological source of the mysteries’ spread and longevity and the final meaning of the generalisation. Although we cannot be sure of the nature of Plato’s or any other individual’s mystical experience – or, for that matter, of his precise meaning (in terms of literal and metaphorical expression) – we can know from the language that it was this that the initiation was ultimately into, in some way – as a potential, implied, at least referenced and, one should assume, occasionally but not so irregularly occurrent (experienced). Here was the core of the semantic self-reference and 77 Thus, also, the eschatological emphasis on the afterlife (Redfield, 2008) should be placed in the context of the experiential aspect and so (immaterial) post-death of initiation (‘rebirth’). 78 Within the framing of the main themes of the soul, this section can also be read as an erotic mystical text (e.g. in serial form, with the juncture here at the ‘shudder’, where mystique becomes erotica) – indeed, ‘initiation’ could be read as a metaphor for sex rather than the more usually argued philosophy as reason (although that would still involve a mysticalising of the sexuality).

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its ostensible contradiction (insofar as any knowing of the mystery must needs be deny it). And it is this revelatory sense – of the Secret, of the Greater Mystery – that is fundamental to initiation as a spiritual phenomenon and concept, and thus its operation in discourse.79

79 In modern anthropology, when considering secrets in Gisu initiation, La Fontaine (1985: 185-186) notes that

‘what is mysterious, because it is not communicable, is the nature of the experience itself’ (and ‘the nature of the secrets may be trivial’, as in the case of Mende, Wogeo and Hopi rituals, where it is simply ‘the knowledge that other people do not know’; see p. 38). In the classical context, further to psycho-social concerns with status, Bowden (2010: 213) considers the key elements of secrecy and ritual performance as operating to ‘establish a closer relationship with the divine’; Ustinova (2012, 2018) argues for an ‘alteration of consciousness’ as central through the idea of ‘divine mania’, a madness that was ‘positively valued and actively sought in Ancient Greek culture’; Plato’s translator here, completing his ‘Introduction’, added a note on the need to have ‘sympathy with his mysticism’ – since ‘To the uninitiated… [Phaedrus] will appear to be the dreams of a poet who is disguised as a philosopher… [which conceal] a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion’– with his mysticism described as the ‘concentration of reason in feeling, the enthusiastic love of the good, the true, the one, the sense of the infinity of knowledge and of the marvel of the human faculties’ (Jowett, 1875: 102).

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Chapter 6. Christian mysteries Several mystery forms became popular in the centuries before the onset of what is now named the Common Era, and after, too, notably Roman Mithraism (which developed a seven-grade initiation system). These appear to have variously spread and combined with (other) esoteric (Kabbalah, Gnostic, etc.) traditions and non-mystery religious forms over the centuries as well as with one another to a create constantly evolving territorial map of syncretic religious but primarily practice-based sects, where the central practice was the initiation into them. The Christian religion that sprung up from about two millennia ago shared and developed some common – ‘cultish’ – features with these, although it was also distinguished from them, both positively, by its Messianic theology constructed around a narrative of an actual human being, recently deceased, and also negatively, by the relative unimportance of entry ritual. Christianity was not a mystery religion, but its relationship with initiation was complex, and it was certainly pivotal to the development of the later discourse. As the new religion grew into power and came into conflict with the mystery as well as with other religious forms previously dominant in Rome and the Empire, the combination of commonalities and distinctions it had with and from them developed in the form of an oppositional incorporation. There was a utilisation of initiatory forms and then their suppression that contributed to and was expressive of the development of hegemonic power, both in general and also in particular, to that strain within Christianity (or, those Christianities) which desired to ‘purge theology of magic’ (Brann, 1999: 169). The combination of appropriation and oppression was both material (regarding ritual practice) and discursive (written texts). Yet it was also the making of the post-classical and ultimately modern tradition of the mysteries, thence initiation as it came to be. Not only did the rise of Christianity as a state religion involve the demise of the classical mystery religions, that is, but it crucially informed the discourse of initiation that developed thereafter. Indeed, the late Victorian anthropological histiography was ultimately pinned on this for its ending, the (inevitable) disappearance of initiation as a function of the advance of civilisation.

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Appropriation and suppression Writing around 55 CE to fellow believers in Konrinthos (Corinth) in Greece (between Athens and Sparta) from Ephesus (Efes) on Anatolia’s Aegean coast, it was reported in the King James Version of the Bible, Paul (Saul, Paulus, the Apostle) stated in one of his ‘epistles’ that Christians ‘speak the wisdom of God in a mystery’ (KJV, 1611 [1 Cor. 2:7]).80 Half a century later, around 110 CE, Ignatius – previously a student of John the Apostle and then the third Bishop of Antioch (Antakya) – when stopping at Smyrna (Izmir), south of Ephesus, under escort to Rome to be executed (hence his appellation, ‘the Martyr’), wrote a letter to the congregation at Ephesus, whom he lauded, according to the nineteenth-century translation, as having been ‘initiated in the mysteries of the Gospel along with Paul’ (Schaff, 1885: 55 [XII]). This metaphorical usage of the language of the mysteries was not a novelty. On the contrary, it had a centuries-long history, long before Christianity: ‘The terminology, as also the fact, of mystery and initiation [had] acquired a generic quality and an almost universal appeal’ (Nock, 1964: 118). Thus, for example, philosophers were said to be ‘initiated by’ their teachers – Plato was initiated by Socrates, meaning that former was introduced into the latter’s teachings and methods and instructed personally as a student, with the younger learning from and guided by the elder. This initiation was a mentoring process and sociointellectual alignment, among other things. In following this tradition, therefore, the new religion was in many ways just working in the idiom of the time, although what was to transpire went far beyond that. Entry into the Christian movement during its vigorous foundation and expansion period involved a considerable borrowing from and then development of the mysteries (and, conversely, some ‘sharing’ with them). Regarding practice, the annual calendar beginning at springtime (around the Roman month of Mars) became fixed in Christianity as Lent through to Easter (perhaps stretching to Pentecost) with entry rites of baptism, confirmation and partaking in the Eucharist (the sacraments, from sacer: sacred, dedicated, holy). From this, a formalised period of instruction and fasting was to emerge, termed ‘mystagogy’. Thus, although water-based (washing) purification ritual physically preparing for and thus signifying change (baptism), avowal and oath-taking as verbal statement of the change (confirmation), and food-based (fast/feast) abstinence and celebration (Eucharist) were neither specific nor exclusive to mysteries practice, their formalisation and development in Christianity were, insofar as this was deployed conceptually, made explicit in the naming. Entry into Christianity was effectively modelled on that of the mysteries, or made a claim to that tradition (i.e. through initiation). Theologically rooted in the first Pauline Corinthian epistle as the ‘Lord’s Supper’ (I Cor. 10.16-7, 11.26), the Eucharist combined a heritage of food ritual (a shared meal in gatherings 80 The

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of the faithful) with Christian narrative (the Last Supper) for a simple, communal linkage of basic sustenance (bread) to religious faith (in Christ) through ceremony (with wine). It was probably the case that ‘Early Christians met at a meal because that is what groups in the ancient world did’ and so ‘Christians were simply following a pattern found throughout their world’ (Smith, 2003: 279) and practice would still have had to be sufficiently plain to gain popular traction. This was particularly relevant away from the urban centres: ‘Given that the new religion spread in the first place through the socio-economy of agrarian subsistence, it was necessarily quite basic and accessible, which, at a societal level, meant being open to all – to villagers as well as to women and slaves – or ‘democratic’ (Koester, 1995: 190). Thus, for example, the ritual instructions of the early Didache (lit. ‘teaching’), most likely used in the rural churches of present-day Syria during the first century CE (in the Apostolic period), included such simple instructions as what to do for baptism when there was no cold, running water – namely, just ‘pour water on the head three times’, intoning ‘the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ (as per Biblical instruction, in Mathew 28:19) (Richardson, 1953: 174). It is after that first, foundation period, in the post-Apostolic period of the Early Church Fathers, that we see condemnation of the mystery schools. While in the mid-second century, Iustinus ( Justin) Martyr noted that the Eucharist was ‘imitated in the mysteries of Mithras’ (in Roberts and Donaldson, 1870: 66) – which quite probably was the case – by the end of the century, Titus Flavius Clemens (Clement of Alexandria) – who came to Christianity through Platonism – wrote as his first work a lengthy diatribe of Exhortation to the Greeks urging them to desist from their ‘mysteries of deceit’. These not only included ‘dramatizing the rape of Pherephatta’ (or Proserpine, effectively the Roman Persephone of the [Eleusinian] Demeter myth, among others) but also, purportedly, the ‘wholly inhuman… mysteries of Dionysus’, with their references to mutilation and dismemberment for boiling and roasting and ‘preserving genitals… to worship’ (Roberts and Donaldson, 1867: 18, 29-31). Then, concluding with an invitation to the ‘haven of heaven’, Clement claimed the discourse exclusively for Christianity, avowing that it was through God that we ‘celebrate the holy rites of the Word’ and are ‘initiated into the… truly sacred mysteries’, that we ‘become holy whilst… initiated’: The Lord is the hierophant, and seals while illuminating him who is initiated... Such are the revelries of my mysteries. If it is thy wish, be thou also initiated… This Jesus, who is eternal, the one great High Priest of the one God and of His Father, prays for and exhorts men. (ibid.: 106-108) Herein, we see the mysteries as perverted and then they themselves converted, as it were, with the old initiation vilified and the true form conceptualised in terms of religious faith, into the Christian Church. The old practices were supplanted by a Christian imaginary, the secret revealed reconceived as the Father and Son. Given the deadening of the mysteries under Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Roman ‘civilising’ influence (and decree), this can easily be imagined as a revivification, an injection of feeling into religious form that captured the imagination of ordinary people, reinvigorating the common like a new fashion. Next, discursively speaking, what began as the assimilatory, rhetorical device of a clear metaphor (‘speaking of God in a mystery’) hardened into descriptive ‘fact’ (being ‘initiated in the mysteries of the Gospel’, into the actual mystery of God the Father/Son). The revisionism here involved not only a usurpation but also a concretisation of the previously metaphorical treatment of initiation, as the Christian God and its trinity became no longer like a mystery or as it, they were the mystery. In essence, the Greater Mystery was theologised. Divine madness became God, at least in one of its senses. As ever, though, we need to be careful with sources.  The primary language of the Church during this foundation period of Christianity was Hellenistic (Koine) Greek. Thus, ‘mystery’ then was from forms of the Greek μυστήριον (transliterated as musterion, later Latin, mysterium, the unrevealed), originally from μύστης (mustēs, then mystes). However, as already noted in the cases of the Hymn (‘To Demeter’) and Strabo, this terminology was not so widely used in the original texts as in the later translations, certainly regarding the nineteenth-century English versions, which was the case also for documents of the Church. The way in which this linguistic development came about is complex but, as indicated above, certainly involves more than just the modern adding of myst- and init- forms (including [init]-[myst]). Greek bibles included epoptai, for example, the Eleusinian ‘beholder’ or ‘initiate’ (at 2 Peter 1:16; 1 Peter 2:12, 3:2.). This alluded to knowing (having seen the secret), but in the more general beholder sense of an (eye) witness (the Gospel as personal account, or a first-century second- or third-hand perhaps composite reporting of that witnesses). Equally, the technical vocabulary of texts on or (more likely) just referencing the mysteries – or, mysteries terminology – might later be rendered differently – such as τέλειος as ‘perfected’ (indicating completion) in respect of tele-, so ‘initiated’, and ‘photismos’, Latinised Greek for ‘light’ rendered as ‘illumination’ – thus establishing discourse (see note 84). The Latin-to-Greek shift certainly included lexical developments (in tandem with the development of mystagogy). This can be exemplified by First Principles (Περί ’Αρχών), by Oregenes Adamantius (Origen of Alexandria), regarded as a primary (neoplatonic) text establishing a common Christian philosophy, or theology. In those places where the extant/reconstructed Greek original, from around 220-225 CE, can be directly compared to the Latin (paraphrasing) translation (De Principiis) produced (by Rufinus) nearly two centuries later – mostly at fragments from four chapters in Books III and IV – there was a clear increase in the number of myst- forms used (following Butterworth, 1973).

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But at least myst- forms were there to be found in the biblical (and older) Greek, unlike init- forms, obviously, which, as a Latin(ate) development, were not. Although old – the noun form rendered ‘initiation’ was in use at least from the second century BCE – initforms seem not to have been rendered in Greek (translated ‘back’, as it were). Therefore, as direct translations from Greek (rather than indirectly, through Latin), the supposedly early Christian init- forms quoted above all involve the later insertion of the (more) modern discourse. Writing in the early twentieth century, the Reverend James Herbert Strawley remarked on this in respect of the translation above of Ignatius, first made in 1867. While maintaining the translation ‘initiated in the Mysteries of the Gospel along with Paul’, Strawley (1910: 51; emphasis added) noted that this was ‘a metaphor derived from the ancient mysteries’, with ‘initiated’ used as an alternative for ‘instructed’ (and in the process assuming ‘Mysteries’ here as not metaphor). Previously, the late seventeenth-century translation by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Wake (1693: 115) had kept to the text in this respect, by not introducing init- (a Greek as well as Latin version had been available since the 1640s) – though he did not even refer directly to the instructed or some such either, using, rather, the ‘Companions of Paul in the Mysteries of the Gospel’ (emphasis added).81 Contemporaneously with Latin init- (and myst-) forms gaining traction in the new religious context as the Roman world became Christianised during the third and fourth centuries, observance and enactment of the old and not so old (especially Mithraic) mysteries began to disappear… and to be disappeared. The telesterion in Eleusis, with a prehistory dating at least from Mycenaean times (before 1000 BCE) – probably established under Athenian control in the 700s (Cosmopoulos, 2014), added to multiple times, twice destroyed by invaders and rebuilt – was finally laid to permanent ruin (by the Visigoth Aleric I, who went on to sack Rome). And after a long period of Imperial policies ranging between persecution and acceptance of the Christians – variously requiring them to maintain traditional practices and allowing them not to, according to the emperor and regional political dynamics of the day – finally, with Constantine, a new dominance was asserted. A series of edicts issued by Theodosius I and codified in 438 included the ominously worded decree ordering that ‘in all places and all cities the temples should be closed at once, and after a general warning, the opportunity of sinning be taken from the wicked’ (Bettenson, 1943: 31, XVI.i.2; Thatcher, 1907: 69, XVI.v.1, x.4). Early Christian initiations, initiation in Christianity Few reports are to be found of early Christian initiation in the sense of the Greater Mystery as argued above – of personal accounts, that is, detailing direct experience of God – although reference was occasionally made to such events, or spontaneous initiations, as they might be 81 In

his preamble to a revision (unchanged for the part quoted here), Wade (1810: 36ff.) detailed various contemporary textual and interpretive issues; further complexities, attendant upon versions located since then (notably, a Syriac-sourced Armenian text), seem not to have materially affected this reading.

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expressed. The biblical account of Saul approaching Damascus (KJV, 1611: Acts IX) was one. Another was the report in 374 CE of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, fourth Archbishop of Constantinople, recalling his father’s ‘involuntary initiation’ (in Schaff and Wace, 1893: 258-259 [XVIII.xii]). Prior to the father’s baptismal immersion, apparently, ‘there flashed around him a light’ that was ‘so clear and visible’ – to ‘the baptiser and initiator’ as well as the baptised – that the former ‘could not even hold back the mystery’. Sudden conversions were not so rare, the vast majority doubtless of a rather social or entirely political nature, but we should surely assume some others also to have been based on a more personal encounter. Interestingly, this would represent an inversion of the two-stage (Eleusinian) mystery form, in which the greater (mystical experience, revelation) precedes the lesser (formal entry, the conversion). As indicated, a procedure instituting entry developed initiatory practice for those committing to the faith. Varying somewhat across the different ecclesiastical centres, the rites maintained their original timing fixed to Lent and Easter but without necessary agreement on specifics, such as when or even whether baptism was necessary and at which point in the catechumenate process of joining the Church the Eucharist was to be taken. A rigorous process was developed in Milan, where Aurelius Ambrosius (Ambrose) became bishop and was (later!) baptised, before he in turn baptised Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis (Augustine) (baptisms in 374 and 387, respectively). After a period of preparation (catechumenatus), the six-week candidacy (competentes) in Milan included confessions and penance, fasts and inspection, instruction and recital before the baptism, which involved a thrice-performed (for the Trinity) full-body immersion in the octagonal bath of the ‘holy of holies’, the dedicated, baptismal building entered just once in a year, on Easter Sunday (Wills, 2012: 8-9). Clearly, this was a highly structured and devout committal that would have established strong bonds of community, and it was the culmination of a model type that had spread. Thus, Victor Saxer (1989) characterises the third to fifth centuries as the ‘golden age of Christian initiation’, following the two-century formative period and prior to a sixth-century period of mutation. We should note here the introduction of the Church language of catechism. Already Latinised, and in English by the 1300s, this term derived from the Greek katekhesis, meaning ‘instruct (orally)’, and was deeply rooted in Christianity. It was used in the Gospel of Luke (1:4), for example, while Clement (perhaps) and Origen had been catechumens (students) at the Didaskaleion (Christian Catechetical School) in Alexandria, which both later headed. The terminology of catechism gradually displaced that of initiation in the Church, such as it was (the Greek and Greek-origin myst- forms predominated). Emphasising instruction, so the pedagogical authority of the written text, the catechism can be regarded as supporting doctrine, or entry as an indoctrination, emotively imbued with the resonance of sound (recitation, chanting – katekhesis itself came from kata as ‘thoroughly’ plus ekhein, ‘to sound/ring’ [hence, ‘resound’]).

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All in all, therefore, it is quite unsurprising to see that even in late nineteenth-century translations of the teachings (probably from the 370-80s) of Kýrillos A Ierosolýmon, or Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus (Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem) aimed at catechumens entering the Church, concluding with five addresses on the mysteries named ‘mystagogic’ and totalling some ten thousand words, that these failed to employ even a single init- form (Parker, 1889: 258ff [IXX-XXIII]). Or that a rendering of Ambrose’s (Latin) De Mysteriis (On the Mysteries) from around 390 only twice found a place to insert init- forms (Schaff and Wace, 1886: 573 [I.2, II]). In the latter case, this was partly because while ‘mysteria’ (plural) referred to rites, Ambrose used the singular ‘mysterium’ primarily to indicate an interpretative reading of the scriptures (Mazza, 1989). Similarly, in the early 400s, a monastic life path was developed from the (gnostic) way of the (Egyptian) Desert Fathers (and Mothers) in the Conferences of Ioannes Eremita Cassianus (Saint John Cassias), characterised through the centuries as the Purgatio-Illuminatio-Unitio path of Christian Perfection. Here, renunciation and ‘admittance’ (admittitur) into the monastery comprised an initiation (with divestment of clothes, tests, etc.) – and yet, as presented in Book IV of his Institutes, Cassias’ Latin explicating this is entirely absent even of myst- forms (Cassiani 1588: 34ff [IV]) (not to mention init- forms, which are absent from his works in general).82 The initiation was not an initiation as they knew it.  The monastic (contemplative) tradition nourished a Christian development of apophatic theology as via negativa, wherein the divine was characterised by what it is not. From a philosophical perspective, this was a prime expression of the logic of the mysteries categorisation and its usage to characterise that to which Christian faith aspired, for its imaginary to be realised, which could only be named in negation (i.e. the Mystery). Writing around 500 CE under the same name as the first century (Paulite) Saint Dionysius – thence both acknowledging a tradition and claiming a lineage (locating his intellectual position) – (Pseudo) Dionysius (the Areopagite) drew from similar (Platonic and biblical) sources as had the fourth century Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nyssa (and maybe drew directly from Gregory, too). Consequently, his work included an Early Christian sensitivity to the context of the mysteries. As recently observed – during the apogee of interest in initiation, as it might be denoted – Pseudo-Dionysius employed ‘mysteries terminology’ to develop the idea of Moses receiving the Law – as a ‘priest of the mysteries leading his people into 82 Pre-Christian, historical roots of this monastic tradition are indicated in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with a

description of a form of a spiritual life in community (separated from society at large, in the desert perhaps, but also in the town – cf. ‘monastery’, late Middle English via ecclesiastical Latin, from ecclesiastical Greek ‘monastērion’, from ‘monazein’, ‘live alone’). Assumed to pertain to the Jewish ascetic sect of the Essenes, this Scroll text appears to refer to an initiatory conclusion (during adolescence) of a ten-year period of study, with oath-taking, divestment of personal property and baptism (Vermès, 2004: 66-68).

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initiation’ (Malherbe and Ferguson, 1978: 153 [note 74]). In this case, however, the language and metaphor were derived from a Jew, the first-century Philo, who had been concerned to reconcile Torahnic and Hellenistic traditions. So, the Early Christian sensitivity was a syncretic one, we should say, attuned also to the Judaic heritage. Rosemary Lees (1981 [1]: 111; [2]: 56 [note 91]) explains how Pseudo-Dionysius’ ‘notion of initiation into ultimate silence’, expressed in the first lines of his Mystical Theology from around the turn of the sixth century, was similarly ‘derived from the mystery religions’. For this purpose, he was ‘highly selective’ in his use of the Bible, at least in one instance. When developing his concept of ‘divine darkness’ – parallel to Gregory’s ‘luminous dark’ – Dionysius referenced Exodus (20.21). This is the point at which Moses had just received the Commandments and, as expressed in the KJV (English translation), he ‘drew near unto the thick darkness where God was’. The expression ‘drew near’ is updated with ‘approached’ in the New KJV; the standard Greek (εἰσňλθεν) was a little different, however. This may be treated as (the neutral) ‘entered’, but Dionysius used a different word (εἰσδύεσθαι), which was a mystery term, better translated as ‘penetrated’ (implying thereby – since it was ‘penetrated’ – that the biblical darkness was the ‘divine darkness’). Thus, even an absolutely core text of the Judaic-Christian tradition, perhaps the first to ever have been set down in writing, had its Greek translation (from Hebrew) adjusted, fashioned to fit a theology – to speak in a tongue – that effectively promoted the idea of initiation.83 Pseudo-Dionysius prescribed a system of initiation practice for the ‘Mystery of Illumination’ in his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (Parker, 1894: 54ff. [II]). This began with the (first) ‘Hierophant initiation’, involving a full ritual (with de-clothing and full-body anointment, vows and chants, consecrations, etc.) to be conducted by priests under the authority of a hierarch (bishop). It was completed by entrance into ‘communion’, the Church order, the ‘Mystery of Synaxis’ or ‘initiation of initiations’ – the climax with (final) confirmation of membership, therefore – which itself concluded with the hierarch declaring the newly initiated as ‘partaker of the most Divinely initiating Eucharist’. Here again, initforms were (only) introduced through the English – at the height of the first wave of initiation studies – with the expression ‘initiation of initiations’ being quite exotic (perhaps, but see p. 149). This could be characterised as a crystallisation of the initiation discourse distilled over centuries of a progressive Latinisation through the medieval period. For in fact, the first ninth-century Latin translations of the Hierarchy from the Greek (made by the Irishman John Scottus Eriugena) had only used two init- form instances – and one of those just with the general sense of start/beginning, leaving just a single use in the whole text – and that of the Christian metaphorical, for initiation into God (and yet that only referring

83 The

early twentieth-century translation of Pseudo-Dionyisius by Rolt (1920: 191, 193-194), which Lees used, has the ‘dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence’ and ‘plunge into the Darkness’ here; thus the expression, ‘His incomprehensible presence… plunges the true initiate unto the Darkness of Unknowing’.

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mundanely, to practical steps to take for those who fall asleep during prayer/contemplation). For all intents and purposes, one might say, the initiation discourse was absent.84 The initiatory process as detailed by Pseudo-Dionysius was only recommended for those who ‘felt a religious longing’ and aimed at ‘contemplation of the highest of mysteries’; it expressly did not constitute a public Christian mysteries ritual. Meanwhile, the potency (and thus problematic) of the primary entry rite into the Christian faith, that of baptism, was gradually lessened. At the end of the fifth century, the baptism of babies, paedobaptism, was introduced, and the restriction of ritual officiation to bishops was lifted. This enabling of lower-ranked clergy to perform the task facilitated its spread, and, like the Jewish circumcision of infant boys, baptism became oriented to birth-right. It was socially defining and thus delimiting (who was ‘in’ and who not) and performed at such a young age as to be shorn of psychodynamic meaning. Or, the import of baptism was shifted away from the psychological in respect of initiands and toward the societal in respect of their families and the large-scale construction of community. Or, baptism was reduced from ritual to ceremonial, the mode of activity ‘lowered’ from the spiritual to the religious for a political programme effecting conversion not of souls but of bodies, for a statist characterisation of the people rather than persons. Or – to take up the modern initiation studies reading of demise – since it was mostly performed just for the newborn, baptism became a naming ceremony (christening) removed from any relationship to youth (so no longer part of a young person’s status change as effected by entry into the Church). Similarly, the Eucharist became a weekly ceremonial, the Sabbath Eucharist (lit. ‘thanksgiving’), a presentation to the congregated performed by the priest in his direct line of authority from God. As a routinized abstraction (relationship with Jesus), not only was its original socio-cultural force of human communion (the shared meal) long lost, but also most of its efficacy as ritual entry (outside of the first communion, with its various histories in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions). And the traditional catechumenate was shortened and began to disappear, its functions addressed to parents and ‘godparents’. Thus, over time, Christian schooling was largely given over to the family, to be gained in faith, prayer and the performance of Christian duty (Saxer, 1989). A complex and paradoxical history of discourse development Discursively, then, the mysteries were reduced to metaphor, while initiation ritual itself was diminished, with a reduced potency of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist as 84 Congregans

divinus sacerdos sacrum chorum, siquidem sanctifico fuerit ordine dormiens, in conspectus divini altaris inclinans eum, initiatur ad Deum oratione et Eucharistia (Floss, 1853: 1106 [VII]; emphasis added); in headings (of sections, etc.), init- insertion occurs, for instance, with the (1897) English for Pseudo-Dionysius’ explanation of ritual practice entitled ‘Concerning those who are being initiated in illumination’; the Latin here was ‘De perficiendis in photismate’ (ibid., 1071 [II]), which literally refers only to completion (perfection) in respect of light (but using mysteries terminology).

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initiations for the community at large and the shift towards a text-based instruction and then decline in catechism. At the same time, however, the development of the monastic tradition was to enable an initiatory tradition that, however failing the lay person, was later to be expressed through, for example, the sixteenth century Societas Iesu (Society of Jesus, the Jesuits), and thence, the work of Lafitau and an eventual continuity and revivification, eventually to be expressed in the development of an identifiable modern initiation studies. Before that, when initiation was always into mysteries – or into the Christian Mystery – we should probably better speak about a mysteries discourse, which involved initiation and out of which the (modern) initiation discourse emerged. Our narrative, therefore, follows the transition from the mysteries discourse to the initiation discourse.85 Lafitau had introduced the notion of initiation into the mysteries into his work with the justifying observation that the Church Fathers themselves had used the idea, employing the (representation of ) the ‘mysteries of the Christian religion’ when ‘speaking before the Catechumens commencing instruction’. And he cited the Fathers several times in his advocacy of a prisca theologia syncretic in relation to his perception of classical rite in contemporary tribal practice (the Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains). Indeed, he used his Introduction to establish the mysteries as exemplifying the universal recognition of Divine Being. Following acknowledgement of his debt to his immediate Jesuit forbear, Julian Garnier, who had established the mission in the region, Lafitau’s only other citation (note) there was (first) to ‘Saint Justin, Saint Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Augustine and several other Fathers of the Church [who] believed that they could see in the works of Plato some quite distinct knowledge of the mystery of the most Holy Trinity’.86 Similarly, by the time of the ‘scholarly’ ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, William Ramsey (1884: 124) was leading off the entry on the (Greek) Mysteries with the acknowledgement that it was to the ‘Christian writers’ that ‘we owe most of our knowledge’ about the ‘ceremonies’.87 The Church Fathers were numbered among many of the leading figures of early Christianity who invoked the holistic universalism of Plato – of the One, or the wisdom 85 More

accurately, the narrative depicts a transition from mysteries discourses to initiation discourses. (1724: 6, 9, 222): ‘C’étoit aussi sous la même idée d’une Ecole, que les Saints Peres eux-mêmes représentoient les Mysteres de la Religion Chrétienne, lorsque parlant devant les Cathécumenes, qui commençoient à se faire instruire’; ‘…le consentement unanime de tous les Peuples à reconnoître en Etre superieur…’; ‘Saint Justin, S. Clement d’Alexandrie, Eusébe de Césarée, S. Augustin & plusieurs autres Péres de l’Eglise, [qui] ont cru voir dans les Ouvrages de Platon quelque connaissance assez distincte du Mystére de la trés-sainte Trinité’. 87 Ramsey states that the Christian writers ‘were arguing against… those pagan controversialists who maintained that all the truths and the morality advocated by the Christian writers were contained in the Greek religion’; the init- entry (related to mysteries) had been withdrawn from the Britannica prior to the ninth edition (so it was absent from Volume XIII, edited by Robertson Smith) – and was not to return until the eleventh edition, fifteen years later (see note 33); initiation in the ninth edition was better represented under the entry for ‘Circumcision’, which was divided into sections on the Old Testament, ethnography and antiquity (Cheyne, 1876: 789-791). 86 Lafitau

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of underlying Form (cf. hyparxis) – as an expression of the truth that Jesus had realised in His perfection. As an identifiable origin of the (yet unnamed) prisca theologia, this became a major reason for Plato’s inclusion and early positioning in the ancient-wisdom lineage-transmission lists. Such thinking contributed to the development of the Western esoteric as an ambiguously alternative, mystico-religious dynamic, which functioned as a cultural undercurrent and counter-current to the expanding power of the Papacy. Monastic, intellectual and other developments in Christianity – or Christianities, both Western and Eastern and various of their Churches (e.g. Slavic Orthodox) – effectively fomented, as a semi- or somewhat institutionalised tradition, what was to evolve into a ‘secret’ heterodoxy, or a heterodoxy of the secret, or Christian mysticism. An illustration of this from Pseudo-Dionysius was the history of his Mystical Theology, translated from (ninth to) twelfth and thirteenth-century Latin into Middle English by the late 1300s. At that time considered [sub-]apostolic), this was employed as a significant source for the popular work, Cloud of Unknowing (the translator of the Theology and author of the Cloud are taken to be the same person, unknown). This history, also, exhibits a discoursal evolution, with several developments in the translation process concerning what Rosemary Lees (1981: 157, 169) terms the ‘mystical vocabulary’. These included a move away from the usage of myst- forms and introduction instead of words like ‘pryue’ (private, secret) and ‘blynde’ (blind). The title, for example, went from Mystica Theologia to Hid Diuinite (Hidden Divinity), while in the text, ‘mysticorum eloquiorum’ and ‘profunda mysteria Scripturarum’ both became ‘derke inspirid spekynges’.88 The net result of the linguistic changes may be characterised as a subtle Christianisation and perhaps mystification (sic) of the text, but also as a ‘drift to an experiential orientation’ (Taylor, 2006: 206). Certainly, it involved a reduction or discontinuity of the mysteries discourse (and also effected thereby a return, as it were, towards the earlier, Greek form of pluralist expression, i.e. different myst-naming terms).89 

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of (the English) ‘derk’ were also used for different forms of (the Latin) ‘caligo’ and ‘tenebra’ (which referenced mist, death, etc.); e.g. referring to divinity and radiance, the Latin ‘supersubstantialem divinarum tenebrarum radium’ became just ‘derknes’. 89 Similarly, when introducing his gloss to the (Latin) Mystical Theology in 1241, John Sarazen explained that he understood ‘“mystical” in the sense of “secret” or “hidden”’ (McEvoy, 2003: 15). Cheryl Taylor (2006: 204) contends that the Latin-to-English translator’s choices were made to ‘actively confirm his development of negative theology in The Cloud’ (e.g. ‘mysticas visiones’ became the paradoxical ‘blynde beholdynges’); notably, the Cloud of Unknowing (Underhill, 1922) contained not a single init- or myst- form. Modern (and recent) translations of Mystical Theology (from the Greek) do introduce init- forms that were not in the Latin; e.g. in Chapter 1, ‘nullus doctorum’ is ‘the initiated’ and ‘Si autem super istos sunt divine doctrine mysteriorum…’ concerns ‘initiation into the divine…’ in the translations by Shrine of Wisdom (1923: 10) and Dysinger (2003), respectively.

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Thence, there commenced an apparent interregnum, initiation’s own Dark Ages or Medieval (between-ages), post-classical period, after the institution of Christianity and collapse of the (Western) Roman Empire leading to papal supremacy.90 Originally from the late fourth century, the Latin Bible version that was in common use by the 1200s (so, as the versio vulgata) and formally adopted at the 1545 Tridentine Council (Concilium Tridentinum) had between a quarter and third of the instances of ‘musterion/mysterium’ replaced with ‘sacramentum’. This was not exactly an ‘alien rendering’ (Findlay, 1909: 639), since both words historically got at the Greek in the sense of the sacred and were also used together, ‘side by side’ (Foster, 1915: 415). Nevertheless, it did express and play into the overall demise of initiation. Similarly, when Latin liturgies establishing the proscribed Mass were eventually produced, they employed no instances of init- forms, and when the seven sacraments of the Church as formally stipulated under Pope Paul III at the Trident Council were finally ratified by Pius IV in 1564, there was no mention at all of initiation (nor for mysteries or catechism, etc.). Nevertheless, it was just at this low-point of initiation history that we see the shoots of an esoteric (practical) and textual (theoretical) revival of the ritual and its reading, (re)established as the tradition of the revivalist modern mysteries – since, following the growth of guilds instituting membership and holy orders ritualising entry, there came the (pre- and early and then full) Renaissance or early modern period (re)discovery of the Classical and Ancient, including its mysteries and magic. And it was similarly at this juncture, during the rule in Britain of the English Tudors and Scottish Stuarts, that initiation as the sacraments was idiomatically (if sometimes scandalously) normalised in English. The political divisions expressed through religion and the treatment of the mysteries as covered in the eighteenth-century encyclopaedias were already well rooted in the vernacular of the latter 1600s. The religious scholar and historian William Cave focused, among other things, on early Christianity and the Church Fathers in works like Primitive Christianity (on the Ancient Christians in the First Ages of the Gospel). There, baptism is referred to in terms such as ‘the door by which persons enter in, the great and solemn rite of our initiation into the faith of Christ’ and as the catechumens’ ‘Badge of their initiation into Christ (Cave, 1672: 296, 309; emphasis original). In Cave’s work, the reporting on ‘pagan rites’ reiterates the early Christian condemnation. However, by the turn of the century – following in the wake of the English Reformation and the full impact of the ‘Copernican Revolution’ worked out through Newton to Descartes, wherein God’s place as explicans and the importance of Man on Earth were much reduced – the discourse was employed in the service of something much more critical. Among the printed works performing this task were those of John Toland, a highly educated Irish convert to Anglicanism who controversially advocated a rationalist interpretation of religious doctrine. Prefaced with an opening statement of his belief in 90 A ‘dark’ age that saw the development of the (Christian) mystery tradition of mysticism, the esoteric negativa.

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‘freedom’, Toland’s overtly radical Christianity not Mysterious proclaimed its argument with the assertive denial for a title. In fact, Toland’s thesis in this respect may be compared to Lafitau’s anthropology, since, although they were quite different in aim, they employed a somewhat shared discourse. For his part, Toland argued specifically for the ‘parallel between the Heathen and new Coin’d Christian Mysteries’. Toland’s (1696: 156-157, 165) reasoning for the assertion of the Heathen-Christian ‘parallel’ involved an accusation of malevolent mystification. For example, the ‘Rites of the Supper… were introduced… by endeavouring to make the plainest things in the World appear mysterious [enabling] their very Nature and use... [to be] absolutely perverted and destroy’d’… [and] not yet fully restor’d by the purest Reformations in Christendom’. He presented a listing of five ways in which the Heathen and Christian mysteries were actually ‘one in Nature’, with observations such as they ‘both made use of the words initiating and perfecting… [and] looked upon Initiation as a kind of deifying’ (emphasis original). And he further supported his disputation with a quotation from Cyril of Jerusalem’s Preface to his catechetical address (appending the Greek original employed [from 1631]). The text in this seven-page section was replete with init- forms.  Another version of the modernisation history during this era is afforded from post-Byzantine and Ottoman Anatolia, developed as the mystical aspect of Islam. This goes outside of Christian history and the specifically European, but returns to a centre of the mysteries and the classical world. Thus, it offers a comparative glance on the Christian and European (so Western) narrative. Consideration of the development there could start with the ancient traditions of itinerants and charismatics (Burkert, 1987: 31), around whom fluid, informal communities of followers (literally) would emerge. But the main narrative moves through the thirteenth century gatherings around mystics, or ‘dervishes’ (who wore plain wool, sufi in Latinate Arabic), to arrive at the organisation of tariqas (spiritual centres) that evolved over time into chains of teacher/pupil relationships (silsilas). These developed initiation systems in which guides/initiators (murshids) directed disciples/initiates through the learning and practice of specific sounds/chants (wirds), formulae and symbols in a step-by-step progression (spiritual process). In considering the relationship of the silsila Sufi orders to the local trade guilds and orders of craftsmanship (and ‘chivalry’), the futuwwa. John Spencer Trimingham (1971) sets out by emphasising their differences (according to the purpose of association, either religious or economic), but this distinction immediately blurs: ‘the initial organisation of the religious orders… owed much to that of the guilds,’ and likewise, ‘guilds were sanctified by tariqas’. Thus, ‘a particular guild and its members tended to be linked with a particular tariqa and saint’, with ‘religious rites’ being the ‘predominant feature’ of guild ceremonies, including

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initiation. Thus, he concludes, the guilds ‘were not associations… but neither were they Sufi orders’ (Trimingham, 1971: 24-25, 189). Indeed, the classification of secular organisations employing initiation and their relationship to religion may be complex and blurry – a generalisation that holds for Europe, too. An obvious parallel here is with the initiatory catechism of the early Christian Church and its institutionalisation in orders and abbeys. And thus, the essential dynamic is of a de-sacralisation. First, there is a grounding of the mystical in religious structure, and then this itself becomes societally transformed by material interests. Eventually in Europe, the modern mysteries tradition was to flourish and then flounder until its own rebirth, to flower again and then (re-)seed in the late Victorian as a modern discourse, with initiation in anthropology and a concomitant sociology of religion also linked to the development of the social sciences. In Germany during this period, for example, the historical approach to religion of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule situated Christianity as one religion among others. In this, enlightened and revisionary science was pit against the traditionalism tying church to state as a fixity, wherein the contextualisation of an evolutionary setting picked out the Jewish and Christian stories of the Bible as fundamentally derivative. Writing on the Lord’s Supper [or Communion] in the New Testament, Albert Eichhorn (1898) had the Death and Resurrection as crucially reconstructed (by the early Church). Since the actual facts around the saviour-rebirth remained inaccessible, they could have been mysticised for polemical purposes. Thus, as it could be expressed, although we might know that the transubstantiation of the sacrament was rooted in the Gospel of Christ’s words at the Last Supper announcing of His imminent demise (or ‘rebirth’ in the Kingdom of God), we did not know anything about what Jesus (the man named ‘Isa’) really said about his future (if anything). Perhaps he had not actually made a prophecy, there was no presentient pronouncement. This type of careful distinction between knowledge and faith that could so easily go towards an atheistic scientism was by no means ubiquitous, however. What may be dubbed a neo-Christian esoterica developed from a mystical re-reading also emerged, along with and as a part of the end- and turn-of-century initiation of initiation.91 Rudolf Steiner (1902) traced a spiritual narrative of the ancient mysteries in terms of their having led to the fulfilment of initiation in the actual death and rebirth of Jesus the Christ, so to Christianity as Mystical Fact – implying Jesus as the end of rite, in some sense. And indeed, that can be said to be what had (materially) transpired, as the rise of the new, universalising religion became the downfall of the old ones. But not completely, of course, insofar as there had also developed the monastic tradition of practice and construction of a discursive bridge from the ancient through the syncretic of neoplatonic Christianity, or

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Evelyn Underhill’s (1911: 541ff.) Historical Sketch of Mysticism appended to her work on Mysticism was very careful in its treatment of the mysteries before moving to the Christian era, focusing mostly on just listing individual (Christian) mystics and their achievements in the negativa tradition of the first half of the second millennium.

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Christian neoplatonism – which evolved as Christian mysticism and was eventually linked back to, retrospectively, from the Renaissance. During the half millennium after Christ, that is, the Christianity in Europe that finally killed off the mysteries was also to become a main root of the Western esoteric, nourishing the various, entwining secret orders, including the Rosicrucian and masonic traditions that fed into the modern notion of initiation. And while, furthermore, this developed with primarily anthropological associations into a sociological discourse with a scientising and secularising design, that same orientation also promoted a neo-Christian esoterica, which was to lead into new syntheses of the perennial philosophy – or spirituality. Summarising in appropriately expansive brushstrokes to sweep across the grand narrative of this history, we might characterise a dual sense of initiation into lesser and greater mysteries as conceptually abstracted and materially diminished. Although calendrical marking (e.g. of the springtime Eleusinian rites) was maintained (Easter), social (community) entry became subsumed in the Christian sacrament, and mystical experience (the harvest climax) was transmuted into a mysticising reference to God through the figure of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, the mystery sects were ended, and the various Christian entry rites mainly failed to replace their experiential function of ecstasy. Rather, initiations into the Mystery became an abstract appreciation of the Trinity, offering a life of contemplation. Thus, by the time the English word ‘mystery’ emerged in the early fourteenth century (probably via the old French ‘mistere’), it was importantly with the Christian meaning of the divine mystery, or God, and a sense of the Christian esoteric of the negativa. The development of an initiation discourse as such in nineteenth century ethnoanthropology was rooted both directly and indirectly (through intermediary translations) in the mysteries discourse of earlier Greek and Latin (and Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, etc.) texts. This was also effected as part of a generalised shift of modernity, one that extended the reference in the old texts to mysteries through more or less interpretive translations, informing and informed by and so broadly parallel with the development of Rosicrucianism and freemasonry and establishment of human science. The Latin(ate) init- forms eventually came to dominate, linked to the emergence of ethno-anthropology and ultimately sidelining myst- forms to the domain of the classical-historical, outside and condemned as theistic-occult. The mysteries had become initiation, the religious giving way to the social, and the mystical to adult initiation – which (paradoxically) birthed the category of the spiritual. In this process, however, the theistic-occult did continue to feature as a main concern in anthropology, expressed in initiation through the idea and study of shamanism (Appendix 2).

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Chapter 7. Shamans, death and rebirth During the Age(s) of Discovery and Empire, the idea of initiation was extended from the classical mysteries to a range of entry rituals observed mostly among non-European pre-agrarian peoples. These rituals afforded membership of societies (tribes), of social groupings (totems, fraternities, etc.), along with induction into specific social roles or role types (chief, man/woman, etc.). Among the latter was that of medicine man, witch doctor, sorcerer, soothsayer and the like, the ritual making of which may be dubbed a ‘spiritual-role initiation’, or initiation into the social position of spirit-worker. This terminology refers loosely to – or, abstractly generalises – an individual’s communal work and status/power as (any combination of ) ritual specialist, healer-magician-herbalist, diviner and suchlike, where ‘spirit’ equivocates between (both) individual spirits (of animals embodied, sick people recovered, etc.) and spirit in general (as opposed to matter, so the mystical aspect of experience, including in initiations). A particular interest emerged in the category of spirit-workers named ‘shaman’, which took on a broad meaning and became standard in northern Asia and the Americas. This term has largely replaced other earlier, English-language names there, which gradually fell out of favour or fashion for various reasons, such as their connotations of a Christian judgement around evil. The specification of spirit-worker initiation is thus also loosely referenced by ‘shamanic initiation’, while spirit-worker initiation here also falls loosely under the category of ‘spiritual initiation’. Which is to say that there are issues around the precision of definitions that mitigate against an overly strict application of the logic enforcing this hierarchy of categorisation, which does, nevertheless, establish a basic framework. Three further general points are made here in regard to the study of spirit-worker initiation as a focus of initiation studies. First, application of the ancient (mysteries) to the contemporary (tribal) through the idea of initiation went together with that of social entry more generally, as individuals took their place in the community through such ritual forms. Or, the age-based and institutional character of tribal initiations generally (named ‘adolescent’, ‘a boy’s’, ‘secret society’, etc.) did not always distinguish it from practices that developed skills and abilities in spirit and characterised particular individuals and their roles within tribal societies. Indeed, there was not always or necessarily a clear distinction between initiations into spirit-work and into other things, such as adulthood, so an overlap in practice and conceptual blurring was already Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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indicated (e.g. the North American ‘vision quests’ – see pp. 83, 85). Thus, the general interest in initiation ceremonies cannot easily be separated from that in spirit-worker initiation. Ethno-anthropologically, this was placed in the context of a more general concern with ceremony as a striking, active expression of other culture, as a strange and dramatic exotic. Second, there was a particular interest in spirit-workers – including in their initiations – that was structured by the concern with religion. Originally, this involved the search for a redemptive truth that humanised the savage (the identification of indigenous peoples’ belief in a supreme power or God, albeit distorted or lacking, so not quite the right God). In the case of the missionary observers of spirit-workers, this carried the pique of a special interest in their shared profession or calling. Then, there gradually developed the further impetus from a rather different background of concern with magic and religion in the Age of Science as a cultural phenomenon of the modern epoch. Christian dogma was now subject, like any other, to an (increasingly) free and open questioning, empirical investigation and analysis (cf. Biblical studies, evolution theory). Like ethno-anthropology generally, the concentration on matters religious as applied to the study of other also involved a reflexive consciousness, in this case of a (Western) socio-culture coming to terms with its own faith and belief and moving towards a rationalist rejection or at least reconsideration of the literalist reading of its own sacred stories. Finally, a commonality can be identified linking the cultish as freemasonry to the paganism of shamans. We can view the impetus of the former that later informed theosophy and the new spirituality as emerging in the latter through the science of initiation studies. Essentially, a line can be drawn linking the one to the other where the fading expression of a pre-modern mysticism gave way to a new discovery of something pre-ancient – or, the modern making of shamanism. Thus, there was a direct and inverse relationship in the initiation discourse of the masonic to the shamanic. The mysticising function was transferred, a kind of discursive mutation determined by relationship to the discourse and the science more broadly. Whereas the craft provided input, while it was a cause in the ethno-anthropology, shamans were a result, something produced. Or, from the residue of the secularisation of the initiation discourse in the transformation of its expression from mysteries to initiation – in the modern making of initiation – there emerged a new discourse of shamanism, housed partly within and that eventually made a great contribution to initiation studies (thence anthropology and contemporary culture generally). Historical contexts In Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, the Society and its Journal went through a decline and hiatus. The early energy had waned, the scientific (non-activist) mission was in a period of reassessment and the organisation buffeted by an institutional schism that developed from Darwin’s work and the place of the Christian religion in human affairs and scholarly endeavours. A Society periodical returned in 1861 with the first volume of a new journal, 128 

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its Transactions. This featured the first two uses Society publications of init- forms. One, by Thomas Hutchinson (1861: 335), was dull and plainly inaccurate: ‘Of the ceremonials of initiation into its mysteries’ – it was stated, referring to those of the Egbo – ‘nothing is known’. Since Daniell (1848) had already given some information to the Society on these ceremonials, clearly something was known (see p. 75). Nevertheless, this contribution was significant, also providing as it did a first Society usage of the stock phrasing of the discourse ([init]-[myst]), thereby instituting this in British ethno-anthropology. Meanwhile, reporting in the same volume from southern Australia, William Stanbridge (1861: 287, 300) mentioned a ‘ceremony when boys arrive at puberty previous to taking rank with the men’, obtaining the ‘office’ of ‘doctors or priests’ after ‘a doctor knocks out one [or both] of the upper front teeth’. This, he explained, was achieved ‘by the individual visiting, while in a trance of two or three days duration, the world of spirits, and there receiving the necessary initiation’. Combining these contributions from Hutchinson and Stanbridge, we can state that initiation was introduced as such into the Society in relation to entry rites characterised in terms both of age and adult status and also of spiritual-role and mystical experience. Thus, the discourse developed in the formalised setting of British ethnoanthropology as already a composite, functionally discrete (with different end products, like ‘doctors’ and ‘men’), but nevertheless grouped under the single term, ‘initiation’, which was characterised in terms of (a type or category of ) ‘ceremony’. As the development of British ethnology proceeded towards a recognisably modern anthropology during the 1860s, there was a marked quickening of the pace of published material generally and on initiation in particular. In the Transactions, two years after the pieces by Hutchinson and Stanbridge, the Society’s first full description of a ritual appeared – a thousand words plus on activities surrounding the ‘Idol Human Head of the Jìvaro Indians of Equador’ (Bollaert, 1863). Alongside this, there was a short sketch of entry into the ‘office’ of ‘the “manangs,” or spirit doctors,’ among the ‘Wild Tribes of Borneo’, whose duties involved finding the ‘lost souls’ responsible ‘in cases of sickness’ (Labuan, 1863, 27, 31). Two years later again, there was the first full Society account of initiation named thus, a page on how a ‘youth at the age of puberty’ (14-16 years) is ‘counted as qualified for admission as a man into the [‘Watchandy’] tribe’, followed by half a page on the preparation of ‘immature females for the marriage state’ (Oldfield 1865, 251-252). And in the same volume, Thomas Hutchinson (1865: 323) now reported on how, among the ‘Chaco and Other Indians of South America’, a man not attacked by a tiger on a long journey would be considered a ‘“comocois,” or priest’ following his ‘probation’. This involved a ‘two years fasting regime [and] abstinence from marital connection’, when the man would learn ‘the names of all the tigers in his territory as well as to cure diseases’ (whenever someone killed a tiger, that person would apply to the village comocois for the name of the animal, which he then adopted in place of his birth name – for which the comocois received ‘his heraldic [sic] fee’. Three years after that, there was a report on the ‘Darien Indians’ – meaning the ‘Caribs ‘and Arrowaaks’ of the ‘Isthmus of Darien’ (Panama). This included a description of Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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how a ‘candidate for admission [sic]… took his rank as a prophet and soothsayer’, namely, through ‘severe penance by rigorous fasts, scourging, suffocating fumigations, and horrid lacerations of his body’ that enabled a ‘familiar spirit, or demon’ to come under his power (Cullen, 1868: 165). This listing may be completed with Tylor’s (1871) two-volume Primitive Culture – generally taken as the marker for the cultural turn around which ethnology’s transformation into anthropology pivoted (in Britain, but with wider repercussions). At the head of a halfpage near the end of the first volume, a sentence on the ‘trance’ of Stanbridge’s ‘native doctor’ (above) is followed by similar examples, including the ‘Khond priest’ (India), ‘Gronland Angekok’ and ‘Turanian shaman’ (Tylor, 1871: [I] 396). This grouping of spirit-workers leads on to a further consideration of ‘Animism’, which, together with a section on Rites and Customs, takes up the entirety of the second volume. Actually, a significant concern of the whole work is expressed through the ideas of spirit and the spirit-worker category: The issue raised by the comparison of savage, barbaric, and civilized spiritualism, is this: Do the Red Indian medicine-man, the Tatar necromancer, the Highland ghost-seer, and the Boston medium, share the possession of belief and knowledge of the highest truth and import, which, nevertheless, the great intellectual movement of the last two centuries has simply thrown aside as worthless? Is what we are habitually boasting of and calling new enlightenment, then, in fact a decay of knowledge? (ibid.: 141) In this short passage, Tylor employs a three-stage model of human development (savage > barbaric > civilized), later used also by Frazer; he references religion and the occult (‘the highest truth’, ‘spiritualism’); and in the questions he establishes a rationale for his subject in human science (somewhat evoking the perennial philosophy embedded in the trope of degeneration). In like fashion, Tylor goes on to comment on the ‘strenuous resistance’ of the ‘widely spread and deeply rooted religion of the Sun’ to the ‘invasion of Christianity’ and on the ‘production of ecstasy and swoon by bodily exercises, chanting and screaming… belonging originally to savagery’. He notes that this (production of ecstasy) has been ‘continued into higher grades of civilization’, and he exemplifies it with various practices (of fasting, purification, etc.) and the ‘preparation for his sacred office’ of the ‘priest or sorcerer in Guyana’ and the ‘Winnebago medicine feast’ for the ‘candidates of initiation’ (citing Schoolcraft). Thus, even if a contemporary expression of this – the ‘manifestations in modern Europe’ as ‘part of a revival of religion’ – may actually have constituted a ‘revival of mental disease’, still, importantly, the ‘transition from the field of religion to the field of philosophy’ that facilitated the ‘theory of ideas’ was to be explicated through the ‘study of Mythology’,

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assuming ‘myth as a natural and regular product of the human mind’ (Tylor, 1871: [II] 268, 379-382, 404-405). We may conclude from this that in the transition from ‘ethnology’ to ‘anthropology’ in Britain as influenced and symbolised by Tylor’s major work and characterised as a cultural turn in the study of the primitive, that turn was very much expressed in terms of primitive religious culture. Insofar as this turn was contiguous with, exemplified by and in part expressed through the establishment of the new meaning of initiation as tribal ceremony and coming-of-age ritual, Tylor’s work stands as a major marker for the discursive development of the initiation discourse. But this key text performing that disciplinary transition itself very much maintained the old meaning related to mystery, referencing initiation in the context of myth and religion and including its specific function of making spirit-workers.92 Shamans: outer Russia, out from Russia Notable in the early British ethnology was the employment of local names, transliterated but not (directly) translated, for the social role(s) also denoted by (English) terms like ‘medicine man’ and ‘priest’ (here, ‘spirit-worker’). Among the Society pieces mentioned, there was ‘manang’, ‘comocois’, and ‘angekok’. Also, there was ‘shaman’, later to become adopted in English, on a par linguistically with other terms that made a similar cross-cultural journey, like ‘totem’ (from Nova Scotia, east Canada) and ‘taboo’ (Polynesia). Originally employed by Evenki peoples in northern central Asia, the word ‘shaman’ and associated practices and ideas were not new to Europe. In ancient times, some two and a half thousand years previously, Herodotus had mentioned the use of hemp in heat baths (cf. sweat lodges) by the Scythians (originally from southern Siberia, then territorially spread as far west as todays’ Romania and Hungary) (Cary, 1852: 261 [IV.78]). Modern reports of the practice, if not exactly the initiations, of the ‘Kam’ or ‘cham’ can be traced back at least to the mid-thirteenth century (Latin) journal of the mission undertaken by Franco-Flemish Franciscan friar Willem van Ruysbroeck (William of Rubruck), dispatched to Karakorum (in Mongolia), then capital of the Mongol Empire (which at that time extended into eastern Europe and whose army was poised to take Rome, hence the mission) (Rockhill, 1900). The Tunguz word ‘šaman/xaman’ – ‘шаман’, in modern Cyrillic, Anglicised as ‘shaman’ – is considered to have entered the Russian lexicon through priestly contacts in the imperial outlands, its wilderness to the east, which came to be dubbed ‘Сибирь’ (Siberia) during the seventeenth century. An early recounting of such encounters is contained in the autobiography of the (Orthodox) archpriest Avvakum Petrov, twice exiled to Siberia in the 1660s for his role in a politico-religious conflict. This was written around 1670 and distributed in hand-written and copied manuscript form after his burning at the stake 92 Tylor (1871: [II] 400) mentions initiation by name in two other places, one for the ‘Mandan ceremonies of initiation into manhood’ (citing Catlin) and the other for Judeo-Christian baptism.

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in 1682 (eventually to be published in printed book form in St. Petersburg, 1861). The English translation (Harrison and Mirrlees, 1924) included a short passage that referred to a ‘soothsayer’, a ‘magician working with devils’. This describes how the man span round with a ram until its head was wrenched off, whereupon he fell to the floor and, foaming at the mouth, made a prophecy as requested. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a series of primarily German, overland, academic expeditions deep into the Russian Empire attested to and classified the activities of practitioners there. In the first and most voluminous of the reports, which were soon translated into French, the leader of one team, Peter Simon Pallas (1788: 618-621), listed five classes of ‘magician’ or ‘diviner’, including performances such as ‘intoning the hymns of necromancy while playing a tambourine decorated with rings’.93 Since Russians in the expanding empire used ‘шаман’ (shaman) for the spirit-worker of the indigenous tribal peoples of Siberia, German ethnographers also employed the term, as ‘schaman’. Thus, through its work in Siberia, Germanic ethnography (Völker-Beschreibung, lit. folk description) developed the modern discourse on shamanism. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in a ‘Visit with Buryat Shamans’ – the Buryat being a people of Irkutsk, southern central Asia – Alfred Bastian (1866: 396) explained that ‘the term “shamanism” is generally used to refer to the religious fetish encountered among Siberian tribes’.94 Bastian saw the role of shaman as a tribal societal channelling of psychomental disturbance – so as ill health, but treated positively (the sufferer taking up a position of social responsibility rather than being consigned to the exclusion diagnosis of insanity). And he considered that the ceremonial dramas associated with the inclusion of individuals into the role of shaman in Siberia – their preparation, acceptance and announcement – might be grouped together with the inclusion rites of investiture into the totem clans of North America. Very widely travelled and a key figure in the theoretical and practical development of ethnoanthropology, Bastian was, among other things, founder in Berlin of the State (then Royal) Ethnological Museum (Staatliches/Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde) and developer through various publications of the concept of ‘elementary ideas’ (Elementargedankan). This testified to the psychic unity of mankind, a forerunner to Durkheim’s (1912) ‘elementary forms’ and Jung’s (later) notion of ‘archetype’ evidencing the ‘collective unconscious’ (the latter drawing also from Plato for its expression as ‘primordial image’). Bastian’s work was employed also by Frazer, and he strongly influenced Franz Boas, one of his student’s at the Museum, who, in the mid-1880s, took Bastian’s intellectual concerns across the Atlantic, where he was to later become a key figure, or founding father, in the development of American anthropology (Köpping, 1983; Gingrich, 2005). Thus, Bastian came to contribute 93 ‘Le devin commence par entonner des cantiques de négromancie, en jouant d’un tambour magique garni

d’anneaux’ (Pallas, 1788: 620); Flaherty (1992) covers the ‘European encounter’ with shamanism in the 1700s. 94 ‘Mit dem Namen Schamanismus wird im Allgemeinen der religiöse Fetischdienst bezeichnet, der dei den verschiedenen Völkerschaften Sibiriens angetroffen wurde…’

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to the wider application of the notion of ‘shaman’, advocating for the idea of its diffusion across the Bering Sea, where, he argued, it evolved in the cultural zones of the Americas that he identified. And thus, through the human linkage with Boas, did Bastian contribute to the conceptual generalisation of shamanism as a category (that of spirit-worker) and assist its passage into modern thought. Application of the concept of initiation was implied for the developing study of shamanism as elementary religious form, with the word ‘shaman’ operating as a blanket term for a generalised social role in a part of the Old World related to that which appeared similar in the New. Or, the spirit-worker idea of central Asia dubbed ‘shaman’ was extended to and gradually applied throughout the Americas. It was not, as a rule, extended backwards through the history of human migration to Africa, where the old terms, like ‘witchdoctor’, tended to prevail. Which is not to say, of course, that the further generalisation of ‘shaman’ to more ancient contexts, as Ur-form for spirit-worker, did not occur.  As Boas was journeying to a new life in New York, another passage to the Americas for shamanism was being made by Charles Godfrey Leland. Leland was raised in Philadelphia but studied in Germany for a period before finally settling in London (so, a kind of reverse movement to that of Boas). In a work on Algonquin Legends (on the Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Tribes), Leland (1884: v, 11, 239, 336) asserted the ‘undeniable affinity between the myths and legends of the Northeastern [New England] Indians and those of the… angakok [spirit-worker]’ and also the ‘identity of the latter and of the Shaman religion with those of the Finns, Laplanders, and Samoyedes [northern Siberian peoples]’. He thus suggested this root, through the Eskimo (Inuit), for the historical origin of ‘American Shamanism’, that this ‘sorcery… formed the basis of the old Accadian Babylonian cultus’, and concluded that ‘Shamanism has probably been at the root of all religions’. Bastian was the first of the museum people acknowledged in Boas’ Preface to his report on the National (Smithsonian) Museum’s collection, where he contributed a work on the Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians (in British Columbia). Following fieldwork undertaken in 1894, Boas’ thorough contribution (illustrated with drawings and photographs, pages of annotated music for songs, etc.) described the process of a boy’s coming of age at 10-12 years. This was tied to the communal ritual through which a ‘youth’ would gain the ‘acquisition of a guardian spirit’ – of which there were four, each with their special powers (Boas had observed the hamatsa ritual, associated with the ‘cannibal’ and also raven spirits. This ritual gained the hereditary ‘gift of the spirit’, through mask-wearing in a dance that comprised a ‘dramatic performance of the myth relating to the acquisition of the spirit’. The hamatsa initiation climaxed in this dance with a ‘death’, when the song of the spirit was received (mythically, mystically or otherwise). It was performed during the winter, Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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with both the ‘period of the winter ceremonial’ and the ‘ceremonial itself ’ being named by a term translated as ‘the secrets’. During this time, the Kwakiutl social structure would be ‘completely changed’, from the clan-based, according to marriage and descent, to spiritbased, ‘according to the spirits that have initiated them’ (thus, to societies determined by the secrets). A single ceremonial would involve the serial initiations of ‘several novices’ (so, several performances of the ritual). Thus, initiation would function as both a societal and social organiser, that is, structuring social relations (through the organisation of extended practice, in the spirits-based and continuous rote of the dance) and structuring the way in which society itself was organised (on a biannual, season-based division of ontological meaning, as it might be analysed). The dance itself would ‘bring back the youth’. Lost in a ‘state of ecstasy’ from his ‘stay with the supernatural being’, the ‘novice’ was returned through the ‘endeavors of the shaman’ and the ‘dances of women’ aimed at ‘exorcising the spirit’ and enabling him to be ‘restored to his senses’. As the leader of the winter rituals of the transformed social order ­– the initiatory, spirit-lineage and thus, one might say, immaterial or covert order) wherein the ontological meaning, as opposed to that of the material lineage and overt structuring of the clan) – the shaman was considered by the anthropologist the ‘most important member’ of the ‘secret society’ (Boas, 1897: 393-396, 418, 431, 544, 642). This may be taken to refer not only to the different spirit-based groupings (e.g. the spirit of the raven), but also to the people as a whole (the Kwakiutl society during its ‘secret’, biannual phase). As the latter, this would suggest an interesting dimension to the notion of the term (‘secret society’), getting at those aspects of a socio-culture that emerge in the mystico-spiritual functioning of its initiation (or other ritual).95 In Britain at the end of the century, an extended (two-part) article devoted to shamanism was published in the Journal – now of the Institute, renamed following resolution of the schism. ‘Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia’ was a translation by Oliver Wardrop taken from Viktor Mikhailovskii’s (1892) work offering Comparative Ethnographic Sketches on Shamanism.96 Introducing shamanism as a ‘phenomenon characteristic of many peoples, scattered throughout many parts of the world’ – referring, at least, to ‘analogous institutions’ in the Americas, Mikhailovskii and Wardrop (1895: 62-63, 85-90, 153, 158) proceeded to detail this in the service of ‘universal ethnography’. A shaman would qualify to become a ‘pupil of the mysteries’ (sic) either by ‘hereditary right’ (‘the profession’ being ‘followed by those who come from a shamanistic family’) or ‘in consequence of some special disposition manifesting 95 The

1894 fieldwork on which Boas first witnessed an (actual) Kwakiutl hamatsa ritual was part-sponsored by BAAS (and undertaken under some duress) – he had previously seen a Chicago exposition performance (Hinsley and Holm, 1976). Boas explains that a boy would be ‘counted among the men’ through completion of blanket exchanges during a ‘festival’, when he would take a third name dressed with a headband and face-paint and be given his father’s seat (the father then taking a place ‘among the old men’); further to the initiation mentioned here, he describes various other types, and he gives several indigenous names for (male and female) shamans (Boas, 1897: 341-342). 96 Shamanstvo: Sravnitel’no-Etnograficheskie Ocherki.

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itself ’ (by showing ‘signs’, like seeing a dead shaman in a dream, ‘raging like a madman’ or having ‘intercourse with the gods’). After that, there would be a period of education, which would probably involve ‘an old shaman’ (e.g. learning the ‘names of the spirits and manner of summoning them’) before a final consecration (public anointment, with sacrifices, etc.). As the reference to ‘old shaman’ indicates, one role of the shaman was to initiate new shamans, who in time would, of course, do likewise. Therefore, a shaman was initiator of the initiator, as well as of the youth in general (boys and/or girls), as in the Boas case above. It was shortly after the publication of this article that the English-language translation of Ruysbroeck’s (Rubruck’s) thirteenth-century journal was made, by William Rockhill (1900: 236-246), who added notes that had many references to the five-volume Voyages by Pallas cited above and made use of the word ‘shaman’. Also at this time, marking the onset of that first period of peak interest in initiation, Spencer and Gillen’s (Australian) work was published. In their first major book, following three chapters (VI-VIII) devoted to pubertal-adult initiation as tribal membership ritual, Spencer and Gillen (1899: 533ff.) introduced a chapter (XVI) on ‘The Making and Powers of Medicine Men; Various Forms of Magic’ with several pages on the ‘ceremonies attendant on initiation’ (including the ‘rare occurrence’ of ‘women doctors’). Later, Eliade was to include this in the information collated from Australia that he used to support and extend the main body of work reported from northern central Asia. Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade was a student philosopher in Calcutta who studied Sanskrit and lived for six months in an ashram in Rishikesh in the Himalayan foothills before returning to his native Romania to submit his doctoral thesis, which took a historical perspective on Yoga as an Indian Mysticism. Thereafter, he became known for his popularisation of anthropological studies – not unlike Frazer before him, whom he read as a teenager, Eliade’s work focused on shamanism as ‘archaic’ religion but also initiation. Eliade also was a major figure in the field during his lifetime (based in Paris and then Chicago) and referenced an extensive body of research (notably, citing Russian studies through his knowledge of German). Like Frazer also, Eliade has lost standing in the subsequent assessment of his work as taking second-hand reports and abstracting from them to fit a grander scheme of questionable value based on a now outmoded thinking (primarily in Eliade’s case, an essentialisation of the primitive, his ‘archaic’). The fundamental import of his emphasis on initiation as death-rebirth, however, remains undisputed, albeit, inevitably, critically revisited. In the 1964 English language translation updating his 1951 French work on Shamanism and the Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,97 Eliade devoted the opening four chapters to a consideration of the various ways by which individuals are introduced into the ‘mystical 97 Le

Chamanisme et les Techniques Archaiques de l’Extase.

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vocation’. He characterised ‘ecstasy’ as ‘trance’ and the ‘content’ of the ‘first ecstatic experiences’ as involving one or more of a range of ‘themes’. Briefly, these were bodily dismemberment and internal organ renewal, ascent/descent to the sky/underworld and communication with sprits/gods/dead shamans, and religious/shamanic revelations. Thus, an ‘ecstatic initiation’ was presented as the paradigm form of induction into the social role and position of shaman. Eliade also observed the parallel of Siberian dismemberment-renewal with the Eskimo’s ‘ability to see himself as a skeleton’, which was used in the later editions to introduce ‘mystical rebirth’. This led to that assertion that ‘all the ecstatic experiences that determine the future shaman’s vocation involve the traditional schema of an initiation ceremony: suffering, death and resurrection’. Thence, a tripartite division was applied to the field. In addition to shaman initiations, puberty/adolescence passage rites (citing Van Gennep) and secret society entries also involved a ‘death and resurrection of the candidate’ (Eliade, 1964: 33, 62-63). The parallel of Eliade’s suffering > death > resurrection tripartite division with Van Gennep’s of separation > liminality > recorporation is apparent.98 As a French-speaker, Eliade plainly drew from Van Gennep for this. Shamanism was inserted into Eliade’s French work on Mystic Births, subtitled Essay on Some Types of Initiation (1958),99 translated into English as Birth and Rebirth and retitled, nearly two decades later, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Death and Rebirth (1975). There, the idea of initiation (a ‘birth’) as a psychic death-rebirth was developed, to include also the historical mythologies of Eleusis et al. Also developed in this work was Eliade’s (1949) idea of ‘eternal return’,100 expressing ritual death as a manifestation of the ‘sacred’, an ‘archetype’ of return to ‘Chaos’, with rebirth thus a move back again to the ‘profane’, but sanctified now for a re-creation, a new ‘cosmogony’. ‘Initiatory death’, wrote Eliade (1958: xiv) ‘is indispensable to spiritual life’. Thereafter, the role of the shaman and position in the community was as ‘magico-religious specialist’ (in divination, healing, etc.) and ‘psychopomp’ (from Greek, meaning ‘soul guide’, especially in the passage to death, thence also in initiation). Employing the ethno-anthropological records of initiates acting as though dead, being referred to as dead, painted, for example, in the white, clay-daubed masks of death and subject to the same prohibitions and strictures observed in funereal rites, and with these references to death followed by birth, with new initiates being ‘brought back’, but to a new life and referred to now as the ‘twice-born’, as observed across space (e.g. in India) and time (the Greeks), Eliade was able to present a range of evidence that led him not only to emphasise the death-rebirth motif but also to categorise as an initiation any activity involving this. In other words, all death-rebirths were initiations, by definition. And insofar as initiation is picked out by the death-rebirth experience, which as characterised by Eliade involved the sacred (psychic death) enabling a spiritual life, then it also follows that all initiation is 98 ‘Recorporation’

– see note 29. Mystiques. Essai sur Quelques Types d’Initiation. 100 Le Mythe de l’Eternel Retour. Archétypes et Répétition. 99 Naissances

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spiritual, again, by definition. For Eliade, indeed, the ‘series of initiatory ordeals’ and ‘the revelations that they entail’ that qualified an adolescent to be ‘recognized as a responsible member of the society’ effected the candidate’s introduction not just into adulthood but also into ‘the human community and into the world of spiritual and cultural value’. Thus, the ‘deeper meaning’ of the ordeals was ‘always religious’, since it was ‘religious experience’ that produced the ‘change of existential status in the novice’. Here, however, the ordeals varied in intensity, so the character of the death, thence rebirth, did further work. The ritualised initiation of shamans tended to be observed as severe; it was commonly optional (in the sense of not required of all, but only for those choosing or chosen to take on the role and become shamans); and it was sometimes a further level to the standard (pubertal/adult) form. Webster (1908: 173), for example, had collated various English, American, German and French accounts from the previous decades to illustrate the ‘conversion of the puberty institution into a seminary for the training of the fetish doctors or shamans’. He reiterated work on the Nkimba rites of Lower Congo tribes that were in the ‘charge of the Nganga, or fetish-man’ and where the newly initiated ‘decides whether he will become a fetish-man or return to his ordinary life’. Similarly, Schoolcraft (1857: 633) had reported an initiate’s experience – undergone when ‘approaching maturity’ – in which, on the third day of fasting, ‘different kinds of To-mahna-was [guardian spirits]’ appeared, but they were ‘not the medicine To-mah-na-was’, and it would be ‘many more days’ before they presented; the boy was reported as saying, ‘I was faint, and I only saw an inferior spirit... he has made me a canoe-builder and a hunter… If I could have remained longer, I should have been a doctor’. In John Smith’s early seventeenth century account (cited above), the selection was made for ‘those who did not die’ from the beatings (of the maturity rite). These boys were ‘kept in the wildernesse by the yong men till nine moneths were expired’, during which time they could not ‘converse with any’, and they ‘were made… Priests and Conjurers’.101 Thus, there was also the idea of a ‘shamanic’ initiation as an extension to and more extreme experience of ‘standard’ age-related, maturity ritual. Maturity initiations, it appeared, may be graded into two – distinguishing either between different types or within a single form, interor intra-ritually – with a first level for adulthood and a second level for spirit-worker. Also, however, the difference between the layman and shaman was identified by Eliade in terms of the number or strength of guardian spirits gained and magico-religious power wielded. In this sense, therefore, the distinction was not categorical but quantitative – such that, for example, ‘we could say that every Indian “shamanizes,” even if he does not consciously wish to become a shaman’. However, it was not just the product or the performance – adult versus 101 In this case, the division transcended mortality and the spirit-worker became a god: ‘the common people’ were assumed not to ‘live after death’, but the Natives thought that ‘their Werowances and Priestes which they also esteeme Quiyoughcosughes, when they are dead, doe goe beyound the mountaines towardes the setting of the sun, and ever remaine there in forme of their Oke [gods], with their heads painted with oile and Pocones, finely trimmed with feathers’ (Smith, (1612: 33).

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shaman(ic) – that distinguished the respective roles and initiations. While future shamans were ‘destined to participate in a more intense religious experience than is accessible to the rest of the community’ – the quantitative difference – this experience was characterised by ‘the element of ecstasy’, which was a qualitative difference.102  The notions of shamanic ecstasy and death-rebirth were powerful, routinely cited as definitive and themselves preserved and transmitted in the discourse through a mythic re-telling and ritualistic reiteration. In respect of ecstasy, however, the evidence for shamanic access to and employment of ‘trance’, even as an ill-defined mental state or psychic condition, is unclear and sometimes simply contradicted. People routinely became shamans without any exhibition or even suggestion of trance. Eliade himself detailed various types of entry into the shamanic role, including non-ritualised forms – through a dream, illness and inheritance – wherein a ceremony of confirmation would not be arduous. Equally, it appeared that some ‘ecstasies’ were less a shamanic experience of ecstasy than a performance. Judging a shaman’s mental state from the outside is obviously problematic, but suspicions were regularly aroused and further supported when knowing that shamans were motivated by a payment to produce a result (healing, prophecy, etc.) through the ‘trance’.103 Thus, Roberte Hamayon (1993) has argued that the conceptual currency of the ecstasy was poorly gained, by repetition, inattention and Western-centric concerns (a romantic projection not just of mysticism as other, perhaps, but also of a compensatory spirituality in a godless world, akin to the earlier functioning of the noble savage). From this, it followed that a revision was necessary (focusing on culturally specified behaviours and a notion of ‘symbolic function’). Regarding death-rebirth, as Burkert (1987: 99) noted in respect of the ancient mysteries, there was the danger of a reductive tendency that would have all dualities regarded thus, such as ‘night and day, darkness and light, below and above’. Consequently, although the mysteries – and we can argue this for initiations generally – ‘should conform to this pattern’ – of death and rebirth – ‘the evidence is less explicit and more varied than the general hypothesis would postulate’. 104 102 Eliade (1958: 48) recalls entrance into the Australian Kunapipi cult, after puberty rites, as a ‘higher initiation’

that ‘once again confirms primitive man’s desire to deepen his religious experience and knowledge’; in this case, it appears, the higher level was mandatory and produced the ‘spiritual perfection’ that would lead to ‘higher religion’. Siikala (1987) refers to ‘supranormal initiation’. 103 This seems to have been implied in the account by Petrov (see pp. 131-132). 104 Ronald Hutton (2001: 29ff.) covers the ‘scholarly construction’ of shamanism, and Alberts (2016: 58) critiques its employment as a ‘key trope in western discourses on indigenous religiosity’. Localised geo-ethnic specification continues to require historical perspective, as per the evidence from Vértes (1990, cited in Baldick, 2000: 175), that shamans were originally just knowers (‘of hidden and future things’) and only later became also healers or magicians (who would dare to intervene in the word of the spirits). On shamanism generally, Andrei Znamenski (2003, 2004) provides a historical introduction and compendium of original works, while Adlam and Holyoak (2005) include a focus on neo-shamanism.

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In addition to the contradiction or at least tension in stipulating ecstasy but listing nonecstatic entrances, Eliade’s presentation was also ambiguous on sex-gender. In his handling of girls’ puberty rites, for example, he made no mention at all of the death-rebirth trope. The interesting enactments reported here had some girls during initiation as ‘neither man nor woman’ and engaging in ‘prenuptial freedom’. This raises oppositions that return us to anthropology, since the ‘death’ of these girls seems more like a ‘life’ (implying a restricted prognosis for their lives as women). The distinction need not be made: it ignores the ethnology that has boys also enjoying a period of ‘licentiousness’, while early in the century, Miriam van Waters (1913: 399-403) had argued that menarche specified a time when a woman would become a shamaness or witch (which may be a death, signifying life) (cf. Shuttle and Redgrove, 1978). Of course, menstruation is easily construed as a suffering and withdrawal (so death and release from this as a rebirth), and initiatory ritual is reported as organised around menarche, including haranguing from elders and introduction of the socio-cultural code (so within but beyond the traditionalist naturalism) (e.g. Richards, 1956). For his part, following an analysis linking initiation first to males (as more common, observed, dramatic and group-oriented) and connecting girls’ rites to ‘first menstruation’ and so ‘individual’, linked to ‘seclusion’, Eliade (1958: 42, 46-47) held that for girls, ‘the fundamental experience’ was a ‘female experience’, and this was ‘chrystallized around the mystery of blood’. The ‘pre-eminent female mystery’, therefore, was the natural event. The creative power (‘fecundity’) this revealed and materially (re)presented, meant that there was no need for myth. The mystery of life lay in the immanence of first blood, as a living process expressing maturity, which does not demand death. Thus, the argument would go – Eliade did not spell it out – that female initiation ritual is secondary, an additional element of complexity rather than required and inherently less intimately profound. Following this line of thinking, death-and-rebirth is indicated to be a masculine toning of initiation, which makes it just a partial representation that does not get at initiation generally (insofar as it does not apply very well to the feminine). Eliade did not formalise his argument quite like this in respect of death-rebirth, although he did note its implications for broader theorisation. Continuing with a brief review of women’s secret societies or ‘closed associations’ – in which women organise ‘in order to celebrate the mysteries of conception, of [child] birth, of fecundity, and, in general, of universal fertility’ – Eliade (1958: 79-80) introduced ‘two different kinds of sacrality’ and thus the ‘antagonism of two magics’. Asserting that ‘women’s initiation par excellence is her introduction to the ‘primordial symbol of spiritual regeneration’, Eliade should probably have complemented this with the assertion for men of a similar emphasis on degeneration and psycho-spiritual obliteration. In fact, he did give ‘relations with the dead’ at the end of a list of ‘man’s magics and lores’ (following ‘hunting magic, …the Supreme Beings, shamanism and… ascent to heaven). But then he abruptly ended discussion, failing to relate this back to the death-rebirth analysis of initiation. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Instead, he referred sex-gender to ‘the psychologist’ – as the ‘problem of... the ambivalent behaviour in respect to the mysteries of the opposite sex’ – merely implying, here, the initiatory difference. Then, he stated that in the opposition of the dimorphic sacralities, what the ‘historian of religion… discerns… is above all a strong and essentially religious desire to transcend an apparently irreducible existential situation and attain to a total mode of being’. In other words, Eliade preferred to simply go beyond sex-gender at this point with a generalising statement about spirituality and the condition of Human, his claim for the homo religious. Which in itself was fair enough, contributing to the pushback of the times to the earlier twentieth-century heritage of reductive behaviourism. And no more and no less, really, than a return to that original interest that had first taken him to India and Rishikesh.

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Part IV – So, where did we get to again? Reassessing the mainstream

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Chapter 8. Anthropology: the core thesis The dedicated 1964 conference on Initiation prepared and coordinated by Bleeker and featuring a paper by Eliade (see p. 36) was organised under the banner of ‘religious studies’, but it was not Eliade’s death-and-rebirth or religion in general that had carried the day in initiation studies. The weight of scholarly interest had shifted towards a demysticised reading of myth and ritual, with initiation studies, as ever, taking a lead role in the overall development of anthropology. Thus, as Weckman (1970: 62-64) articulated in his taxonomic paper, which came from a similar disciplinary setting (History of Religions), a ‘great body of literature’ had adopted a ‘reductionist position’ – ‘anthropological studies’, primarily, had removed the ‘significance of the rite from the religious sphere’. With the Victorian crisis of faith (Christianity) now passed, resolved for the main part with a liberal academia aligning fully behind Enlightenment reason as the norm, explanations of human concern with the mystical were given over to psychology and sociology. Religion itself was a lesser issue, interesting more from a comparative perspective. The modernistic anthropology now dominating the field of initiation studies lent ever more strongly towards societal (structural, functional) and then cultural (symbolic or semiotic) analysis. This was expressed in the discursive norm of the twentieth century to talk about ‘initiation’ but drop ‘the mysteries’. The stock phrase had become defunct, standing for an approach that no longer had currency. Following this secular victory and the ending of European empires, the stage was set in the 1950s for an ascent to the top. [init]-[myst] was dead, but init- now (re)born (see note to Appendix 3). The triumph of science expressed through initiation studies came at a cost, though – that loss of mysticism, of a consciously ‘spiritual’ dimension, or, the denial of God. This was recognised in the 1950s by Eliade and then in the 60s and 70s by Victor Turner. Thus, in addition to the standard pairing of Turner with Van Gennep, a thematic history might also be made linking Turner with Eliade as reintroducing the mystico-spiritual dimension back into initiation studies. This could be appreciated as a step in the reconstruction of initiation studies. In that case, the present chapter – presented as the core thesis of initiation studies, mainly through discussion of Van Gennep and Turner – not only covers the final establishment of adult initiation but also the beginning of a putative return of the spiritual. Broadly, the two pillars of the core thesis may be regarded as first (Van Gennep) effecting and marking the secularisation of initiation and then (Turner) its re-sacralisation. While Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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this does not accurately represent the approaches of the two authors, it does serve to convey a basic flow of ideas. Initiation studies in the nineteenth century sought to take God and organised religion out of the equation with a literal end to mystery (at least of the supernatural sort, thus precluding any scientific endeavour to solve it). However, after an abyss of meaninglessness (radical materialism, World Wars), the times were ripe for an infusion of intrinsic value. Thus, the mere socio-cultural functionality was relieved through revivification of initiation's remnant mystery – the liminal space in between. Arnold van Gennep In Arnold van Gennep’s model as applied to the concept of initiation for a new paradigm, there was leaving (separation) and (re-)entering (‘aggregation’, as translated directly from the French, or ‘recorporation’ – see p. 55) – and there was the actual passage across, the moving between one state or situation and another. This occurred literally, as Van Gennep introduced it, across territorial borders, and metaphorically, across the threshold in a house and from one room to another, where the house becomes a society and the rooms where people stay, or belong, such as with their peer group. Thence, the ‘life an individual’ is the journey through the rooms of the house, ‘from one age to another’, which thus stand for life stages (there is a room for childhood and for adulthood, for example, connected by the doorway of initiation. Since the passage across territorial borders was inherently dangerous, it was ritualised; hence, rites of passage. Similarly, the transition from one state or stage of life to another was socially problematic, disturbing or disruptive, potentially chaotic, so it was formally marked, enacted and effected. Ritual here was thus a form of magical performance dealing in particular with the transformation of an individual from child to adult, regarded in terms of social status. It ‘regulated and guarded so that society as a whole will suffer no discomfort or injury’ (Van Gennep, 1909b: 1-3). Van Gennep’s original concern with rites of passage generally has been identified not just with the ‘rites of the so-called “life-crises”: birth, initiation, marriage, and death’ (Gluckman, 1962: 3) – or life-crisis rites – but specifically with the second of those, just the coming of age, with pubertal and adolescent (maturity) initiation in adulthood. Thus, ‘rites of passage’ became collapsed into ‘initiation’, as equivalent – for which Van Gennep is culpable. Despite professing to be concerned with passage rites generally, he gave little attention to those that were not concerned with the individual human lifespan, such as calendrical and succession rites, and of the four chapters on lifespan rites that make up the bulk of the book, approaching

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half of the text was given over to the single chapter on initiation – so, fully a quarter of the whole book focused on this alone.105 Reference to ‘rites of passage’ nowadays is almost always to youthful maturity processes, or adult initiation. Consequently, in our usage today, ‘initiation’ and ‘rite of passage’ are quite synonymous. Each has its own area of independent application, so wider meaning. We can talk about initiations that are not a rite of passage and vice versa – such as spiritual initiations, indeed, as well as the rites of passage of territorial crossings – so the synonymy is not perfect by any means. However, it is very strong.106 Interestingly, after opening his Chapter VI treatment of initiation in Rites with an insistence on the reference of ‘puberty rites’ to a social rather than biological timing, Van Gennep continues by reviewing inductions into clan totems, magico-religious fraternities, secret societies, political and military organisations, age grades, ancient mysteries, religious brotherhoods, sacred prostitution, castes and professions, and the positions of priest/shaman and chief/king.107 And where examples of an age are given, almost all are put at 10-20 years old, with the highest at 25-30. Thus, Van Gennep effectively treats the entry into a wide range of statuses and institutions as functioning also as a youthful maturity ritual. Which of course is obvious enough, insofar as such entry is typically undertaken at that time of life, and often enough involving physical movement out of the natal home of a more or less permanent kind. This has the effect of emphasising adult initiation, as though all initiations are also that. It both subsumes the many types of initiation under the broader adult definition and unites the concept under that single category. The concept of initiation is equated with passage rites and thus (re)unified, diminishing the importance of taxonomy. Initiation, that is, may apply both to the child-to-adult move and to organisation/role entry, but these need not be distinguished. Insofar as the latter is an integral part of the former, it may be conceived largely as an expression of that. The root dynamic for Van Gennep was of ‘regenerative process’. In his view, societies tend to become exhausted, their energies expended and therefore requiring processes of regeneration, with a tempo regulated by the wavelike nature of organic change: ‘to act and cease, to wait and rest, and then to begin acting again, but in a different way’. This need not be mysticised – it can be just empirical fact. But the triple-phrasing of stop-wait-(re)start does parallel the logic used for passage rites. Or, it expresses the same idea in a different, perhaps 105 Lifespan

rites need not be sharply distinguished from the calendrical, of course, insofar as it is the annual weather/food supply cycle that determines the timing of initiations; similarly, maturity/membership initiation structures societal time over lengthy periods as a generational phenomenon, thereby fixing history (e.g. according to the German ethnologist Otto Schellong [1889: 154, as cited in Webster, 1908: 26], rituals in Kaiser Wilhelmsland [north-eastern Papua New Guinea] were performed initiating up to a hundred boys at a time at twenty-year intervals). 106 This equation is, presumably, a major reason why anthropological works directed to other life-stage transitions have often (perhaps typically) not introduced the discourse (e.g. Spencer, 1990). 107 This is the main part of the list, with one or two original translations, e.g. ‘shaman’ for ‘magicien’ (Van Gennep, 1909a: 93).

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more basic way. Thus, societies and people are both viewed as (if ) organisms, exhibiting the same basic pattern of cyclical process over time. This does appear interpretive rather than (just) factual, as Van Gennep’s own myth-making. So perhaps the mystical was not quite banished from anthropological initiation studies after all.  An issue regularly noted is that the analysis may appear vacuous. All processes have origin and conclusion of some sort – by definition, insofar as a process is identified – and thence also, a point of connection. And then to insert a middle at that point, between the beginning and the end, is to do no more than any story does. So really, all that is being recognised here is the psychological fact of the human tendency to make stories, to read narratives, to create unifications across time threading together events that mark time to make time. However, Van Gennep conceptualised his three stages through naming and characterised them with examples of ritual-types. Thence, they were analytical categories of some substance. The ‘material passage’ of actually leaving and entering (‘les rites de sortie/entrée’) characterised transition as a separation from and a recorporation into (social life), featuring parallel ritual behaviours. These expressed the separation, transition and (re)entrance through a range of removals and replacements related to things like hair and food. Edmund Leach introduced a structural logic and semiotics into the analysis for this, related to and explaining the work of Claude Levi-Strauss. This had partially dealt with oppositional relationships, with the lead symbol of raw versus cooked/prepared food – and suggestion, for example, of Orion and the Pleiades as treated ‘both in correlation with, and in opposition, to each other… diachronically, in terms as presence and absence… throughout the world’ (Levi-Strauss, 1964: 226). Leach (1976: 56, 77-78) noted the ‘binary coding’ of oppositional relationship in tribal rituals. Considering separation and recorporation (he also used ‘aggregation’), Leach offered examples like disrobing and re-clothing and beginning and ceasing prohibitions. Further to the simple symbolic reversal of separation and recorporation with disrobingre-clothing, other binaries observed in anthropology included both the structural (syntactic) opposition of sequentially reversed ordering (e.g. being unclothed first and then washed, and then washed first and re-clothed) and also the thematic (semantic) opposition of different sets of behaviours, such as wailing and mourning at the separation as opposed to feasting and dancing at the return. Thence we can talk about the different types of opposition in terms of meta-symbolic forms. Another meta-symbolic form is the directional structuring achieved through permanent change. As a movement from one to another, it specifies a transition that is irreversible. This is marked and expressed by signs and signifiers like change of residence, along with vows and oath-taking. In the status rise of adulthood a new social identity is taken on that is also entered into psychologically. The most intimate and material to do this is to literally embody it. Thus, 146 

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circumcision and the knocking out of teeth and tattoos, investigated in recent years in terms of ‘inscribing’ (e.g. Schildkrout, 2004). These tribal ritual themes bear transference to the contemporary situation for readings of and insights into current practice – the current fashion of tattooing, in fact, has precisely this origin. The process is less painful today – implying analysis of a long view of human development and the relationship to physicality – but tattoos that are stencilled on and wash off are still not so meaningful, signifying less than those that are inked in, permanent and scar. The final phase of recorporation is a joining (with a new identity/status, a different room) and yet also a re-joining (of what has been left, a fixed place in the house, by the same person, although changed). Hence, recorporation is within the whole as the new but also a recorporation (of the renewed). This is easily appreciated and applied today with the relationship to society expressed through family life. Simplistically – but paradigmatically, and typically, in fact – we leave our parents and then we become parents, which may be taken as representing the social archetype of a full initiation. Thence the recorporation is a renewal of society, or societal reproduction. The binary logic of initiation dividing children from adults indicates the fundamental import of the implied lifespan division, recognised as involving the conferring of (full) tribal membership. This clearly endures today in the legalistic sense of citizen rights, mostly gained by entitlements awarded by law in late adolescence (to purchase alcohol, drive, marry, etc.). Thence, equally – or more fundamentally in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1962: 117-118) logic of inversion – initiation serves to primarily identify those who cannot ‘pass over or transgress in a lawful way’. By effecting the tribally defined passage into adulthood, initiation effectively (negatively) specifies those who qualify for tribal membership, by omission (the denial of passage rights, so rite as right). This membership identification operates to ‘consecrate or legitimate an arbitrary boundary’, so that to speak of initiation is actually to foster a ‘misrecognition of the arbitrary nature of the limit’. The definition of the tribe and its territory is no more a natural given than the social demarcation of stages of life, and it is instituted through initiation in the separation of those ritually recognised (as potential candidates to negotiate the transitional passage into adulthood) from those who are not. Initiation is thus about eligibility, and more accurately referred to, according to Bourdieu, as rites of consecration, or legitimisation, or institution. It is not so much a ritual structure created by society as one that defines society (initiation may have social functions and operate as a function of society, but it equally has societal functions and society is a function of initiation). Thence, we might add, initiation specifies the territory of the tribe or the nation through a human geography. This explains the need of the territorially expanding tribe or nation or state to formally ‘adopt’ (as described by Morgan for the Iroquois ‘naturalization’ of ‘captives’ – see p. 86) – and for contemporary incomers to be similarly admitted (as in the various consecrating rituals for foreigner citizenship, like memorising the national anthem or passing a national culture test). In the present-day situation, therefore, Bourdieu’s perspective indicates the laws of migration and condition of the stateless (illegal migrants, Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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refugees unrecognised or treated as ‘guests’, etc.) and speaks to the notion of the right to be recognised in a world of mobilities – or, a dysfunction of statehood. In the movement grouping these people, the large preponderance is of youngsters seeking to make a way in life, something better, and the tie-in with initiation operates at the literal level of a life passage into adulthood.  Leach (1976: 78) recognised that the three-part process of Van Gennep’s ternary implied before and an after states. This indicates a quinary-aspected articulation (beyond the tertiary, of before > separation > between > recorporation > after) – which Leach did not make. Rather, he reduced separation and recorporation to ritual moments as opposed to stages and thereby maintained the form of a ‘three-phase scheme’, now recast as the ‘rites of transition’. This comprised the conditions or statuses of ‘initial’ (before, pre-separation, the given, beginning), ‘marginal’ (between, without, outside) and ‘final’ (after, post-recorporation, created, final). Thus, there is a being in, out and (back) in society, depictable also as ‘normal’, ‘abnormal’ and ‘normal’. This analysis throws the middle into relief, as the focus of most interest, as the heart of initiation, identified as initiation itself, even. The name itself points to an essence of initiation, the transition, thus essentialism. This essentialism can also be appreciated as just a function of the trinary distinction, that could work equally for a quinary (and logically, any other odd number). And it can be shown with the original tripartite. Van Gennep had already observed that some rites are intrinsically linked to one of the three stages. Funerals are separations (from life), for instance. Therefore, the separation context (level 1) of a funereal ceremony may itself have, say, a recorporation stage (level 2), the recorporation rites of a separation ritual, one may say. Then, logically, it would follow that any one stage in the process can have its own, internal, ternary or ternary-type division (level 3). Thus, there is (or at least may be perceived), say, the marginal (middle) phase (level 3) of the separation (first) stage (level 2), which itself is fundamentally recorporative (so final, a [re]joining) (level 1). To illustrate, we can employ a contemporary rendition of the case of a wedding. Weddings are linked to recorporation (level 1), one could think (although Van Gennep links betrothal to transition]). Then, the journey to the place where the actual marriage will take place comprises the separation phase (level 2) of that ritual – a physical leaving (from the old home) before the wedding itself. And this is not just any journey, it is highly important, probably pre-planned and even rehearsed with a rented or at least cleaned car, so heavily ritualised. The journey begins with a send-off (level 3) and ends (level 3) with a welcoming at the place where the transition ritual – the actual marriage ceremony (level 2) – will be performed. And in between these end points of the journey, there is the actual travelling itself, when the bride/groom-to-be are in the between-state (level 3) of having left (home) but not yet arrived (at the wedding ceremony site). No longer in the natal family, nor yet 148 

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starting the actual transition to the new life, they are (quite literally) in transit (level 3), to the (metaphorical) transition stage (level 2) of the ritual that will recorporate (level 1). In fact, although it may become absurd, there is no logical limit to the number of levels of analysis. The intention in this descent into a potentially fractal implosion of tripartite levels is to show the implication for initiation. Just as funerals are intrinsically separations (for recorporation into the next world, perhaps) and weddings are recorporations (leaving youth behind), so are initiations as a rite of passage taking the individual from childhood to adulthood inherently linked to transition (level 1). Indeed, Van Gennep explicitly makes this connection. Then, combining the idea of divisions of division with an initiatory focus on the middle phase of the transition – i.e. when initiation is itself a transition – suggests an infinite regression as the logic of initiation, of the marginal part of the marginal part of the marginal (level 2, 3… n). This essence may be understood as the extreme point of an initiation, a defining moment in the lifespan. Repeating the analysis thus, we arrive at the liminal core: initiation is identified with the centre as the centre of the centre (and the centre of that, recursively). This is rendered phenomenologically ultimate with a ‘peak experience’ (Maslow, 1964), marking the spiritual high (or low) of the initiation. Thence, all initiations are spiritual, or have such a potentiality. Revisiting Van Gennep, we should note that when he introduced the three-stage model and the sequence of ritual types, he also highlighted the middle phase. The Rites here focuses on the actual transiting part of the transition, across the limen (doorway, threshold). In fact, even as Van Gennep (1909a: 20) stressed the (supposed) equivalence of the three categories for analysis he denied it when characterising the schema – as pre- and postaround the centre of liminality, thence: ‘rites préliminaires (séparation), liminaires (marge) et postiliminaires (agrégation)’. Manifestly, referring to the pre- and the post- has the effect of pivoting separation and (re)union – thence, initiation as a whole – around the liminal, both thrusting the margin into the centre (characterising initiation by its otherness, difference, ambiguity, etc.), and implying the liminal core (an extreme of this otherness as central). Thus, a sentence by Van Gennep that follows the pre-/post- characterisation become particularly pertinent: ‘This leads me to speak briefly of what we can call the pivoting of the notion of sacred’. Here, the sacred was not given an absolute value but stood in oppositional relation to whatever constituted the profane. Since that was most obviously linked to the realm of the social – of human relations and productions – and Van Gennep had himself started from a quasi-mystical sense of nature’s round, then the sacred would seem to evoke a sense of that in which the natural was imbued, negatively specified as the societal ‘other’, as that which is outside of society and ordinary social relations, ways of operating in the world and suchlike. Moreover, the text at this point has only just identified initiation as an inherently marginal passage, so liminality was made central now to a sociologically characterised notion of the sacred. Hence, initiation as the passage into adulthood is itself sacred.

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A mystical interpretation of the sacred may ordinarily indicate a valorised and numinous netherworld of immaterial effect and corporeal manifestation (or that which is made thus, in the act of sacralisation). Here, however, that spirituality becomes a defining time – or moment – in a person’s life (to which we may always return). Sociologically, it is the new generation’s challenge to the old order crystallised. And culturally, there is a categorically distinction from the hegemonic ordering, with the sacred as possibility, dangerous, perhaps, but anyway carrying the potential for a coming into being, of something new. Directed by Gluckman to focus on Van Gennep’s Rites, Victor Turner had plenty of reason to focus on the crucial, defining stage of the liminaire.108 Victor Turner Turner’s (1964) introduction of the idea of liminality into his ethnological focus (on the Ndembu in Zambia) – famously, as the (‘interstructural’) state of being ‘Betwixt and Between’ – concentrated on the changing of persons (rather than social status). The novel and grotesque juxtaposition of elements in symbols (like masks) stimulated critical appreciation, he suggested. This may be understood more broadly as an awakening, or having one’s eye’s opened by the shock of the new, itself a psychological separation and marginality and a spiritual perspective. Like Van Gennep, Turner’s work was never quite without its own mysticism, or mysticising. Having experienced his own marginality – left by divorced parents to be raised by grandparents, living with his wife Edith in a gypsy caravan – Turner (1969) went on to establish his thesis of liminality as anti-structure. This was expressed through the 108

And Edith Turner too, since she was ‘the co-author of everything he wrote’ making theirs a ‘Turnerian project’ (St John, 2008: 3); references to ‘Turner’ below refer to the work of which he was the named and principle author, conventionally denoting through him alone, therefore, what was has been described as a more or less collaborative endeavour. On a historical note regarding the discourse, Van Gennep’s work is commonly depicted as fairly moribund prior to the English translation in 1960; although supported by quantitative data (Appendix 3), this was not quite the case. Around the time of publication and in the years following, Les Rites de Passage was reviewed in English (African Affairs, 1909: 108-110) and used by Harrison (1912: 20, 272), who included a brief synopsis of the range of the ‘ceremonies that accompany each successive stage of life’. In southern Africa, it was explicated and employed by the Swiss writer, Henri Junod (1912: 74), who summarised the tripartite schema before employing it for his study of the Bantu Thong (applying direct English translations from the French, viz. ‘Separation’, ‘Marginal’ and ‘Aggregation’); and it was indirectly referenced by Isaac Schapera (1930: 277), who employed the term ‘rites of aggregation’ when describing Khosian (Khoikhoi) ritual, the initiation of herding peoples (‘bushmen’) in the Cape. Thus, Johannesburg-born and educated Max Gluckman (1962: 8) reported how, as a student in the 1930s, Junod’s analysis was ‘worked through again and again’, and, in the same book, Meyer Fortes (1962: 55), who was raised and educated in Cape Town, stated that ‘Van Gennep’s model has become so entrenched in our thinking that it is seldom explicitly questioned’. This would have been in the 1920s; Edith and Victor Turner were reading Junod in the early-to-mid 1950s (Engelke, 2000: 845). In the US, meanwhile, Chapple and Coon (1942) had critiqued Van Gennep (for overgeneralising – they preferred the phrase ‘rite of intensification’ for group ceremonies), while in Britain in the post-WWII period, the term was taken up in literary criticism with the naming of the sub-genre ‘rite of passage novel’, indicating the broader cultural impact to come.

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ritual process, as a processional dissolution of the social order enacted through the (liminal) inversion of normal social roles and temporary destruction of power relationships. Already, the analysis implied a binary phrasing of chaos as opposed to order. In this case, we might judge that the opposition of anti-structure becomes a-structure, not so much inverting the social order as denying it, as outside or beyond it. And yet, this chaos was not without any order at all, insofar as an ordering of sorts emerged internally. Thrown together into the chaos, initiands naturally develop community. As determined by their externality to hierarchical social relations, however, denuded of identity and rendered ‘dead’, they develop the bonding of ‘communitas’ as a kind of alternative, flattened ordering of connection (so oppositionally, horizontal vs. vertical linkage). This indicates a social relations based on the commonality of equals-in-nothingness, in which what is valued is the person themselves, indicating a more profound, or ‘spiritual’ way of relating. Further, the betwixt-and-between marginality was importantly positioned at no position, without social duty or responsibility – so, beyond behavioural norms, thence sacred/holy/untouchable, yet dirty/polluted/dangerous (Van Gennep, 1909b: 114; Douglas, 1966: 97ff.). An obvious suggestion following Turner’s own analysis here is that the move from antistructure to a-structure may be sequenced in initiation as a process, operative as another meta-symbolic. In initiation, first we go out, and then further out, as it were. Then, the peak of experience becomes the extreme of liminality. The idea of the centre of the centre is rendered in social and societal but also cultural terms. As a meta-symbol of initiation, the material question then concerns what is done with this, how the dangerous-sacred of communitas relates to the whole.  Following a line of work in the tradition of Frazer’s kingly sacrifice that moved through observations of tribal dethronements and enthronements, the work of Max Gluckman had emphasised initiation as a social system of authority, serving, in the analytical tradition of British structural-functionalism, to maintain social coherence and societal equilibrium. Initiations for Gluckman (1954, 1962: 112) were ‘rituals of rebellion’ that functioned to ‘openly express [thus release] social tensions’. They enabled ‘dispute about particular distributions of power’ but ‘not about the structure of the system itself ’, and resulted, thereby, in the organisation of ‘institutionalised protest’ that ‘in complex ways renews the unity of the system.’ This reading had initiation as a psycho-social abreactive. It facilitated societal stability by controlling anti-social behaviour (in particular, the threatening aggression of young males). Turner stayed at least somewhat bound to this fundamentally conservative form (quintessentially conservative, indeed, socially embedding traditions and traditionality into deep cultural structure). Guided by Gluckman into the world of British functionalism, Turner’s (1957) dissertation roots were in social conflict and the resolution of ‘breach’, mostly as leading to ‘reinforcement’ rather than ‘schism’ (Turner, 1969). And he continued Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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to maintain that the ‘liminal phases of tribal society invert but do not usually subvert the status quo, the structural form, of society’ (Turner, 1974: 72). Vizedom (1976: 45, 47) expressed the idea in terms of initiation as a ‘ritual of confrontation with authority… that of seniors’, and the ‘connection of rites of access with the relationships of the generations’ (emphasis added). In her tribal examples, Vizedom saw the elders as dictating the terms of the confrontation, as granting the access (or delaying it), directly empowered (afforded status) by the ritual system. La Fontaine (1985) effectively developed this line of argument too, with her emphasis on the ritual role of the elders – such as through their application of ritual knowledge, through the power this accorded them and recognition of their ‘wisdom’ – and thus the function of initiation to legitimate, confirm and bolster the authority of experience. Edith Turner was always concerned with this, too, but from a different perspective, having developed ‘strong ideas… about liminality not being subsumed under structure’ (Engelke, 2000: 849; emphasis added). Later, Bobby Alexander (1991) was to argue that rather than sublimating socio-political change (acting as a bulwark against it by structuring cathartic release), ritual liminality and communitas might function to facilitate it (and that this, moreover, was the correct interpretation of Victor Turner’s work as he developed it). Marginality here was not only destructive-creative as opposed to maintaining and hence generative of inverted order, but also generative in a way that could effect oppositional change to the whole (i.e. unbounded by, delinked from and thus outside of the ritual space). The hegemonic could itself be transitioned, transformed. The case study Alexander used to make this argument was a contemporary one, involving an African-American Pentecostal congregation. Actually, Vizedom (1976: 48) had also indicated a different conclusion to the modern confrontation with authority ‘in American society’, in which youth itself is valorised. With the aging trying to stay young and youth being the ‘best and most important time in life’, it was adjudged, the ‘constant remoulding of society is advanced by these values’. This was not a simple overturning of the old, though. Even if the authority of the elders is lost – they just become old people, the elderly – the power structures they maintained endure and ‘the young continue to be informed by the institutions of the elders’. Tradition endures, but there is an evolution. It follows that the rites of confrontation in the passage to adulthood operate on and within the broader dynamics of societal transformation for both/either stasis and/or change. Insofar as we perceive societies as fundamentally in flux as opposed to settled, then we should assume to conceive of initiation as a vehicle to that end, or even the vehicle. That is, there may be a materially effective dialectic of ritual and social structure effective of socio-cultural evolution – as opposed to a hegemonically meta-structured ordering of the whole (stasis, conservation), or, occasionally perhaps, an upturning of the order (revolution). Which is to say just that the extent to which one or the other is determined to be the case in any one situation becomes a matter of judgement and perception, dependent, inevitably, on the mode and criteria of analysis. When is a society really changed, to what degree is it 152 

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the structure of society itself that is changed, and, in order to count, how deep must that structural change be? Is the liminal genuinely transgressive and transformative, or just resistant, or co-opted, or merely used? Probably the perspective for most people today, worldwide, is one of change, and we can take this as a starting point for a basis (if not necessarily the basis) on which analysis should proceed. The transition of initiation then becomes involved and implicit in a profound societal shift. This has been closely related in recent times to technological jump, with implications and ramifications unfolding. Indeed, technological change dictates and is dictated by young people in particular, the latest next generation. At the individual level in this situation, the transformation of the person is such that the boy precisely does not become his father and the girl her mother, the youth become unlike the adults of the previous generation. Then, there is a distinct lack of preordained content in the transition to adulthood because we are going into uncharted realms and, moreover, moving forward, in what constitutes a progression. The individual initiation plays its part in the larger process of a sociocultural initiation into so many brave new worlds. Thus, in an important way, there cannot be guiding elders to do initiating work. The capability and suitability of elders is specified by the times they knew and grew (up) in and thereby greatly limited to and constrained by these. When the youth are ecologically ahead of their elders such that the two are moving together, then there is a sharing, with each able to give to the other. Initiation studies in this context may become a consideration of the exchange – as it mutates through the times, moreover, with any study immediately redundant insofar as the new era as characterised is already another new development. We already engage in a cultural convention which is to generationalise this through the emerging youth. The socio-cultural zeitgeist is observed in and informs the generational naming to indicate the fault lines of distinction and confrontation and the passage of cultural time, with the terminology of individuals, like the ‘modern woman’ and ‘new man’, ‘metrosexual’ and ‘star-seed’, and groupings, like ‘baby-boomers’, ‘millennials’ and ‘generation X, Y and Z’ to ‘Alpha’.  There may be a sense of dis-ease around this discursive usage, or misusage. Can we properly apply the fundamental specification of initiation as rite to the developmental vanguard, as conceived? Are we not taking a free ride in assuming to apply the idea of initiation per rites of passage to the events and experiences occurrent during the transitional process of maturation today? As an anthropologist desiring to avoid such a free-ride, one could say, Turner (1974: 55, 62, 64) broadened his analysis sociologically to include the ‘liminoid’. This was introduced as the liminal in the contemporary situation (of the West), so outside of ritual in a conventional sense of the term – but it was also unlimited to and unspecified by passage. Rather, Turner applied the liminoid qua generative to the ‘“cultural refreshment” Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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genres… of post-industrial society’, listed as ‘poetry, drama, and painting’ and ‘art, sport, pastimes, games, etc.’ and discussed in terms of ‘leisure’ with reference to notions of ‘work’ and ‘play’. Thus, the idea of the liminoid was not directly applied to the coming of age at all, conceived of in terms of ritual or otherwise. To do so would need a further argument, to the effect that it is young people especially who are most actively engaged in and defining of that cultural refreshment. This seems reasonable, although then the restriction of refreshment to ‘culture’ appears unnecessary. More pertinent to the idea of communitas in liminality today is the idea of it being young people who drive new forms of commoning. This involves an alternative, non-hierarchical refreshment of ideas, practices and systems across many, most and even all public arenas, from forms of activism, communication and information sharing to business, production and farming. The restriction here is only to the concerns of human life and its reproductions (e.g. Bollier and Helfrich, 2012; Ruivenkamp and Hilton, 2017; Federici, 2018). Turner (1974: 86) did apply ‘liminal’ in the contemporary context, to the relatively fixed rituals of highly structured organisation – like ‘churches, sects… fraternities, masonic orders and other secret societies’. This appears to specify his differentiation between the ‘tribal’ (‘stable, cyclical, and repetitive systems’) and ‘post-industrial’, with the occurrence in the latter of initiation as cultural remnant (akin to the ethno-anthropological reading of primitive, tribal life as a historical, developmental remnant). That is not obvious, however, and as a converted Catholic himself (with Edith), he might have disagreed with the judgement. Regardless, the main point here is that since the subject had mutated and was no longer delineated by maturity rites of initiation into adulthood, these could be safely ignored as defunct and the new, free-floating subject of marginal space applied to the ritualistic of art and performance as well as of organisation entry (and other fields, e.g. sociological analysis generally). Thus, presenting the conceptual move of liminal to liminoid as an ‘as if ’ (the liminoid resembled the liminal), Turner may be taken as restricting the scope and withdrawing from the implications of his argument in respect of initiation. That is, the argument was that the idea of the liminal did not apply to initiation today because that did not exist – rather than that its contemporary application could go with a revision of the standard thesis holding that initiation no longer occurred. This suggests possibilities for a reconstruction. Turner’s denial of the contemporary liminal was a move that expressed the analysis of initiation couched in the history of initiation as formed in the history of initiation studies (i.e. as demise). It also reflected a wider discursive retreat, wherein init- form usage fell from its peak and began to drop out of fashion. Indeed, one can judge that initiation studies are in retreat. Thus, in the contemporary context, the initiation discourse largely transmutes into a post-initiation or passage-rites discourse. Just as myst- fell out of favour, so has initentered another death of re-making. For his part, in his role, Turner doubled down on the employment of lexical adjustment to remove his subject from the fray, as it were. 154 

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The ‘tribal liminal’, wrote Turner (ibid.: 76), ‘can never be much more than a subversive flicker’, yet it ‘contains the germ of future social developments, of societal change’ – in which revolutions become ‘limina’! Again, this may be taken as suggesting possibilities for initiation/passage-rites today. There is a questionable quasi-historical thesis here (about the limitations ‘tribal’ initiation), and there is an overly positive valorisation of revolutions (which are linked to ‘freedom from norms’, assuming these as undesirable restrictions and thus paying insufficient attention to the communitas of violence and fascism). But the possibility of linking ‘limina’ to a contemporary initiation is anyway immediately scotched, since, to the idea of their being some sort of transformation or becoming of social revolutions, Turner again sounds the retreat, stating ‘this is to use “liminal” in a metaphorical sense’. In sum, Turner shifted his focus away from a broad employment of the analysis of ritual as social drama for application to societal process and toward a narrowing world of non-work (games and play/leisure moving to the performing arts). Although the productions of radical theatre and the like may materially affect social transformation, their influence tends to be tangential, at best. In order to apply Turner’s ideas for initiation today, we will eventually need to confront the idea of ritual (which was the move made by Alexander [1991]). This involves a return to the discourse, the contemporary situation and a consideration of initiation studies as histiography.

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Chapter 9. Conventional history, contemporary studies This chapter continues the work of preparing the ground for a revision of initiation studies today. Thus far, the subject has been explicated through a historical examination of the making of initiation, now critically presented as the core passage-rite conception of initiation studies as determined by anthropology. The next phase of reconstruction involves a review of the narrative that has been written into the discourse as history, both implied and explicit. This is an idea of initiation studies as histiography that refers to the historical thesis or narrative that is at work in the discourse, or, the conventional History of Initiation. A reconstruction of the discourse of initiation studies should examine the way in which it treats of its own subject from a dynamic, material perspective. How has initiation supposed to have changed through the ages, what has happened to it? In presenting such a History of Initiation, the opportunity for critical assessment again offers possibilities for questioning and new suggestions. Here, these are placed in the context of the recent discourse as a contemporary history of initiation studies. Or, as suggested above, a post-initiation or passagerites discourse. Below, initiation in recent archaeology, classical studies and religious studies is glossed, for a sense of the wider field as informed by but also outside of anthropology. Some recent ideas, are mentioned, further developing the field, but essentially the decline and demise in the histiography is investigated for either support or refutation. The latter is found to indicate a major difficulty with the discourse, involving a critique of the notion of initiation and its application that radically undermines the History. This primarily refers to the breadth of conceptual coverage in relation to our appreciation of a now post-modernity. The evolution of initiation studies has been presented through the earlier chapters as the transition of a mysteries into an initiation discourse, or, regarded as a whole, simply the initiation discourse. This has assumed, inherited, claimed and constructed the History of Initiation, directly and as bi-product, as a result of the nature and terms of the endeavour. That, in turn, has carried over into and continues to inform contemporary ideas – including our notion or notions of spiritual initiation. Issues are thus raised about the past and the present. As considered here, these issues – the topics of the present chapter – concern first, the histiography of initiation practice (as ending with disappearance) and second, the current usage of the discourse (as widespread).

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The primary thesis of decline and demise As noted at various points and throughout the narrative so far, the discourse of initiation was constructed from the start as a narrative of dissolution. A patterning of decline and demise was indicated at the outset of modern initiation studies in the adoption of the old mysteries for tribal rites, and this was repeated by an emerging ethno-anthropology significantly motivated by a perception of the imminent loss of the primitive peoples of the world, and thus their rituals, so initiation, as it became identified in that emerging ethno-anthropology. The assumption of a lack of initiation in the modern world was deeply embedded in the logic of the programme, therefore, as the teleological conclusion to its history-making. This basic assumption stood notwithstanding the fact that the new initiation studies had partly developed through freemasonry, which had enjoyed a very active development and engagement with ceremony, and had its own redemption histiography of dissolution thwarted. Such a situation arose due to the (re-)definition of the subject by and as part of the development of the new human science. Increasingly formalised and professionalised, this took the mysteries and admissions heritage and applied it to primitive peoples in the imperial context for a notion of adult initiations, or rites of passage through the life-cycle moving from child to maturity. Thus, the modern idea of initiation emerged, initiation was invented, first, as a ritual of the other and second with the idea of progression through youth at its core. It was in this context that history-makers, such as Robertson Smith, developed their new history of initiation, rewriting the previous ones developed in masonry by people like Oliver. This combined the new evidence from studies of the world’s primitive peoples with the old knowledge of the mysteries and their demise, dovetailing masonic and other, similar secret-society rituals into a final product, the History of Initiation. That, briefly, is a history of the histiography of initiation. The conceptual dynamic or basic patterning of that histiography ran thus: 1. Pre-history: legendary beginning (initiation as a single, supra-performative, ritual event that incorporated and achieved a wide range of socio-cultural and psychomystic functions and products). 2. History: fragmentation (multiple types of initiations with increasingly discrete products), followed by further diminishment (loss of power). 3. The present: insignificance and disappearance in modernity. Basically, this was a process of devolution that occurred as a function of Man’s evolution – or ‘progress’ (in nineteenth-century thinking), or ‘development’ (the more recent term, still current). Thus, the grand civilising history of the Ascent of Man was equally one of the Decline and Fall – of initiation. The structural logic of this can be represented as oppositional arrows of ascent and of descent, where the upward pointer toward human progress moves from the vague, manifold, disparate hunter-gatherer past lost in the mists of time, inexorably 158 

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up to the present moment, manifesting with increasingly palpable reality until arriving at the here-and-now point of singularity – and the downward arrow of initiatory regress that began at the lost, perfectly pristine moment of tribal origin and slowly expanded and fractured and degraded over time, diffusing and dispersed and dissolving to the currently vanishing formlessness.109 The pre-history can be characterised as established through an implicit conceptual encounter – of the colonial experience of ‘primitive’ (‘savage’) with Biblical, esoteric and also mystical masonic tradition. The realities of this in ethnography and knowledge of the mysteries, roughly (the move through ‘barbarian’ to ‘civilised’) were the markers for history. These two were established as givens, and the gap in between was filled in (so the History was mostly made, in the nineteenth century, e.g. by Robertson Smith). What happened thereafter was less interesting with its post-Christian, modernist conclusion, although the inevitable ending was considered analytically (see below). Contrary to this disinterest, it is the later phase that has been the focus for the main part of this book until now, at the level of discourse, presenting a story of the concept of initiation as an evolution from the mysteries. Thus, the image of opposite arrows works here also, the one representing material demise and disappearance and the other discursive growth and its blossoming (through the twentieth century). To be clear, although there is interaction, the history of discourse presented bears relatively little on the histiography, the main story of initiation practice through the Ages, steps 1, 2 and 3. One question, then, concerns the extent to which this conception of the History of Initiation, the histiography of the Ages, endured through the following (twentieth) century and remains. Quite a lot, one can say, which may seem surprising. In addition to a predication on an essentialist view of ‘tribal societies’ (as fundamentally unchanging, thus allowing us to take the present ones as equivalent to those from the past), and a Golden Age (logically still implied, in some sense, at the point of origin), there remains the underlying assumption of a teleologically Eurocentric, unilinear model of development that is routinely critiqued now. Surprisingly, perhaps, the overall schema for the gradual (d)evolution of initiation seems not to have been explicitly revised. One reason for this is that a contemporary history of initiation remains unwritten. Anthropology rather lost its early historicising zeal, turning away from issues such as the worldwide narrative of dispersal, originally impelled by biblical considerations. The cultural turn with its emphasis on sociological analysis largely displaced history and the old alliance with antiquaries, and there is not the same appetite today for the sweeping overview made with the confident assumptions of the Victorian panoramic. Which is, of course, a rather sweeping view or assumption itself – but not without truth. As a result, the old narrative has 109 This ascent-descent motif can be understood also to represent Robertson Smith’s synthetic resolution of the

nineteenth century conflict between the progressionists and the de-genarationalists, wherein (anthropological) science was to be paradoxically squared with (Christian) religion (Douglas, 1966: 11ff.); interestingly, albeit quite distantly, it also invokes the meta-modelling of entropy-syntropy (Di Corpo and Vannani, 2014).

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been mainly maintained. Thus, while it is quite standard nowadays to problematise the idea of a globalised following of a single evolutionary path leading to the Western cutting edge – minimally indicating that initiation is not necessarily doomed, for always and everywhere – the histiography of initiation has rather remained in place, implied by default. The present work, indeed, is an example of this tendency to evade material history, having looked at the history of initiation studies rather than of initiation itself. The ‘History of Initiation’, capitalised, is presented as histiography, which itself is a code for keeping a distance, regarding rather than committing to a history-making, like the ‘making of initiation’. Thence, we are dealing only with ideas, in the abstract realm of the conceptual, not actual practice. Which is reasonable, up to a point. However, a recognition of the mounting frustration that post-modernish studies garner in the refusal ever to be quite tangible is also quite reasonable. In relation to which, the expression of a more forthcoming claim, in the reconstruction, is part of the aim toward this chapter works. For that, we do to look at today’s History of Initiation, such as it exists, and how in most ways it does not radically revise the conventions of a century and more ago. A sketch of this can start with the speculative assignation of initiation to pre-modern peoples as pre-history (meaning prior to the written record, so before the time of the Homeric hymns, some two and a half to three millennia ago in the eastern Mediterranean). This takes us all the way back, to the pre-ancients, before civilisation and its architectural record, to the earliest evidence of human activities.  In the early 1990s, in the area of the Russian town of Ignatievskaya in the southern Urals, the finding was reported of a cave covered in etchings dated at 12-14 thousand years old (Devlet, 2008: 130) depicting animals and what looked like their footprints. Vladimir Shirokov, leader of the archaeological team that made the find, suggested that the cave may have been the site of an ancient education in hunting which comprised the first stage of a ritual of initiation. The initiation would have continued, Shirokov explained, with the initiates crawling through a narrow connecting tunnel to another, smaller cave. Situated in the second cave were more two sets of paintings, one set of animals painted in black (charcoal), including a mammoth, a horse and a camel, and the other set in red (ochre), depicting a bison and a stylised female figure with 28 dots counted in three lines between her legs, suggesting the lunar-menstrual cycle. In this second cave, the theory went, the youngsters were instructed in the deeper mysteries of life and death, after which, by crawling out through a different passageway, returning to the first cave and then up and out, back into the daylight world, they were ‘reborn’, able to take their places in daily life as fully-fledged adults.110 110 Reported

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in ‘Sex and the caveman’, The Observer newspaper (2nd May, 1993).

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Shirokov (2002) has since also suggested that such depictions might refer to ‘shaman ideology and practices’ – implying a shamanic initiation, with the production of alternate consciousness, as per the Greek mysteries. In other words, the caves and daubed images are supposed as a pubertal-shamanic initiation that addressed cosmological instruction on the deepest mysteries and effected a physically enacted psychic death-rebirth with mystical experience to produce adults. The inference is of a ritual that was supra-performative at a categorical level: producing adults, mystics and members all at once. It recalls some of the anthropology, including Eliade, and it derives from the high-water mark of initiation studies. It is a product of ethno-archaeology that would not likely emerge from today’s anthropology. Travelling southwards from the Urals, back along the route of human global expansion to our homo ground zero, as it were, one arrives at the geo-historical origin of our Outof-Africa story. At Blombos, on the coast near Cape Town, evidence of initiation has been found in the red ochre discovered in a cave and on its walls, dated at some 75,000 years old. It is suggested that this was used ritualistically for body painting as a tribal marker of adolescence or as a social form of birth control.111 In arguing thus, David Lewis-Williams (2002; Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1988) developed a neuro-psychological model for the interpretation of cave art in which various patterns and representations are taken as indicative of trance and shamanism. Again, the suggestion appears to be hinting at a supraperformative initiation. Here, contemporary technology of the brain is applied to get at the very Dawn of Man. This is a technological advance on the old assumptions that extant tribes afford us a privileged window on our past, when in terms of the cultural development of ritual, this might not be very true. And the result is similar. Such interpretative endeavours as these of Shirokov and Lewis-Williams do view the pre-past (their subject) through the lens of the recent past (tribes encountered) for a construction in the present. Or, they read the thesis of decline, the standard history, back into the past, as it were, to arrive at the origin. Yet they go further than that, even, since initiation is posited as an example of the type of ritual that historically functioned to enable the survival of homo sapiens (through adaption during the [Upper] Palaeolithic, roughly 50-10 thousand years ago). This is suggested in a book co-edited by Christopher Henshilwood, who made the South African Blombos finds, carried out excavations at the cave and, like Lewis-Williams, went on to specialise in the emergence of modern man with reference to religious and symbolic behaviour. Thus, the (supra-performative) initiations are not just posited as coincidental in the story of human evolution, as just happening to have occurred. Rather, they are given evolutionary currency as explanatory value, assigned a role in the human story (upon which we may speculate). Initiation as a construct of evolutionary theory is not only taken – assumed or argued – to have been practiced in our pre-history, but is indicated to have directly contributed to our much earlier development, in the Stone Age (Barrett, 2011: 209; Henshilwood, 2009: 111 Reported

in ‘Stone Age man wasn’t so dumb’, The Daily Telegraph (10th February, 2000).

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1-2). The logic of this appears forced. What has been constructed from the present and projected into the past is then explained in evolutionary terms to bolster the construction. It is a hypothesis whose conclusion proves the premise. Yet it sits quite happily with findings from the investigation of sites located in the Fertile Crescent from the Pre-pottery Neolithic A period, dated at up to and around twelve thousand years old, like Göbekli Tepi in southeastern Anatolia. The indication there of a pre-agrarian communal religiosity is taken to suggest religiospiritual practice as a key socio-cultural driver of material development at a key stage in mankind’s civilising shift (toward agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle with complex society building). This reverses the previously assumed causal relationship of material conditions on cultural progress as enabling religions. A fuller reconstruction of this societal evolution, including the early usage of grains, is already more complex and interwoven, but the pertinence of the Eliadian homo religious conception is apparent, and operates tangentially in support of an ‘always-initiation’ thesis.112 Indeed, the homo religious conception does seem to get at something fundamental to the human condition. This is further borne out, one may suggest, by the continued resilience of old religions and/or their replacement by new forms of spiritual belief and styles of practice (like the New Age advocacy of our need for a spiritual life and its inevitable expression – such as through ritual and including initiation – at the risk of undesired psycho-social consequences where this fails, cf. Bly). Such a conception of man as supportive of the conventional history of initiation is confirmed by its continued vitality. Or, contrarily, the ‘development of an individual human being from boy to old man’ operates as an ‘analogical and narrative device to frame the story of ascent (Sommer, 2011: 66). In that case we revert to the standard anthropology depicting a vigorous growth and development of initiation to the Agricultural Era, and then its decline into ill health and worse – from the time when the two arrows ascending and descending cross, as it were.  In assessing the claims of the History in regard to its logic and discursive roots in a prehistory origin of undifferentiated rite, clearly, it can be concluded that the evidence appears moderate at best and quite indirect, based on a back projection through time from the known into the unknown. With that said, then, the case made appears quite fair; in fact, it has improved over time. It may well be right, though we shall never know. More strikingly, perhaps, the desire to make it remains strong. The discourse that has produced this logic, the motivation and imagination to think thus, endures. And although a full history of initiation may be unwritten, there has certainly been serious work on aspects of it, such as the origin. 112 The Göbekli Tepi site is also at the known region-of-origin for a grain that was among those first cultivated

and which seems to have been used to make an alcoholic porage, or mushy beer, which links back to the ecstatic rite idea of initiation (Dietrich et al., 2012).

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Moving on to the middle, transition stage of the History, the demise of initiation, it appears that the connection of the mystery schools of classical antiquity to tribal rite situated as a remnant in the present-day pre-agrarian that (was) dissolved has worn well enough. First, at the start of the twentieth century, classical studies were influenced by the anthropological shifting of the mysteries’ to an initiation discourse, going from the mysticoreligious (Christian, Western esoteric, etc.) to the sociological (maturation, membership, etc.). By way of a notable example, the prominent British classicist Jane Harrison (cotranslator of Petrov’s autobiography – see p. 131) moved with anthropology, away from a Frazerian (fertility) view of ritual, to embrace the modern (social systems) notion. Previously, in her Prolegomena, Harrison (1903: xi) had employed Frazer’s idea of ‘sympathetic magic’ – the magical thinking that linked replacing the priest to ensuring the harvest through correspondences of rejuvenation. For example, she explained how myth, such as the ‘Orphic doctrine of possible union with the divine’, informed and infused ‘primitive rites’ with a ‘deep spiritual mysticism’ in such a fashion. In her Themis, a decade later, however, she began by acknowledging the influence of Durkheim and the need to consider the ‘ritual of tribal initiation’ (mentioning, of course, the ‘knocking out of teeth’). Occasioned by the recent discovery in Crete of an ancient inscription in a sanctuary site (the ‘Hymn of the Kouretes’, to Zeus), Harrison (1912: 19, 272) engaged with themes like death and rebirth, puberty and male initiation, and membership and social structure, with repeated citations of writers like Lang, Spencer and Gillen and Van Gennep. Perhaps the most telling sentence for this comes in the opening amendments to the book. There, regarding the etymology of τραγωδία (tragedy), Harrison (1912: xxxii) states: ‘I would gladly avail myself of any derivation that might connect tragedy with puberty and initiation-ceremonies, but…’ – going on to explain why this does not work. In other words, it was only despite her best effort that she was unable to make the connection, for she surely would have made the model fit to shape the evidence if she reasonably could have. Adult initiation had become paradigmatic, a template for analysis.113 Following Harrison, and again after the second wave of initiation studies that came with the translation of Van Gennep, so from the 1970s, the ‘initiation paradigm’ (including the Van Gennep analysis of separation > marginality > recorporation) replaced that of fertility in the reading of Graeco-Roman texts and related studies, shifting the focus thereby from ‘nature’ to ‘society’ (Graf, 2003: 17, 20). Thus, for example, Ken Dowden (1989: 2ff., 194ff.) established ‘the mythic complex’ of Kore (the maiden), Demeter (the mother) and Hippolytus (who failed to reach adulthood) as relating ‘the passage rites from maidenhood to the status of married woman’, before going on to describe the role of vestal virgins and

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Rather than revisit Harrison’s reading, contemporary scholarship has tended to focus on this Cretan example as it bears on other concerns, like the assumption of performance from the evidence of inscription, the continuity of religious history from the Bronze Age to classical period, and religious change and cult (intensification vs. new emergence) as a function of crisis (Alonge, 2005, 2011; Driessen, 2015).

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girls ‘housed in a remote cave’ and the employment of this complex in the age-class systems of Greek city-states. Bruce Lincoln (1981), meanwhile, had taken a comparative or decontextualized approach to women’s initiation rites that climaxed with a re-telling of the Demeter-Persephone narrative, or complex. His concluding analysis concerned Van Gennep’s structure as applied to men’s rites and, specifically, a female equivalent that he introduced. This comprised the parallel tripartite of enclosure > metamorphosis/magnification > emergence. The girl, that is, went in (inside, inward, was enclosed), where she changed (with status enhancement), and then emerged (back into society, as a women). Finally, thence, there was a working out for initiation of the implications of Eliade’s comments on two magics and the female mystery of generation – built from an analysis of ancient initiations. Regarding Lincoln’s enclosure > metamorphosis/magnification > emergence model, we should also review how the above considerations apply to such a female-oriented iteration of the basic tripartite for transition. First, the fundamentals of a before and after and a unidirectional, permanent change are unaffected. Second, the primary movement is of a going in and coming out; instead of a ‘from-to’ there is an ‘into-out of ’. As observed for the tribal situation (p. 29), physical movement is spatially reduced, to a retreat inside the hut and then (re)emergence, with that decreased even to no movement within the hut. In this sense of a small and shrinking movement, the retreat inwards, spiritual initiation make be taken to have a paradigmatically feminine tone (cf. the religious retreat, classically, in a cave). Other linkages of male-to-female binary logic may be made, like peak high to peak depth (trough) or adult initiation to day-light versus spiritual initiation to night-dark. Of course, the application of any such universalising analysis is to be made in a specific context. Somewhat following on from Lincoln in developing her own insights, for example, Marion Woodman (1985: 33) suggested that that ‘initiation into mature womanhood’ in a ‘patriarchal culture’ may occur through ‘abandonment’ (which may be physical or psychological but also involves the idea of a giving up, or surrender). This implies aloneness (and egolessness) as a particularly feminine tone, which again links to a standard notion of spirituality as well as to the anthropological history of initiation (with the linkage of male initiation to group rites) – but on the material premise of patriarchy. However, more recent work has questioned the applicability of the ‘seemingly monolithic paradigm’ of initiation as a ‘category for studies of classical antiquity’. Writing on GrecoRoman antiquity in a critique of the overly wide usage made of the archaeological record to reconstruct rites of passage, Garwood (2011: 269-270) refers with suspicion to ‘attempts to identify material evidence for rites of passage such as birthing and female initiation’, as well as the similar usage of ‘figurative representations… with written sources’ (to which we may reasonably add cave structures and paintings from the Palaeolithic). Similarly, there

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has been a recent rejection of the interpretation by Angelo Brelich (1961) of ancient (Greek, etc.) ‘ritual wars’ as ‘initiation wars’ made by Stefano Girola and Elena Franchi (2012).114 These authors went further with the assertion that, as an ongoing process since the 1980s, the ‘notion of initiation has been rejected’ (ibid.: 241). The idea that initiation studies has met the same fate as its subject and found itself out of time in the world of contemporary scholarship certainly has some value, since previous applications have been found wanting as over-generalised and new perspectives and names have been introduced (such as by Bourdieu – p. 147). It is far from clear, however, that this invalidates the subject under which they have been housed, insofar as that conceptual confusion may still house them – much in the same way that terms like ‘ritual’ have been problematised without emptying the idea of meaning. This is an issue to come back to (see Chapter 10). Related to this (and included in the Girola and Franchi judgement) are issues with definition. Where the definition of initiation is problematic – as it is – then instances might be identified primarily on the basis of its own theory, which can become quite circular. However, this is essentially the case with any concept in relation to instances. For initiation, Van Gennep observed that rites of passage, exhibited three ritual or ritualised phases, specified and in order, so where a social process seems amenable to such a characterisation, it becomes an initiation (similarly for Eliade and life-death). There is certainly a circularity here, but this may be problematised and investigated by reference to context. It was Jan Snoek’s ‘vain efforts’ to define ‘initiation rites’ that Girola and Franchi cited, yet he did investigate the concept application to confound circularity. In Snoek’s (2004: 80, 98) consideration of Zoroastrian Rituals, he focuses on the Parsi entry ritual of Navjote. Acknowledging the problem of ritual descriptions already informed by theory and inquiring as to whether the Navjote is to be counted as an ‘initiation’, he suggests that the ‘first thing we should do is to verify that it fits Van Gennep’s criteria of a rite of passage’. Since Snoek has already determined to apply other approaches – those of Eliade (1958), Bloch (1992) and his own (Snoek, 1987) – this becomes a comparative analysis study. The determination is that the Navjote does qualify as an initiation since it fits Van Gennep’s description, sufficiently meets Eliade’s and his criteria and characteristics, and it ‘can also be interpreted Bloch’s way’. Thus, the issue of definition is fairly resolved for this case (in the affirmative).115

114 Although the connection was already reviewed at the time as made ‘somewhat tenuously’ (Andrews, 1962:

192); Girola and Franchi (2012: 230, 347-348) develop this critique, arguing that Brelich employed what were already ancient misinterpretations – e.g. Herodotus’ (endogenous) reading of Spartan post-conflict hair-cutting as initiatory (rather than a mourning ritual) – to thereby compound original errors for what they analyse as a ‘second level mistake’ or ‘creative epistemological misinterpretation’ (cf. White, 1991). 115 The Navjote is not sex-gender specific, and thus another example of non-binary initiation; in Snoek’s (op cit.: 89) words, it is ‘exacatly the same… even no segregation between boys and girls takes place’. Snoek’s own characterisation of initiation is largely a selective synthesis of Van Gennep and Eliade; Bloch’s involves relations of (metaphorical and material) ‘violence’ (which may be but is not necessarily integrated with Van Gennep), such as the wrenching out of community (separation) and the sacrifice of an animal (recorporation).

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Returning to archaeology, an interdisciplinary conference and subsequent volume in 2008 did push toward a radical disconnection of the concepts of the classical mysteries from anthropological initiation, such that little more than a notion of ‘secrecy’ was found to be common to them. However, this was also deemed to be very much a function of the different disciplinary approaches – specifically, regarding theory, methodology and sociological application (Blakey, 2008). Attempts to combine the two were made for contemporary situations, but in relatively ‘undeveloped’ social contexts in (rural, tribal) regions of central and western Africa, in which context, MacGaffrey (2008: 109) noted the ‘important difference between Greek and African mysteries… that Greeks were literate’. If anything, this would only speaks to the fragmentation thesis, in terms of different types of mysteries, unless the Greeks were to be considered more highly developed than the Africans referred to or imagined, in which case the History is not really addressed (but again, difference could be an expression of it). Any complete removal of the classical mysteries from the linear development of initiation in the history as told would be supremely ironic given the discursive history (patently, anthropology would not have used init- forms without Latin usage for the mysteries, so there would have been no initiation studies as such for the classical mysteries to be removed from). A full argument for this has not been made, however. Notwithstanding the conceptual distance and dissimilarity of mysteries and initiations indicated, the anthropological histiography itself is little addressed. Certainly, there has been a considerable pull-back from the earlier (twentieth century) classicist excess of seeing initiation everywhere, as a contemporary perspective would have it. But not so much more than that. Thus, the overall thrust of an edited volume on Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives by David Dodd and Christopher Faraone (2003) that also covered this ground – the mysteries-initiation relationship – was very much to restrain rather than reject the applicability of the anthropological idea of initiation to the ancient Greek (discursively original) context, aiming only at a ‘critical evaluation of the paradigm’ – an evaluation, apparently, that was actually not much required in some relatively unproblematic cases, such as the Eleusinian mysteries (Dodd, 2003: xiii-xv). Critiquing his earlier (1981) work in a second edition ‘Afterword’, Lincoln (1991) indicated the possibility of a radical deepening and widening of this revisionary approach – yet he too was to stop short of arguing against the whole edifice of the History and/or attempting to rebuild it. In another Afterword (to the Dodd and Faraone volume), Lincoln focused only on the twentieth century in his identification of three ‘lines’ or ‘lineages’ of discourse – as into and elevation through (1) mostly male, eventually proto-state groups (starting from Schurtz and Webster); (2) occult groups and the secret wisdom, philosphia perennis tradition (referencing Eliade); and (3) social groups (as ‘moral communities’, linked to the life cycle and Van Gennep’s model). Thus, Lincoln’s (2003: 250) conclusion was just to offer (mainly limiting) ‘corrections’ for ‘further studies’ – and to confirm the divisions

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of initiation, or fragmentation. Something similar is indicated in translations of historical (Greek) texts, which continue to use init- forms quite liberally (see note to Appendix 3). Overall, it appears, recent work and the adjustments it has advocated have disputed the strength and the relevance rather than the fact of the conceptual linkage of the archaeological, classical and tribal through initiation. This, one can judge, has only served to further underscore the conventional narrative of disappearance, that such passage rites belong to the developmental past (and thus the material past also, in large part, which is to say that they are constantly in overall recession, worldwide). In anthropology, evidence for diminishment was presented by Schlegel and Barry (1980: 697, 712), with development and then decline, parallel to (as both expressive and generative of ) the social importance of gender. Thus, ‘initiatory ceremonies can be plotted along an evolutionary line, from simplicity to complexity of societal organization’, they argued – since girls’ initiation is more prevalent than boys’ among simple societies, and longer, more involved and group (i.e. boys’) rites dominate among ‘middle-range’ societies – until finally, in complex societies, ‘adolescent initiation ceremonies recede in importance’. The evolution and development of initiation carried in it the idea of variety and different types, and the idea of demise involved a further process of division and fragmentation. This was partly expressed in the idea and confusions of the taxonomies, as discussed in Chapter 1. The division was and continues to be regarded as historical process rather than just sociological analysis, although little detailed as such. The different categories and subcategories are presumed and partially shown to have materially evolved out of a simple, unitary (supra-performative) form, or something like that (e.g. with shaman as an original social-role/position specialisation in simple societies and large group rites as emergent). Initiations into other positions, beyond chief and spirit-worker, required those positions to be developed as a feature of the more complex society that went with material progress through technological and economic advance. Initiations into knighthood and other ceremonies of confirmation exemplify this, together with the reduced nature of the ritual (and indeed, all ritual, with the modernising secularisation of socio-culture).  The final diminishment is expressed in the idea of a rump manifestation as pale reflection and historical artefact. This, broadly, extended into modernity, starting with initiation into religious and quasi-religious orders and the societies of guilds and crafts – such as nonspeculative masonry, indeed. Then, even the last remaining paths from novice apprentice to master craftsman were obliterated by the juggernaut of modernisation and industrialisation. Only vestiges of the old ritual remained, isolated remnants in the world of work, like young sailors voyaging abroad for the first time being ducked from the yardarm or spread-eagled to the rigging and coopers in London rolling their young lads in a beer barrel (Henningsen, 1961: 247ff.). Nowadays, with the passing of stable, life-long trade- and profession-based Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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employment relationships, even work-based initiation means no more than a practical joke on the first day. Finally, therefore, we have the convention of the histiographical denouement, that is, the final chapter in the History of Initiation, the conventional conclusion to the whole sorry saga – elimination, the unfortunate ending of effective disappearance. Generally this is contained in the discourse as just implicit in the logic of the narrative, but it has been explicitly asserted and argued. Max Gluckman (1962: 30, 36-38) characterised rites of passage (so initiation) in terms of their function to ‘segregate the roles of people living in the small groups of tribal society’ and also of ‘conflicts between the roles’. Therefore, he found ‘the rituals of the kind investigated by Van Gennep’ – i.e. mainly adult initiation – to be ‘“incompatible” with the structures of modern life’. They did not ‘evolve in the urban situation’, at least not outside of ‘“pockets” of social relations’ (small, closed communities), and even there not in such a way as to ‘mystically affect the well-being of initiands’ to the extent that their non- or incorrect observance would ‘bring misfortune on one’s fellows’. It was continued in this line that Turner, as described, refused the application of ‘liminal’ to the modern context. Vizedom (1976: 56) stated that US student-fraternity behaviours cannot be counted as initiation since they have no ‘credible elders’ and marginal phases like ‘participation in the drug culture’ similarly fail because of the lack of a ‘traditionally defined transformation’ (specifications that could thus qualify military service and academic candidacy for doctorates). La Fontaine (1985: 44, 58) was concerned to emphasise that initiations into secret(ive) societies, such as the Chinese Triad, were into ‘subgroups within large and complex societies’ that importantly ‘represented an alternative source of spiritual and political power but… did not challenge the main principle of government’. Here, then, a space for initiation in the modern, defined by its marginality. Vizedom’s military service and academic candidacy similarly provide liminal spaces. The central idea of initiation, liminality, is thus contained within its present expression, defining the space for its practice. Notions of status-rise and authority with tests determine this idea, but also that of secrecy, an enclosed and inaccessible environment. Without these, we can conceive of public, trans-national initiations into offices of power, but only as rites of confirmation, ceremonies of little effect than to mark the making or do the doing that has really already been done – so, emptied of mystery. A place for initiation is observed today also in a space situated within the authority-power, mystic secrecy and public engagement institutionally described as ‘religion’. The academic discipline of Religious Studies routinely uses the idea of initiation and has produced some significant work that grew from the anthropological. Assuming to apply Van Gennep’s modelling to formalised entries into religions as institutions, this has tended not to challenge the narrative of decline, however, even as it details contemporary performance. In the introduction to Initiation Rites, for example, an educational series on Religious Topics aimed at (pre-pubertal) youngsters, Jon Mayled (1986: 4-5) noted that ‘many religions have special initiation ceremonies during which people are initiated into the religion as full 168 

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members’ and that these are usually ‘held for young people who are reaching adulthood’. Extending consideration of Japanese religion to the more general context of rites of passage, meanwhile, Ian Reader (1994: 174) recognised that ‘company induction ceremonies’ in Japan develop ‘a common sense of identity’, but this identity only contributes to that of adulthood, it does not effect it. Thus, we can say, they are initiatory rather than initiations. Relatedly, in a second Afterword to the Dodd and Faraone volume, Redfield (2003: 257) distinguishes ‘initiatory experience’ from ‘initiation ritual’. He argues that the former is not ‘derived from’ the latter, but the other way around. Ritual ‘aims to clarify, motivate, normalize, support, and explain’ the experience. This is interesting for two reasons. First, though perhaps not intended, it seems to carry the implication that initiation ritual does not (necessarily) effect initiation. Then, as it ‘aims’, so might it fall short, implying the idea of a failed initiation.116 Second, and more obviously, the deployment of ‘experience’ suggests a qualitatively different conceptualisation, of an individual or inner sense, of a process that occurs independently of the outward form of ritual. Then ritual behaviour may compliment and support initiation, but this could occur anyway, somehow (or not). That would certainly seem to invoke a sense of spiritual initiation, as ought to be expected in the Religious Studies framing. Reader’s piece on initiation in Japan covering company induction may be adjudged to reaffirm the History, but it can also be taken to indicate the possibility of a category widening that goes beyond our usual idea of initiation ritual, and thus undermines the History. Noting the Japanese aphorism that people are ‘born Shinto and die Buddhist’, Reader (ibid.: 169ff.) described how in the process of modernisation that has come with industrialisation, Shintoism and Buddhism have declined and receded to rural communities, becoming ‘spiritually deficient and even moribund’, which goes also, of course, for their initiatory rites. An interesting consequence of this process, however, has been the development of a standardised secular rite of initiation to replace the religious, consisting of a civil ceremony every January 15th for people who will become twenty during the following year. Thus, Reader developed initiation theory in terms of ‘rites of passage involving transformation and recorporation into new communities’, rites that are widespread in Japan, including ‘formal entrance ceremonies to schools, even nursery’ and ‘company initiation ceremonies’, and which thus contribute to ‘a common sense of identity’. This inclusiveness and incursion into communal identity is also suggestive of a broader approach, a further, contemporary revision of the discourse that involves a range of initiations within an overall context of the initiation experience of moving and joining and identity-forming. These might be named ‘incorporation’ or ‘inclusion’ or ‘identity’ rites – or similar – but the name ‘initiation’ may equally be valued and maintained if it gets at something involving the maturation process. Following the History, we should add that in Reader’s account, still, a loss of spiritual initiation is implied. Broadly, with the development from shamanic pantheisms to 116 Cf.

Hippolytos; see p. 163.

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monotheistic religions and then the replacement of (all) these by science, the demise of tribal society and its magical religiosity represents a shrinkage and vanishment that pertains to the mystical. The old thesis not only holds but is echoed and amplified in the perspective of a loss of spiritual value generally in the world of capital, consumerism and endless entertainment. Although this perhaps gained a problematic currency with Marxian alienations of the self to the self and Nietzschean atheistic materialism, it found rejuvenated expression in the counter-culture, then alternative and then New Age and complimentary approaches for a contemporary esoteric identifying, among other things, the loss of ritual. The demise of initiation in the discourse really is closed linked to the de-sacralising tendency of modern culture, where the fetish is material and in which the space for any mysticism is quite curtailed. Then, initiation into no mystery is a poor substitute – so it fails. Realities and representations today The unilinear, Western-centric model of modernistic anthropology, with its teleological decline and demise of initiation, is little supported today. Rather, multi-linear approaches are assumed, thereby undermining the theoretical underpinning for a generalisation about the modern death of initiation as a rite of passage into adulthood. At the least, such statements need to be contextualised by time and place. What is occurring in one situation with one history may not be happening in another. This is a fact of abstract analysis, but there is also the ‘fact on the ground’ of analyses that are made. There is a currently proliferation of initiation studies worldwide, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, accessible to all at the click of a mouse. Such studies routinely employ the discourse of post-initiation, which is to talk about transitions and life crises and identities employing the vocabulary of the core thesis – but not necessarily or only rarely using init- forms. Thus, there is a sense of passé in the rather rigid requirements of initiation – that there must be credible elders (with experiential authority granting status), that transition must be traditionally defined (as rule-based and unchallenged), that the function of confirming the social order should be maintained, and suchlike. If these do not exist or pertain, then clearly they are just not necessary, and their stipulation becomes arbitrary. An academician needing clarity of concept and purity of purpose could want to maintain tight definitional restrictions for what counts and does not count as ‘initiation’. But in vain. The information flood nowadays simply drowns out such voices. Rather than reconsider arguments for what should be understood by ‘initiation’, then, it is better just to illustrate the present situation for an appreciation of how the discourse actually is employed in the service of adult initiation today. As ever, in fact, a bottom-up approach to terminological usage is indicated as practical and ultimately preferable (or at least, as democratic, more flexible and responsive, ultimately stronger and simply more relevant, thus enduring). Typically indicated by the name of the country in which they occur (in addition to or rather than by a people – so, tending to the state-territorial more than ethnological), 170 

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contemporary initiation studies may start from pre-identified initiations. The relationship of the researchers to the subject may be varied, as well as, of course, the focus of interest. In recent African studies, for example, some works, for example, emphasise the endurance of traditional practice as a resilience to developmentalism. In ‘Linking African Traditional Education and the Ethic of Identity through Shangani Culture, Zimbabwe’, Richard Shadreck Maposa (2011) seeks to ‘expose and discover the vitality of the circumcision rite as part of the education in traditional Shangani society’. Others look to change and the present development of traditional rites in an intercommunal and intercultural context. Focusing on ‘Girls’ initiation rite and inculturation among the VaRemba of Zimbabwe’, Tabona Shoko (2009) argues that the Komba rite can be accommodated into Catholic practices such as ‘baptism, confirmation and matrimony’. Munthali and Zulu (2007) focus on sex/sexual activity in regard to the timing and some functions of contemporary initiatory practice. They focus predominantly among Yao Muslims in southern Malawi, but in both traditional and novel forms (so also among Christians). Initiations may be deemed important from the perspective of contemporary civil society and public policy. Peggy and Ben Siyakwazi (2015) present a ‘Case Study for Initiation Schooling among the Lemba in Mberengwa District Zimbabwe’, through which they advocate that the ‘largely untapped wealth of indigenous knowledge… be adapted to Zimbabwean context’. Such studies are grounded within relatively narrow limits, identifying practice that has a geography and history but not one that can necessarily be abstracted for generalisation about what tends to happen (and far less what will, there, and in other places). Other studies may be characterised as starting from an abstraction – a standard, implicit conception of initiation, employing aspects of the core thesis of initiation studies in anthropology regarding social practices as rites of passage for young people in order to identify initiations ongoing today. Some of these are transnational. Looking at ‘Migration as a rite of passage for young Afghans building masculinity and adulthood in Iran’, for example, Alessandro Monsutti (2007) focuses on Hazara males who move from the mountains of Central Afghanistan to the cities of Iran aiming to provide for their families back home in the mobility context of ‘multidirectional cross-border movements’ and their political framing (related here to the Taliban and then international backed regime in Kabul). Here, the ‘rite of passage’ essentially refers to a testing of youngsters as a core thesis aspect, a difficult experience through which they mature. Initiation comprises the undergoing of the test, the performance of the difficult task required, although that word itself is not used. Thence, it follows that in the return move, back to Afghanistan, repatriation should be understood as the initiatory recorporation (Kamal, 2010: 206).117

117 The

irony or intrigue here is a return to the very type of movement with which Van Gennep started, the physical crossing of territorial borders (the socio-political significance of a material event that was used by Van Gennep to establish the metaphor of marginality [in psycho-social life] is now re-applied to the same type of material event for analysis in terms of psycho-social marginality [before, during and after]).

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This application of initiation is a popular, common even, and yet actually rather radical move. The histiography of decline only ends in developmental demise with disappearance in the West because it is only there that it has actually transpired. However, but insofar as ‘initiation’ names an analytical form (the abstraction of rites of passage, the core thesis), then it is not clear that even this is necessarily the case. Whether the analysis applied is of ‘initiations’ or (just) of events and process that are (conceived of ) ‘initiatory’ (and named ‘passage rites’), the effect is sufficiently similar to be spoken as the same. This is, ineed, initiation by any other name. It should not be condemned to a metaphorical status, like ‘liminoid’ and ‘limina’, as though the ‘passage’ is not already that, a conceptualisation of life’s journey and model for the stage of a process in terms of ‘rite’. Initiation is a well-enough established idea in the public domain, a cultural reference that works, a way of understanding the world that can help to make sense, to give meaning (even if the word itself is not used). Thus, we can potentially apply it (as discourse) to any situation, anywhere, ever – including, obviously, ‘the West’. Which is precisely what goes on in domains like school projects, entertainment productions and arts critique, with categories like ‘rite of passage movie’, which are as easily staged in the town of Alaska, Zimbabwe as Zion, America, and use the terminology in names, such as a slide presentation of the famous Afghan novel as Kite Runner Rite of Passage.118 As an online upload, there may be a certain ephemeral quality to this last example, but that also means contemporary relevance (at the time of writing), which in turn goes to pick out one aspect of the functioning of initiation as applied concept: it is inherently mutable and transitory, determined only by the parameters of the paradigm. Initiation may end with adulthood as its product, by definition, but it is not very easily restricted by this when the notion of ‘adult’ is itself also vague. That vagueness, however, does not mean invalidation. The core concept of adulthood as a cluster of ideas and relationships remains, albeit unfixed to rigid parameters and extremely if not quite entirely negotiable. Also, the Kite Runner story shifts between Afghanistan and America and back again – so between the Developing and Developed Worlds, the Third and the First, the Rest and the West – which further smudges the cultural boundary of the conventional conclusion. The idea of ‘the West’ is already outmoded in a globalising context, and the very concept of ‘development’ is critiqued, let alone its teleological conclusion. Add to this the complications of movement, and it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint quite where the disappearance of initiation even might be situated. The conceptual space of the West as developmentally situated beyond initiation is itself quite defunct. In this sense, a relative, non-specific a-historicity enters. The conventional conclusion seems to dissipate into a flattened world of the kaleidoscopic, at all ‘stages of development’ intermingled at all levels, from the embodied individual through conceptions of community 118 Kite Runner Rite of Passage, by Caleb Limmer (2014). Available at https://prezi.com/kiy7mlnijlsd/kiterunner-rite-of-passage.

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to the virtual world, presently-presented yet forever-everywhere, in which initiations may be anthropologically contra-indicated yet nevertheless identified. In this flattened world are sited the always unique, actual stories of initiation set in specific environments; the particular narratives of the myth of each coming of age eternally retold anew. Initiation then is a model applied to a given situation, embedded in that psycho-social environment, determining how the particular details relate beyond any generalisable past or future. Yet, like all post-modernisms, the ‘post-’ here is still of the ‘modern’. The anchoring of anthropology still fixes the discourse and its histiographical conclusion, as alongside the more free-floating applications. The idea of a devolution and dissolution is maintained, even if its ending is messy and unconcluded. Then, we do not argue that contemporary forms necessarily emerged out of traditional ones in a material, causal sense – and nor that they did not – but rather that the broad movement of human development is well enough understood when expressed thus (i.e. as relatively unitary, powerful initiations at earlier times; then distinguished as non-adult or age-defined and growing in complexity; and becoming marginalised and de-mystified in recent times). The sense in which initiation is moribund is not lost, therefore. Yet neither is it necessarily assumed, as a given. Thus, for example, the idea of a contemporary adult initiation as rite of passage requires reconsideration – and an idea of spiritual initiation without a spirit-worker role to take on or a mysteries cult to enter into remains as a possibility to be worked out.

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Part V – Where then, where now? Expanding the vision for a contemporary, integrated approach

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Chapter 10. Beyond anthropology Initiation: The Concept, was first made by the Latins, taken from old footage of mysteries that itself reframed a wide range of practices dating back to and before the opening reels of recorded time. It constantly evolved thereafter, primarily in the discourse of mysteries, through the Early Christians and secret society traditions until the 1900s, when it was remade as Part II: The Adult, by ethno-anthropology in the Age of Science. The result was a conventional History, the historiography of initiation, based on its modern demise. Now, the idea of completing a trilogy involves taking the plot-ending of Part II as the preposterous premise for a new scenario. Part III: The Resurrection. Or at least, a reconstruction, towards a new conceptualisation of the discourse of post-initiation studies. Granting the signs of life in anthropological initiation studies defined through the application of the discourse of passage rites into adulthood, the wonder is how far this goes, or can go, or can be taken. Like a dried-up, withering plant that springs back into life upon the first watering, might initiation be similarly resuscitated? Since it never did really die although pronounced and portrayed thus, might we not find it surprisingly resilient and growing in all sorts of places? Including but going beyond anthropology, this chapter moves mainly toward sociology. It widens the context of analysis to raise other ideas, or provocations, around culture and meaning. Aiming in the general direction of a rehabilitated idea of initiation, approaches to education, ceremony and the meaning of ritual are considered along with the work of the Turners. These are not rigorously detailed, neatly dissected or drilled down on, but allowed to free-flow and relate as discussion. The aim is for a stimulation, although also groundwork, to create a space for the reconsideration of initiation today, for a contemporary rethinking of the subject. One idea that might be aired from the start is that in the same way that feminism had led to gender studies, so also could the study of initiation be extended in studies of the cycle of life, or life-course studies. This, presumably, would also contextualise spiritual initiation. Just as the focus on women was to lead to a broader (horizontal, as it were) curriculum, an analytical approach from the perspective of sex-gender, especially from the marginalised position of the third (so the syllabus of queer studies), so may initiation be extended in a complimentary (vertical, longitudinal) approach, taking the perspective of age and development. Impelled by the young, the generation (always) coming through (so the discourse in initiation studies), concepts of age and development as perspective and Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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analysis could be as profoundly employed and radically critiqued and extensively applied to all manner of cultural phenomena as has been gender. This is already done, but in piecemeal fashion. For example, there are analyses of the effects of demographics in politics (e.g. as a standard dimension of voter polling research) and observations about how progress actually works – like the ‘remarkable’ – and brutal – fact learnt by Max Planck (1949: 33-34): ‘A new scientific truth… triumph[s]… because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’ Indeed, there is a stock phrase that still expresses such societal change, ‘the generation gap’. Since the idea of age introduces time as a dynamic constituent, it implies narratives of change, process, development. Then, introducing societal complexity and human development, the inter-generational life-cycle can be used as a generalising perspective for the interpretation of subjects ranging across the humanities, social sciences and liberal arts, crucially determined by practical issues of power and identity. Instead of fitting age into identity studies, age could be made central and identity theory placed in this context. Or, it could have been. Theoretically, this makes sense, but maybe its moment has passed. Perhaps initiation belonged to the same ‘revolutionary’ era as women’s liberation and feminism, gay activism, civil rights and the final dismantling of the old maritime empires, no less, which spawned the vital intellectual awareness and critical language for new movements (of post-colonial studies, identity studies, etc.). And maybe that moment has passed now, an opportunity unseized. The concern is not that initiation is dead or too much of a committee-designed camel of a subject to do anything much with, but that it has already, in fact, run out of time. Certainly, this was the sense expressed by Bruce Lincoln (2003: 250), when he wrote that ‘interest is fading in initiation’, as a function of ‘fashion, accompanied and assisted by generational succession’. Which, of course, is not without irony, insofar as such ‘generational succession’ – per Planck’s insight – is precisely the type of dynamic that one would expect to admit of a longitudinal investigation rooted in initiatory analysis. Anyway, where at least part of the concern with initiation is with the mystical and the notion of a spiritual initiation – as it has always been, in fact – such fashions and dynamics are not so important. In the timeless realm of the mystic, one cannot really be out of time. Or, being out of time is a given. To get going ‘beyond anthropology’, we can start by returning to a place we have left, with Turnerian ideas. Education and Turnerian extensions Liminoid production for Turner (1974) was characteristically pluralistic, individual, idiosyncratic and optional. Whereas liminality had requirements and rules specifying when, where and how one should break or else follow the rules (this meta-regulation hegemonically directed, probably), for the liminoid today the ‘should’ becomes ‘could’, a personal creative freedom. It is very liberal. A liberalising or not really so liberalising historical account of this shift – in terms of, for example, subsistence type and technological development, 178 

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contractual socio-political relations and post-Marxian capital, or even the spiritual progress of mankind – need not be so important. The new initiation project for a perspective of maturation situating and problematising development starts out as paradoxically posthistorical. Similarly, for the distinction of the liminoid that was based on an essentialising of the tribal, since ‘liminoid’ is anyway dispensed with. ‘Liminal’ is widely used, ‘liminoid’ not, and we do not care to make problems. The point is just Turner’s characterisation of where we are (in terms of pluralism, individualism, etc.), as a characterisation of the age. Turner’s notion of the liminoid resonates strongly with Joseph Campbell’s (1968) thesis of modernity as involving a creative rather than inherited mythology, in which the individual is free to (re)fashion myth. Campbell used literary fictions as examples, with the works of Thomas Mann and James Joyce offered as models. These are given as a view from the present summit of human culture, in comparison with the ‘primitive culture’ of fixity (inherited archetypes, eternal myths and legends about gods and goddess that do not change in themselves but just develop slowly across cultures). But the evolution of the primitive reveals the illusion of non-fixity. Thus, a common assumption is of time moving more quickly now, compressing change and our sense of our options, so that choice – flexibility, freedom – appear to be peculiarly present. Again, though, the historical thesis is rather unimportant in a post-modernising context where the concentration is more on the perspective of today’s pluralisms and a focus on recreativities and suchlike taken as key. Cultural productions in this context include the employment of a passage-rites genre, for the novel and in film (and elsewhere, in exhibitions, installation, etc.). This occurs across a range of cultural utterances – in publicity presentations, reviews and critiques – as well as in the works themselves, through their internal languages (literal and cinematic). The Kite Runner project cited above employs a contemporary form. There, the initiation discourse is applied in a recognisable yet liberal fashion (with originality, as pertaining to the particular case). This is achieved through a geographical presentation of the movements in the story (in Afghanistan, to America, and back and back again) – so paradigmatically liminalising, territorially passagewise – with a narrative of the names for transitions comprising the transformation shown on an interactive map of the world in the slide-presentation mode accessible on a popular internet platform. So, we can update Turner’s focus on speedy communication and passivity in respect of mass media by emphasising the space of multisource access, the activity of uploads and the communitas of real-time sharing.119

119 The names for the phases of Amir’s journey in the Kite Runner presentation are ‘Background’, ‘Aid/Mentor’,

‘Christ Figure’, ‘The Call’ // ‘Chaos’, ‘Trials and Ordeals’, ‘Epiphany’, ‘Trials and Ordeals cont’ // ‘Cosmos’ and ‘New Persona’ (tripartite division added); in migration studies, the idea of 'mediatisation' becomes relevant. There are, of course, countless examples from the passage rites genre, some of which are quite consciously framed thus and others read thus. Thus, William Golding’s (1980) novel about an early nineteenth-century voyage to New South Wales opening a trilogy and entitled Rites of Passage clearly falls into a different category from his (1954) passage-rites classic, Lord of the Flies.

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The challenge is simply to consider the liminal as it works at present – at all levels (material and conceptual, implicit, conscious, self-conscious) – rather than remaining fixed to the (analytically, merely) liminoid. The scope of enquiry should not be limited or prejudged. Turnerian ideas are applied to adult or maturity initiation today, which is to state an empirical fact, but also wider afield. Rites of passage stories (fictional or art/ entertainment productions) usually assume a single hero(ine) as the main actor – sometimes, a small cohort (four characters is about the maximum) – to carry the old myth of initiation. These stories place a person or persons in a certain place and time. Thence, they (re)present a ‘slice of life’, or an (imagined, reflected) socio-cultural making of personal history, or an anthropological artifice contributing to the totality of the lived and living fabric of the contemporary imagination. This gets at a wider sense of where initiation studies can go.  In order to move forward, let us go back (once again). The expeditionary journal of Edward Eyre (1845: 332ff.) referred to the observation of ‘five stages to be passed through’ in a ‘youth’s passage to manhood’, for three of which there was a ceremonial whereby the youngster was ‘entered’, or ‘initiated’. The first stage started from birth, while the last, ‘the rank of a bourka, or full grown man’, was ‘only attained when the individual is getting grey-headed’; the three enacted initiations occurred at about ten years old, with a blood (smearing) ceremony [cf. separation], at twelve to thirteen, with circumcision [cf. marginality], and, at about twenty, with tattooing [cf. recorporation]. Adult initiation was thus established from very early on as an extended process lasting for a long period of time, over many years; the tertiary ritual process is very much evident as applicable to the process as a whole; and this was distinguished from simple ceremony, with rituals as events occurring (procedures performed) to mark the passage as a whole. While the tribal membership rites reported by Spencer and Gillen (1899) began at puberty, these extended into biological adulthood, reportedly performed between the ages of 10-12 and 25-30. Taplin (1897a: 15-17) had already explained how Narrinyeri youths were not allowed to comb their hair until their beards had grown sufficiently (two inches), upon which the beards were plucked out, a process that was then repeated another twice before they were ‘admitted as an equal among the men’. Including this example, Webster (1908: 71-84) complied other Australian reports on how the Booandik males, in the south, passed through the full ordeals of initiation two or three times; on how the Dieri, again in the south, endured a six-stage process of initiation; and on how, in some of the Queensland tribes, it was difficult for the initiated men to complete the process with marriage before the age of thirty (because the elders kept all the young girls to themselves). Here, marriage effectively becomes the recorporation phase of initiation; or, at least, the end of initiation goes with (is followed by) marriage as a boundary marker between stages of life.

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The idea of initiation as a maturity process extended through adolescence (and beyond), was a focus in British studies in the twentieth century, particularly the pre-WWI to post WWII period. A classic early work by a key figure in the development of the field, for example, was written by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1922: 91, 144) on The Andaman Islanders in the Bay of Bengal. Declaratively nominated by its sub-title as a Study in Social Anthropology, this features extensive treatments of initiation ceremonies, which are established in the context of ‘three well-marked periods… childhood, adolescence and maturity’, and marked by statements like ‘initiation [for a girl] is a long process that is only completed by marriage’.120 Fundamentally, of course, Turner developed this perspective in his conception of ritual as ‘processional’. Initiation was not just placed in time – in calendrical and agricultural, lifecycle or some other time, as defining and defined by or just occurring in it – but also, time was placed into initiation. Initiation had duration. Manifestly, we should not limit our thinking of initiation to a single or short series of events. At the individual level, following Van Gennep’s image of life as rooms in a house, the initiatory threshold between rooms becomes a connecting passageway, or even a room of its own. One implication of this is that initiation can operate as societal organiser, through the organisation of age sets, of (groups of ) youngsters – or the not-so-young – bound together through the initiatory process. Initiation produces generations. In the Institute’s Journal, Phillip Gulliver (1953: 148, 151-153) detailed how this operated for the Karimojong Jie in north-eastern Uganda. Used both as a verb (to initiate) and noun (initiation), the local word ‘athepan’ referred also to age-set. In the indigenous, or emic (as opposed to outsider, or etic) conception, init- forms captured the notion of individuals grouped by both cohort and generation. Gulliver analysed the Karimojong Jie initiatory system as organising a hierarchal, tripartite, (male) societal structure. This consisted of a senior (closed) generation (the elders, who had completed initiation), a junior (open) generation (those in the process of going through initiation), and the as yet unopened (‘non-’)generation, where ‘approximately twenty to thirty years elapse[d] between the opening of a new generation and the opening of its successor’. Indeed, every life and even the whole of society was constructed around the generationalising function of the initiatory tripartite. Looking today for a similar form, for a socially instituted and mandated ritualistic producer of adults through the organisation of generational age sets, we do find one: education, the education system of schools and colleges. Basically, we all have to go to school until we are adults, and we are organised in age sets by calendrical years (mostly running from September), between ages running to a fixed minimum (15-16 is common). This, then, may be suggested as the primary initiatory structure of contemporary society. Of course, one may argue that schools do not produce adults, it is the legal system that does this through 120 On ‘initiation ceremonies’: ‘The term is perhaps not the best that could be chosen, but usage has rendered it familiar (Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit.).

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its formalised fixing of the ages of consent and majority (and others), but then it is the legal system also that requires a fixed-period education; state (and private) education systems are still initiations, albeit underwritten by statute (cf. p. 147). Teachers at schools are given parental authority, to act in absentia, in loco parentis, thus as the surrogate ‘parents’ of (or ‘uncles’, etc.) of initiation; they are initiators. Uniforms delete personal identity and grades must be passed. The curriculum determines those with knowledge (the secrets), and the authority of those with knowledge gain their power from this in the context of the disciplinary of the system. The ordeals and tests of initiation as education, including, literally, its exams, operate as social sanction that is effectively proscribed, since entry into society without having passed through this system with reasonable success is problematic, with the usual consequence of various forms and levels of marginalisation – thus, perhaps, a certain liminality as life condition, of being less than fully recorporated. Simply, the huge importance attached in the modern period to passage through the educational system has made completion itself a major marker of adulthood. State-sanctioned education systems unquestionably function as contemporary initiations. The options to continue beyond the minimum correspond to some ethnological examples noted above and fit Eliade’s obligatory-voluntary distinction; they match with Vizedom’s observation of a modern initiation – and they may even end with the non-medical conferment of ‘doctor’, an old term for spirit-worker (see pp. 39, 170). The greater complexity of life with the development of human society today means that education is currently contributive to the complex of initiation rather than simply constitutive of it. The idea introduced here runs thus. Historically, following the conventional history detailing the demise of initiation (Robertson Smith), that demise became assumed and the argument made that initiation cannot be effected in complex, advanced societies (Gluckman). The historical, material analysis moved to a sociological, abstract one, from a descriptive to normative (with reason). However, the initiation that then/there was impossible is now/ here no longer the initiation envisaged. It is not that initiations cannot effect change in complex environments but rather that it is the ‘simple’ initiations of ‘simple’ societies that cannot do this. Contemporary initiations are complex. They are not contained by single institutions, as unitary systems. Thus, education systems are systems of initiation that institute the transformation into to adulthood. But they do not, in and of themselves effect it (even if there may be some senses of ‘adult’ in which this does occur). Thus, applying the discourse analysis, we can comment on the place of the system in the whole vis-a-vis stasis and change. Looking forward, assuming that our schools will be radically transformed through the next decades, we may anticipate that education will become an (even more) dynamic site of contestation around tradition and refreshment. The outlook is for more conflict, not only acutely expressive and constitutive of socio-political power advocating for cultural conservation or transformation, but also of the definitions of ‘society’ and ‘global’ and a

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new bio-politics informing what we want for our youngsters, do to them, how they resist and how they will move human forward.  The educative function of initiation has always been recognised. Shades of the thinking of Michel Foucault colour the passage above – and his (1978: 61) conclusion in the History of Sexuality included the statement that ‘In Greece… sex served as a medium for initiations into learning.’ The dangerous relationship between initiation and pederasty (cf. paedophilia) in classical times – the mystery schools – may be read as implicit in the quoted section from Plato, translated in the 1870s (see note 78 and Appendix 3). Other translations are more explicit, such a recent one that begins thus: ‘[N]o soul returns to the place from which it came for ten thousand years… except for the soul of a man who practices philosophy without guile or who loves boys philosophically’ (Nehamas and Woodruff, 1997: 526 [249a]; emphasis added). This subject is covered by Cosimo Schinaia (2001: 90ff.), who cites Weitbrecht (1963: 175): ‘Between the eros paidagogos – the adult’s psychic and spiritual love of the young disciple he is educating – and the gradual sliding into a sensual paedophilic relationship, the step is small’. The appropriacy, illicitness and power issues around cross-generational, hetero- and homoerotic relationships in education including academia are always immanent. In anthropology, though, it appears that education in initiation may have been overemphasised. Schlegel and Barry’s (1979) statistically based analysis generally found education not to be a major function of (tribal) initiation, or not clearly so, contrary to the standard assumption.121 That standard assumption historically made may be clearly inferred from the original Society/BAAS Queries, which included, just prior to the questions on puberty and ceremonies, Question 22, combining education with an implicit initiation: ‘How are the children educated, what are they taught, and are there any methods adopted to modify their character, such as to implant courage, impatience of control, endurance of pain and privation, or, on the contrary, submission, and to what authorities, cowardice, artifice?’ (BAAS, 1841: 452). The conclusion to be drawn from the Schlegel and Barry research here is that the assignation of the educative function to tribal initiations involved a cultural projection. A projection from modern, Victorian Britain of its own initiation (onto the primitive). This conclusion should be treated with caution, though. Intriguingly, some of the earliest anthropological work on initiation as named occasionally employed, as an alternative to init- (and admit-), a form of the word ‘matriculate’, which mostly was used in education (and still is). In the case of the Journal, for example, in the second ever contribution to a Society publication using an init- form, on the Aborigines of Australia, Augustus Oldfield (1865: 252) described how ‘a youth at the age of puberty’ was 121 E.g. ‘Learning skills, sharing secrets, etc.’ was observed to be a primary component of initiation in less than

five percent of societies and in over two thirds of the remaining societies not even a secondary component (Schlegel and Barry, 1979: 205).

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‘counted as qualified for admission as a man into the tribe’ with ‘ceremonies attending this matriculation’ that concluded with a ‘final act of initiation’. In addition to ‘matriculation’ here, we see the employment of several terms to refer to and get at what Oldfield witnessed: ‘manners’, ‘customs’ and ‘ceremonies’ of ‘admission’, and ‘initiation’. Notable here is the absence of both ‘rites’ and ‘rituals’, two of the main categorising terms later to be paired with ‘initiation’ in the standard anthropological discourse. Oldfield’s language, however, was usual for its time, when ‘rites’ was typically paired with items like ‘religious’ and thus ‘circumcision’ and ‘sepulture’ (for burial/funerary rites). In other words, the tribal passage into manhood was not regarded as obviously religious (just as its naming by init- had not yet been fixed). In fact, there was a rather tardy uptake of the terminology of ‘rite/ritual’ for initiation during the nineteenth century, with ‘custom’ and ‘ceremony’ mostly preferred. It could be argued that there was effectively a choice being made on whether to view the activities observed in terms of religion or education – and that this paralleled also the event vs. process distinction for ‘initiation’, where ‘rite’ and also ‘ceremony’ were linked to the former (religion, event), with ‘custom’ a wider notion that could work for either, including the latter (education, process). Notably, the first, 1874, Notes and Queries had the (perfunctory) entry under initiation placed immediately following the section on ‘Education’ (and preceding one on ‘Games and Amusements’) – the section orderings of the different nineteenth-century Notes and Queries followed a sequential connecting logic with identifiable themes or clusters). In the later (1892 and ’99) editions, however, the ordering was changed, with the (full) ‘Initiation Ceremonies’ section located between ‘Circumcision’ and ‘Totemism’, indicating the linkage of the anthropological concept of initiation to ritual (event) rather than education (process) – but where ritual (ceremony, rite) was now secularised through a sociological reading. Religion was separated as a distinct topic cluster in the end-of-century editions, comprising sections on ‘Religion, Fetishes, etc.’ ‘Mythology’, ‘Superstitions’ and ‘Magic and Witchcraft’ (in that order) and placed some distance away from the circumcision-initiationtotemism grouping. Indeed, the idea of matriculation never caught on, as anthropologists witnessed a religious-type ritual, confirmed the name ‘initiation’ and moved to a sociological analysis – relegating education to a function of initiation (rather than being central to its definition). ‘Matriculation’ is a rather old-fashioned word in English, now, probably better read as ‘graduation’, and quite different from ‘initiation’, conceptually and grammatically. Regarding its deep or structural semantics, it tends to refer backwards, to the past (through success, an ending), rather than forwards, to the future (a beginning). In terms of the deep syntax, there is a distinction of agency. Matriculation/graduation is somewhat different to initiation insofar as it is something achieved (by the subject) rather than done to (them, as object). In initiation studies generally, people were initiated, admitted and also adopted; they did not matriculate.

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That is, the passive form was employed as standard for the discourse of initiation, expressing a grammar of the ritual (as it was perceived/constructed). This distinction suggests a different course for initiation studies, one that it might have taken. This would be concerned first, with the individual as agent rather than society as determinant, and also it would be youth- as opposed to adult-oriented. The agentive approach may be taken to indicate an emphasis on initiation as creative endeavour, something that we actively fashion in our lives, stressing thereby the unique rather than normative. Today, we are partly initiated by the education system and by other institutions and specific individuals in them and outside them; ultimately, however, we do not gain our real education (in life) and we are not really initiated by (any one thing or person in particular) – other, that is, than by our experience, the totality of which we realise in retrospect. Rather, we fashion our early path through youth within the parameters available, so, as agents in a determining system within which we make room to manoeuvre. Our total life experience becomes our initiation, replete with the rituals themselves of first love and loss and educational tests and gaining work, forging a career and such like. Indeed, life is the teacher!  Eventually, in pedagogical philosophy, a concept of education as initiation was to emerge. During the growing (second wave) of interest in initiation around the 1960s, the influential British philosopher of education, Richard Peters, included a chapter in his Ethics and Education on the idea of ‘Education as Initiation’. Presenting education as a ‘synthetic sketch rather than a definition’, Peters (1966: 46) aimed here to tread the middle ground between education as a handing down and fostering growth, as imparting and regenerating culture, so both a maintenance of social order and (re)constitution of new structure (within the overall order, but possibly not, so reconstituting that) – in other words, initiation as stasis and as change. Recognising the initiation of learners into ‘bodies of knowledge’ and thus their transformation into the status of socio-cultural ‘insiders’, Peters’ work informed the practical development of teacher-training in respect of the socio-philosophical context of their profession and its institutions. While this approach was influential, however, it did not win the day (and much less did it re-definitively return across the disciplinary divide for an anthropology of initiation as education). After gaining initial success in Britain, the understanding of initiation in terms of education fell to the wayside as itself a marginal view in the political battleground – when faced, one could say, with the conservative thrust of traditional values combined with the hegemonic market demands of future employment in the Neoliberal Age. Or, perhaps this

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was more the expression of a deep systemic inertia weighed by the cultural capital of the traditional school curriculum accumulated over the past century (centuries).122 Notably, though, the linking of initiation to education has endured. This is indicated, for example, by its recent application in the ‘commutarian’ perception of the school (Cotter, 2013). In this case, we might want to argue for peer-group communitas in the playground (out of lesson times) rather than the school as a whole. Or, for a commonality in alienation within and outside the school through the rituals of ‘subculture’ (Hall and Jefferson, 1976). Leftist critique of education during the 1970s would routinely regard it in terms of a ‘socialisation’ and investigate in Marxian terms the relationships between power and subjectivity. An example was the research programme based in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham (UK), from which the Hall and Jefferson book emerged – hence the title for a review on the CCCS work and its cultures and identities, ‘Coming of Age in Birmingham’ (Lave et al., 1992).123 The initiation-education linkage manifests in Leonard Waks’ (2013: 139-140) application of the presently popular construction of nesting. He refers to the nesting of ‘particular academic initiations in general social initiation’ in order to argue for a ‘rigorous training’ in ‘several disciplines and fields’ (related to ‘occupational opportunities’). The aim avowed for this is to ‘embrace education’s transitional role – as initiation into adult life’ and thence to repair the ‘broken link between education and adult status’. Thus, there is a profound disconnect here of failed initiation. As Waks’ reference to rigorous training indicates, the initiation discourse can also be applied to specific educational domains. Brent Bell (2003: 42, 46) sought to apply the ‘rites of passage model (ROM)’ as a ‘transformative model’ for critique of the ‘Contemporary Adventure Model (CAM)’ for ‘Effective Programming’ in ‘Outdoor Education’, thinking mainly of Outward Bound courses. Margi Nowak’s (2008) chapter in a book edited by Graham St John interestingly employed Turner’s analysis to special-needs education. For example, it has parents as neophytes and their social performance as playing a role in the drama of a paradigm conflict between the core American values of equality and of winning. Contemporary initiation studies such as these may be filed under the disciplinary domain of a post-colonial reflexive anthropology, of the non-other, or just sociology. Many domains can be analysed thus, as shown by other chapters in the same (St John) volume on popular culture. These include pieces on the structural liminality of backpacking and the spontaneous communitas of festivals. Importantly, these chapters are oriented to the experiences of young people, but not necessarily teenagers, the pubertal and adolescent age122 Relatedly, it may be argued that the adoption of ‘learner-centred’ approaches after Carl Rogers (1951; e.g.

Weimer, 2013) has been quite limited and slow-moving, especially when viewed in the context of what are now decades of the digital revolution (with digital application and digital issues but digital non-revolution in education) – and that the situation will change relatively little and late, until a more fundamental shift in work and employment patterns emerges (which is currently ongoing). 123 The review article does not really defend its title, which reveals a function of the discourse as metalanguage, to refer to a perspective (initiation) just through naming (of items of cultural production).

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siting most associated with anthropological initiation. It would be a truism to say that people are growing up faster but becoming adult later, though one that does bear repeating here. More interesting might be the relationship between initiation and adulthood. The definitions and approaches to definitions of adulthood are many, including its ontological status – is there even such a thing? Is this not reification of that which is better regarded as performed, like gender, per Judith Butler (1988)? Like the rites of a passage, indeed. Problematising the notion of adult is crucial, yet the internal logic for initiation is straightforward. Adulthood is its object, that into which it goes, and adults are its product, that which it makes. Adulthood is what is entered through initiation, by definition. Avoiding repetition of semantic dispute around what counts as initiation and the initiatory, in the liminal and liminoid in the examples above of communitas in backpacking and festivals, a related critique may be noted. This relates to the original Turnerian establishment of a hippy, feel-good ethos of assumed positive evaluation. Again, it is pointed out, little attention is being paid to darker, destructive and thus morally problematic expressions of young people’s communitas, such as online bullying and city riots. This would not be entirely fair, though. While it is true that the notion of ‘communitas’ has been little applied in such ‘negative’ senses, initiation studies have ben applied to contexts that are contemporary, specifically ‘Western’ and not joyful or progressive. Applications of the initiation discourse to life trajectories aimed at the adult have a specific operation at the level of marginalities to the hegemonic of power. When people are doubly liminal, as both youngsters and from an ethnic minority, say, the target of recorporation into ‘society’ may be more ambiguously approached or else greatly impelled due to its distance (raising issues around the assumption of initial incorporation enabling even the possibility of a recorporation). Analysis of such ‘double’ marginalities is determined not just by the more familiar alternative and subaltern identity-status definers (related to sex-gender, ethnicity, etc.). They include also (poor) health and the liminality of living with cancer (Little et al., 1998). And prison, and not just prison as a transition in society but also its waiting-rooms during visits as liminal spaces of a non-linear or only cumulatively linear transition (Moran, 2013). The notion of non-linear liminality – where the marginality comes and goes – resonates with the idea of an education system that contributes to rather than constitutes initiation. It gains further traction as applied to other physically defined transition spaces, like tourist beaches (Preston-Whyte, 2008). And it is extended for animals to the wild-human hinterland, with studies of a coastline for whales and a wild-captive life status for a tigress (Fielding, 2014; Doubleday, 2017). As the contexts expand – specified by Turnerian notions to include other approaches, like actor-network theory (ANT, in which the beach, for example, is treated as [though] actor, with an agency in the network of relations) – then the development of non-paradigmatic notions may be fed back into the discussion on adult initiation. Complex analyses can be made and insights gained. Connections between multi-, non- or otherwise different linearities with adulthood as a fuzzy concept could be Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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interestingly developed. The suggestion could be made here of a spiral linearity, for the idea of a gradualist and multi-directional and dimensional approach to a centre (adulthood) that is fixed through its making (performance), but where the fixity is potentially amorphous, receding and indefinitely provisional. The ritual perspective The most common categorising word for initiation during the early nineteenth century development of the anthropological discourse was ‘custom’. Initiation was one of the observed customs of aboriginal peoples, indicating what appeared to be their usual or traditional practice. However, it appears that the sense of the past intrinsic to the idea of the customary became problematic, since usage of the term gradually declined. One supposes that the cotemporaneous move away from ethnographical historicising was not just coincidental. During the nineteenth-century development of ethno-anthropology, ‘custom’ began to give way entirely to ‘ceremony’ and ‘rite/ritual’. Towards century’s end, in Frazer’s (1890) two-volume work, the words ‘custom’, ‘ceremony’ and ‘rite/ritual’ (singular or plural) were used at an approximate ratio of 17:9:5, respectively; thirty-odd years later, in the single-volume (1922) abridgement, this ratio had shifted to around 5:7:5, so a massive (relative) decrease in ‘custom’ although little (relative) change in ‘ceremony’ (as compared to ‘ritual’).124 In both the first and last versions of Frazer’s major work, the usage of ‘ceremony’ and ‘rite’ in phrases with init- was divided fairly evenly, with negligible usage of ‘custom’ (or ‘ritual’, which was generally used only half as often as ‘rite’). This shows phrasal combinations like ‘initiation ceremonies’ (the Notes and Queries section header) coming to the fore during the latter nineteenth-century shift to cultural anthropology – during the time, that is, when the discourse was fixed by ‘initiation’. The main phrasal move was from the semifixed ‘initiation into the mysteries’ ([init]-[myst]) to the fixed ‘ceremonies of initiation’. The latter also predominated over ‘rites of initiation’ in Frazer, as in Notes and Queries).125 Thus, ‘custom’ mostly dropped out of favour as terms like ‘culture’ and then ‘social structure’ came increasingly to the fore, but ‘ceremony’ never did. Or rather, it was vigorous well into the post-WWII period and still informed the attention given the subject in the 1960s. In a volume on African Political Systems, co-edited by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown and Edward Evans-Pritchard featuring contributions from other leading figures in British socialanthropology, Myer Fortes and Aubrey Richards, as well as the then relative youngster, Max Gluckman, Radcliffe-Brown (1940: xi) formulated the task at hand as a ‘systematic investigation of the nature of human institutions’. Here, the word ‘ritual’ generally dominated, 124 The

ratio changes resulted from Frazer near doubling his total usage of ‘rite/ritual’ – in the context of a total word-count increase of around 50% (since the ‘abridgement’ was of the twelve-volume [third] edition of 1911-1915) – combined with a small (7%) absolute rise in ‘ceremony’ and larger (15%) fall in ‘custom’. 125 Already in 1890, Frazer had only two instances of [init]-[myst], and these were gone in 1922.

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at double the usage of ‘ceremony’ and five times that of rite.126 However, among the 22 uses of init- (over half being the noun ‘initiate’), there were six (relevant) pairings, comprising two instances of ‘rite’ and four of ‘ceremony’. In initiation studies, meanwhile, what were originally named as ‘initiation ceremonies’ came to be defined as ceremony. In a well-known, entirely modern paper on female rites by Judith Brown (1963: 838), initiation was stated to comprise ‘one or more ceremonial events’. And nearly two decades after that, Schelgel and Barry’s (1980: 698) data for ‘Evolutionary Significance’ was specifically named as for ‘Adolescent Initiation Ceremonies’, characterised as ‘some social recognition, in ceremonial form, of the transition from childhood either into adolescence or into full adulthood’. Whatever else, initiation was certainly and importantly a ceremony. The term ‘ceremony’ carries the sense of a formalised public performance, of a predetermined, tightly scripted ritual acted out. This was thus invoked and referenced throughout the study of initiation as it grew with anthropology from childlike vulnerability in the context of the religious to increasing strength and maturity as related to the social and cultural. Meanwhile, with the development of the analytical approach of sociological function during the first half of the twentieth century and then also of cultural semiotics in the decades following the Van Gennep translation, ‘rite’ and also ‘ritual’ came to dominate (including their phrased pairing with ‘initiation’), notwithstanding the enduring vestiges of ‘ceremony’ for initiation. Actually, the words ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ used in both religious and sociological contexts have quite a similar sense to that of ‘ceremony’, as prefabricated action or rote performance. It may be that ‘ritual’ has a stricter, more formalised sense than ‘rite’, which signifies the initiation discourse through Van Gennep’s usage, but that difference is generally insignificant (or non-existent, even, where ‘ritual’ is just an adjectival form of the nouns ‘rite/ritual’). Mostly, in fact, they have been treated as synonymous, along with ‘ceremony’. Thus, there has been a tendency built into the discourse to view initiation in terms of events, singular or plural, even if these occurred over time (giving duration). The initiation rites referred to in twentieth century anthropology could stretch over intermittent periods of several days, or even some weeks, but the essential reference and imaginative was of a relatively short duration. Initiatory systems, on the other hand, could and did span many years. Paul Spencer (1990: 7, 12, 19) combined rebellion and age-set perspectives to suggest that, in the initiation of the male Massai, ‘the collective aim of the younger men was to enter the arena and wrest the initiative away from their predecessors in early middle age, retaining it for perhaps fifteen years’; further, he argued, ‘When Van Gennep considered Massaic initiation as a pre-eminent rite of transition, preparing boys to become moran, he need not have stopped there’, since moranhood was an ‘extended period of marginality’ that could be seen as ‘part of an even more inclusive transition from childhood through to elderhood a decade or so later’. In other words, Spencer was arguing 126 ‘Custom’ was used about a fifth less than ‘ceremony’ but mostly, in this volume on political systems, for what

could be termed ‘natural’ or ‘common law’ (as frequently used in the phrase ‘laws and customs’, for example).

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for the application of initiation to the entire social structuring of the process of maturation (as a function of power). Thus, we assume initiation as a ritual system that was organised by episodic rites marking particular junctures of the process at group or individual level (paradigmatically – in the Van Gennep-Turner core process – at the start, with a climax, and then the end). We can certainly apply this to the contemporary situation, and identify, say, cluster rituals – rituals that form part of an episode. For example first sex, exams and leaving home quite often occur within a couple of years as a separation (from childhood, school and family). Clearly, this employs a wider, popular sense of ‘rites’ (as in ‘rites of passage’). It has been standard practice for anthropologists to just assume the meaning of the category word applied to initiation, be it ‘custom’, ‘ceremony’, or ‘ritual/rite’. In so doing, they mainly rode on the initial distinction of rite as opposed to myth, which distinguished behaviours and actions (the physical) from concepts and words (ideational). In regarding the tribal cosmos in terms of scripted stories enacted physically rather than just narrated verbally, the implicit or apparent division and emphasis of mind over matter – the (over-) valorisation of logos – was avoided. Thus, rather than the activities of magic being linked to the tribal and the beliefs of religion to civilisation, magic and ritual were tied together as the embodied expression of religion. The primitive was afforded religion, that is – while the civilised, by now post-religious (as supposed and analytically, at least) – was specified by science. Then, the Durkheimian linkage of religion to the sacred as opposed to the profane became the site of assumptions and another binary contestation. While Eliade, for example, seemed to reify the distinction of sacred and profane as ontological split, Bronislaw Malinowski (1915: 535) had asserted its secondary importance, as an ‘accidental feature, dependent upon the social part played by religion’ (the more important the role of religion, he held, the greater the sacred-profane division) – although a decade later, in his (1925: 17) ‘Magic, Science and Religion’, the division was expressed as empirical fact: ‘In every primitive community… there have been found two clearly distinguishable domains, the Sacred and the Profane; in other words, the domain of Magic and Religion and that of Science’. The overall tendency was to link the activity of ritual to the domain or realm of the sacred, by definition. Turner (1974: 72) essentially maintained that meaning logic, albeit revisioning the ‘sacred’ as liminality and communitas and indicating through the liminoid an as-if quality. Thus, he considered some leisure/entertainment (post-)industrial genres, ‘such as the “legitimate” or “classical” theater’ to be ‘historically continuous with ritual’ and possessive of ‘something of the sacred seriousness, [and] even the “rites de passage” structure of their antecedents’ (emphasis added), with the ‘crucial differences’ between the liminoid and the liminal spelled out as concerning ‘structure, function, style, scope, and symbology’ (so, pretty much everything, a rather totalising difference). The qualificatory ‘something of ’, however, is telling. It means that, while Turner perceived a genuinely ritual space for experimental theatre, he largely wrote ritual out of the modern context, along with (adult) initiation.

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 While it is common not to theorise about the deeper subject of discussion and just assume it in order to actually have the discussion, it does become necessary to at least consider some ideas, suggest a perspective, to broach the ‘tedious question of the definition of ritual’ (Kreinath et al., 2006: xvii). For those writing specifically on the subject of initiation, really, rites did need to be characterised. La Fontaine (1985: 11-12) addressed the issue in her Introduction, setting out with a brief definition that offered the anthropological meaning of rule-governed, relatively fixed, obligatory ‘social action’ representing ‘social relationships’ as a legible symbolic code. It was the ‘social nature’ of ritual that distinguished the anthropological from the psychological, which was characterised just as ‘repetitive and formalized behaviour’. Catherine Bell (1992: 7), however, focusing specifically on ritual and the ‘confusions’ that went with ‘attempts to distinguish clearly between rite and non-rite’, rejected the idea of it not only as a ‘distinct behaviour category’ – as ritual/magical behaviour as opposed to instrumental/utilitarian activity – but also as an ‘aspect of the category “action”’, namely, the expressive/symbolic aspect of action’. In other words, she was denying the socio-anthropological meaning as laid out by La Fontaine. The negative motivation is less important than the positive result. Bell’s ‘solution’ was first, to concentrate on ritualising as an activity mode – to apply the performative turn to rite itself, we might say – and then, to characterise that mode in terms of intention. Ritualisation was a ‘way of acting’ that was ‘designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, more quotidian activities’ – and thereby ‘creating and privileging a qualitative distinction between the “sacred” and the “profane”’ (emphasis added). Ritual is an acting consciously, we could say, an attending to the action, a directing of attention to the performing itself (so a type of meditation). In essence, ritualisation for Bell was the assignment of significance, the ascription of value – and therefore, she concluded, ‘ritual systems do not function to regulate or control the system of social relations, they are the system’. For Bell, therefore, rather than repeating, fixing, rigidifying and ossifying with the weight of tradition, rites were seen dynamically, as ‘constantly differentiating and integrating, establishing and subverting… distinguishing local identities, ordering social differences, and controlling the contention and negotiation involved in the appropriation of symbols’ (ibid.: 81, 84, 111, 116, 130). Initiation viewed thus is clearly liberated to play a dynamic role in society, unrestricted to just reflecting its deep values and maintaining its underlying structure. Expressed thus, the difference between La Fontaine’s view of rituals (things) and Bell’s of ritualisation (acting) can resolve into the distinction between initiation as either ordered by or as (re)generative of (the hegemonic) – or, between cultural performance as (just) entertaining or (actually) efficacious. Then, the two approaches may be combined oppositionally, as extremes of a range. Insofar as rituals are givens, the types of repeated actions that order social relations, they tend to replicate socio-cultural and symbolic Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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patterning (thence, generalising, they operate within society, for the dominant); and insofar as we engage in ritualising as a mode of activity wherein value is assigned, on the other hand, then we enter a dynamic (so we constitute society). In the former, the value is assumed, as tradition, while in the latter it is created, or made conscious, or reviewed, upon which it may be contested (and also reaffirmed, or re-made anew). There are various issues with Bell’s approach and different ways in which to develop or reconceive it, including her presentation of the role of belief in ascertaining or describing intentions and the involvement of these in determining the description of action (Hutt, 2009). This is something that the key idea of privileging comes up against, also. The nexus of ‘privileging’, ‘value’ and ‘meaning’ is worked hard here. For present purposes, however, it is probably sufficient to observe that Bell’s approach enables us to keep initiation as rite but without insisting on patterned performance and social obligation. Then, introducing the idea of ritualisation as a performative characterised by privileging, the assignment of relative value, as the expression of significant meaning (thus sanctifying), implies change (effected through the application of value, even if it does not necessarily equate or lead to that). The rites of passage into adulthood are things that we have to undergo – or at least, they can be assumed as a universalising way to look at the maturity transition that seems to work pretty well from the evidence of people applying it in a wide range of areas over time. As picked out through the initiation discourse, these involve – among other things – separation, the other space of liminality with its tests and ordeals, communitas and peak, death and rebirth, along with more structural notions like experiential authority, identity transformation and status transition, and then [re]integration, all systematised in tensions and conflicts around stasis and change, tradition and regeneration and the dimensions of gender and place. These are the discursive elements of initiation. They ritualise (attach special meaning, so sanctify), referring to performance at the level of a meta-patterning of performance as well as the performances themselves and their types. Here, at the simple level of events, rituals are conceived as single (and repeated) actions. At an intermediary, more abstracted level, what may be dubbed ‘ritual forms’ characterise types and processes – and more abstractly still, ‘ritual formations’ are periods and structures. The ritual as paradigmatically imagined is an observable, definite and definable action performed. This contrasts with the vaguer ritual form as a concept, and then again the analytical mode that is ritual formation as a conceptualisation. Leaving home, for example, is a regular action performed every day (although it may be ritualised, as a kind of basic or implicit, judged ‘neurotic’ ritual). However, when we leave our home to live independently of our family – a common experience – we leave it as a last time. The performance inheres in what the actual leaving means (cf. ‘leaving our home’ vs. ‘leaving home’). In fact, we may likely often return to and leave that house in the future, the home of our family and the past, so this is the last time we will leave our home in this sense (a transition to the future and the first time to come when we will leave in a new way, to go back to our new home).

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In the wider sense, ‘leaving home’ refers to a period in our life, a structuring of self to the self, of social identity and human relations. The actual act of leaving, the physical moves and the feelings that go with doing it a last time (or first time) are necessary constituents (or ‘necessary’, i.e. typical, in theory). But they do not really get at the meaning, at what is happening in our life. Hence, in this case, the difference in verbal expression referencing what is being left (‘home’ or ‘our home’, with or without a determiner). Ritual formations broadly direct interpretation rather than micro-manage, and as applied to initiation they reference the teleologically designated aim of adulthood. When we talk about the separation phase of an initiation, we understand events and processes conceptualised as pertaining to a whole, leading to adulthood, which may take years (a phase may itself be problematised, e.g. as unfinished, recurring, ambiguous, etc.).127 The tripartite division of rituals-forms-formations is just a model, of course, as way of characterising ‘levels’ of ritual to get a handle on a range between the concrete and abstraction. This range of application tends to be blurred in the literature, certainly historically, but discernible nevertheless. The language of ‘customs’ and ‘ceremonies’, for example, was and has generally been used in fairly concrete ways, but ritual has also been commonly used as a starting point for more abstract discussion. In fact, the fieldwork case-study as basis for extensive analysis has long been and remains a paradigm form in anthropology. A case in point from the 1980s here was a piece using initiation in the very first volume of the US (Pittsburgh-based) Journal of Ritual Studies – itself aiming for considerations of the ‘full range of ritual, extending from high differentiated sites to undifferentiated processes and quasi-ritualistic elements’ (Grimes, 1987: 1). In that first-issue article, Thomas Peterson (1987: 73) suggested that in the liminal stage, the initiate is ‘at a spiritual threshold of transcendence’, but ‘the initiation rite… only begins the process of transcendence that will remain a life-long activity’ and ‘initiation rites therefore become occasions when the community also renews its quest for meaning’.128 Peterson was primarily concerned here with the issue of transcendence, but the ‘initiation rites’ that he used to get at this were specific events – someone’s experiences in a ‘Lakota vision pit’ and with ‘the sacred pipe’. In the above quotations, he noticeably changes to ‘initiation rite’ (singular) to refer more conceptually, as with an abstract noun (albeit with ‘the’, so part-way between perhaps). Together with the noun ‘rite’ in the singular indicating abstraction, the adjective ‘ritual’ in phases like ‘the ritual process’ both either indicate or explicitly reference the conceptual level named here ‘rite form’. Then, most abstractly, there is language of ritual formations, which carries a primarily representative or symbolic meaning, 127 The,

say, separation stage is a formation, and the separation phase of, say, the liminal stage is also a formation, so formations themselves may be applied at different levels. The climatctic conclusion of a formation or progression from one formation to another may be observed as an intensity, or cluster of rituals. 128 Here also, an indication of the place of initiation studies in the development of ritual studies, akin to its constituent role in the development of anthropology. Including Peterson on transcendence, the first three issues of this journal each included a piece on initiation, either directly investigating practice (Myscofski, 1988) or referencing the initiation discourse (see Bregman, 1987).

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like ‘separation’, and the extended periods of a broader ritual structure. The anthropological discourse of ritual has this range of abstraction from the concrete well embedded. Another issue here concerns intent and awareness. We may know we are leaving home at the time – or, at what levels and in which ways the ritual is operative (i.e. how the action is being performed). Equally, thought, we might not realise until later what has happened, or it could take someone else to recognise it, and they might not tell us, and we may never stop to reflect even. There is no assumption of a privileged access to the ‘privileging’, to the meaningfulness of events called ‘actions’, or to what is really performed. The interpretation of ritual from without, as a reading of text (the dramatic script) by an external observer (audience), is not invalidated by the emphasis on value, intention and action. The reader may write the text in the performance of reading as much as the performer performing. Which is not to say that those performances are not intrinsically different, since they are: we do tend to be more invested in our own stories that those of others, and our first-person knowledge does at least feel important, itself privileged. These are different ritual perspectives. Conversely, privileging does not entail public performance. Rituals are not only social events and processes but may be independently performed, without witnesses. Here is a notion of private ritual, in which we are, as it were, in conversation with ourselves – or, perhaps more healthily, consciously, in conversation with our selves. In fact, the performance of ritual – itself, in this sense, a tautology – may be more often done alone now than in the past. There may be an ongoing socio-cultural dynamic in which private ritual performance is a growing tendency of our times. This would be the expression of physical distance and a loosening of ties attributed, say, to functions of individualism, liberal capital and unanimated technology or some other ‘advance’ that characterise the modern condition. Then a current conclusion might be that social media is so popular because we actually do want our social rites, and will self-publicise to make them. Private rite is extended into the public realm and thus made social.  An ‘essentialist’ approach assuming an inevitability of maturation (or at least, its standard applicability) means that the rites (or ritual formations) are obligatory as a category, necessarily undergone (in principle, as a generalisation, though there may be options on absolute necessity). Or rather, to be more precise, ritual formations are necessarily perceived as potentially undergone (since this is a reading, an interpretive act related to coming of age – which is itself also such, of course, per any naming). Within the (attribution of ) necessity, however, specification concerning what is meaningful and what not, which acting, when and where and how and why and for whom – in short, what counts – is only ever partially pre-determined (as a more or less reasonable judgement, including judgement of ‘fact’). And the performance itself remakes the conditions not only of future enactment but also its own. Basically, we all make it up as we go along. But thus also, a social and societal space is available 194 

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for human ecological development through the maturation process as ritual performance understood in terms of the discursive elements. Which feeds back into that society as an ever ongoing loop (because age-sets and generations are not clearly defining and discrete). Thence, at the level of structure, for example, the typical societal requirement of passage through the education system may be a paradigmatic of initiation as structured, but initiation need not be structured thus, and the value attached to it by any particular class, grouping or individual may be quite different. Insofar as the educational drama becomes a seemingly unreal game and the ritual of education routinely rote-delivered by weary players, the ritual fails, and the initiands look elsewhere for their meaning (in the transformation to adult). Equally, the wonderful, liberating opportunity that education affords in the world today and as a standard requirement for personal progress means that it is still valued and succeeds on its own terms as an initiating system. And it is the distance between these two evaluations that determines the deeper contestation, as definitions of what ‘society’ is in terms of who interacts with who (when, how, etc.). An advantage here of Bell’s approach to ritual as the privileging of action as meaningful is that it gives an object of meaning. The value is not left free-floating but pinned to a transformation and thus the discursive elements (conscious, unconscious or third-person ascribed). What gives the meaning of action is its bearing on the passage. Becoming adult may be fulfilling and a cause of happiness, but the process of getting there not. On the contrary, it is usually quite difficult as well as joyful, with the tests and ordeals and suchlike of the process as well as peaks, (so extreme, changing, unbalanced), but it is these that give the meaning. Indeed, happiness and meaning in life are quite different, with meaning linked to, for example, ‘integrating past, present, and future… worry, stress, and anxiety… personal identity and expressing the self ’ (Baumeister et al., 2013). Alongside the identification of recognisable rituals as performed in an initiatory context with a tendency to globalisation (e.g. Liptak, 1994) – or width – we should also identify and explore initiatory passage rites as performed (so the separations, liminalities, tests and ordeals and suchlike of growing up) with a particularising tendency to depth. This implies an emphasis on the individual and the psychological, precisely because of the valorisation of ‘meaning’, the non-quotidian, or, if we want, the ‘sacred’ as intrinsic to action. And then, through the individual the socio-cultural complex is expressed, with each person a unique point of confluence. Finally, emphasising the manner of performance, ritual(ising) as a performative indicates a performative studies (of which Turner’s work was an important source), to feed back into initiation studies and the general discourse. The value for initiation theory of approaches to and notions of performance (so the theatre as model) may be taken as implying primarily that initiation is what it does. Thus, initiation is action (with intention, the ultimately adultmaking purpose), and so an acting expressed in terms of entry (the category of ‘adult’ as teleological paradigmatic). An attempt, then, to relate all this to some sense of ‘spiritual’ leads to multiple considerations. Undoubtedly, these include issues around the role that we Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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all perform, the drama in which we all engage and the very search itself to find meaning, to make meaning, to make our lives and our selves. Or, our ritual perspective.  This returns us one last time to Turner, here in the context of spirituality. As asocial, the communitas of liminality goes not just outside but also beyond the limited and material nature of the prosaic. The positive values recognised and aspired to in communitas, that is, imply a sense of spiritual initiation, or the mystico-spiritual aspect of maturity initiation. Turner (1974) used the mysticising word ‘ludic’ (and also ‘ergic-ludic’), referring to ‘play’ and to ‘activity’ as opposed to reactivity/inactivity, and relating thereby to creativity, which was characterised as ‘flow’. Thus, the modern contraction of the sphere of religious ritual was compensated for by the ‘flow experience’ – understanding ‘flow’ as a spontaneously and fleetingly manifested, end-in-itself, ‘in-the-moment’, attended-consciousness, an egofree merging. This here-and-now experience certainly has a rather mystico-spiritual sense, suggestive now of a contemporary, dynamic expression of communitas not as a space (ritual location) but a performative (cf. commoning as activity). This is the always-imminent in the common of cohorts, for example. Referring to the liminal/liminoid in general, Turner (1974: 78-79) clarified that ‘Liminality may be the scene of disease, despair, death, suicide… anomie, alienation, angst’ and suchlike. However, ‘where it is socially positive it presents, directly or by implication, a model of human society as homogeneous, unstructured communitas, whose boundaries are ideally coterminous with those of the human species’. At such moments, people ‘experience unity’, ‘all people are felt to be one’, even if only for a ‘flash’ on the ‘existential level’ with a ‘”gut” understanding of synchronicity’. This unity may certainly be studied, including its production for political ends. It is quite mystical. And it resonates quite clearly with the liminal as peak, implying an initiatory urge for gathering. The inherent fluidity – and extremeness – of liminality, its dynamic flux of highs and lows, expresses mystically as a heaven (or hell) on earth. This is conceptually cognate with initiatory rapture (or tortures – the shamanic flight of ascent/descent). In the domain of anthropology too, it has a sense of the experiential. This was finally spelled out by Edith Turner (1992: 5) with her account of return to the Zambian Ndembu, some thirty years after the first fieldwork famously presented and published by her now recently deceased ex-husband. There, as participant this time rather than observer, she actually saw the object of a psychic healing ritual, the tooth of a dead hunter removed from a sick woman, and thus made her ‘discovery of… the existence of spirit’.129

129 ‘I didn’t actually see a tiny little tooth coming out of the skin. I saw the spirit object, a gray blob, come out.

I don’t know whether a concrete tooth came out of the vein, or a spirit tooth as a gray blob came out. But I saw it, whatever it was’ (in Engelke, 2000: 852).

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Thence, from the anthropologist’s lived apprehension of a psychic immaterial, we can conclude that the originally sociological analysis of initiation as a time out, a time out of time, as a ‘sacred time’, was not, in fact, just defined negatively (in terms of a secular movement out of ‘social time’, itself constructed by the objectifying observer as an analytical category). It really did involve a sense of timelessness, of a positively non-metaphorical cosmic time as something actually lived (so, a ‘religious experience’). Ditto for the equation of marginality with the ‘sacred’ (which in truth was only ever quasi sociological, since, as a characterisation of religion, it was always already dripping in mysticism, never to be quite wrung dry by reason). At this point the sacred becomes a real experience (again), not just implicit in a binary of analytical relations. It follows, therefore, that initiation may or paradigmatically tends to involve mystico-spiritual experience. We can say that this refers to an extreme of performance, of meaning making and taking. In other words, spirituality is not an aspect of ritual but rather its inherent expression. To take the mysticism out of adult-making is simply to make a lesser adult. The move of the anthropologist into the field of the other – going first from veranda to tent and etic to emic (Bronislaw Malinowski) and now from observer to participant (Edith Turner) – takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction. It starts with an ontological immersion informed by the primacy of experience, such that the reality of the ‘enchanted world’ is not judged outside of its own framework. This seems to be the modus operandi of, for example, Alma Gottlieb (1998) in presenting the liminality of infancy. For the rural Beng (or Gan, Ngan) in the Ivory Coast, the little ones are reborn, reincarnated as babies, and move from the spirit realm, named ‘wrugbe’ (which is accessible to ‘diviners’), transiting a dual, wrugbe-material identity until they finally leave the wrugbe (aged between around three to seven years old). Questioning the nature of that reality – importantly here, its enchantment – may effect a removal from it and lead to a metaphysics that the anthropologist can avoid, retaining a level of equivocal ambiguity about the ambiguous. But the researcher need not enquire into the sense(s) in which the wrugbe actually exists or, for Edith Turner, how real or how really real the tooth really was (the nature of the reality of the tooth). Rather, it is just taken as read and as the way to read that we admit of symbols not only as standing for something but also as doing something profound as a fact of their nature. Symbols are not only representational but also, as Edith Turner (1992: 17) designated and divulged, ‘spirit triggers’ and ‘sacramental objects that are the numinous’. That, indeed, may be a condition of enchantment. In order to allow the mystery, we must allow it to be mysterious. Thus emerges, as it has sometimes been named, the new discipline of a humanistic anthropology of consciousness. This implies also a reality of the spiritual in initiation that goes beyond indulgence and suspended judgement – or ‘paranthropology’ (Hunter, 2010, 2015). In presenting the personal context of her own birthing and mothering, Gottlieb (2004) sets out on theradically new direction for anthropology. This takes participation as an embodied study through (ritual) experience considering the possibility of other realities Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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(Dubisch, 2008: 335) towards the field of the self. Certainly, fieldwork is regarded here as an anthropologist’s own rite of passage and maturing process. However, it is not just that the other – paradigmatically, the ‘tribe’ – becomes no longer the object or subject of study, but that this otherness now moves to one’s own culture. Thus, we say that the environments in which we grow comprise dynamic skeins of semiotic codings with their histories and geographies that we learn – into which we are inducted and educated – through experience. And then, these very cultures in which we are imbued and immersed, from which we are psychically constituted, become our other, wherein we locate our self, as a finding and a positioning. This implies a lived anthropology (spiritual psycho-sociology) of one’s context. Returning to the theme of education, it is not only that ‘religious phenomena cannot be explained away in naturalistic terms’ requiring us to ‘go to school with the Ndembu’, as Edith Turner (1992: 9) wrote, quoting her husband Victor (Turner, 1962: 196). We already go to our own schools as we grow up and enter into the wider world of adults. Like all anthropologies, that of consciousness too is reflexive. In the context of enchantment and a certain spritism, then the new direction indicated here is that of a phenomenologically based spiritual anthropology or auto-ethnography of our own life journeys – including and during and even as initiation.

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Chapter 11. Psychology: development and depth We are all, it may be said, the hero(ine) and villain of our own life narratives of our becoming adult, our self story-telling, all making and re-making mythologies as personal meanings or purpose, for our futures, our presents, and our pasts, be these comedies or tragedies or something nearer the reality in between. And, manifestly, including the idea of initiation must involve a (re-)incorporatation and foregrounding of spiritual initiation. And this should be gained without a further obscuring of the notion as has occurred in hiving mysticism off to religion and its sublimation in modern anthropology (the sense of the mystical that never quite went away). Or, going beyond the capture of initiation studies by anthropology involves going beyond anthropology in its classically modernist guise and beyond disciplinary compartmentalisation. Nowadays, that is done through inter-, trans- and post-disciplinary models. The implication is for a kind of discursive broadening as necessary for any contemporary initiation studies, including the incorporation of work from related and little related fields that has hitherto been little or completely unlinked to initiation studies. In contradistinction to the sociological concern with exterior forms, this means, first and foremost, a revaluation of some past concerns and a (renewed) emphasis in initiation studies on our investigations of the interior world. Here then an overview of something of what was left out of initiation studies in their explicit form. The idea, basically, is that there was an explicit initiation studies – work in which the discourse was employed, specifically with the lexical items of init- forms and pertaining to ritual/rites (of passage). It was this to which the core thesis as characterised was central. Then, there was also an implicit form of initiation studies, in which the terminology was not employed, and which thus remained outside the discourse. The modern capture of initiation studies by anthropology and then generalised lowering of interest in the subject as such came prior to anthropology’s ‘psychological turn’ at the end of the millennium. The formalised public-performance sense of ‘ceremony’ inflecting ‘rite/ritual’ and carried into the twentieth century discourse was quintessentially social in the sense of exterior, materially expressed, empirically validated. As a consequence, the core thesis has been little exposed to the interiority of a psychological reading. Psychoanalytic and similarly psycho-causal considerations did inform the post-WWII American school of initiation studies, but, other than the work of Reik and Bettelheim, these were primarily aimed at predicting and characterising social arrangements. Robert and Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Ruth Munroe (1973: 493), for example, utilised a quantitative analysis approach for four ‘sample societies’ in east Africa to confirm their hypothesis that where a society does not have initiation rites in conditions indicating a need for them, ‘there are permanent psychological effects’ – specifically, ‘men in a rites absent society experience more symptoms during wives’ pregnancies.’ Such usage of psychological insights into the general prevalence and distribution of initiation continued, for example, with Gilbert Herdt’s (1982: xv) assertion that male as opposed to female initiation rites are indicated where there is ‘greater stress placed on the adult dramatisation of the masculine gender role’. This was a rather limited line of enquiry, so the heavy sociological bent of twentieth century anthropology actually made initiation studies a ripe candidate for anthropology’s psychological turn. And this did bear a few fruits. For instance, the psychological insight of ‘flashbulb memory’ was applied to the employment of extreme initiatory experience for imprinting socially desirable values on the mind (Whitehouse, 1996).130 In the main, however, since initiation studies was now a fading subject, losing the glitter of intellectual innovation, so it was not to gain much benefit from the new anthropological interest in matters of the mind. The major need here, therefore, is a review of what was excluded by the disciplinary compartmentalisation. Most obviously, this comprised the investigations of lifespan or developmental studies (situated in psychology and sociology) and of depth psychology (following the psychoanalytic line). The former emerged as a type of limited age-development studies (internally oriented to how the lifespan is fixed, etc. rather than assuming it to apply how it operates). The latter leads into notions of spirituality and mysticism (e.g. with ‘archetypes’, as a kind of depth anthropology of the human condition). Simply, these two areas of academic and intellectual activity covered the terrain of initiation – both adult and spiritual, in the sense of inner growth and transformation – but they did not name the thing that way. Falling within the discourse yet undeclared as such, therefore, lifespan developmental psychology and analytical depth psychology can be said to have contributed to the discourse darkly, as a ‘covert’ or implicit initiation studies. Developmental lifespan studies Patently, the idea of a life segmented, the periodisation of the lifespan, is not new. Declaring the world as a stage, Shakespeare – unsurprisingly recorded as an original employer of initforms in the English language – characterised the ‘seven ages’ of our drama by single words referencing male initiation as social identity with the move from ‘schoolboy’ through ‘lover’ and ‘soldier’ to ‘the justice’.131 Vedic tradition had long fashioned an idealised model in which childhood – again, for boys – was followed by a period of religious instruction with a 130 This

is understood neurologically in terms of the vivid recall of the central parts of an emotionally intense experience as enabled by (nor)epinephrine helping to encode memories in the hippocampus. 131 As You Like It (II.vii.146-173).

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teacher. This culminated in a metaphorical ‘second birth’ and then ‘second marriage’ before assumption of the duties of a householder (Leslie, 1983: 100). The ‘second birth’ alerts us to initiatory death and rebirth, of course. The German philosopher William Dilthey denied both a Shakespearian universality and the cultural particularism later to be advocated by Leonard Cain (see below). Having produced a ground-breaking (culturally contextualised) story of another person’s life (his 1870 biography of theologian Fredrich Schleiemacher), followed by several other biographies, he argued instead that the ‘meaning of the individual existence’ needs to be understood ‘from within’ as ‘totally singular’ and so ‘not accessible to explanation’ (quoted in Rosenmayr, 1982: 40-41). Thus, he privileged the performer’s declarations, but not only these and not as these, in a literal sense. Rather, Dilthey advocated the use of subjective testimony (diaries, letters, poems, etc.) in the art of creating the stories of people’s lives (by getting inside, as it were, the stories people create of their own lives) – a technique that is standard for biographers today. The task of developmental lifespan studies, then, has been to work within this tension, towards, that is, the construction of a more or less objective sequence, a generalisable pattern for growth through the lifespan, but without losing sight of the unique subjectivity of personal experience. Which is rather much the main issue raised concerning ritual, action and the performative intent (above, on Bell). Although Van Gennep was able to stipulate that the puberty defined by initiation was a social construct and not biological, still, biological development inevitably undergirds the course of life. Structured by an arc of growth and progress followed by decline and decay, this also involves characterisation by specific life events, together with processes of generally increasing chronological duration and decreasing chronological determinacy. Babyhood spans a shorter period than infancy, for example, while the age range at which babies teethe (a biological marker for the end of infancy) is more closely fixed and considerably narrower than that of girls’ menarche (marking puberty). Interestingly, a rather specific biological endpoint for adolescence has been suggested – at around twenty years old – based on a natural mammalian sleeping cycle (teenagers wake and sleep at progressively later times of the day until they are about twenty, a process that then slowly reverses) (Roenneberg et al., 2004). This is also around the standard age of the end of education (between the mandatory secondary level [school] and optional tertiary [college]). It approximately coincides with the various legal(istic) recognitions of independence, freedom and responsibility. And it conveniently follows the decimal system of numbering. Thus, the age of 20 – or so – can stand as a reasonably trans-cultural marker in the child-to-adult maturation period. However, and contrary to some standard perceptions (e.g. Sawyer et al., 2018), the end of adolescence and advent of minimum age requirements do not necessarily herald the beginning of adulthood. This was observed during the twentieth-century emergence of lifespan studies. Primarily an interdisciplinary investigation of psycho-sociology – but academically housed more in psychology departments – lifespan studies have looked at Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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the progression of a human life from birth to death. This has included consideration of the divisions of life into segments or stages (cf. ‘stage of development), named, for example, ‘childhood’, followed by ‘adolescence’ – and ‘youth’. Childhood has been argued to be a relatively recent concept – from the late eighteenth century according to Philippe Ariès (1962).132 Adolescent initiation ceremonies have long been an item in anthropology, and in 1924, Alfred Kroeber, a student of Boas, conceived a project related to cultural determinism that involved the study of adolescence.133 While young people have been long named ‘youths’, though, ‘youth’ as an identifiable category in the lifespan appears as a more recent phenomenon, mainly a product of twentieth-century prosperity in the West led by the US. John Gillis’ Youth and History (1944) was an early introduction to the subject, very much in the ‘vertical’ perspective of age and initiation studies suggested above (p. 151). Despite the history overview, however, it did not make a connection with the ceremonies and rituals of adulthood. Mainly, this exhibited the disconnect between an anthropology of the other and sociology of the West, and that continued. The mainly sociological work of the CCCS on culture and subjectivities cited above focused somewhat on the transition into adulthood, particularly from a marginalised, young (working-class) perspective. And the Hall and Jefferson (1976) volume on subcultures mentioned was entitled Rituals of Resistance, recalling Gluckman’s (1954) Rituals of Rebellion. Therefore, as suggested above and indicated by the ‘Coming of Age’ review, this could have very obviously placed itself in the context of the initiation discourse – but it did not.134 Kevin Kenniston (1970) specified young adulthood, or youth, as a post-adolescent stage of life, but with a similar lack of anthropological reference. Even wide-coverage, introductory works, like the more psychologically angled Adolescent Experience, originally published in 1983 but going through multiple editions (Gullotta et al., 1999) failed to exhibit any awareness of the discourse. The situation was similar in the development of lifespan or life-course studies.135  Roughly, we can say that work grounded in post-WWII psycho-sociology and dedicated to the course of life evolved and crystallised into a discipline during the late 1960s and 70s. Of note was an inter- sometimes multidisciplinary approach to lifespan developmental studies emanating from Chicago. Like other work of this ilk, it evidenced little or no contact with 132 Cunningham

(1995) assessed this claim and its critiques; essentially, it is not without value but should not be exaggerated. 133 Considering a history of the self (in terms of four major problems), Roy Baumeister (1987) showed adolescent identies as clearly defined from the 11th century (cf. the role of apprentice, which fits with the initiatiory degredation thesis). 134 The coincidence of titles, then, was presumably just that, i.e unintended; ‘Coming of Age’ review, p. 186. 135 Although terminological and orientation distinctions for discipline name were made and discussed, they did not become important; only ‘life-cycle’ was not often used, as that has a well-established biological meaning.

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anthropology and the initiation discourse. Thus, although it tended to focus on the first half of life, reference was not made to initiation, passage rites, liminality and suchlike. Regarding the later part of life, old age also began to receive significant attention only in the 1980s, when it was divided into two. Approximating and using simple decade numbers, early old age was specified at around 60 to 80 years of age, and late old age beyond that (over 80). With a more fine-tuned approach to the end section, the whole of the life course was now staged by academic study. The notion of stages of life, albeit theoretically problematic, has a ‘common sense’ appeal and accepted vocabulary (‘infancy’, ‘childhood’, etc.) that has endured. It affords a ‘useful heuristics to chart development over time’, in the words of Orlando Lorenço (2016: 125) in his consideration of ‘Developmental Stages’. Thus, notwithstanding the problematic relationship of life stages to chronological time (measured by years of life, from year zero at birth), the history of developmental studies has been marked by the formulation of schemata doing just that. From a selection of six such, three – Charlotte Bühler (1933), Robert Havinghurst (1953) and Carl Jung (1931) – gave (four or five) conventional life-stage names (like ‘Childhood’). More performatively, Erik Erikson (1950) listed eight psychosocial tasks, four of them pre-adolescent and one during adolescence, while Roger Gould (1972) and Gail Sheehy (1976), focusing on the middle period of life (between childhood and old age), characterised their stages in terms of attitudes and objectives (like ‘Must leave parents’ and ‘Pulling up roots’). Since ‘adulthood’ (or ‘maturity’) specifies a stage name, the age of commencement of adulthood was clearly set by the first three of these writers, although there was considerable variation among them, ranging from 18 (Havinghurst) through 25 (Bühler) to 40 ( Jung) (see Appendix 4).136 Schemata dividing the lifespan into stages are variously determined in accordance with a general conception of human development. Applying an analytical procedure that may be more or less descriptive or prescriptive, they offer an overall assessment following a certain methodological approach. Bühler, for example, was influenced by Dilthey and based her assessment on a study of 53 biographies; Erikson extended the Freudian perspective in depicting an ego-oriented process principled by an increasing recognition of and commitment to oneself and to others. Focusing on childhood, Jean Piaget (1952) conceived of development in terms of a progression of cognitive abilities – recently expanded by Commons’ (2008) behavioural tasks model – while Lawrence Kholberg (1964) saw it in terms of a morality-defined phenomenon. In terms of methodology and presentation, Sheehy was largely intuitive and took an easy-to-read, accessible rather than scholarly form, while Gould (1972) used the experimental approach of academic psychology. Gould’s techniques included having subjects respond to a collection of personal-opinion statements that were then evaluated by age to show changes in attitudes through the lifespan. 136 Obviously, adulthood as a stage typically has an ending some decades before death, while as a maturity

(majority) attained, in essence, it does not (outside of issues around dementia).

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The results gained were used to define life stages according to periods of fluctuation, the ‘unstable periods when response scores changed’, interpreted and augmented by general observations. For example, there are ‘significant changes in the thirties as the sense of time becomes finite while a reconciliation with the limitations of being mortal involves work choice, the sense of well-being, money resources and the deterioration of some general abilities’ (Gould, 1972: 529). That he saw these in terms of mid-life issues may indicate a bias on his part to have adulthood after 20. On the other hand, the 20s are characterised as ‘Being adults’ (prior to ‘Questioning omnipotentiality’ [I and II]), suggestive of a role-playing of adulthood (prior to its actual becoming, for real). This would most obviously occur with the changes located in the 30s, so at the break between two halves of the Questioning stage, put at 34-35 years of age. That is, a placement of adulthood across two phases, in the 20s and the early 30s, seems reasonable. In the four decades since then, the body of knowledge gained from this type of inquiry has filled out immensely and the analytical procedure grown in sophistication, but the conclusions are not dissimilar. Thus, a recent meta-analysis investigating 72 (from 124 in a data-base of 565) ‘identity studies’ conducted over a ten-year period looked at ‘overall identity achievement’, a complex process across different ‘identity domains’ leading to a measurable level of (sufficient) ‘identity commitment’ – so Gould’s ‘stability’ as measured for ‘identity’, one could say. The review concluded that just about half of participants had achieved the overall identity as defined by the age of 36 (Kroger et al., 2010). This received tangential support from a Finnish study that assessed overall identity status (in domains related to work, relationships, lifestyle, politics and religion) for people at the ages of 27, 36, 42 and 50 years. Here, a gradual and diminishing tendency towards further achievement through the period was shown (with women generally attaining this before men) (Fadjukoff et al., 2016). This investigation built, first, from the Eriksonian task for adolescents of forming a sense of self, ‘identity’ (or else suffering ‘role confusion’), and then, on James Marcia’s (1966, 1980: 160-161) characterisation of this in terms of some further types of developmental stages. These were of ‘diffusion’ (where no clear identity has emerged) and ‘foreclosure’ (a premature fixing of identity), which may lead to a ‘moratorium’ (in which identity is explored) before ‘achievement’. The diffusion-foreclosure-moratorium’ process (not necessarily fixed in that order) was presented in terms of a ‘crisis’, when decisions need to be made. Such a crisis in life involved, minimally, a felt need for ‘commitment to a sexual orientation, an ideological stance, and a vocational direction (where ‘vocation’ was a wide notion of ‘one’s “work in the world”’, including ‘interpersonal relations’). Thus, there was principle linkage of the end of adolescence to possible foreclosure and moratorium. Drawing from Marcia, Jane Kroger (2000/07) also looked at the continuation of the identity-development process into ‘adulthood’. Effectively what this did was to continue Erikson’s psycho-social (biological, psychological, societal) task-defined stage of identity formation into the 20s and 30s, which he had characterised as the task of achieving ‘intimacy’ (or else facing ‘isolation’). Thus, together with sex-gender-based liaisons and partnerships, we 204 

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can regard the intimacy in terms of the vital importance of friends for a young person, best friends, the peer group and cohort (terms frequently deployed in this field). The implication of a communitas here is quite apparent. Marcia’s (1966) conception of a post-adolescent pre-adulthood pause in life – as a deferment or ‘moratorium on adulthood’– was also used by Kenniston (1970: 4, 8, 9, 29, 289-291). Considering the moratorium as linked in particular to a resistance to pressure to join and conform, he applied it to the category of ‘youth’ – now, as a ‘stage in life’. Kenniston observed that young people meeting the Eriksonian psychological but not the social criteria for adulthood enter a ‘socially ambivalent and indefinitely prolongable moratorium on adulthood’, a ‘no-man’s land’ or ‘limbo’. The basic structure of youth assumed ‘affluence’ as an economic condition and could last a decade. It was a time of ‘alternating estrangement and omnipotentiality’ characterised by qualities and values like ‘fluidity, flux, movement… openness… inclusiveness’ and a ‘generational consciousness’. Words like ‘radical’ and ‘uncommitted’ captured its vitality, and also an inclination to self- as well as social development. Thus, the ‘pervasive ambivalence’ was ‘to both self and society’, with a ‘central problem of youth’ being ‘how the two can be made more congruent’. Clearly, this very much echoed Turner’s conception of liminality (and communitas) in initiation, and it largely developed from a similar socio-cultural setting in the 1960s-70s. Kenniston’s (1970: 120, 161) observed the young people actively (in this case politically) engaged during the post-adolescent moratorium as ‘unusually healthy’ – although he noted also a tendency for social scientists to judge ‘disturbance’ and himself saw ‘considerable disturbance’ among ‘disaffiliates’. This recalls the hegemonic defining of disturbance applied as a societal disciplinary, pathologizing, delegitimising, incarcerating and institutionalising (Foucault, 1964, 1977, 1978) – sanctions that Kenniston’s relatively privileged subject-group could largely evade. This returns us to politics, the work of the CCCS and the idea of double – or multiple – liminalities. There is generally observed a far lower tolerance for lower class behavioural issues (rich people aren’t mad, just idiosyncratic), as also for women (‘punished’ for pregnancy outside of marriage), ethno-racial minorities (e.g. US segregation, prison population ratios), and non-heterosexual orientation (without legal rights to marry, etc.). Divisions and oppressions that express demographic fault-lines of disempowerment – in fact, any kind of difference at the individual level and oppositional to norms at the systemic level – may function as a barrier to the smooth uptake of adulthood at a young age. In turn, this pushes young people further into liminality (with the implication of unresolved ‘issues’ of adulthood that can persist into adulthood and throughout life). The implication of this here concerns the application of the idea of moratorium. Kenniston’s subjects were healthy, but conditions of deprivation and inhumanity restricting development may also be reasons for deferment and crisis. Summarising, a wide range of personal and social factors – indicated as task-based, attitudinal and identity flux developed across different dimensions and resonant with the initiation discourse of ritual formations – all go to suggest that there are good reasons to situate a post-adolescent (from age around Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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20) category of youth prior to adulthood and commonly ending (statistically tending to end) in the mid-thirties. Of course, the conclusions derived from the investigations and analyses cited above are tentative and provisional. For a start, the empirical data-base studies are all Englishlanguage, implying an Anglosphere bias. And even a ten-year meta-study has insufficient longitudinal power to take into account cohort effect (Ryder, 1965), in which major events impact differently on different generations. Relatedly, as Irving Roscoe (1978: 67) noted, the ways in which people share their connections to historically important episodes are ‘relatively stable over the life course’. Thus, events define generations, but specifically according to the meaning the events carry for the different age-groups (e.g. younger people are more resilient to catastrophes like war as measured by clinical depression, and a ‘war generation’ is generally not the one most scarred by the trauma). Also, in these research studies, while controls for factors like (male vs. female) sex and education level are generally applied, other biases inevitably go unobserved and unattended. One such is the sampling – from ‘advanced’ societies – since it was from studies made in the West that the reports cited here were drawn. Cross-cultural (anthropological) dimensions of age and the lifespan tackling societal advancement bias have been directly addressed, for example by a research programme in the 1990s led by Christine Fry. This involved fieldwork sited in six very different locations (a village in Botswana, a town in Ireland, etc.). It had respondents sort into groups a number of cards with pictures designed to suggest the life course, with the groups created by the sorting being interpreted as ‘divisions in the life course perceived by members of the same society’. Since the number of groups sorted in the six locations ranged one to eleven (with a variety of principles used to make them), Fry (1994: 145) was led to ‘question the universality of a staged life course’. However, this has various issues of interpretation around, for example, the relationship of specific events as markers to ‘their’ stages (as opposed to definers of them) and individual versus group norms vis-à-vis cultural normatives (where the latter do not emerge from the disjunct [opposition] of the former). Further, there are three cohering, universalising factors that together can mitigate this over time, one relatively fixed but two dynamic. The first is biology, establishing a basic matrix, or commonality (this may change over time and vary across place, such as the mean time for a woman to have a first child, but it drags as a restraining factor). Second, there is the effect of centralising, unifying socio-cultural forms determining norms (such as national education systems and leisure and entertainment realms, linked to common objectives, timings, socialising aspiration, etc.). Then, assuming these to be extending transnationally with globalisation, in all its aspects, makes for an overall increase in universalising effect. Third, there is a tendency to timeliness, referring to expectations about the timing of life stages and the events that mark them (leading to

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personal motivations as well as social pressures). These will tend to change as a function of the increasing effect of centralising social norms, thus (mostly) amplifying the effect.137 Regarding timeliness, Bernice Neugarten (1969: 121, 125) referred to the individual as following ‘social clocks’ according to which we may be early, late or on time. We ‘internalise expectations of the consensually-validated sequences of major life-events’, including not only the events themselves, but also ‘when they should occur’. Thus, there develop normative systems policed by self-regulation and adjustment in order to fit in (homo socialis): ‘early or late individuals move toward the norm on the next major event in the life time… age deviancy is always of psychological significance to the individual’. Paul Spencer (1990: 15) referred to as a notional ‘life text’, which is normatively shaped and ‘acquires meaning through individual experience’. Hence, we can generalise in terms of a dynamic tendency to norms at a global level, even if we cannot exactly universalise. For example, the unrelated (so effectively arbitrary) counting system that yields age as a sequence of decade markers fulfils its own prediction, as it were. We may be quite conscious of being ‘in our twenties’ and wanting to achieve certain things during that time, for example, and of it being time to ‘settle down’ when we ‘turn thirty’. A mutually informing and confirming feedback loop of cultural commonalities is narrated in the making of the life story that we tell ourselves as well as others and that informs their judgments about us and our actions in response. Initiation as life-stage In the preceding sections, two generalisations were established. The first was primarily biological: the start and the end of adolescence made in terms of sleep patterns. The second was quite complex and multi-faceted: the ‘first’ establishment of identity. The ending of the first broadly coincides with the second, providing a completion of the adolescent phase, or stage of life, chronologically fixed at around twenty years of age. Next, and contrary to the norm that has adolescence followed by adulthood, the life-stage of ‘youth’ was mooted. This appeared a little nebulous, without a clear ending and characterised by negative notions, of deferment and moratorium. Another point of reference mentioned was the idea of ‘mid-life’. In the case of Gould (as discussed), this may be identified with middle adulthood or with its beginning, depending on how we want to stage the lifespan. The former would be more conventional, but this modelling is not wed to that. Therefore, going with the latter, the age identified as making the relatively ‘final’ achievement of an overall identity at the mid-thirties to forty range is identified with adulthood. This actually meshes rather well with all the six schemata referred to above. 137 ‘Mostly’, because there may always be resistance, including society-wide perceptions of cultural invasion and imperialism kicking back against the import of the foreign (lifestyles, ideals, etc.).

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Thus, we can propose an approximate contemporary schema compatible with maturity initiation as starting with adolescence and then using decade markers of chronological age for convenient breaks (at 20 and 30 years old) and ending (at 40, say) for phases of extension. Ultimately, this reformulates the old adage that life begins at forty (normatively and paradigmatically). It is then only one more small but crucial step to link duration of ritual, ritual as performance and ritual formation to the life stages of adolescence and youth as the stages of initiation in a model for the passage to adulthood. This affords us the structure of a contemporary adult initiation. From the earliest times of its modern making, tribal initiation was always presented – and exhibited – as a wide range of rites, from the knocking out of teeth to gatherings of the tribe over days with ritual activities like spear-throwing, circumcision and a feast. But it was the sense of single events – so the throwing and suchlike that took place within the context of the gathering – that characterised and stood for the ritual categorisation. Historically, we could say, description began with the simple. The case of Lafitau speaks squarely against this, however, with its Iroquois ritual perceived as the mysteries received. Thus, we should say that in the observation of ritual, the analytical logic – and not entirely the empirical history – first has initiations as events. And then these as extended, with duration. Next, ritual duration is regarded as process and then segmented. And this division into processional ‘stages’ moves the analysis from ritual forms to formations. Meanwhile, becoming ‘adult’ and ‘coming of age’ are concepts applied to the lifespan conceived developmentally and segmented into ‘stages’. Then, rituals and ritual forms of initiation are inserted into and related to such stages and named after them as the teleological object – like ‘adolescent’ and ‘adult’. And finally, the ritual formations are equated with or themselves used as stages. Manifestly, the stages of the ritual process (its formations) and of life (its ages) might be matched. Of course, anthropology has long encountered and identified indigenous (emic) structuring of the life course in this way, as indicated (e.g. see pp. 180, 189). In fact, the modern (Western) life course certainly has been viewed in this way before. Coming from a sociology background and perspective, Leonard Cain was an early advocate of a multi-disciplinary approach for a life-course model that included ‘age status’. Cain (1964: 273) noted that the stages of life were akin to the age sets found in tribal initiation systems. Although culturally specific, they were ‘formalising categories giving a generalised ‘order and predictability to individuals for the successive statuses they will occupy’. And moreover, we can add now, they indicate a theoretical foundation – through discourse (the discursive elements) – with which to view, analyse and become (self-)aware of the coming of age today. So, we just need to complete the move now and insert initiation into the life course. The eventual fulfilment of the task of achieving identity by forty years of age or so (above) as an indicator for the entry into adulthood suggests a separation phase during adolescence leading to the attainment of a ‘proto-adulthood’ (cf. Gould’s ‘Being adults’). This may be called ‘adolescent initiation’. ‘Adult initiation’ then names the whole process, 208 

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but directs attention more to the period starting with the end of adolescence, when the initiation is achieved. Here, we might note, the adolescence ritual formation is allied also to recorporation (e.g. finding work, a place in college – plus their failures, deferment, etc.), while the next – youth ritual formation is separation, again (leaving home, economic independence, etc.). This is the expression of formations within formations (level 2; here, first, the recorporation phase of a separation) expressed as a cluster. Also, the two may overlap (it is not or need not be regarded as a discrete process), and the overlap may be expressed in crisis points and ambiguities. Indeed, all such modellings are to be problematised from any and all angles and extremes of sophistication, of course.138 For simplicity’s sake, and with other reasons, the Van Gennep tripartite can be presented chronologically (by years of age) and decennially (at the zero-point), for example as 10-20 adolescence/separation, 20-30 youth/liminality and 30-40 early adulthood/recorporation (implying full adulthood thereafter).139 Or, let’s say 10 is a little young and we want to keep the traditional names with the idea of an extension, then the age-period 12-20 covers adolescent initiation and 20-35 adult initiation (understanding the whole 12-35 period as initiatory, so characterisable also as ‘maturity initiation’). With these two formulations combined, initiation effectively becomes a stage of life, after childhood, before adulthood (see Appendix 4, adding ‘regeneration’ as initiatory into ‘elderhood’). Although quintessentially separation, adolescence may be also characterised as a recorporation – from the initiation out of childhood. The universality of the tripartite narrative and the flexibility of ritual formulation means that application of the initiatory framework is quite malleable. Certainly, adolescence can be said to typically involve a movement out, from the home/family to the social/world, which is equally a type of entry in, into society, or proto-entry and recorporation. And we can identify typical ritual form clusters to fit. The focus here, though – and historically and as discursively grounded – is (post-)pubertal and/so adolescent/adult (maturity) initiation. 138

E.g. ‘Developmental psychology... as one of the “grand metanarratives of science” through which modernity has been characterized… universalizes the masculine and European, such that peripheral subjects are rendered pathological and abnormal’ (Walkerdine, 1993: 451). One of the validations for initiation here is that a perspective of development does fundamentally fit with the first half of life (be that fundamentalness understood as a matter of natural fact or conceptual logic). Thus, from an age studies perspective, the application of development through the idea of initiation comprises adoption also of a youthist perspective. 139 ‘Other reasons’: further to the above, there is a huge range of very predictable supportive empirical evidence that builds a picture of related life markers and milestones (i.e. connoting development and clearly, albeit not necessarily, linked to initiatory formations), e.g. African migrants are predominantly male and aged 15-34 (fao.org); New Zealand inter-regional migration peaks at 20-24 and bottoms out at around 40 (archive. stats.govt.nz); the average age of first motherhood in 127 countries worldwide ranges between 18 and 30 (matching a poor-rich range [nationmaster.com]); the mean age of (first) marriage in the US is around 28 years old (with an approximate two-year difference between the sexes, up quite little from a hundred years ago, when it was around 25 (US Decennial Census [at census.gov]); suicide rates in the UK peak during a two-decade period beginning at 40 (expressing despair linked to ‘failed’ initiation perception [at samaritans. org]); male schizophrenia is massively diagnosed at 18-40 (female also, but less so [Chen et al., 2018]).

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 As toned by separation, adolescence can be seen as liminally tending toward the conventions of anti-structure. It is sited in opposition to authority systems (including parents), expressed as resistance (foot-dragging, rejection, rebellion, etc.). Then, the twenties are linked to the freedoms of a-structure (facilitated by legal independence). Or, adolescence is characterised as separation, to be followed by the marginal stage of the transition during the twenties linked to anti-structure, which may then morph into a later, a-structural phase, before recorporation by 30 or 40. Such a template will be useful insofar as it fits, makes sense, helps understanding, and problematic insofar as it does not. All framings can be tailored, away from the abstract and normative, to fit actual life experience, as experienced. In this case – where the identity formation of adolescence is treated as (merely) a separation or proto-adulthood and does not mark maturity – then this rather characterises the manner in which we exit the separation stage and enter liminality. We enter liminality in terms, that is, of a more or less successful, foreclosed or delayed ego-identity self-definition (according to any one perspective or set of dimensions). Thus, for example, an early marriage indicative of ego formation and happily celebrated with the arrival of children may yet emerge as an effective foreclosure, particularly in changing times, when the identity established cannot withstand the various stresses encountered. Which did become quite common, as measured by divorce rates for what are now ‘early’ marriages. Thence, a ‘deeper’ psychological notion of adulthood and maturity emerges – one that is got at by Erikson’s ‘intimacy’, perhaps, and one that may tend to the spiritual. Here, then, we go toward a passage rites modelling for spiritual initiation. The Turnerian idea of liminal anti-structure extended to a-structure in this contemporary passage rites model can get at some important aspects of the growing-up process. There is an obvious tendency to move to the a-structural in the ‘opting out’ of an elective moratorium, commonly enacted nowadays in numerous ways, such as ‘travelling’, engagement in shortterm employment/voluntary projects and the unconventional (bohemian) life of the (would-be) artist. Then, there is a large group of people who are thrown into this zone through lack of employment, while those who are employed may live for the night, the weekend and the communitas of the bar or the dance. Girls may become mothers, yet not exactly through a self-commitment to that. Home spaces may be shared houses, always in flux and the site of continual negotiations on semi-communal living. And this may all be sociologically sited in contemporary conceptions of ‘resistance’ and ‘change’, or just trying to make it (Tuck and Yang, 2013). There are many and various ways in which the a-structuring of post-adolescent liminality is expressed and experienced, physically, emotionally and mentally, as well as socially – and spiritually, indeed. A profound lack of settlement during this (pre-identity formation) period of life may be usual, when connection is provisional with doubts about where one ‘belongs’, felt personally as not knowing what one wants, who one is, sensed internally in 210 

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terms of an uncertainty about one’s place in the world generally, let alone in the future. Characteristically, there is a transience, a lack of groundedness, an uncentredness, imbalance and lability; paradoxically, however, there may also be a complete certainly and driving conviction, in the negative sense of at least knowing what one is not and what is not right and in the positive sense of the absolute imperative to follow one’s sense of life, of adventure, an intuition into the unknown. And this, in turn, may also be characterised as a psychic a-structuring, as a lack and development and discovery of purpose, of the meaning of one’s life and thus mission on Earth, which is to ritualise the whole lifespan, to give it meaning in a greater context, which is spiritual. Analytical depth psychology Erikson’s developmental tasks were characterised by a sequence of life:death type of dyads with positive/negative outcomes, in the tradition of his Freudian background as a trained psychoanalyst. Freud’s own model of personhood positioned an ego riding the wild horse of the id, with the reins and the spurs, we could say, of the super-ego. Or, a conscious decision-maker flooded by (primal) pre- and sub-conscious (animal) instincts and passions themselves repressed by the conscientious moralist (civilised life). Or, from transactional analysis, the adult regulating (and regulated) between the demands of the expressive or unruly child and the restrictions of the concerned or overbearing parent (Berne, 1958). Hence, the ego is constantly challenged to ‘succeed’ in an embattled psyche at war, for a self to be free and yet integrated into the modern world, to maintain a measure of order that yet does not descend into neurosis or hysteria. This evoked a conflict model of the human psyche, and thus of the person. In developing the concept of the unconscious and emphasising the importance of sexuality, Freud had opened up the possibility of understanding maturation as a psychic process of sexual resolution related to the blocking of libidinous energy by fixation and fetishisation. This involved the internalisation of family relationships and early life experiences. His development of the ‘talking cure’ method also established the route of ‘therapy’ for healing and transformation (through association and analysis of the representations or symbols of the unconscious, notably dreams). This found a natural home in the transition into adulthood and related unresolved issues (hence indicating initiation – see pp. 25-26). Alternative approaches to the conflict model with direct implications for the conception of maturation into adulthood (as well as for psychotherapeutic practice) were offered by others who passed through Freud’s circle. Rather than dwelling on dysfunction and the Thanatos (destructive) aspect of the primal urge, Wilhelm Reich was to concentrate on the id as Eros, on sexuality in its expressive aspect. For Reich, the expression was of ‘orgone’, the life force, like the Hindu prana. In this version, then, the story of maturation narrated the development of the ability of the individual to tap into, release and express orgone. In the political context of bourgeois Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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society and socialism in 1936, it demanded a consideration of Sexuality in the Culture War.140 Twelve years later, in the light of a ‘sexual reaction’ in the Soviet Union undoing earlier gains and recognising that ‘authoritarian ideology and freedom ideology have nothing to do with economic class boundaries’, Reich (1945: xi, 80, 155) presented his ideas more broadly as the need for a Sexual Revolution. This need was particularly acute for the ‘youth’ since the central ‘problem of puberty’ in Europe and America was the moralistic requirement of ‘sexual abstinence’.141 Previously, Alfred Adler had pioneered a similarly positivist and socially oriented approach to personhood with the self as fundamentally healthy but injured by a repressive society (which was malleable, not a function of civilisation). Adler expressed this in terms not of sexuality, however, but of a (Nietzschean) ‘will to power’, as the growth and attainment of control (autonomy) executed externally. Our most deeply motivated need, in this view, the developmental core through which our personhood manifests concerns manipulation of the real world. The repressed and distorted negation of this realisation of the self in the external expresses as heartless ‘power phantasies’ and the development of an ‘inferiority complex’, which is the root cause of neurosis. Thus, Adler (1914: 14-15) argued against Freud’s emphasis on sex. In fact, he held that the ‘compensatory dynamics’ of youth unable to fully express itself in the world would only be avoided if the ‘sexual role’ was ‘relegated to one of minor importance’. This self exteriorisation, therefore, constituted the task of maturation, importantly related to the need for social justice for the possibility of its realisation. The most influential and well-known of those who broke with Freud was Carl Jung, whom Freud claimed to have ‘adopted… as an eldest son… successor and crown prince’ (Freud, 1909: 361). Whereas the therapeutic intervention in Freudian practice for cases of malady or dis-ease had involved uncovering conflict at a personal level, for Jung, the transformation required the bringing into consciousness not just of personal elements but also collective. The Freudian (inner) conflict model (requiring a resolution) and Reichian and Adlerian liberation models (requiring the removal of restrictions, both external [socio-environmental] and internal [psycho-social]), all tended to pathologise the (actual) maturation process (as something that is either intrinsically in tension or extrinsically distorted, but either way in dis-ease and needing to be mended). Jung’s approach, on the other hand, employed a (self ) fulfilment model. An active exploration of one’s human potential was indicated to bring to light and integrate various aspects of the human psyche. As a process of what Jung termed ‘individuation’, this opened the way for therapy to evolve into a humanistic and individualistic (client-centred) self development. In the manifestation of the self, or self realisation, the becoming-of-who-we-could-be as a maximisation-of-possibility was naturally linked to maturation in terms of the ‘becoming’ of adulthood.

140 Die

Sexualität im Kulturkampf.

141 Although not just moralistic, since prior to the development of medical (chemical) contraception (‘the pill’),

sexual intercourse had direct results determing the life-course (certainly for women).

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Individuation involved uncovering the shadow (repressed ego, our ‘counter will’) and (then) animus/anima (opposite sex-gender), as well as the persona (the self image and projected ego) and a cast of (other) archetypal characters, like the hero, wise old man and trickster (cf., respectively, the ego [or fool, making the glorious and impossible journey], the self or higher self [experienced and knowing guide] and the magician, or fate [unpredictable, changing the world]). Thus, one was to work towards the uncovering, recognition, acceptance and integration of (one’s expression of ) the ‘suprapersonal’ or ‘collective unconscious’, and thence towards self realisation. Such archetypes, the collective unconscious patternings through mythic symbol, were accessed by methods that avoid the ego, like Freud, but not just through transference and analysis in therapy with an expert (the psychoanalyst, later the psychotherapist as facilitator). This was also to be achieved by the individual, independently ‘working on oneself ’, through fantasies and dreams, painting and diary-writing and exploring the projections and encounters of everyday life. The challenges to the individual to locate, mitigate and dissolve these patternings thwarting and offering individuation thus became tests (per initiation). In general, the psychoanalytic tradition has done well in its humanistic, Jungian guise but the passing of time has not been so kind to its other aspects. Notwithstanding a high intellectual tradition in France and very strong roots in parts of the US, leaders have fallen foul of (judgements about) their own failings, theory has struggled with evidence, practice seems inefficient and state sponsorship not so forthcoming. Yet, for a contemporary idea of initiation that is lacking a psychological perspective, a renewed consideration of this history offers much. One might certainly judge that the (mostly) covert coverage of initiation in psychodynamic depth analysis has been a loss to initiation studies and would better be integrated into it. The bare structure of leavings and liminalities need fleshing and body with toning and colour, which is something these perspectives can give. It is not enough to rely on the core thesis descriptions, which tend to be of human objects. The questions raised, thus, may be pitched around emotions. Is growing through adolescence and youth felt as something to get through or enjoy? Is it a struggle or joy? Is sex an opportunity or excuse? How free is freedom, what do we do with it, want to do with it, imagine we might do with it? Are we trapped in repeating replays of our own early histories or is the need for healing already a diagnosis? Issues raised by such questions point to the wealth of material produced by the psychoanalytical tradition of twentieth-century depth psychology. And that takes us through Jung into the contemporary domain of spiritual initiation.  Jung came to his insights and conclusions on archetypes through his own self work, producing a series of mandala images and a study of alchemy that served as his model for individuation as a staged process (thus, parallel to ritual and life-stage schema). The (six-stage) alchemical process is described by Jung (1946: 197) as including a separato as ‘the dismemberment of Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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the body’, from which gradually emerges a res simplex that ‘consists of a duality’, followed by the conjunctio oppositorum, the ‘royal marriage… which is supposed to bring the work to its final consummation and bind the opposites of love’.142 The marriage of two people that paradigmatically concludes initiation is thus metaphorically employed – or re-imagined – as a psychic union with one’s own repressed consciousness (a recorporation). Through his paintings of mandala images, Jung (1948: 165) came to conceive the self as ‘centre’, which was the aim of ‘the Work’ (alchemy), now psychologised as self realisation, or encountering the archetype of the self. The contemplation of mystical symbology more broadly afforded insights such as the need for the ‘inferior’ or unconscious function to be made conscious as ‘one of the major tasks of individuation’.143 Jung himself had a range of profound (mystical) and strange (‘parapsychological’) experiences and was witness to the testimony of many others, leading him to state that the ‘numinous experience’ of the individuation process is, ‘on the archaic level, the prerogative of shamans and medicine men’ (ibid.: 194).144 This introduces a sense of spiritual initiation as including mysticism as numinous experience (so vivid dreams, visions, etc. conceived of or felt as carrying a particularly significant meaning, i.e. for the development of self ). Indeed, Jung’s 1963-translated Memories, Dreams and Reflections is in part mystico-spiritual autobiography detailing his own individuation process from this perspective.145 Here, then, we come to a notion of spiritual initiation as involving the mystical and denominated as an aspect of ‘individuation’. Jung’s idea of individuation may be understood as an expression or form of initiation – or as a synonym for initiation, or as spiritual initiation, specifically. Or, individuation was initiation, developed as a modern procedure, effected through and presented from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Jung’s term ‘individuation’ was never intended to be used interchangeably or together with ‘initiation’, it did not enter the initiation discourse and it did not survive him (beyond usage within clearly Jungian frameworks). In his English and German-language papers on the ‘Meaning’ and ‘Process of Individuation’ (‘Individuationsprozesses’), for example, no init- forms were used ( Jung 1939, 1950a). He did write on ‘Rebirth’ (‘Wiedergeburt’), however, and was heavily influenced by mysteries mythology at the level of analysis ( Jung, 1950b). And Jung did conceive of the connection to the collective unconscious in terms of a personal death and he represented the therapeutic 142 Within the initiatory tripartite, the separato would be matched to the liminal phase, following the earlier, separation phases of calcination and dissolution (and to a-structure following the anti-structure phases). 143 The inferior (orienting) function here refers to one member from the Jungian pairings thinking-feeling and intuition-sensation (or, alternatively, thinking-sensation, feeling-intuition); the quaternity as whole is suggestive of a division of the ‘four quarters of life’, wherein initiation would be placed second in the model above (opposite to old age). 144 Jung had the Christian Mass as the ‘summation and quintessence of a development’ from the archaic, which he characterised as a ‘progressive broadening and deepening of consciousness’; through this, the ‘isolated experience of specifically gifted individuals’ was gradually made the ‘common property of a larger group’. 145 The ‘autobiography’ was an interviewers’ edit checked, authorised by and presented as authored by Jung.

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process of ‘transference phenomena’ as completed with ‘the new birth’ (using the alchemical process of the Hermetic Rosarium Philsophorum) ( Jung, 1946: 304ff.). This was already evident from his extensive references to the mysteries traditions in his early investigation of an ‘individual phantasy system’ with the ‘unity of antique and modern psychology’ in the Psychology of the Unconscious.146 This work was already translated into English during WWI – which was to prove an crucial time for him. Jung’s personal process, or inner journey, his individuation – or spiritual initiation – was triggered by a dream in 1912 that included what he took to be a representation of the Emerald or Smaragdine Tablet, from the ninth(?)-century Arabic text Kitab Sirr al-Asar (this perhaps drawing on fifth-century Syrian sources and claiming the authorship of Hermes Trismegistus so thereby referencing a lineage to the ancient Egyptian god, Thoth). From there, he entered into an intensive and extended encounter with his unconscious through a technique he dubbed ‘active imagination’. When he was in his late 30s, Jung recorded the inner part of this individuation, up until 1916, in a spiritual diary, his ‘Black Book’. Active imagination was a combination of spirit-worker (mediumistic or channelling) techniques involving auto-trance for writing, drawing and role-play identification with archetypal figures. This was later developed by Jung for therapeutic work as the ‘transcendental’ or ‘fifth’ function, the ‘union of conscious and unconscious contents’ – implying the psychotherapeutic process itself as a spiritual initiation (so the psychoanalyst as a contemporary spirit-worker and soul [self ] retriever ( Jung, 1916: 67). Jung immersed himself in this Work following his break with Freud and considerable psychic and social dislocation (which he later linked also to dreams presaging the Great War) – and when he moved, we may say, from the anti- to the a-structural (from against Freud [the father] to beyond him).147 Comprising a total of seven journals (five of which had black covers), the story as recorded has its key moment – so a peak experience of Jung’s initiation – placed in the second book, commencing in November 1913. In December, as he recalled a decade later ( Jung, 1989: 96ff.), he had seen a ‘vision’ in which he was, effectively, crucified and shown as a god (Aion, the eternal being, linked to Leo as the fourth of seven grades of the Mithraic initiation system). A gathering intensity was then reported until a break during the summer of 1914, when the War began and Jung took time out to compile and revise his (black) journal material as a single volume, a first draft of The Red Book: Liber Novus, finally published in 2009. Appended to the Red Book is the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Septem Sermones ad Mortuos), a collection of seven mystical texts published and distributed privately (from 1916)

146 Wandlunge

und Symbole der Libido [lit. Transforamtions and Symbols of the Libido]. Jung (1916: xlvii). the break with Freud, all my friends and acquaintances dropped away. My book was declared to be rubbish… a period of inner uncertainty began for me… a state of disorientation. I felt totally suspended in mid-air… I knew that I was plunging into the unknown. Beyond Freud, after all, I knew nothing; but I had taken the step into darkness’ (Jung, 1963: 167, 170, 199).

147 ‘After

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as ‘written by Basilides of Alexandria, the city where East and West meet’. In Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Jung (1963: 190-191, 308) explains how the Seven Sermons came to be written. Following his identification of the interior (psychic) ‘anima’ figure, or female-aspected ‘soul’ (originally as the internal voice of a patient) and his transfer of this material (including the mandala drawings), to the Red Book, and beginning to feel the pull to write, explained Jung (1963: 190-191; emphasis added), ‘It began with a restlessness… Then it was as if my house began to be haunted’. On the Friday night, his eldest daughter saw a ‘white figure passing through the room’, his second daughter, ‘independently of her elder sister’, explained that her blanket was twice ‘snatched away’, and his nine-year-old son had a powerfully evocative dream that he (uncharacteristically) drew the next morning (as ‘The Picture of the Fisherman’). The following day, on the Sunday, in the late afternoon, ‘the front doorbell began ringing frantically… but there was no one in sight’. Sitting by the doorbell, Jung ‘not only heard but saw it moving’, and they all (he and the housemaids) ‘simply stared at one another’. The air was ‘so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe’, and to his (presumably inner) question ‘What in the world is this?’ came the answer ‘We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought’. This statement, from ‘the dead’, became the opening line of the Seven Sermons, which was written in three evenings and the ‘haunting was over’. The whole event – but most palpably, the ringing doorbell – was treated by Jung as a ‘violation of the rules… [of ] scientific, physical knowledge’. It appears to have been the material manifestation of the completion of his numinous-mystical climax to the spiritual initiation. Jung was a little below forty years of age at this time, effectively locating himself as at the end of ‘youth’ (see Appendix 4). The impression, thus, is of an extended period of learning that culminates in a non-normal expression of the individuation process, or, of a spiritual initiation beyond ‘normal’ individuation in a maturity process that involves a transcendent, perhaps ‘paranormal’ (numinal-mystical, perhaps rule-violating) peak experience. Here, there is suggested a paradigm of spiritual initiation, namely, as the emotive climax of the process of adult or, more widely, maturity initiation, the a-structural centre-of-the-centre. As a climax, this is an analytical rather than temporal centre, since it may tend to occur toward the end of the wider process, prior to the conclusion (as per Jung’s individuation) – as an initiation climax.148 For Jung personally, it involved running into ‘the same psychic material which is the stuff of psychosis and is found in the insane’ (ibid.: 188-189) – another reason for the tardy publication. This is underscored by his comments on numinous visions and conversations with his inner-world figures and his need for the family life and patients that ‘made demands’ and ‘proved to me again and again that I really existed’ and which saved him, as he saw it, from the fate of Nietzsche. Jung had looked to Nietzshe’s writings as a source material on the mysteries, but found he had ‘lost the ground under his feet because’ – without a family 148 The

notion of initation climax is not restricted to rule-violations – it is exactly this that comes across in the peak experience of Anna Jameson’s canoe trip, which is relatively ‘ordinary’ (see p. 84).

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life to hold him – ‘he possessed little more than the inner world’, which rather ‘possessed him’ (leading to a psychotic identification with the crucified Christ). Taking mysticism as the numenal and paranormal may have it as including externally as well as internally felt sensory experience (where the object of perception appears as outside oneself ). This involves a problematic evaluation expressed as the distinction between, for example, ‘visions’ (positive) and ‘hallucinations’ (negative).149 A negative interpretation encourages denial of the experience as a physical reality. Paralleling the Greek view on mania (see note 85), there is a difficulty here for the individual (first person) as well others (the third person, perhaps institutionally empowered). Not only for reasons of privacy, therefore, did Jung keep his own individuation process largely secret until finally being persuaded to divulge and share at the end of his life.150 Jung’s (ibid.: 198-200) final identification of the image of the self as the centre, beyond which ‘one could not go’, was also central to his own process, since when this was completed, through its realisation, he ceased drawing and painting mandalas, and his life ‘entered its second half ’. This had been the ‘most important period’ of his life, from which ‘everything essential was decided’ and he gained ‘the primo materia for a lifetime’s work’. Thus, we have the sense of initiation not only as into adulthood, but as setting it up, as establishing the framing for the next period of life. By way of an interesting footnote taking the storyline further, Richard Noll has argued that Jung’s ‘self-deification’ and ‘fantasies of leading a movement to revitalize humanity spiritually’ – the latter was not entirely unrealised, one might add – through his ‘highly dissociative trance-induction technique’ was ‘cultish’, with the leader exhibiting a ‘god complex’ and identifying as ‘the Aryan Christ for the new age’. Certainly, it must have been a delicate business for Jung treading the fine line between pioneering leader, mystic explorer and human scientist (among others) in his therapy work and in the intimate interface of public and private life. Thus, in Noll’s words, it was partly in order to maintain his reputation and survive professionally that Jung invented ‘“scientific” terms’ like the ‘collective conscious’ – in order, that is, to help ‘obfuscate the direct experiences of living mystery that he offered his initiates through analysis’ – referred to by one such as “rebirth” (“Wiedergeburt”) (Noll, 1997: 144, 150, 158-159, 175, 179). Noll introduced an (unpublished) edited volume with the argument that Jung’s 1916 experience developed into a ‘cult... movement devoted to the initiation into the mysteria’. Thus, the ‘initiation into the mysteria… exerted a great influence on the spirituality of popular culture in the twentieth century’ (Noll, 1994: lxvi; emphasis added). This may be the most strongly expressed argument for the influence of the historical mysteries of initiation in contemporary life. The conclusion may hold, albeit only in a covert

149 William Stace (1960: 47) ruled on the division by definition, stating that ‘visions and voices are not mystical

phenomenon’ – unhelpfully, since they are included in the usual understanding of ‘mystical’. 150 The main substance of his process, that is, since fuller details are still being released by his estate, some half a century since his death now).

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sense (that Jung was influenced by the mysteries is not itself an item of popular culture) – and it may hold even though the premises are problematic.151  It has become standard to view the early period in a person’s life as crucial for subsequent development. Following the work of (post-)Freudian clinicians and theorists like Melanie Klein (1932) and Donald Winnicott (1949), ‘early life issues’ have been referred back not just to childhood but to ‘the first three years’ (for learning, cognitive development) and, more specifically, to the first months and initial bonding (through ‘object relations’ development through the mother-baby/carer-infant relationship) – and then further even, to pre-birth, the intrauterine/perinatal environment.152 This all makes obvious sense from a causal perspective, where earlier problems will lead to later ones and limit growth. A huge plasticity and compensatory mechanisms of the psyche have also been emphasised, which may, somewhat retrospectively, be linked to the idea of psychotherapy, leading to therapy, ‘healing’ and self-development more broadly. The example of Jung indicates something else, however: the later, crucial import of individuation for a person’s life, for a fulfilment of one’s spiritual potential, we can say. Here, outside of the therapeutic context, a period of intensity occurring before but at least by mid-life, which may be rephrased as the initiatory centre, can play a major determining role in what follows. It establishes a life script, as it were, importantly directing how the world is experienced and setting the scene for ongoing, lifelong interests. This is rather like the biologically based notion of sensitive periods, when neural circuits linked to cortical area are developed and specific abilities functionality achieved or impaired ( Johnson, 2005).153 Such an idea has been developed for adolescence (when the grey-white matter balance changes), linked to brain structure and cognition reorganisation for ‘sociocultural processing’ (Blakemore and Mills, 2014).154 Indeed, it appears quite clear that following such a period of liminal intensity the brain does come to process and/or represent information in new ways – Jung’s case is an example – which should, presumably, be demonstrable at the biological level. Such a spiritual initiation is not fixed to the adult maturation process. It may occur at any time, including in childhood – when the ego may not be strong enough to ‘handle’ the mystical and ‘rule-violation’ manifestations, indicating incipient ‘schizoid’ or ‘schizophrenic 151 Carrie

Dohe (2015: 8ff.; 2016: ch.3) appears more reasonable on the judgement of ‘cult’; the issue of the paranormal is not raised in this discussion. 152 Including specification of specific trimesters, e.g., in relation to schizophrenia (Bracha et al., 1992). 153 The fixity (in time, by age) of sensitive periods (e.g. for facial recognition) is variable but not rigid (Röder et al., 2013). 154 Relatedly, specifically adolescent drug (cannabis) usage is thus pathologised, looking just at negative motivations and effects (Fuhrmann et al., 2015); a spiritual perspective would consider this more positively in terms of the desire for and development/production of (the conditions for) mystical experience.

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break’ or major somatic symptoms of dis-ease. More positively, a younger experience may facilitate flowering abilities that can be positively nurtured. Certainly, it can occur later in life (as for Edith Turner, who was near 70 years old, if her experience is to be adjudged in this category). Conceived as inherently an experiential process of maturation, however, spiritual initiation connotes youth and is paradigmatically situated during the staged period of overall (ego) identity achievement, as a spiritual coming of age. It is placed during maturity initiation, marking a key point in the adolescent or adult process, most likely perhaps, at present, anyway, as the apogee of (and defining) adult initiation. We can work with a combined chronological and life-stage fixing for spiritual initiation as a paradigm and a tendency, recognising that the two aspects may very well be disengaged. The anti- and a-structural dimensions of the exterior expression of adult initiation may manifest in rebellious and revolutionary activities – of all kinds – in a period of liminal relationship to the ‘conventional’ world – defined by it as against and outside it – and in which the communitas of one’s peer group manifests. In the case of the spiritual expression of this, however, incorporating the mystical and apparently rule violating, it is particularly the inner world that is characterised by liminality. The exterior liminality in some sense operates as a base from which the inner drama builds, but beyond which it is rather unimportant (so long as it serves sufficiently to support and does not overly impinge on the inner journey, or journeys). Attraction to the a-structural high of the peak period may lead it to be extended in ways judged as unhealthy, just as drug use may become drug abuse. This is the case with one of the classic initiatory figures of depth psychology, the puer aeternus, identified by Jung and developed as a modern problematic by Marie Louise Franz (1981). In its negative aspect as the Boy Who Never Grows Up, the puer is suggested as an important, particularly apt symbol for the contemporary situation, with its cultural emphasis on youth, its commercial investment in people wanting to stay young and its psychic fixation on immature role models for youthful aspiration, such as film stars and pop stars and sports stars, images of heavenly brilliance, shining and sparkling but without substance, liminally stuck to the wider fixation on a provisional life. The puer aeternus is a Peter Pan figure who does not complete the initiation process. He is unwilling or unable to return to the world of ordinary limits and prefers instead to fly. In this context, as James Hillman (1975) put it, the ‘soul, man in his myth, his individuation process in its historical plight… [d]epth psychology, existentialism, and the new theology all point downwards’. Then, for this post-humanist development, the ‘new mysticism is one of descent’ (hence the move from ‘analytical’ to ‘depth’ psychology). Among other things, Hillman advocated a cultural exploration of myths, legends and fairy tales beyond ego psychology for a re-visioning of contemporary culture in all its (material, conceptual) forms as itself the expression of ‘soul’ (thus, he worked from the main psychoanalytical tradition). His specific treatment of the puer theme was to bring down the high-flyer, as it were, by emphasising its opposite, the figure of the senex, a Saturnian father-figure who refuses to relinquish power. Hillman (1990: 5, 10, 24) then presented the Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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present-day instantiation of the enduring symbolic reality of the puer/senex relationship and its ‘conflict of generations’ as ‘sometimes no longer a conflict of misunderstandings, but a silence’. Here, there is plenty of scope for the application of an initiatory age-development approach to socio-cultural phenomena. For Hillman, the silence between generations is indeed attendant upon a ‘division… between age and youth’. This is a division of ‘communication systems’, since ‘the latter learns today not through traditional forms and printed words but from altogether other media in our urban collective, and thus largely without communication outside of itself ’. A presently contemporary expression for this would speak of youth’s ‘echo chamber’. In brief, there is here a profound disconnect, wherein the elders lack even the basic means to play the role of initiators. Similarly, insofar as life and society are changing quickly, the older cannot mentor, at least in some important respects. Again, initiation in its traditional form is prevented. The dangerous prognosis is that where the disconnect becomes a break from grounding reality itself, forms of disorder and psychosis may occur. The more positive version looks to new forms of generational co-learning and information sharing as a marker of change (again being flexible about how initiation operates; i.e. it may be successful without initiators). Then, the interpretation of initiatory style becomes societal analysis. The female version of the puer is the puella. In the standard twentieth-century reading, the relatively recent, major historical loss in initiation had been assumed as masculinetoned and related to apprenticeship (the world of employment), but the puella was also depicted as developing in a distorted fashion. This occurred through the loss of contact and traditional transference of practical skills founded on the mother-daughter bond. Notably, Marion Woodman’s (1985: 33ff.) analytical development of the puella motif as ‘creators in the sense of… “soul-makers”’ follows from a father-daughter complex in which the mother (or older woman-teacher) is essentially irrelevant. For ‘women whose psychic center has always radiated around the father, real or imagined’ – and who thus need to go through an ‘initiation into abandonment, actual or psychological’ as an ‘identity-conferring experience that frees them from the father’ – a mother-daughter void is implied. Thus, in the (initiatory) ‘effort to liberate themselves from the very real restrictions of patriarchal culture’, these women ‘tend to become its victims.’ Again, in the theme of abandonment, there is the filling out of a feminine-toned initiatory model, and also the implication of a fundamental absence of initiators. In terms of social relations, this again throws the emphasis onto peer-connections for the sharing of experience, or the communitas of learning life and the world around. The importance of cohorts (plural) is again highlighted, especially intimate connections as mutual support given the lack of guidance. This goes for all, regardless of sex-gender, indicating an initiatory co-parenting function of sex-love partnerships in youth. And then, we might further

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conclude, paraphrasing Hillman, in the Age of Development as defined by technology, the latest ‘mysticism’ becomes human connection.155 The idea of initiation as an education in the broad sense suggests the maturation process as a gaining of knowledge in a deep sense, which implies the novitiate self or initiate personhood as (if ) relative tabula rasa. Like the tribal (and contemporary) practice of bodily inscription, the candidate for admission is stripped. Psychologically, this is the removal of ego defence and child identity for a re-education programme (through the ‘school of hard knocks’, relationship break-up, etc.). Contrarily, therefore, one way in which to understand initiation is to see the (peak experience) knowledge gained as a psychic inscription. It is this that provides the border passport (back) into and through adult life. Individual selfidentity is constructed from the basis of the person who has experienced an extreme in their making (torture, dismemberment) and identified therein a sense of authenticity, from whence the initiation offers a place or a phase of regrouping (reassembly). Like tattooing and scarification, this knowledge can never be removed; even though it may fade, it is never quite forgotten. Thence, the experience of an initiation performed provides the material for its own recorporation. Per tabular rasa, we are not only innocent in our youth but naïvely so, the mythic hero-fool of folk stories and fairy tales setting out on the tarot journey. Writers in the posthumanist wave of depth psychology have considered this in terms of an emotional education related to the theme of descent into the dark. Thomas Moore (1992: 278, 281), for example, picked out De Sade’s theme of the ‘ravishment of innocence’, of how ‘innocence is naturally drawn to its own corruption’, concluding that De Sade is ‘an excellent guide through the necessary dark channels to insight and initiation’. Hillman (1975) portrayed this corruption of innocence as a betrayal for a typical contemporary narrative.156 Prior to the development of a secure self – during the maturation process of adolescence and youth – we are motivated by a lack of self-security to look outside of ourselves for confirmation, primarily through intimate relationships. This tends to provide a ‘false self ’ (foreclosure, inauthenticity). In much of the contemporary world and especially its most developed urban areas, this route is very possible since young people have widely come to enjoy the freedoms that Reich advocated, and which now form the sex-love basis of Hillmans’ ‘relationships’. Hillman explains how, making ourselves vulnerable through intimacy, we trust. Thereby re-establishing the original emotional bond of baby/infant-mother/carer, we 155 Issues around AI, and human-tech interfaces arise here; thus, the ‘mystic’ outsider and rebel element in sci-fi living ‘off-grid’. Also in this connection, the importance of sharing autobiography, for communication of important life experience – especially of initiation. Assuming an explanatory (Turnerian, Jungian) framework of contemporary initiation, Woodman (1985: 175ff.), a minister’s daughter from London, Canada, narrates her own as having occurred at ‘mid-life’ (with separation, death and ‘spiritual rebirth’ though a journey to India, becoming the object of a Krishna-cow ritual and then an individuation dream). 156 Stating as definitive that ‘initiation makes a change’ – because it crucially involves ‘experience’, as opposed to education, which (only) ‘seems to add something’ – Redfield (2003: 256) notes that this means ‘loss as well as gain’, thus ‘loss of innocence’.

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entrust other people with the conditions for our growth into adulthood, precisely through their consequent capacity to betray. Thus, our lovers are our betrayers are our initiators. This opens the possibility of our development of forgiveness, a true love: ‘We are betrayed in the very same close relationships where primal trust is possible… Neither trust nor forgiveness could be realised without betrayal. Betrayal is the dark side of both, giving them both meaning, making them both possible’. As with Freud and Jung, this is maturation as inner process, but like Adler and Reich it is also very much one that is experienced through the lived world of ordinary life. Thence, we might come to an appreciation of young people’s gathering as a communitas of pain. In distinction to the conflict (resolution) and the positive (expressive) and fulfilment (potential) models of person, the negative or blank (tabular rasa) model is defined by lack and emptiness, thus as need, requiring addition – an experiential education, indeed. The lack may be conceived as expressed by that hole into which we fall in the existential angst of a life crisis, through abandonment, through ego-identity stripping, through betrayal. Depth psychology thus implies a (negative) life crisis model, suggesting an internalising trough as opposed to peak, a dark night of the soul, initiation with a spiritual connotation. This life crisis is a disappearance of ego (without self ), the loss of external reference, of relations, purpose, a dwelling deep within beyond feeling depression even, unreachable inside a dark despondence. At this point the drama of youth combined with the freedom of modernity may turn to a literal nihilism, the annihilation of self-life – but not necessarily quite played out. At the very nadir of initiation, as we face ‘self-knowledge and the experience of reality, then an enquiry into suicide becomes the first step’ (Hillman, 1964: 15). Thence, we have here two forms of the spiritual in adult initiation, the way of the light bearing the seed of a fall and destruction and the way of the dark (soul) seeking hope. Inevitably, this may also be understood metaphorically as an engendered binary, as masculineversus-feminine toned paths of the spiritual dimension of maturity initiation. Most positively, perhaps, the two can be regarded as combined in the modelling of development in which a life-altering experience – ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – establishes phases through a transformative extreme. These may also be posited as situated in a range. At one end of the range lies the kind of event that is not at all extreme in the sense that it is quite common, such as first sex/orgasm, falling in love, divorce, moving to a new city, major job change, career breakthrough, suicide attempt, or some other attainment, collapse or radical reorientation. While these types of things are ordinary in one sense, they are not so for the individual concerned, and may well constitute a life-defining event and thus the ultimate point (peak/trough) of an initiation (specifying thence, moreover, the spiritual aspect of maturation process). Or they might combine with other events for a time where everything goes wrong and life falls apart, or a period when everything just fits into place (cf. cluster ritual). Or they may build through a developmental process of increment, as a life-affirming exploration or compulsive addiction, such is in sex and sex-love relationships. Thence sexual initiation as first time morphs into process (the ‘Kama Sutra’ 222 

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imagined as initiation manual) and hedonism leads to an endpoint of conclusion (peak expression, collapse, ennui, etc.). At the other end of the spectrum (and as the endpoints of increment) are less common events, which also may cluster, make and be set into narratives. Examples could include the extreme moments of travelling (e.g. canoeing down river rapids, involvement in a Krishna-cow ritual) (see p. 84 and note 155). They would further include ‘synchronicities’ and the more exotic, mystical-type experiences of astral/shamanic flight, ‘near-death’ experience (NDE) and such like. And these transformative extremes might also be felt as openings on a path to awakening, expressed as sense of meaning, purpose or mission. Roberto Assagioli (1927: 21-22), who introduced Freud in Italian translation and approached the transpersonal similarly to Jung, whom he met in 1907 (Rosselli and Vanni, 2014), developed the analytical and therapeutic approach of ‘psychosynthesis’ (in distinction to psychoanalysis) as involving both the ‘personal’ and the ‘spiritual self ’, and thus, in the case of the latter, a ‘pscyho-spiritual synthesis’. Referring then to the ‘superconscious’ and Evelyn Underhill’s (1911) ‘high inner realms’, Assagioli was later to use the term ‘awakening’ in his revision of the 1937 Self Realization and Psychological Disturbances.157 Awakening was related to both ‘new tendencies at the time of adolescence’ and ‘religious aspirations and new spiritual interests, particularly at middle age’, although the former was largely dropped by the time of the (1961) reworking of ‘Self-realization’ (capitalised) in terms of a ‘spiritual awakening’. The awakening part was explained as potentially smooth (‘gradual and harmonious) and without crisis (without ‘neurotic symptoms and emotional disorders’), while the meaning of ‘spiritual’ covered ‘not only the specific religious experience, but all the states of awareness, all the functions and activities which have as common denominator the possessing of values higher than the average, values such as the ethical, the aesthetic, the heroic, the humanitarian and the altruistic’. This was a much softer sense of emergence, of transformation rather than death-rebirth, expressing the effects of a widely defined spiritual initiation but without its violence. Republishing Assagioli’s (1961) paper as the opening contribution to their (edited) volume, Stanislav and Christina Grof (1989) drew on this for their notion of ‘spiritual emergence’ and ‘emergencies’ and development of a supportive network. David Lukoff (1991) concentrated on the dangerous aspect of this, the ‘emergency’, in articulating what he dubbed a ‘shamanistic initiatory crisis’. This referred to the difficulties and potential psychological collapse of a (contemporary) non-shaman engaged in shamanic-type activities, like psychic illness diagnosis, communication with spirits and ‘flight’ to other realms (potentially leading to psychiatric medication and hospitalisation). Sara Lewis (2008) extended the same analysis for experiences related to consumption of the indigenous Amazonian entheogenic ayahuasca 157 Underhill (1911) only used init- forms in a few places, mostly in citations, especially to Steiner’s (1908) Way

of Initiation (notes 96 and 98); Assagioli’s usage was similarly restricted, mostly in a 1965 piece on Liberation focusing on by Alice Bailey’s (1922) Initiation (broadly, therefore, these usages were restricted and came through theosophy).

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brew, in which the ‘spiritual crisis’ is a period of ‘liminality’ in which we may be ‘at risk due to a lack of cultural support’. However, it is ‘awakening’ rather than ‘emergency’ that caught on in the popular (Anglosphere) mind. Indeed, we can regard ‘initiation’ today as largely having morphed into ‘rites of passage’ from an external, sociological orientation and into ‘awakening’ from an internal, psycho-spiritual one.158 Underhill (1911: 213ff.) used ‘awakening of the self ’ for the commencement of the ‘mystic way’ (focusing on [Christian] conversion). With Assagioli’s deployment, therefore, ‘awakening’ was placed parallel to both a wide-sense maturity and specifically spiritual initiation. Valorising what is generally reported as a positive experience to the exclusion of the old, default model of mental illness (with its standard diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’), this type of thinking has been developed in post-psychiatric modellings of a continuum between psychosis and spirituality and a distinction between them). The former is importantly nonjudgmental, while ‘discontinuity’ is based on a recognition of two different (cognitive) approaches to ‘operating in the world’, namely, the everyday (for psychosis) and the ‘transliminal’ (for spirituality) (Clarke, 2001). Obviously drawing on the initiation discourse and applicable to initiations, the idea of transliminality in particular can be viewed as a contemporary working out of the fine line that Jung pioneered.159

158 As Lukoff et al. (1998) reported, the spiritual emergency idea was accepted as ‘religious or spiritual problem’

in the psychiatric DSM (IV) listing, with a V code indicating a condition ‘not attributable to a mental disorder’. Lukoff followed Grof and Grof (1989) in linking ‘initiatory’ to ‘shamanic’ and ‘awakening’ to ‘kundalini’ in a listing of ten types of problem, or ‘conflict’, which he referred to also as a ‘spiritual awakening’ (and when Lukoff recently [2018] mentioned his own ‘psychotic episode’, it was again as a ‘spiritual awakening’). 159 The therapeutic approach is broadly that of the (non-medicalising) supportive network/self-help group and intervention on the basis of ‘acceptance’ (O’Donoghue et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2013); Isabel Clarke’s ‘transliminal’ is essentially a reformulation of psycho-spiritual modes (emphasising numinosity, acausality, identity diffusion).

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Chapter 12. From mysticism to cosmos Our concept of spirituality is typically a fairly vague one but considered generally in terms of expanded mind – as a breadth of vision and depth of wisdom – and an open heart – being loving and giving. It relates to one’s ethics in life and being in the world, involving a connectedness to others and the whole as opposed to confinement within a narrowly defined desires and motivations. A little paradoxically, then, this notion of expanded awareness and selfless action is primarily an individualistic one. Essentially, it offers an expanded or further dimension to personhood. Combined with the dynamic construct of progress, it further affords the concept of spiritual development, as a profound, inner growth. There is another aspect to spirituality – certainly as used here under the rubric of ‘spiritual initiation’ – which concerns alternate, non-ordinary realities and the immaterial.160 This meaning introduces the more mystical realm of the paranormal, or supernatural. Combining this with human agency, or manipulation, we enter the realm of magic (with healing, curses, prophecy, etc.), while the idea of growth here suggests the possibility of psychic development. To this can be applied Dean Radin’s (2013) portmanteau ‘supernormal’, indicating the view that such abilities are special, somehow more than, yet actually quite commonplace (rooted, it is surmised, in an evolutionary survival value). Then, the parallel term ‘paranatural’ may also be coined. Again, the act of recombination for a new word expresses a general desire to get away from the exotic flavour that the standard terminology has acquired and approach the subject anew, without prejudice. In this case, a concept of something beyond nature is indicated, so pointing to a metaphysics rather than human concern. As beyond nature, the paranatural is also defined by nature, a usual understanding (common sense) of which is

160 Assuming here, for the sake of a characterisation, a ‘conventional’ sense of ‘material’ and not problematising

it. In fact, just as gravity, for example, was introduced as a ‘force’ to explain phenomena in the material world and expressed in physics in a way supported by experiment that enabled it to be accepted into a ‘materialist’ view of the world, something similar might be also the case with phenomena labled e.g. ‘psychokinesis’ (PK) or ‘telepathy’ that currently have no standard causal explanation and whose very occurrence remains in doubt (at least by those who have not or take themselves not to have experienced them, i.e. ‘sceptics’). If the material reality of such phenomena is to be accepted as standard (e.g. in ‘science’), it may be through the development of theory that widens the scope of what is understood as ‘material’ and enables the currently ‘immaterial’ to be taken within its purview. This might be dubbed ‘super-materialsim’ or ‘para-materialism’.

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assumed in order to get at phenomena which unusually go outside of that, as anomalous (an un-common sense). Hence, there is a sense of normalising the atypical.161 The two senses of spirituality indicated, ‘individualist’ and ‘mystical’, both involve the manifestation of what was once known as ‘psychical phenomena’. Jung’s doorbell ringing was presented as one example of this, as was Edith Turner’s tooth, or ‘tooth’.162 Other examples mentioned in the realm of ‘visions’ and ‘synchronicity’ are less obviously outside of and thus threatening to a materialist explanation (they could be accepted without contradiction, i.e. explained away). Psychical manifestation occurs by definition in the case of the latter spiritual sense of a mystical immaterialism and as observed fact for the former, individualistic one – especially and as a tendency (at least) in times of life crisis and relatively sharp jumps in development, such as initiation climaxes).163 Indeed, psychical phenomena are themselves intrinsically ‘liminal’. By way of an elucidation, they can be listed as including supernormal abilities (like ‘extrasensory’ perception [ESP], which covers telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition) and paranatural events and entities/beings (like poltergeist activity, ether and angels).164 Overall, there is outlined here the subject area of a nexus of spirituality, referring through the two meanings noted and psychical phenomena to a wide range of related experiences and conceptions that are variously imagined in ordinary language and differently specified within the field. We also refer broadly to the spiritual dimension of life, the actualisation and efficacy of the supernormal and the psychic reality of the paranatural – in general, to this nexus of spirituality – as mysticism (cf. Eliade’s ‘mystico-spiritual’). In initiation studies, it has been primarily identified – and set aside – through a fundamental distinction from adult initiation. Spiritual initiation has been assumed, loosely instantiated and detailed through the narrative – sometimes as ‘shamanic’, or similar, or as mysteries’ rites, such as at Eleusis, or entry into a religion or a brotherhood, like the Roman Christian Church or Anatolian Sufi tariqas, or entry and progression through clandestine ranks affording access to secrets, so of the Chinese Triad, or as revealed or experienced in peak (liminal) experience or perhaps troughs, and ultimately into the secret of God, or the Greater Mystery. A jumbled collection, 161 The

paranormal would be closely linked to the para-material. These two examples being quite different in terms of the level of ‘immaterialism’ (Jung’s related to the movement of a physical object and Turner’s to the reality of the object itself). The outmoded (19th century) term ‘psychical’ (as opposed to ‘psychic’) is used here precisely because it is defunct (and therefore less problematic today while still doing something like the job it was originally employed for). 163 Although it is also an individual variable, presumably with a bio-genetic explanation for determinates of ‘experiencers’; see p. 236. 164 The listing is illustratory: e.g. to clairvoyance should be added clairsentience, clairaudience, etc., while precognition may be housed under ‘retrocausality’ or ‘remote viewing’, for example, to encompass information gained at a spatial as well as temporal distance (which itself can be past as well as future) (e.g. Rhine, 1967; Targ and Puthoff, 1977; Targ, 2012). Other terms used to cover this area include ‘spooky’ (from Einstein on distant action at the quantum level), ‘psi’ (from scientific investigations into ESP) and ‘woo’ (from American popular culture). On the liminality of psychical phenomena, see e.g. Hensen (2001). 162

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but in some way involving the senses of spirituality outlined above and at least not aimed at a sex-gender- or wider society- (e.g. tribal) defined adulthood or entry. In this book, that distinction has been taken as fundamental, as the fundamental distinction of initiation, as indicated in the discursive shift (of myst- to init-), a basic movement wherein the adult developed out of and came to dominate over the spiritual. This, then, provides a general context for consideration of spiritual initiation and its integration into a contemporary approach. The first section below outlines an approach to spiritual initiation to give a model; the second looks as cosmic consciousness; and the third add a final thought on the present situation with respect to mysticism and spiritual initiation. Modelling spiritual initiation The forms of (spiritual) initiations in some way involving and into mysticism as characterised may be imagined as located on a continuum. Combining this with an appropriate approach (ontology) informing the continuum supplies a model for the category of spiritual initiation, which, in turn, indicates a taxonomy for an organised listing of initiatory forms, or types of initiation. This can then offer a perspective on initiation more broadly conceived. The aim in this section, therefore, is to provide a positivistic explication of the idea of spiritual initiation – one, that is, which does not just assume an implicit understanding and treat it negatively on the basis of a fundamental division of the subject, as other-than (so, not-adult).165 To set out, we can take the same direction as that which led from sociology (in the convention of overt initiation studies) to psychology (with the proposed revision, incorporating covert approaches). That is, we move toward the individual and internal. Thus, the notion of interiority become fundamental to the framing of spiritual initiation in mysticism. This can be taken as implying a phenomenological approach – not necessarily, but suitably, as a ‘natural fit’ – one that valorises experience over ‘facts’ (so, subject over object, here over there). The concern is with how things are embodied in the world as opposed to the world of bodies, with relevant value instead of bare information. Rather than a universe characterised by extension (how things extend, their materiality, their behaviours), we start from a cosmos oriented from intension (how things intend, their purpose, or meaning).166

165 The

idea here developed has similarities to that of Weckman (p. 37); indeed, it might be considered a post-humanist or more mystical version of that. There are also some similarities to Wilber’s (2006) ‘Four Quadrant’ model. 166 ‘Cosmos’ here stands for the subjective entirety, as opposed to ‘universe’ for the objective entirety.

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In short, the assumption is of an intensional metaphysics (a hermeneutics or teleology, concerned with interpretation and ends).167 For an appropriate structuring of the continuum of mysticism, the linear movement should similarly direct us from the external to internal. Thus, instead of a hierarchy of levels, with its vertical logic of superior-inferior, we can posit the idea of an innerarchy or inarchy, wherein the outer contains the inner, which is valorised. Hierarchy may be analysed as metaphor in terms of its biological basis in a life determined by gravity, where UP is good (so the best is on top, the superior is above, the highest has control, etc. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). In this vein, from the spiritual perspective, we grow and may also seek to rise above the limitations of our material existence (cf. the characteristic in psychical experience of flying and other airborne phenomena, the place of ‘the heavens’ and the mystical adage ‘As above, so below’). Innerarchy, on the other hand, employs a container metaphor of selfenclosed systems or wholes, like organic entities, or bodies, where IN is good (so the external is superficial, the core meaning is the most important, power is at the heart of things, the centre, etc.). Spiritually, we seek to penetrate the outer shell of daily existence and focus on the inner life for deeper insight (cf. the revelation of secrets and the mystical direction, ‘The Kingdom of God is within’).168 Keywords could be ‘growth’ and ‘holistic’, supplying the binary equation hierarchy:grow th::innerarchy:holistic. The first pairing is conceptually linked to the developmental model, thence initiation as contextualised from without (in the life-stage framing). The second is linked to an alternative approach, and as going within, to a centre, thence to liminality (cf. note 154). As a continuum here, the innerarchy starts from the outside with the domain of the social, at the level of the group; then there is the domain of the psychological, and the individual; and then the cultural, the collective.169 These classifications along an inarchical continuum of mysticism (i.e. employed to get at the nexus of spirituality) also identify types or levels – or layers – of ‘consciousness’ (i.e. as group, individual and collective). It might appear counterintuitive to go from group to individual (and then collective) rather than individual to group (to collective). But that would be more attuned to an exterior perspective (using a hierarchical logic), looking at objects as ordered in numerical scale, from the single to the many (to the uncountable). The movement from the group to the individual is an 167 There

is an obvious problem with the objective reality of intension; this is oppositionally parallel to issues with the subjective reality of extension. Manifestly a difficult area, it takes us into very deep water, raising huge and perennial philosophical subjects, like the possibility of idealism or the meaning of ‘nature’. In the discourse considered here, related issues are captured by the equivocal semantics of ‘mania’, as good and/ or bad, expressed in today’s English with different colloquial meanings of ‘mad’, as approbatory (meaning ‘excellent’) or neutral (meaning ‘extreme’) as well as psychologically ill. 168 Concomitantly, OUT is good insofar as it is the expressing of something from within (but bad when it is uncontained, outside, left out). 169 Per continuum, the boundaries between categories like domains are not sharp; these are not discrete entities.

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interiorising one, and then another step inward to the collective. Treating the conceptual structuring of the mystical thus, we can tackle the subject of spiritual initiation.170  The axis of the inarchical continuum can be understood as characterising initiatory forms both by style and by name, as specifying both dimensions and types of initiation. This allows us to both view initiations in terms of their spirituality and identify ‘spiritual initiations’. Thus, on the one hand, there are the spiritual dimensions of social and individual transition – such as the transformative meaning for human relations around the deeply personal aspects of a (new) sexual/gender self-identification. And, on the other hand, there are spiritual initiations – as negatively defined by the fundamental division and positively through the characterisation of experience, meaning those with a specifically numinous quality – including those that are more orientated to the group or the individual (so religious as well as spiritual initiations). Among these, then, may be counted entries into religions, sects and cults (so including secret societies) and into spirit work.171 Beyond this, moving in from the social through psychological we arrive at the cultural core, the domain of the collective, related to the mystical. Entry here goes to the essence of being, or the nature of existence. Initiation takes us into the supernormal and paranatural though a first (felt) experience or period of experiences, where this is both an aspect of initiations generally (the mystical or spiritual dimension) and also names initiatory type (‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical initiation’). The mystical dimension of social and psychologically characterised initiations can refer to special import attached to the logics of symbolic language, both in the public and the private domain, like astrological sun-signs and the meanings of numbers and colours (especially where these affect action, such as shying away from a relationship with a Scorpio, making a life-changing decision on an auspicious day, wearing one’s lucky colour for a job interview).172 Consigned to the (sceptic) realm of ‘superstition’, such perceptions may be very strongly felt, or gnown, or only consciously resisted.173 The mystical ‘seeing’ may be intellectual rather than sensory, a mysticising, 170 Jung’s individuation did this for initiation, viewed as a psychic separation from group (friends, community,

as he saw it) for an interiorising movement and inner (individual) exploration through which the collective of archetypes (and ultimately self) is accessed. 171 The experiential here can be characterised as opposed to ritual in the sense of the term that emphasises routinised behaviour but as an aspect of ritual in the (performative) sense of valorisation, the attachment of meaning; spirit work nowadays may include spiritualist mediums, contemporary shamans, professional psychics of various kinds, but also therapists and extending to health workers, performance artists, etc. 172 The private language here is already a cultural construct, or culturally meta-constructed. 173 Terminology using ‘gnow-’ references ‘gnosis’ to get at the characteristic mystical sense of certainty, especially where information is gained or imagined as gained from an alternative or non-sensory (immaterial) source but also from a standard source with that ‘unreasonably’ strong conviction. Distinguishing between true gnowing and just being convinced, so perhaps wrong, is a general problem of gnowledge akin to that of knowledge (cf. note 160).

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applied rather than immanent. Again, we emphasise the experiential, here, as the sense of significance. We intuitively feel the importance and profound cultural connotations of tattoos, for example, without knowing quite what these are. This is a relative mysticism, we may say, as distinct from mysticism proper (as initiatory dimension rather than type). In mysticism proper, so named – involving immanent psychical experience (an immediate gnowing of numinosity, quintessentially sensory perception, or direct apperception) – the experience is culturally determined. In the indigenous context, if an initiate ‘saw’ a deity figure or a power animal (guardian spirit), it would almost certainly have been one from the tribal stock of such figures. The psychical element is culturally bound here both in form (a vision quested) as well as content (the vision seen).174 The classical (idealised, paradigm) form of such ‘shamanic’ inductions can be rendered experientially as a ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical initiation’. In what may be conceived as the spiritual aspect of such a mystical in particular, one goes as far as desire and imagination take one, as deeply as fear will allow, or as determined by any other propensity – or just ‘fate’ – after which the challenge is to integrate this back in the world but into a new reality for a radically changed (expanded) worldview and sense of self (a different metaphysics). A new conceptual logic has been introduced in the preceding two paragraphs, but not clearly. Thus, to clarify: parallel and linked to (or resonant with) the linear categorisations of the continuum on the inarchical axis – of social > psychological > cultural, operative at the layers of group > individual > collective – an innerarchy of spiritual initiations can be characterised, respectively, as religious > spiritual > mystical. There are complications at work in the model as presented, however, with different options available.  One issue emerges in the idea of types and dimensions. Logically, the modelling presents a matrix of 3x3 initiations, where the three dimensions are applicable to the three types. If we reserve the religious > spiritual > mystical continuum (names) for the categorisation for types, using social > psychological > cultural for dimensions, we deny the expression of the spiritual aspect of initiations generally (by dimension). Since that has been assumed in a fairly natural way (above), this option is not preferred. However, if we do not do this, then the grounds on which we should distinguish between, say, the spiritual dimensions of a religious initiation from the religious dimensions of a spiritual initiation (let alone the spiritual dimensions of a spiritual initiation) appear quite problematic, possibly arbitrary and certainly in need of explication. There are ways of going about this, but rather than

174 The

vision of Oshahgushkodanaqua seeing the ‘white stranger’, who manifested as her husband-to-be, represents an interesting twist on this norm (presumably experienced as a future-telling representation); see p. 84.

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usefully elucidating are more likely to just further muddle things.175 Rather than working through these complications, therefore, it might be better to go to their source – which is in the initial conditions of the model. Some difficulties stem from elision across different meanings employed for ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’. The term ‘spiritual’ is currently operating in at least two and perhaps three distinct ways. It is (1) the general name of this realm (as a ‘nexus’), distinguished through and identified as a fundamental division of initiation, which characterises an (inarchical) axis for a typology; also, it is (2) the specific name of a type of initiation along the continuum of the axis (related here to psychology and the individual); and further, it is (3) a dimension of initiations, which can be applied generally (including to adult initiations, in that all initiations are or may be more or less spiritual affairs, can be interpreted spiritually or have a spiritual component, in some sense). Moreover, while the logical distinction between the general (1) and specific (2) is clear – as category and sub-category – the idea of dimension seems to prevaricate between the two. Drawn as adjectival from the general meaning (1) and with a general application to all initiations, it is also applied at the specific level (2) of spiritual initiation. The confusing usage is similar for ‘mystical’, which indicates (1) the spiritual nexus in general and its initiatory categorisation, (2) initiation type (sub-category) and (3) an initiatory dimension. Then, a further complication arises in that whereas the two terms ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’ are treated as equivalent in the general context (‘mysticism’ as connoting the ‘spiritual nexus’), they are being used now to name dimensions and types that are different (by definition). An obvious clarification can be made here, then, by a simple move recognising the logical distinction: we use noun forms instead of adjectives for the names of the initiation types (2). Thus, to distinguish them from the category (1) of ‘spiritual initiation’ and ‘mysticism’ generally, we refer to the specific types (2) as ‘spirit’ and ‘mystic initiation’ (‘sect’ could be employed similarly, instead of ‘religious’). Another problem lies in the ambiguous and ambivalent meaning of ‘spiritual’ that was introduced. A general idea of the spiritual nexus as mysticism was outlined which comprised two senses of spirituality, referred to as ‘individualist’ and ‘immaterial’. And of these, it was mentioned, the latter, emphasising the supernormal and paranatural, can be regarded as more mystical. The division of meanings enabling elision was already introduced, therefore, at the general level (1), prior to the (more) specific divisions (2, 3). The spiritual and mystical were already conceived of as at the same time both synonymous with and yet different from one another. 175 E.g. the notion of ‘experience’ and (layers of) ‘consciousness’ has been used, but only for the interiorising

approach to the single axis of the inarchical continuum, not to distinguish for two axes in combination; it could be employed together with the framing of initiatory context – the former as dimension and the latter as type – which throws the problem onto the conception of ‘initiatory context’; this could be characterised in terms of an exterior definition as opposed to the interior of experience/consciousness – but then the type was introduced in terms of domains, which go with the consciousness layers; so this route does not appear promising.

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Further, while the spiritual and mystical at the general level (1) are equated (as the ‘spiritual nexus’ and ‘mysticism’) and also different (as ‘individualist’ and ‘immaterial’), that difference itself is not one of equals. The distinction is not exclusive, since the mystical is related to spirituality as one of its senses. Again, this is mirrored at the specific (continuum) level of types and dimensions (the inarchical layers). This non-exclusivity indicates not a mere intersection of meaning, though, but an inclusion, or subset – which does indeed go to the heart of the problem.  From the internal ordering of the continuum, the inarchical logic means that the religious incorporates the spiritual (which is what makes it different from the merely social); and the spiritual incorporates the mystical (which differentiates it from the psychological).176 Religion without spirituality becomes a dead form, one might say, while spirituality without mysticism is just personal growth. Conversely – since one contains the other (as within), like a subset but at the core, as central to meaning – then, mystic initiation can be said to be the paradigm (type) of spirit initiation, which is the paradigm (type) of religious initiation (we could adjust that name also, to ‘sect initiation’). Simply, the inarchical logic means that mystic initiations are spirit initiations (as a type) – the core sense and paradigm form, in fact. Now, when we talk about the spiritual initiation of a shaman or other spirit-worker as a ‘mystic initiation’, when we name it thus as type, we are referring to the particular aspect at the heart of the transition into an immaterialism – or super- or para-materialism (note 160) – where the supernormal is activated (or qualitatively extended) and the paranatural experienced (most vividly). And the same goes for the shamanic style of initiations undertaken by youngsters in general, not just those dedicating to the spirit-worker role (such as the Niitsitapi boys’ creation of a medicine bag observed by Catlin and Oshahgushkodanaqua painting herself black for a ten-day fast to gain a guardian spirit) (see pp. 84, 85). Mystic initiation is characterised, thus, by that aspect of the experience named as the second sense of ‘spirituality’, the mystical, or core sense, as it is now revealed. Or, mystic initiation is named on the basis of its mystical dimension. The linear logic of the continuum for spiritual initiations means that these are classified by type according to that aspect of the process which is the most profound – the deepest – and thus most central to the experience. In the initiation discourse, this is named as the ‘liminal’. Hence, dimensions are effectively equated with liminality. Expressed thus, the liminality is related to a centrality as depth of experience (in the sense of the deepest, the core, thence the mystical, the ‘most’ on the inarchical continuum), rather than as a stage (the middle of three, characterised as distinct from the social order, thus opposed to it, and then going beyond that opposition

176 ‘Incorporates’,

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to an asociality). Patently, however, these are getting at the same thing, hence the obvious equivalence.177 This provides a discursive logic for the ascription of dimensions to types, thereby collapsing and largely (if not necessarily and absolutely) obviating that distinction. Since the different types of initiation along the continuum are specified according to or as having those dimensions (as liminalities in their naming as types), usage of ‘dimension’ becomes redundant. It is simply stated that religious (sect) initiations have a religious dimension as central, which constitutes their liminality, that sense in which they are outside, beyond, sacred; spirit initiations likewise have a spiritual dimension as central, in the first (individualist) sense of ‘spiritual’, and mystic initiations have a mystical one, in the second (para-material) sense of ‘spiritual’. Insofar as each layer incorporates its next, inner layer as a centre, we can add to the liminal the flavour of the next dimension, as a depth that is implied. Thus, a religious/sect initiation implies spirituality and a spirit initiation implies mysticism. This could be something logically implied and subconsciously or unconsciously sensed (intuited) rather than experienced as such. It could also give us a new sense for failure, as in a ‘failed’ initiation (see pp. 168-170, 186). Insofar as the liminal implication of the continuum (towards the centre) is not realised, the initiation fails – as ‘perfunctory’ (at least from the present perspective of spirituality and mysticism). Thus, ‘ceremony’ has a sense today of that which tends to such a routinisation at the layer of the social and lacks a religiosity, where this relative interiority involves an engagement with the realm of the spiritual nexus. Religiosity can be understood here as referring to the spiritual through a pre-constructed belief system (worldview, dogma) that indicates something greater (deeper, meaningful, purposive) and the experience of a group (sect, communal) ethos and fraternity that goes with that something greater (cf. Turner’s communitas). In the idea of ceremony as ritual failure, there is the lack of that indication of something greater – where the ‘indication’ is primarily subjective, something ‘felt’ (sensed, experienced), although not necessarily consciously and not necessarily (or even ideally perhaps) without good reasons. If a spirit initiation seems not to have a mystical dimension, it is (probably) because the outer form only has been assumed (as sufficient for the naming). But an initiation is not defined by its outer form in this system, and so a spirit initiation cannot lack this mystical dimension or liminal aspect. If it does, it fails, because that is no spirit initiation at all. Then, if we want to maintain the finer descriptor of ‘dimensions’ (thus allowing the naturalness of the original suggestion), these would be better not conceived in terms of a multiplying axis (giving 3x3 combinations) but relegated to relatively nuanced interpretations, as additives, like ritual flavours. Such flavours are not like the dimensions further characterising an externally given, such as the entry rites into the spirit role that are manifest – certainly to anyone with a trained eye, 177 Cf.

‘the centre of the centre’ (p. 149).

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such as an anthropologist. Rather, they are aspects of the process wherein the supernormal and paranatural express (as experience/consciousness, which are less clear from without and generally inaccessible). Shamanic-type initiations, for example, may be undertaken alone in conditions (time, place, etc.) that the child or family choose, or in groups, and as integral to societal structuring. However, at the liminal point of interest – the trance-vision, say – these are unimportant and do not give a context very much worth noting. They are not a dimension of the experience.178 In contrast to the idea of initiatory ‘failure’, an apparently routine ceremony during which someone has, say, spiritual or mystical experience will obviously tend to take on a spiritual or mystical significance for that person. Applying the logic more strictly, the ritual as a whole as defined by its liminality will take on a different quality and should be specified as a spirit or mystic initiation (as additional and further to the ‘religious/sect initiation’ classification). The realities of social practice and human experience are multifarious, of course, and an analysis like this only aims at a conceptual mapping, effectively simplifying it for the sake of an intellectual comprehension. To repeat, though, there is an artificiality to all these distinctions. The main point here is to express the inarchic perspective and orientation to intensionality. There is no sharp border between classifications applied to a range along such a continuum as this, just the basic distinctions as made, like the colours of a rainbow.  This reduction of initiatory dimensions to the liminal – connecting them to both experience and types of initiation (as the names for initiation types) – still allows for another difficulty, however. There seems to be no good reason why, as socio-psychological transitions with a typically spiritual dimension, sex-gender-based adult initiations ought not to be conceived of as intrinsically spiritual affairs. The spirituality of these transformations is not just a ‘flavour’. On the contrary, the stipulation of the interior logic for the dimension – as part of a middle (the central) phase of the whole experience – qualifies them as spirit initiations (in the first, individualist, sense of ‘spiritual’) – insofar as they are experienced thus profoundly, of course, and do not ‘fail’. Indeed, powerful sex-gender-based initiations may induce mystical experience. The ethnographic record certainly testifies to this, and further, to the organisation of mystical initiations on a sex-gender basis (cf. the Kwakiutl winter arrangements witnessed by Boas, where the ‘youth’ is a boy) (see pp. 133-134). The idea developed now is to house all (sex-gender, age-based) adult initiations under the category ‘spirit’ (or ‘mystic’, or ‘sect’, for that matter). This vanquishes the fundamental (adultspiritual) distinction. It applies also to tribal/communal adoptions and tribal inductions into ‘secret societies’ that play(ed) that role. In fact, to all initiations. Thus, the inarchical axis of the mystico-spiritual continuum is placed as primary and definitive. Initiation in general is 178 This

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conceived using the model for spiritual initiation as basic template. This is not to deny the value of making a fundamental adult-spiritual divide in general – for example at the level of expressed intent, the emic explanation for ritualistic forms – but that is not what we are doing here. Were the adult-spiritual divide to be mapped directly onto the continuum, then adult initiation would be linked to the social and determined as essentially lacking in mystico-spiritual experience. Which is somewhat the direction that anthropology took and sought to escape from. In fact, though, the adult-spiritual distinction is not an easy one to make anthropologically, which is precisely the idea expressed in an integrative approach. Bringing adult initiation into the inarchical analysis offers up a single perspective on the whole field. This not only suits but actively indicates an integrated approach, and it also thus simplifies things. Just as the need for the introduction of ‘dimensions’ is obviated by equation with liminality (although it may still have a useful analytical function, reduced to flavours), so is the category of ‘spiritual initiation’ (as opposed to ‘adult initiation’) emptied of meaning and the names ‘spirit’ and ‘mystic’ to distinguish initiation types become largely redundant (they may still have some clarificatory value, but their usage is optional). Thus, specified by mysticism, the inarchical perspective on and for an integrated approach provides a corrective to the modern dominance of anthropology in initiation studies (or, it goes further in the de-secularising direction that anthropology had already taken). And it arguably, thereby, restores – in a contemporary form – the primary archaic, traditional and historical meaning of initiation as a mysteries discourse.  We should still be careful not to reify plurality with the labelling of different ‘types’ of initiation. Referring instead to our own performative, we could use, say, ‘interpretations’, or ‘readings’ – or, indeed, we could redeploy ‘aspect’ and ‘dimension’. Or, to stay with the orientation of interiority, we can use just ‘experience’ (so, e.g., the ‘religious experience of initiation’). Or, to indicate the logic of the continuum, we can speak of the ‘foci’ (invoking the idea of focusing in on something, as a concentration). Similarly, a return to the adjectival ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’ might be preferable to ‘spirit’ and ‘mystic’, as descriptions of initiation generally rather than the names of different initiations. As ever, the particularly terminology used is less important than an awareness of what is going on, what we are doing when we use it – but an appropriate terminology does facilitate that. Finally, a further characterisation of these different initiatory contexts, the foci of initiation, becomes desirable. Since the idea of spiritual initiation is no longer characterised either by actions that can be witnessed or by an opposition to adult initiation, the initiations previously thus envisaged and categorised have lost some meaning. Indeed, all initiations lose the layers of meaning afforded by reification and the fundamental division. The general (positivist) characterisation of a spiritual nexus as mysticism remains, but its application to initiation rests on the innerarchy alone, which already, as continuum, goes toward spirituality Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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and mysticism. In other words, the skeleton (­ the abstraction, the system modelled) could benefit from a little more fleshing out (with more content, to ground it on its own terms, in the phenomenal reality of the lived experience). Here are two ways. First, the wider sense of maturation can still frame a process. Thence, the outer engagement of younger age (e.g. adolescence) slowly gives way as goals are met (or not), enabling (or directing) a more inward focus. There develops a paradigm of process through age-time in which we follow the inarchical continuum inward, toward our ‘self core’ (cf. individuation). This may be experienced as more or less ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ according to circumstance (most obviously determined by the introvert-extrovert rating of personality, but also as impacted by conditions of life and events in the word). As a peak moment or trough, the defining liminality may be quite externally expressed – but it is a peak moment or trough precisely for internal reasons. Thereafter, we emerge into adulthood – at 30, say, or 40 (or more, possibly less) – each incorporating our own sense of self and of Self, carrying our own medicine bag for life. The relationship of this process to ideals and actual realities, to reverses and repetitions, to life-markers and timing and suchlike, all this is quite flexible. It is just a model – although to be of use, it should represent sufficiently well, it should be a recognisable rendition or template for the way we see our own lives and that of others. Second, taking issue with the timing of onset in models of ‘invariant, stage-like spiritual development’ that, in accord with the present suggestion, occur in adulthood upon the development of ‘ordinary cognition’, Edward Dale has argued for ‘Variability in the Emergence Point of Transpersonal Experience in the Life Cycle’. This argument advocates the introduction of evolutionary developmental biology to psychology and spirituality. The suggestion is that the transpersonal be viewed in terms of heterochrony, where neurobiological changes resulting from gene expression caused by epigenetic influence (induced by brain and wider environmental stress, e.g. a spiritual practice) leads to cascading alterations over time, which explains and comprises the extended duration of the developmental period (initiation, in this case). It is precisely because such developments are atypical – as is the case for the more profound types of mystical experience – that variety of onset and flexibility of duration of ‘spiritual awakening’ is to be expected, yet restricted within recognisable forms, or ‘pathways’ (or ‘canalised’, using a term from epigentics). Dale present four such forms, as developmental patterns A to D, in which A, of the type considered here, is the main one (perhaps as a function of Western culture): ‘The emergence of transpersonal experience in adulthood remains the primary form of transpersonal development’ (Dale, 2014: 155). Dale’s second pattern (B) is characterised by early emergence during adolescence, suggesting an adjustment to the initiatory template with a model that pitches the peak earlier (which could extend the recorporation). The fourth pattern (D) has an early presence of the transcendental that fades and re-emerges later in life. Carl Jung is given as an example of someone advocating this (and his personal experience seems to fit quite nicely into the present model, wherein adulthood is not assumed as an early life achievement). The early presence may then be regarded in terms of separation, perhaps a false or pre-separation or 236 

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an aborted one, while the later life re-emergence may also be treated as post-initiatory, as a second initiation (or ‘regeneration’ – into ‘elderhood’) (see p. 209 and Appendix 4). Most interesting, perhaps, is the third pattern (C), in which there is a gradual development beginning from a very young age, of ‘childhood animism’ and an ‘intuition of consciousness in everything’, thus obviating the need for a ‘swift or sudden awakening’ (ibid.: 150). A contemporary example of this is afforded by the experience of Jude Currivan, who attests to having always ‘walked in two worlds’ – following, as she recollects, the appearance of a ball of light (an ‘orb’) in her bedroom at four years of age. And yet she did undergo an ‘initiation’ as she named it (Currivan, 2007: xv), a mystical event that set off a three-year mystico-spiritual (and very earthly) journey, or quest (when she was in her forties). With this variability in mind, the template may be supplied by another, related way of characterising initiations, which is to talk about the continuum in terms of a range between poles of becoming, from joining to being. Essentially, this is a working out of the continuum from the perspective of activity. How an initiation functions is designated by what the initiate is doing. At the exterior end of the scale, the focus is on the entry into social institutions and groupings, on a joining in which the initiate becomes a member. Then, at the layer of the individual, one identifies with the group and adopts a societally defined position as self identity. When one psychologically becomes a woman or worker or citizen of a new country or similarly takes on and adopts any other adult role (so joins a wider, societal institution) – that is what defines the person, one’s self, as a mode of being, both in the world and to one’s Self. There, being becomes itself the activity. Joining is relatively easy to understand, because it has an object, that which is joined. Ditto for becoming, in the sense suggested, which is also a joining (to society in general through one’s position/role). Being, however, is not so clear. Indeed, it is quite mystical. Similarly, in the detailing of the template, where the concern now starts at ‘mysticism proper’ and the nature of a mystical initiation. If this is characterised in terms of the supernormal and paranatural, then what is its inner dimension, the liminal focus of this already innately and intrinsically liminal, the centre of the centre of the centre? If religious (sect) initiations have a religious focus implying the spiritual at their core (or better, the religious focus of initiation implies a spirituality) – and spirit initiations have a spiritual core implying mysticism (the spiritual focus of initiation implying mysticism) – then mystic initiations have a mystical (para-materialist) one implying… implying what? What does this mystical initiation imply? Where does the interiorising logic of the continuum of the inarchical axis lead? Here, at the last, we enter the Greater Mystery, dramatised, if we will, as a confrontation with ‘God’. Cosmic initiation Highly strange events or experiences of the supernormal and paranatural, we may say, take us into a focus on the domain of the liminal, through alternative or non-normal consciousness. This is certainly identifiable as a spiritual initiation. And beyond that, it is Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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a mystical initiation, insofar as it involves the numinous experience and rule violation of the psychical. Within the context of an adult initiation, this might specify a period of time when such experiences recur, perhaps are sought, which thus give a such a character or inner sense to the period as a whole – which itself may be positioned in a wider period of spiritual initiation, of seeking. But that liminal core has its own centre, a yet ‘deeper’ expression of self (or experience), which becomes the whole.179 This is not that which may be called a magical initiation, or the magical aspect of (a spiritual or adult) initiation. Magicality in initiation is probably most commonly expressed as a heightened sense of energy, of ‘flying’, being on top of the world, where things just fit into place, with synchronicity. This is not that, which is more akin to a lesser mystery. This is not experience of the mystical, in visions, astral/shamanic flight, etc., with their range of external-to-internal and imaginal-to-veridical experience, as altered types and modes of perception of other and of self. Rather, this is experience of the mystical itself, as got at by various expressions, such as ‘cosmic consciousness’ and ‘God’ (‘God’ can be understood as a religious expression for ‘cosmic consciousness’, which is a more spiritual expression). Thence, we distinguish cosmic from mystical and psychical, supernormal and paranatural experiences, which take a culture-bound form, albeit quite non-normal (see Appendix 5).180 Violet Firth, a woman from north Wales, then south England and later writing as Dion Fortune (1928: 136; 1930: 38), seems to have had this cosmic in mind when she wrote that in order to ‘attain initiation… consciousness must... transcend ordinary psychism’ (as well as the ‘five physical senses’). Thus, ‘spiritual initiation’ occurs when we ‘become conscious of the Divine within us, and thereby contact the Divine self without us’, such that ‘no-one can be called an initiate who has not experienced cosmic consciousness’. And emphasising, such an initiation ‘is a spiritual, not an astral experience’. The specification of the cluster spiritualdivine-cosmos as distinct from that of astral-psychism-senses seems to indicate a spiritual initiation as involving a cosmic consciousness that is to be distinguished both from the (mere) collective consciousness and archetypal (mystical) and from altered consciousness and the psychical, or ordinary psychism.181 The distinction may be related to initiation discourse as a yet deeper sense of the division of anti- versus a-structure, in which one stands outside of or transcends the basic opposition of the normal with the other of mysticism; this is liminality as a going beyond mysticism (or deeper into it). Also, in material terms, it may be that Fortune’s initiation is empirically demonstrable as tending to occur during adult initiation as set by a 20-40 years’ age range. 179 At

this point ‘self’ and ‘experience’ become synonymous, standing just for perspective, the always given point of reference. 180 Here, what may be characterised as a religious sense is invoked, but in the sense of the very essence of religion; it may be missed, for example, spiritual emergence/awakening-type models may omit it (e.g. Goretski et al., 2013). 181 Assagioli’s (1961) ‘Self-realization’ combines or elides this distinction; Stace’s (op. cit.: 49) distinction has ‘mystical’, which here is ‘cosmic’, ‘God’, etc., as opposed to ‘extrovertive’, which here is ‘mystical’, or similar and thus, in some sense, of ‘less importance’.

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That would certainly be the expectation insofar as it is in the period of our late teens to midlife that people most seek for answers, first explore and engage in the domain of religion and spirituality and are anyway already situated in relatively a-structural space. Biologically, we seem to enter a ‘sensitive period’ at that age, identified, for example, as decreased right hemisphere/right parietal lobe (RH/RPL) functioning (when the RPL is more likely to exhibit reduced electrical activity). If this can operate as a ‘neural coordinate’ for cosmic consciousness (so, not making unnecessarily ambitious claims to causality), then it may indeed provide a ‘universal neuropsychological foundation for spiritual transcendence across cultures and faith traditions’ ( Johnstone et al., 2012; 2017).182 If we measure the lifespan spiritually or mystically using cosmic consciousness as the definer of maturity, then youth and adulthood turn on this moment of realisation, which can come at any time. Generally, however, the cosmic as initiation appears to come in the chronologically and otherwise defined first half of life. This appears to be the case partly as empirical fact (a biological fate affected and effected by the sensitive period, perhaps), and also through human intervention (engagement in practices that cause or enable its occurrence – including but not limited to the formalised ritual practices of mystico-spiritual and religious traditions). Thus, while there is no one-to-one matching of (first experience of ) cosmic consciousness with age as a chronologically characterised life-stage (youth, defined simplistically today as under 30-40 years old), the intersection seems quite strong. Here, the argument would be further for a normative connection, for a positive valuing of the production of mysticism during youth (so an engagement with ritual, in all senses). In the remainder of this section, ‘cosmic consciousness’ is considered both generally and also as an expression of spiritual initiation, namely cosmic initiation.  The first experience of cosmic consciousness may be considered a cosmic initiation. The term ‘cosmic consciousness’ derives from a book written by the British Canadian Maurice Bucke at the beginning of the twentieth century. In introducing the book – referring to himself in the third person as ‘the writer’ – Bucke (1901: 7-11) sketched the details of the first thirtysix years of his life (until 1873) before explaining how, ‘all at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were as if by a flame-colored cloud’. Realising that ‘the light was within himself ’, he was transported by a ‘sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination’, described as ‘one momentary lightening-flash of the Brahmic Splendor’ that thenceforth ‘lightened his life’. He ‘saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence’ and ‘learned… within the few seconds that the illumination lasted… what no study could ever 182 Following Aldous Huxley (1962: 141), the term ‘neurotheology’ is used – although ‘theo-neurology’ would

seem more appropriate, recognising it as a sub-discipline of neurology rather than of theology; see e.g. Newberg (2010); see p. 253, also note 209.

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have taught’. This was his ‘real and sole initiation’. Thus, the English-language term ‘cosmic consciousness’ was introduced along with ‘initiation’, as its true expression. Indeed, this was during that first phase of the widespread take-up of the initiation discourse as such (in spiritual as well as scientific [anthropological] circles). Processing the experience, Burke wrote and talked to a few people who had insights to offer – Walt Whitman was key for him in this – and he read. Considering the various explanations of figures such as Paul and Mohammed, Burke was able to recognise his experience in theirs, or something of theirs through his, since his ‘spiritual eyes had been opened’. As a medical doctor and now Medical Superintendent of the London (Ontario) Asylum for the Insane, Bucke (1879) was already using ‘consciousness’ in his first book, which was dedicated to Whitman. The addition of ‘cosmic’ may have come via Edward Carpenter who met Bucke in 1884 after himself visiting Whitman. Carpenter’s prosepoem Towards Democracy, written with the Bhagavad Gita as ‘keynote’ and completed in 1882, refers to the ‘soul’s true being’ as the ‘cosmic vast emancipated life’ (Carpenter, 1905: 442; 1916: 106). Bucke first proposed the idea of cosmic consciousness in 1894 through various publications and addresses, such as to the Medico-Psychological Association and the Theosophical Society in Philadelphia. Subtitled A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, Bucke’s major work regarded cosmic consciousness as the highest of three ‘forms or grades’ of consciousness, with cosmic consciousness being as far advanced of its precursor, human self-consciousness, as that was from the simple form of consciousness, ascribed to the higher animals. The human mind, therefore, was regarded as having the capacity to make an ‘evolutionary’ leap, implying a progression to a more advanced form of consciousness as an interpretation of initiation. Then, if cosmic initiation is involved in humanity’s spiritual evolution, one can speak collectively of the ‘initiation of mankind’ (e.g. into the New Age). Such phrasings may be imagined metaphorically – as the worldwide human development of ‘spiritual’ qualities, like selflessness (the first sense of ‘spirituality’ [above], which is more closely related to an ethical judgement about behaviour than cosmic or even mystical experience). Or they may be taken and used literally – as an increasing experience of God and ability of people to access and stay in God, meaning cosmic consciousness. Holding to the latter view, Bucke (1895: 320) had previously listed the ages of 23 cases of cosmic consciousness experience, putting them all at between 30 and 40. The cases were not of living people, so the data was very much secondary and historical (interpretive), thus quite poor. Yet it was enough to present a reasonably convincing picture. Bucke (1901: 65-66) developed an evolutionary thesis wherein the usual age would slowly come down – to puberty, ‘after many generations’, and then to the end of infancy, at around three years of age, ‘after many thousands of generations’. That assessment based on written records did not include anthropology, we should note. Thus, it failed to take into account the traditions of tribal peoples, where the bottom age limit for mystical and presumably cosmic consciousness/god experience in initiation studies generally was already commonly set at 240 

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puberty/adolescence (and the average age too, probably). At least, this seems to be the evidence that was available from modern initiation studies.183 Regarding the experience itself, Bucke (1901: 3) linked ‘consciousness of the cosmos’ to ‘a sense of immortality, a consciousness of the eternal life’. The ‘lightening-flash’ of ‘intellectual enlightenment’ was an ‘illumination that continued no more than a few moments’, a ‘moral exaltation’, leading to a ‘transfiguration of the person’. Dion Fortune (1928: 141; 1930: 38) similarly described the ‘illumination’. For her, it was the ‘exaltation that comes from within’, as a ‘flash’, a ‘sudden burst’, which changes one’s life. More recently, Alan Smith writing with Charles Tart (1998: 100-101) reported his cosmic consciousness experience a little differently, as a ‘continuous change… to an ecstatic state’ that ‘faded’ as the experience ‘passed off ’, a process which he estimates ‘must have lasted about twenty minutes’. The length of time that he was in the ‘ecstatic state’ before the reverie of a fading is unclear, but just a minute or two or less appears usual in the mystical literature (like Fortune’s ‘few moments’). The suddenness of the onset of the experience for Bucke and Fortune appears startling, which seems not to have been the case for Smith, yet the shock of the sudden came for him anyway, with a retrospective realisation of the enormity of what had just happened. Thus, while Fortune referred to the ‘shattering of existing order’, Smith, ‘following return to usual consciousness… cried uncontrollably for about half an hour… because I knew that my life would never be the same again’. Notably, these cosmic experiences appear as introverted events, with little or no connection to the outside world (at most, the eyes are open, but generally not). There is also a general sense of surprise, a lack of control, even randomness. This is something that generally happens to a person, an unpredictable experience that might (have) come at any moment, which just comes and then goes, leaving its impact for life, like the psychic form of an initiatory scarification. Indeed, there is a parallel here between cosmic experience – an instance of cosmic consciousness – and the passivity of initiation, as expressed by the grammatical phrasing (see p. 184). This passivity is not one in which the fate of the initiand is in the initiator’s hands, however; the power is not socially entrusted at all. In Christianity, the unpredictability and passivity are indicated by the notion of ‘grace’ (divine grace, God’s grace), sometimes with a deified personalisation (God as ‘the Initiator’). This is not to say that there is no agency or intention involved at all. Paradigmatically, the initiate as agent is a seeker who sets out on a quest to realise the possibility of gnosis, of gaining knowledge, or gnowledge, at least as mystically represented (through universal symbols envisioned, dreamt, etc.), and ideally as cosmically realised, through direct experience. Such dedication must be lived, literally in a monastery perhaps, but in the conditions of ordinary life, also.184 Then, a spiritual (cosmic) initiation defined teleologically as (first) 183

The deification of mystico-spiritual and cultish leaders may involve (implicit) ascription of cosmic consciousness at a very young age, or from birth or before; e.g. ‘Paramahamsa Vishwananda was born God-realised’ (at paramahamsavishwananda.com). 184 Cf. the root meaning of ‘monastery’ as ‘alone’ (note 82).

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cosmic consciousness may be detailed as process (toward that end) – although this will only carry the promise of God, there will be no guarantee of effort rewarded. Hence, it may be a path of despair – like that of a ‘failed’ initiation – in which case the adult initiation may come from recognition of and coming to terms with this, the lesson of letting go the dream (so failure-affords-success as spiritual paradox).  Traditional spiritual symbols and systems, or mystico-religious symbolic structures, can be understood as representing the journey through levels of awareness to experience of cosmos. There are many systems mapping such paths of mysticism, which may thus be considered the development of the ‘soul’ through the spiritual initiation (or the journey to it). Standing analytically for a transition, therefore, such systems may further be appreciated as depicting the path through initiation generally, as structuring the sequence of initiatory steps in a symbolic form (a sequence, mysticised as the sequence). Inherently plastic and multi-valent by nature, symbols can work on more than one level in relation to initiation also, referring as transition sequence both to its mystical aspect in particular but also, in general, to the whole. This was Jung’s appreciation of alchemy, where the goal was realisation of the self – although not (necessarily) as mystical experience per se. As mystico-religious structures, such symbolic systems (of transition) operate as the cultural expressions of a mysticism, and are bound, therefore, to the societies of their production, to the cultural well from whence they spring. By their very nature, however, as representative of the mystical, they equally transcend these strictures and stand for initiation generally, across cultures, regardless of contextual detail. In other words, a certain level of universality is assured. Similarly to that of the anthropological modelling of passage rites, then, the beginning and end states are givens – in this case the start of the journey (ordinariness, human ignorance) and its conclusion (extraordinariness, gnowledge). Applied across societies, the symbolic transition systems organise a pan-societal or human culture. Religions have such systems at their esoteric heart, like an instruction manual for how to get there, a model of aspiration, establishing the goal, the completion or perfection. The most obvious of these is the (initiatory) story and/or character of that with which the religions are identified, generally a founding-prophet figure, supposed as real or legendary, individual or incarnation. From the perspective of initiation, these models are important also for what they say through the stories of such figures after they achieve perfection (typically, receive mystical enlightenment and pass on the spiritual message gained through the climax of their initiatory process). The cultural tradition that engaged in a space race in the 1960s has had a prophet model that concludes in the climax of initiation into heaven (where the Resurrection becomes Ascension). Symbolic structures representing transition as a spiritual path may be passed from a teacher (guru, murshid, etc.) or housed as the mystical tradition of the religious system, formally 242 

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taught or otherwise expressed (culturally transmitted), including impersonally, as a timeless wisdom. They may involve or comprise performance sequences as a pragmatics, as courses aimed at inducing the fleeting divinity or states of revelation (technologies of production for the experience of cosmic consciousness). These include both rhythmic excitation (dance, chanting) and stillness (sensory deprivation, meditation). As representations of paths of perfectibility, on the other hand, they present a conception of the spiritual journey in initiation – and not just as related to maturation but also as a lifelong process. Again, this may be more closely related to ethics and generalised notions of the good in relation to the person than to mystical or cosmic experience as such – or rather, it ambiguously spans the two. Thus, the way in which symbolic, mystico-religious structures of transition sequence represent spiritual development is generally unclear and actually quite ambivalent. This uncertainty concerns the very nature of ‘the path’ – so, quite where it ends (in cosmos/ God, adulthood/individuation or ethical excellence), how the end is reached (with direct experience, in/through living, in society/in retreat), and in what timeframe (in youth, through a lifetime or lifetimes). Then, reference to ‘maturity initiation’ here implies an equivocal mystico-spiritual notion poised between a youthful cosmic initiation and learning that takes a lifetime. Classical Sufi initiation, for example, had a seven-step process into şuhba, which may be linked to various other mystical, often septenary progressions, more or less clearly situated as technique and/or metaphor. Which is to emphasise the ambiguity, which tends toward mystification. As metaphor, such paths are mystified as technique (as though the alchemical Work really does involve metals, for example), and as technique, they are mystified as metaphor (as though the cosmic experience equates to perfection, conflating the mystical [non-ordinary] with the spiritual [ethical]). Thus, originating with the gnostic practice of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in northern Africa and then mutating into the monastic way, the Christian tradition employs a ternary of Purification > Illumination > Mystic Union, wherein the ecstatic instant of God realisation was instituted as evolving over a lifetime of surrender. Conceived as a patterning of the cosmic, Christian mysticism represents a path that is lived based on the distinction between Illumination – the numinal ‘flash’ – ending youth, on the one hand, and Union in old age, on the other. But this assumes the cosmic consciousness experience. Or, as a method of dealing with the infrequency of that – and there is every indication of it being the exception rather than rule – the distinction extends initiation from a youthful, sudden event to a lifelong work aimed at a gradual emergence of something else (the ‘union’, however conceived – an ideal of spiritual summation as inner peace toward the end of a person’s life, perhaps). The path operates ambiguously as metaphor and mystification. While such a move may have facilitated operation of the Christian mystic

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model as a social pragmatic – rather like the ultimate in deferred gratification, the promise (or threat) of the afterlife – it obfuscates in respect of God (yet maintains the Mystery).185 The parallel of the three-stage Christian movement to Van Gennep’s passage rites is quite striking. In purifying, one leaves behind the old (separation); in sensing or seeing the numinal flash, one intuits (God) but does not gnow, or God is present but gone (liminality); and in union one embodies (God), or re-embodies, since one has only returned to the source of being (recorporation). This can work for a mystic union in old age (a spiritual conclusion as individual reconciliation) or as one in the never-never (not actually obtained). It can also work for permanent state of grace as an ongoing condition of life – as God gained during maturity initiation through the experience of cosmic consciousness, which remains in some sense as gnowledge. As the idea of a permanent grace suggests, though, the cosmic initiation could also be into a permanent state of cosmic consciousness, or one that can come and go, remaining accessible. This idea can be introduced through further personal testimonies, starting with the awakening experience of Yogananda.  Originally Mukunda Lal Ghosh, formally initiated as (Paramhansa) Yogananda of the Giri [mountain] branch of the swami order, Yogananda (1946: 148-149) used Bucke’s ‘cosmic consciousness’ for his (English-language) rendition of his ‘first’ such experience in India: My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap. The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far down Rai Ghat Road, and noticed also a white cow who was leisurely approaching. When she reached the space in front of the open ashram gate, I observed her with my two physical eyes. As she passed by, behind the brick wall, I saw her clearly still…

185 Mystic union as an inner peace may be equated to constancy as an experience of consciousness which is in turn regarded as an expression of the cosmic, so God (see below).

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An oceanic joy broke on calm endless shores of my soul. The spirit of God, I realised, is exhaustless bliss… countless tissues of light… oceanic joy.... A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges; there I could see a mellow radiance, ever-undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light… The divine dispersion of rays poured from an eternal source… Irradiating splendour issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. Blissful amrita, the nectar of immortality, pulsed through me with a quicksilverlike fluidity… Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realised that my infinite immensity was lost. This vivid description still appears as a mental event. It has a sudden beginning and conclusion and it is trance-like, without engagement with (physical action in) the world; however, it also exhibits duration. The lack of action in the world here, it should be noted, does not mean that he ceased entirely to do anything at all (which would imply crumbling to the ground, dying or dead). Autonomous functions (breathing, etc.) continue (reduced, perhaps), and what was being done before continues, in a semi-autonomous way (again reduced, perhaps; e.g., if there was movement, this may slowly grind towards a halt). Rather, action is not performed in the sense of a new intention executed; since the attention is entirely focused on the inner experience – one is immersed and attends to nothing but the inner world of the cosmic – there is no (new, exterior) intention formed, so, by definition, no (new, exterior) action (cf. Anscombe, 1957).186 Measured by the holding of a breath as reported, the duration of Yogananda’s experience seems to be that of an elongated moment (akin to the ‘slow motion’ of intense experience). In relation to the perception, we do not know whether what he saw with his ‘spherical sight’ was veridical, whether there really was a white cow behind him that he did see through a wall. A sceptical account is quite possible.187 It may be that Yogananda’s details ought to be interpreted in the way that Susan Blackmore eventually did for her out-of-body experience [OBE] of ‘astral projection’. In 1970, in Oxford, England, in an upstairs room with two friends, Blackmore (2001) eventually came to adjudge her ‘flight’ that started in 186 Mental action is still available, though, the individual ‘will’ remains, just as does a sense of perspective – implying the continuation of self, in some sense. 187 Thus: this was a composite imagination based on his present and previous knowledge of the world and that local environment which just seemed real as he unconsciously filled in the blanks of received visual inputs for an unusual production of the visual field.

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the city as ‘hallucination… with the quality of… hyper-reality’. Importantly, this was because when checking some details observed, she ‘immediately discovered that some were wrong’ – notably ‘old metal gutters’ that were, in fact, ‘modern white plastic ones’. Alternatively, she may have assumed her conclusion too quickly, for example if the old metal gutters she saw were actually the old ones, quite real, and she had ‘flipped back’ in time (accessed ‘pasttime’ information)188 Embedded in and (avowedly) wed to the (Western) scientific tradition, Blackmore spent several years trying to experimentally demonstrate the veracity of ESP. Thence, she embarked on a journey through sceptical debunking to neurological research in the emerging discipline of consciousness studies – but later to advocate ‘monism’. Yogananda’s first experience of cosmic consciousness or ‘celestial samadhi’, however, was merely that, as self-reported, a first experience. His spiritual (cosmic) initiation in the ‘Eastern’ context began what he described as a protracted (four-month) experience and a life lived in a permanent state of access to cosmic consciousness. Thus, shortly after the first experience, Sri Yukteswar, his guru, taught him ‘how to summon the blessed experience at will, and also how to transmit it to others if their intuitive channels were developed’. Yogananda reports entering the ‘ecstatic union… for months’, with and/or followed by multiple acts of remarkable divination, and more. There is a striking parallel between Yogananda and Blackmore’s youthful experiences, since not only did both have (realistic) visual perception of the locality (the cow, the gutters), but they also went on to experience a spatial expansion. Yogananda began with a ‘swelling glory… to envelop… the earth’, while Blackmore became ‘bigger… [to] incorporate… the earth’; and just as this led him beyond ‘stellar systems, tenuous nebulae’, so she, ‘moving and expanding faster and faster’ was ‘soon enveloped many other galaxies’; and as this continued for him until he came to ‘envelop… the entire cosmos’, so she ‘went on expanding… to the limit of the universe’. Yogananda and Blackmore relate dynamic cosmic consciousness experiences. That is, following a period of localised perception, the final state was reached through a rapid process of spatial identity expansion/incorporation. Both cases started with an abrupt change. Yogananda’s experience started quite suddenly, when his guru/master, Sri Yukteswar, ‘struck gently’ and his ‘breath was drawn out’, while for Blackmore there was a ‘transition’, from inner-visions of ‘tunnels’ to ‘looking down… eyes shut, most of the time’, when she ‘suddenly realized’ that she was ‘high up’ and seeing her ‘own body’. Then, rather than the sudden flash as immediate immersion (into cosmic consciousness), there was development, an experiential sequence of an outward-moving, encompassing nature going from the non-ordinary, or mystical (visually realistic perception unrestrained by the usual bodily

188 She

came to the hallucination conclusion later; although she indicates that it was reluctantly accepted, there is also a sense that it was always waiting to be drawn: ‘At the time I assumed that my astral body had left my physical body… However, even at the time I had some sceptical doubts’ (these are not referred to the drainpipe detail, which does appear pivotal, as reported).

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limitations) to the entirety or cosmic identification (becoming the whole). The end of becoming is being, which is ‘cosmic consciousness’. The progression was realised not only in the spatial sequence, but also in a temporal shift. There was a movement from the local environment – with the particularities of the activities on Rai Ghat Road (Yogananda) and her friends in the room (Blackmore) – to a conclusion of timelessness, or eternity – with the ‘eternal source’ and ‘nectar of immortality’ (Yogananda) and a ‘sphere in four dimensions, time having somehow totally changed in concept’ (Blackmore). A distinction in the experience of light was also evident. For Yogananda, there was an initial motion, as the ‘unifying light alternated with materialisations of form’ and perceptual objects like the ‘trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, till all melted into a luminescent sea’, which resolved into the ‘entire cosmos, gently luminous… a mellow radiance, ever-undiminished… divine dispersion of rays’. In Blackmore’s case, first there was ‘light streaming in through the window’, and then, a little differently, it was ‘as if ’ she was ‘travelling at the speed of light and could travel no faster and so was static in the sense of not accelerating’.189 In Yogananda’s report of a four-month experience of cosmic consciousness, we should not imagine that he just sat, entranced and yogi-like, inactive and unengaged on the external, physical level. On the contrary, it appears that the cosmic experience may extend to the exterior, into the world and coexist with action that is then both/either internal and/or external. Living in the Pittsburgh/Lake Erie region around 1980, Claudia Michele reported a full month of being ‘in state’, as she put it. This was also a first but only such experience, which began in the kitchen, at a time when she was ‘severely anorexic’ – which she believes ‘substantially contributed to the initiation’ – and when she was in the process of leaving her then husband: …suddenly, and totally, there I was. The explosion occurred. I was standing there washing dishes, and the wooden spoon with the ribbon on it was as much a part of me as were my own hands… I contained All Things, including Claudia, who went into the bedroom to lie down. The walls in the bedroom blew away, and in rushed a golden, crystalline light that flooded her senses. This is the state that lasted a month. It pervaded both her inner sense (including dreams) and exterior-oriented (waking) action in the world – which is already to make a ‘false’ distinction by the frame of reference of the 189

‘But in spite of moving at that speed, I was getting no bigger, nor moving’ – interestingly, this can be understood as roughly commensurate with current science on expansion of the universe. In another case, there was a clear distinction – of one phase and then the next – but a reversal of the ordering (so unlike Blackmore’s and Yogananda’s); here, there was first the cosmic (suddenly, flash-like to an immediate eternal timelessness and radiance permeating the dark), enduring for moments (to the point of self-awareness and the possibility to explore) – which then ‘fell’ into the non-ordinary perceptual (looking down from high over the Earth), a ‘shamanic’ flight as a vision, with image and prophetic (as a future divining), and a clearly perceived light.

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experience itself, where ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ were undistinguished, where such division was ontologically absent. During ‘The Revelations’, she explains, Claudia was the subject, but ‘she’ was not limited to her own self: ‘I could bi- and multi-locate in one thing, some things, All Things, no thing at will’. This rather makes sense insofar as the cosmic is all, incorporates everything. ‘In the absence of barriers between self and other’, she was the ‘engulfing’ of the experience of others as well as her own. She was the ‘infinite planes of existence and nonexistence’, which included ‘every possible combination of being and nothingness, from the most distant galaxy in time and space, to the most endless Void’. Claudia characterised her self – the state – as ‘Whole, Conscious, Beautiful, Just, Compassionate, True’ – so very much a ‘standard’ cosmic consciousness-type listing, but as actively lived, we might say, rather than just experienced. Thus, she did not sleep or eat at all for the first few days, when she ‘had no bodily functions occurring of any merit’ and her ‘heartbeat and breathing had slowed considerably’, yet she had incredible energy after that, rearranging her mother’s furniture for her and tilling her garden by hand. Later, she killed a ‘rabid dog’ that ‘lunged’ at her with her bare hands, and she put her ‘hand into fire without burning’. Externally (sic), she ‘saw through walls and round corners’, while internally (in reverie), she ‘saw how the universe was put together in infinite, infinitely intersecting planes of reality, all white light’. And through all this, she ‘lived in a mysterious, overwhelming calm’. After the month was through, she lived the next two months in a ‘bridge state’, when she began to make ‘some semblance of human sense of it all’ and ‘reconstruct… [her] personality’. Then, for the next thirteen years, she was able to ‘use’ the experience ‘without effort’ (and enjoyed the ‘rare moments’ of reliving). Then she had a two-year ‘burn out’ period, since which she has found herself in state occasionally and spontaneously, as the occasion demands (giving as an example of one day when teaching that she told a ‘whole class of students their private lives!’). Generally, however, that first experience of state: …provides the alpha and omega framework to collect and eternalize from this perspective what I can. When the Revelatory period ended, my gnowledge of All Things was [mainly] limited to the gnowledge of the existence of the gnowledge.190 This appears to be the report of an extreme form of cosmic (so also spiritual and mystical) initiation, placed within the adult initiatory setting (of marital break-up and later recovery and recorporation) for a very wide-ranging maturity initiation.

190 Personal

communication (originally via Rhea Whites’s Exceptional Human Experience Network [EHEN] website; at ehe.org.).

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Further considerations According to what may be termed the narrow view of cosmic initiation, there is an unfolding psychic process that culminates in a certain type of experience (the initiation itself, the point of cosmic consciousness); there is a wide view, on the other hand, in which this is just the climax of the first stage of initiation, that stage as a whole beginning the initiatory journey towards enlightenment as a state of being. Yet enlightenment as a state may very well be realised immediately, without preparation (Claudia Michele), or at least quite rapidly, while still young, so not worked for over a lifetime (Yogananda). And this state may be maintained, qua ‘state’, although it need not (and possibly cannot) be maintained permanently (even if access to it is, or might be). This goes contrary to the standard idea of enlightenment as permanent and constant, which is a teleologically paradigmatic but also mysticising ideal. While ‘enlightenment’ does have this sense, it is as an extreme of a range – mystically linked, for example, to ending the round of reincarnation. At the other end of the range, the state of being ‘enlightened’ refers to the ongoing state of having been enlightened (i.e. as one who has experienced cosmic consciousness). Thus, in a rendition of the lifespan as determined by cosmic consciousness, all adults are enlightened. Depending on perspective, either this is the paradigm of all initiation or all initiation is metaphorically extended by being thus expressed. Enlightenment-as-state is mystified with the idea of initiation as the journey to perfection when it is not clear that that goal equates to a cosmic consciousness that is actually realised, let alone permanently maintained or accessible. This was the ambiguous sense afforded in the past emergence into the public realm of the Western esoteric through mysticising (occultist) systems of initiation. Examples of this are those instituted by Blavatsky and Crowley, mentioned above, but also by Fortune, who established her own esoteric order, the Community/Fraternity of the Inner Light, and a three-level system of initiation. In the ‘preparation for initiation’ wrote Fortune (1930: 44), the ‘candidate may spend long years in the preliminary training; disciplining mind and body, learning all the lessons of life, loosening his hold on the desires and dreams of matter, and patiently waiting for the longed-for admission to the Mysteries’.191 She foresaw the possibility of quick advance upon eventual breakthrough, although apparently ignoring the chance or likelihood, even, of non-admission, of no breakthrough. We should also say that given the apparent tendency of cosmic experience to occur once only in a lifetime, the wider notion of a lifelong journey to enlightenment as a mode of being again seems to have limited application to actual cosmic experience as an expression or reflection of what really goes on, in general. Indeed, it may even tend to be doomed to failure 191

Thereby placing herself within the modern mysteries tradition, like other late nineteenth and twentieth century occultists who routinely referenced this in promoting the idea of initiation as a spiritual phenomenon or process; thus Fortune (1930: 40-41), for example: ‘The soul that is naturally inclined to mysticism is… in the Lesser Mysteries always given an occult training… It is not until the Greater Mysteries are reached that the soul is permitted to follow its natural bent…’

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insofar as the ‘sensitive period’ of maturation passes (Fortune’s candidates could have been entirely likely to die waiting, rather literally). In short, it is mostly unhelpful and potentially and actually quite misleading to conceive of the cosmic aspect of spiritual initiation – or cosmic initiation, or God realisation – in the wider sense of a prolonged (lifelong) journey (typically starting from [after] adult initiation). The mitigating ‘mostly’ here should be emphasised, however, since this is not to say that the wider notion has no value at all, as though later illumination or union never occur – and nor, for that matter, through effort – but rather that the rarity of this seems much greater than that of the spontaneous flash linked to the adult initiation period noted as rare enough in the first place. Rather than offering a longer-term path to salvation, therefore, the wider notion has a tendency just to mystify in general and possibly lead to a level of unfulfilment.192 The cases of Yogananda and Claudia Michele do indicate, however, that cosmic consciousness may take the form of a state of being, one in which the individual operates in the world, with enlightenment as a condition. This is not, therefore, just a transient, trance-like form, which though relatively rare appears far more common. Recognising the reificatory attraction of sharply delineated categories, this speaks to a need to distinguish cosmic experience as tending to one of two poles, either a (relatively) short, interior event (IE) or else a (relatively) lengthy, exterior state (ES), where the ‘exterior’ refers to that being in the world. Also distinguishable – as per the yogic-Buddhist perhaps Vedic classical system(s) of gradated samadhis – are a range of cosmic consciousness experiences along the two dimensions of duration (event-to-state) and orientation (interior-to-exterior). These start with dream IE and then, between IE and ES, feature cosmic consciousness events in which the eyes are open in darkness and in daylight but without physical action in the world (beyond a change of attention focus), and where the mentally oriented (IE) affect of awe, wonder and rapture is enhanced in exteriorisation (ES) with bliss, compassion and love. In the mystic tradition, ‘true’ enlightenment requires such a heart expansion.193 Summarising and characterising, cosmic consciousness comprises a certain experience of light and space and time sensed with concomitant affects. The ‘light’ is a radiance, the ‘space’ is the entirety and ‘time’ is its condition, and each is felt as profoundly still and whole, an unmoving unity. The light is a radiance in that it is seen in the dark, or void, or space (hence also ‘numinous’, which combines luminosity with meaning); the space as entirety is the framing of all, so space itself (thus ‘omnipresence’ as predicate, as a quality or power of

192 There is a process of mystical (supranormal, paranatural) development, like any skill that is honed, although

no great gain seems to be had from constructing an (initiatory) lifetime patterning for its qualitative unfolding. 193 Essentially, therefore, this true enlightenment involves and affective engagement in the world.

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‘God’, itself a religious characterisation of cosmic consciousness); and time is the condition of space, so change (thus, ‘eternal’, similarly as pertaining to God).194 Space and time are sensed from the perspective of here and now, but where the locations ‘here’ and ‘now’ are unbounded. Thus encompassing, this removes the other of ‘there’ and ‘then’ (different places and times). The single point of reference is maintained, as the ‘centre’ that becomes all – as the individual self becomes coextensive with the subjective whole, or cosmos. This is a unitary or unitive consciousness as a fundamental, or the fundamental, so underlying all material reality as ultimate – expressed in physics, for example, as a string theory ‘beyond’ the micro or quantum level of probability waves (Hagelin, 1987) or the (space and time) Planck-length pixilation comprising the ‘holographic’ experience when eight dimensions are rendered in four and three (Klee, 2017). Where light is regarded as a fundamental, and thus a determinant of the phenomenal (in current physics, through its speed), then cosmic consciousness may be characterised as phenomenal access to the condition of phenomenality (e.g. to the nature or condition of the ‘quantum hologram’).195 Similarly, cosmic consciousness can be considered from the formal perspective of philosophical tradition as an ontological second-order awareness, that is, as experience of the conditions of experience. Thence, it may be characterised as the direct apperception of space and time themselves, or of the Kantian transcendent. Thence, as the form of experience itself, it is the a priori. And, to specify it in terms of space and time – or space-time – is to give the content of the form, or the synthetic a priori. This is the ‘pure’ form of cosmos, engrossed in the interior, consciousness itself as solely reflexive, the only object of awareness, cosmos as opposed to universe, without exterior, hence interior – IE (or SI) – cosmic consciousness. Insofar as there is no or minimal interaction with the world, one would think that an IE cosmic consciousness cannot last for very long without the organism supporting it ceasing to function. It does seem to be characteristically fleeting, the ‘flash’, little extended. From Smith’s experience, we gather that a subsequent period of entrancement may follow, for some hours. A temporal distinction between IE and ES cosmic consciousness is made at least by sleep, such that the idea of a state as opposed to event can be said to apply to cases where the individual sleeps and then wakes, still in the cosmic-conscious state. In that case, it would seem, the experience applies also to external engagement as a pervasive sense. In 194

Hence, in the oxymoronic tradition of Christian apophatic mysticism, Gregory of Nyssa in The Life of Moses (II: 162) states that ‘...intelligence… gains access to the invisible… and there it sees God… this is the seeing that consists in not seeing…’ (Malherbe and Ferguson, 1978: 95); from Pseudo-Dionysius, we have the ‘superessential radiance of the Divine Darkness’ (Rolt, 1920: 192) – from ‘τοú θεϊou σκóτous ακτίνα’, where ‘superessential’ (or ‘supra-divine’, etc.) is added, and the Greek ‘ακτίνα’ is translated through the Latin ‘radium’ (radius/spoke) to the English ‘beme’ (beam/ray), with the verb form ‘ακτινοβολώ’ thus as ‘shine/radiate’; similarly, space-time as conceived by the seventh-century Christian apophatic theologian Maximus the Confessor is the ‘ever-moving repose’ and ‘stationary movement’ (Mitralexis, 2017: 192ff.). 195 How this is worked out may be unclear, but the implication is that the notion of a hologram, which uses coherent light, provides a metaphorical handle for the place of light in relation to consciousness in manifestation (of the phenomenological world, of ordinary or ‘objective’ reality).

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this situation, internal engagement also takes on a qualitatively changed form, the temporal extension permitting narrative, the experience of exploration (learning, play), based on detail within the cosmic, or manifestations of the cosmic as material reality (thus, the self can identify as an ‘other’, which really is not other). The spatial (interior-exterior) distinction would also seem to imply a rule violation that, like the internal experience, is at least somewhat volitional. In a singular space-time, causality is merely pattern unfolding, so its ‘rules’ may be ‘broken’. This introduces the idea of access to ‘special powers’. The development of supernormal abilities is closely associated with spiritual development referencing the more mystical in various cultures (e.g. siddhis and shaktis in the Indian subcontinent and southern Asia traditions of tantra, yoga, etc.). In this respect, the spirit-worker operates in the murky area of greater or less actual or apparent rule violation, where even this mystical is mysticised. A major reason for this obscurification would be a grouping together by profession (‘shaman’, etc.) of individuals who have actually had a range of initiatory experience, including cosmic consciousness as paradigmatic, but certainly not necessarily. Finally, there is no necessary developmental path from one to the other (IE to ES cosmic consciousness), so no norm relationally placing these in sequence as initiatory (although neither is that ruled out). Simply, this binary marks two poles or extremes of cosmic experience, thence cosmic initiation. With a background in Freudian psychotherapy, Fortune (1928: 141) described cosmic consciousness, or initiation, in terms of the ego moving to a spiritual dimension – ‘the ego sees with the eyes of the spirit rather than the eyes of the flesh’ – which maintains the position of the ego through the experience. In the shifting of vision, she might be speaking in various ways, quite literally in terms of the immediate source of visual stimulation (‘normal’ or ‘psychic’/‘third eye’), but also metaphorically, referencing the cosmic feature of light (radiant numinosity). Given Fortune’s subsequent preference for Jung, we should perhaps also understand the ‘ego’ movement to the spiritual as equivalent to the emergence of ‘self ’, as expressed by Roose-Evans (1994: 5): ‘The hard shell of the ego has to be broken if the real self is to emerge’.196 This gets at the sense of shattering, in which the previous worldview, including sense of self, is immediately, radically and irretrievably changed However, the nature of the shift (e.g. its violence) seems also to depend somewhat on the context of initial position or preparedness of the individual (cf. Yogananda). Insofar as experience continues – with a perspective and the possibility of willed activity (especially in ES) – self remains through the cosmic consciousness experience. Self is not destroyed as such, but rather expands to encompass all, ‘cosmos’, the primary identification being singular, of no differentiation, so a ‘cosmic self ’. Then, between ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ we may insert ‘expanding’.

196 Ironically, a challenge associated with the experience of mystical consciousness is ego-inflation, the god

complex engaged with by Jung.

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This is expressed differently in Jeremy Hayward’s exposition of Buddhist philosophy derived from shamatha-vipashyanna meditation and Galen Strawson’s explication of self as arrived at through philosophical introspection. In these cases, the concern is with the illusion of a constant (maintained) self, which Fortune and Roose-Evans get at by ‘ego’. Self illusion and ego in this sense denote a kind of ‘false self ’ or an outer sense of core/centre (so pre-cosmic, we could say). Hayward (1998: 616, 624-625) explicates thus: The sense of a continuous self arises out of the habitual mechanical repetition of certain patterns of dharmas [‘momentary elements of experience’], including the patterns that provide the sense of having a physical body. The background intelligence energy, rigpa, within which this process occurs is beyond the boundaries of conventional space and time. It is neither mindstuff, nor matter-stuff, but is primordial to both, having the qualities of openness, energy, awareness and insight… In this case, cosmic consciousness appears as the experience of (direct acquaintance with) rigpa, the ‘background intelligence energy’. Strawson (1998: 418, 422 [note 27]) suggests that: The sense of a single mental self… has to do only with the present, brief, hiatus-free stretch of consciousness, at any given time… [T]he appearance of flow… seems to be in affinity with the Buddhist theory of the way in which consciousness is an interruption of ongoing, unconscious bhava˙nga mind’. Here, cosmic consciousness is ‘bhava˙nga mind’. Just ‘mind’ may also be used, which references the Western philosophical tradition.  The idea of a self that is maintained may assist a reconsideration of the analysis offered by Robert Forman (1998: 188-200) based on a distinction between two ‘strands’ of mysticism – so, characteristic types or expressions of spiritual initiation, or initiation as liminally identified by its inarchical core. First, there is the kataphatic, which has phenomenological content (‘imagistic mysticism’, with visions, etc. – and also actively involved in the physical realm, we should add, with synchronicity, magic and healing, etc.); second, there is the apophatic, which is ‘devoid of such sensory-like content’ and also of mental content (thoughts, feelings, etc.), so ‘non-intentional’, indicating the contemplative and meditative mind-emptying mystic-religious traditions. This division parallels the ergotropic-trophotropic (activityinactivity) distinction – as employed by Newberg and D’Aquili (2000) from Andresen (2000) and it is also rather like the ecstatic-versus-negativa characterisations of religious Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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styles and the ‘Western’-versus-‘Eastern’ and ‘occult’-versus-‘mystical’ distinctions made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (i.e. concomitant with the emergence of the modern initiation discourse, so historically pertinent, also, to the idea of ‘spiritual initiation’). The content-ful/kataphatic aspect of initiation links to the spirit-worker ritual traditions at the level of the ‘mystical’, although with few insights historically into the relationship of this with cosmos. ‘Flight’ in the upper and lower realms seems to go in the direction of cosmic experience, but this ‘astral’ experience is actually not that of cosmos, or God. Similarly, the kataphatic is relevant to the distinction of mystical from cosmic, as made here. Wanting to focus just on consciousness itself, however, following his own experience, Forman looks at the content-less/apophatic. He details a three-level schema for this, comprising ‘pure consciousness events’ (PCEs), the ‘dualistic mental state’ (DMS) and ‘unitive mystical state’ (UMS). These are expressed as (though) both distinct expressions and a process, so should probably be regarded here as an overall expression of spiritual (cosmic) initiation.197 PCEs are actually not quite contentless events, since there is content, that of consciousness. This is got at by the apparently negative but equally positive notion of ‘silence’ – referring theologically not just to the Christian esoteric of a lack of internal noise (thought, or ‘chatter’), to an inner calmness as psychological disposition, but further to a felt stillness, constancy, the light of consciousness as ‘switched on’ and unwavering. This is a feature also of cosmic consciousness, so PCEs seem to parallel IE cosmic consciousness. A PCE is an IE. Or, more accurately, perhaps, a PCE is IE without the awareness of cosmos (as object); so, it is a passing experience (short, temporary state) of objectless consciousness. A first experience of this may be represented as the separation stage from our everyday normality (as gained, say, with the ego-identity of adolescence). Then, DMS would equate to the liminal and UMS to recorporation, or attainment, definitional of the completion of initiation. By way of an illustration to get at PCE – and one that works also for cosmic consciousness – we can imagine a mystical vision, say, of the yin-yang symbol. Subtracting the symbol, removing the content of the whole (i.e. the black and white shapes), leaves us with just the (representational) form of the whole, namely, its numinosity (as a mystical vision) and the circular shape (containment, a unity). This numinous round as the form is the particular way in which the symbol is expressed; it constitutes the content of the form. This may be said to be the content of the form of something (cosmic consciousness), or of nothing (a PCE). Thus, a PCE is the content of the form of nothing. However, as stated, a PCE is (or is also, or does exhibit) the content of the form of something (namely, consciousness itself as object of 197 Forman’s preference may follow also the valorisation given by Stace (1960: 49) to the ‘introvertive’ form of

mysticism, which seems to be the same as Forman’s apophatic; assuming the ‘extrovertive’ as just ‘experience’ (so events, not states), Stace did not consider ‘extrovertive’ mysticism of the type considered here as (durable) exterior cosmic consciousness, leading him to suggest the extrovertive as ‘no more than a stepping stone to the higher introvertive state, and in any case of less importance’. The resonance of all this with the Christian esoteric tradition can be assumed as formative, as also for Forman.

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awareness). Thus, there seems to be a distinction being made between the content, as just of experience itself (a PCE, experienced as a personal constancy, one’s own stillness, or ‘silence’) or of experience identified as cosmic (numinous, universal and eternal).198 The most obvious division within Forman’s ternary of PCE-DMS-UMS is evident in the names, with the opposition of ‘event’ versus ‘state’ and the introduction of ‘mystical’ (either dual or unitary), thus setting up a basic contrast between PCE and DMS/UMS. The first, event-state opposition introduces the dimension of temporal duration, of relative transience and endurance, as mentioned above.199 In the apophatic way of mysticism, duration is generally gained through the mind being stilled by deep, extensive (meditative/ contemplative) practice (so, in ritual). This suggests DMS/UMS as tending towards a later life developmental category, insofar as a singular focus and quiet repose are not qualities associated with youth and the years of practice required indicate a prolonged commitment, at least in contemporary society and outside the supportive framework of a religious institution. In other words, one would expect kataphatic experience to be more commonly relevant to cosmic initiation today. Or, the spiritual core of maturity initiation has this as its most common expression of mysticism.200 The second distinction, introducing ‘mystical’, involves a combining of the temporally extended pure consciousness with experience in the world.201 Given that the apophatic specifically excludes the phenomenological content of imagistic mysticism, the ‘mystical’ here seems to be a special inner sense, or awareness, the stillness or ‘silence’. Finally, UMS involves a loss of self, characterised as no subject-object boundary, indicating DMS as an (analytically) inter-state (so liminality) between pure and unitary consciousness. This interstate parallels dreaming as an inter-state between (deep) sleep and waking (between no consciousness and ordinary consciousness). Then, the consciousness states of non > ordinary (human) > cosmic are implied as a further lineal progression, at least at the level of analysis.

198 The

notion of the content of a form that remains when the content itself is abstracted may rescue James’ (1902) notion of ineffability, which otherwise seems to dissolve very much into the ‘hard problem’ of mind and the nature of (ordinary, human) consciousness anyway (Chalmers 1995; cf. Nagel, 1974). It is not that ‘religious experience’ (cosmic consciousness) cannot be communicated in a descriptive fashion (e.g. the sense of ‘cosmic’ is captured through reference to space-time and radiance), or, specified, for example, by the attributes of God (omnipresent, everlasting, aweful, etc.) and the 99 names of Allah (‘abd al-awwal: ‘the First’, etc.); rather, it is that the communication is importantly of consciousness as itself object, as form made content, which is quite abstract and difficult to get across (hence recourse to metaphor, here with the yin-yang symbol). 199 William James (1902: chs. 9, 10, 16, 17), made an apparently similar distinction between cosmic consciousness as a ‘sudden conversion’ as opposed to a ‘gradual conversion’ – for him, the difference between the two forms of conversion experience was merely one of character, or ‘psychological peculiarity’. 200 Or the most common healthy expression, allowing for schizophrenic break as a distorted katphatic. 201 Forman also insists that DMS (but not UMS, oddly) is permanent, which is a strong claim (one might think that any ‘permanence’ to any (mental) state would or at least could eventually wear off should the practice that produces and then supports it be desisted); it does, however, seem to go well with Yoganada’s report as well as a popular imagination of the genuinely mystic life, so not entirely mysticising.

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The examples of UMS given by Forman mostly involve sensory content and do not appear to pay any particular heed to the kataphatic-apophatic distinction. However, he does make considerable use of the testimony of American ex-nun and housewife Bernadette Roberts, who describes her process as starting with a first ‘contemplative movement, a union of the self with god’, followed by a ‘second movement’ of successive and evolving mystical experiences and states in which ‘the sense of self and God fall away’, leading ‘beyond union, beyond self and God, a journey into the silent and still regions of the unknown’. The first movement or union (of self with god) would seem to be the IE form of cosmic consciousness. The second movement is referred to by Roberts (1993: 54-56) as itself an ‘initiation’, the ‘Great Passageway’ into a period of mental tortures of fear, dread and insanity and physical tortures of burning and freezing, convulsions and ‘darting tentacles of light’ – ‘Physically, this thing was tearing me to pieces... All I wanted to do was get it over with – to die if necessary’. Here, in terms very reminiscent of the shamanic deaths of dismemberment and suchlike (cf. also the religious Purgatory/Hell), we clearly have a meaningful example of the extended, potentially life-long type of spiritual initiation that involves a development of inner, mystical-type experience over decades, after youth. Such a timeframe should not be assumed as necessary, though; we may pin this also to an adult initiation, before mid-life – like the kundalini experience process reported by Gopi Krishna (1967). Roberts’ initiation was followed by a four-month period of recovery and purification, described as ‘a radical state wherein the mind cannot dwell on anything known or unknown’, which eventually resolved into the discovery of ‘doing’, a mode of action not based on a self-concept of freewill or ‘silent mind’, but on the final loss of the ‘silence of no-self ’, the ‘gateway not only to what is beyond the self, but beyond no-self as well… beyond any notion of experience of self and silence’ (ibid.: 66, 79, 82, 105). While the initiatory pattern appears to express the recorporation stage, the beyondness seems to be just like that described above in the context of cosmic consciousness. Thus, if PCE is understood as a purely personal form of consciousness (without cosmos), then (this) UMS appears to be a realisation of that in terms of a lived depersonalisation. As the examples of Susan Blackmore, Claudia Michele and Yogananda show, cosmic consciousness takes the form of the self as incorporating other (all other). The individual identifies as everything (which includes nothing). In this sense, then, the experiential ‘loss’ of self is rather that of other that disappears as something separate from self, the loss of a distinction (and self-identification with that). Cosmic experience – and UMS – does not mean that one loses perspective, but rather that this is expansive (unrestricted) and malleable. The addition of malleability may be considered as a further distinction between samadhis (higher samadhi levels, or inner layers). What falls away, therefore, is the fixity of self, the singular and unique identification of self with one particular as opposed to all or none or any other. In this sense, rather than no-self, Roberts’ experience could be expressed in terms

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of the non-fixity of self on anything in particular, including her (Roberts the woman), and including nothing.202 Returning to Forman (and this holds, too, for Roberts), the main move, from PCE to UMI – which can be taken as initiatory and is introduced through temporality (as state rather than event) and as the ‘mystical’ (in the dualism-unity dimensions) – appears to be one from interiority (inward attention fixity, inner experiential immersion, ‘trance’) to exteriority (worldly action). Which rather nicely presents an oppositional development as symbolised by the ascent-descent motif of progress (see pp. 158-159). The limitation of the interiority one may suppose as actually occurrent in the world (materially) but not including it (phenomenologically), which itself implies a distinction or splitting of realities (subjective and objective) within which the cosmic is realised (as IE). The final move of cosmic initiation as an analytic, then, is from intension to extension, but as a recorporation, where the exterior is suffused with the whole. Finally, ‘universe’ and ‘cosmos’ are characterised as exterior and interior notions of or ways of getting at the same totality, like two sides of a coin, where ‘cosmic’ refers to intensional reality, and the ‘universe’ to the extensional (implying a philosophical dualism). Since the intensional presupposes consciousness, there is no need to specify a ‘cosmic consciousness’, since the cosmic is necessarily that. Then, the assertion of ‘consciousness’ is tautological and thus unnecessary to say. Ultimately, then, assuming an inarchical perspective, initiation is just an entry into cosmos.

202 Cf.

‘I contained All Things, including Claudia... to the most endless Void’ (p. 247).

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Postscript – Awakening, ascension and the rebirth of initiation In contemporary culture, ‘spiritual development’, ‘mystical experience’ and ‘cosmic consciousness’ are further linked to UFO-ET experience, together with conceptions of and beliefs about ‘the phenomenon’.203 This is developing now on a large scale and increasingly ‘mainstream’ level, and as a part of an opening to the manifold of materialities that are also not so much extra-terrestrial as extra- and interdimensional. That is, the rejection of a ‘nuts and bolts’ thesis for the phenomenon (one that asserts simple physicality) is taken as necessitated by several of its aspects (e.g. the evolution from dirigibles and flying saucers, and the telepathic and experiencer-centred nature of events).204 Then, an understanding of the nature of ‘contact’ – itself an initiation, in a contemporary form – is afforded by a shift from the old spiritual conception of ‘planes of existence’ to a model of dimensions, where a ‘higher’ (e.g. ‘fifth’) dimension could interface with our four (the 3+1 of space-time) in a way that we can experience but is beyond us to really grasp. In this third millennium conceiving of awareness, the sense of ‘cosmos’ (as entirety of the internal) becomes closer to ‘universe’ (as entirety of the external). It appears as a new cosmology. The ET is located in star systems, like Orion and the Pleiades, yet, in a ‘collapse’ of our fourth dimension, is always with us, depicted through human history and indigenous myth. A complex and multivalent reality emerges. Just as the ‘Chariots of the Gods’ (Von Däniken, 1969) became the ‘Spaceships of Ezekiel’ (Blumrich, 1973), so has a vibrant new religious form developed. This is a legendary system of meaning for the global present and our future – comprising a ‘new’ worldview (within the cosmology).205 203

‘UFO-ET’ is used here for convenience, as known acronyms; for craft, ‘UAP’ – unexplained aerial phenomena is preferred now to ‘UFOs’, which carries baggage and restrictive connotations (all three terms, ‘unidentified’, ‘flying’ and ‘objects’, are problematic); for beings, other terms and acronyms, beyond ‘alien’ and ‘ET’, include or have included ‘extra-terrestrial biological entities’ (EBEs) and ‘visitor’; there is also an uncertainty about making a hard distinction between the two (craft and beings), since ‘orbs’ may appear as objects that are ‘really’ beings. A range of recent research and theory on this subject is represented by Alexander (2011), Kraay (2014), Rodwell (2016), Hernandez et al. (2018) and White (2018). Rey Hernandez (cited here), now leading the Consciousness and Contact Research Institute (CCRI), has developed the phrase ‘contact modalities’ to get at the field named here as ‘supernormal and paranatural’, where ‘contact’ indicates a UFO-ET orientation. 204 An early version of the ‘interdimensional thesis’ was proposed by Hynek and Vallee (1975). 205 Tribal myth has been covered in the anthropological tradition e.g. by Waters (1963).

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This development is occurring in the context and as part of our manifestly shifting relationship to ourselves and life on Earth, including our place in the world, the nature of that planet and its place in space. The rapid development of biogenetics and ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) beginning to extend our manipulation of ‘nature’ to ourselves already combines with an increasingly global environment of cultural interconnectedness – and the spectre of ecological, thus civilizational collapse. Manifestly, this has an epochal setting located in the popular mind at the End-of-Days, with the dark threat of the New World Order of a pathologically self-interested, destructive control mechanism. Thus, there is a demand for disclosure (Greer, 2001) and an ongoing history of exopolitics (Salla, 2004).206 Yet also, a more positive imagination has the (1940s-50s) Space Age mutating into the (1960s-70s) Age of Aquarius and then into the (1980s-90s) New Age as a millennial ‘ascension’. The life-affirming vision involves a planetary ‘rise in vibration’ or ‘loosening of density’, a shift away from the physically bounded and material towards immaterial forms that blur that division. Just as the main unit of energy as currency becomes information, so are developments in crypto financing (replacing money) and ‘anti-gravity’ devices with overunity (‘free’) energy (obviating old fuel sources) envisioned. These will decouple limiting, politico-economic structures in a thoroughgoing reorganisation of our material and immaterial conditions. ‘Disruptive’ technologies break though, Armageddon fails, commoning and abundance displace commodity and scarcity. And this emergent utopic – ‘ascension’ – succeeds through the dystopic (as another rendition of the ascent-descent form). In the emergence of the new, with such a transformation across systems of meaning, the old is supplanted in various ways. There is extinction, there is change (evolution), and there is addition (of the new, which can come to dominate). Thus, the UFO-ET phenomenon and the dystopic-utopic it enjoins do not necessarily eradicate previous psychical forms and do away with ‘spirituality’ – but these fade. This was already observed in the process of modernisation, with its industrialisation and urbanisation and thus general loss from the experiential collective of nature spirits, like fairies, pixies, and imps. A similar loss of ghosts, angels and daemons may be occurring. Evolutionary developments of and phenomenal ‘equivalents’ to these spirits we can adjudge to now include greys, nordics and reptillians.207 Unsurprisingly, the UFO-ET phenomenon is also a function of youth, and thus intimately connected with initiation and ‘generational’ change. Thus, the word for initiation itself changes; notably, the outmoded constructs of its primarily passive grammar are 206 Where the quintessential expression of conspiracy, ‘the Cabal’ of ‘the Illuminati’, has some roots in initiatory

tradition and mystical experience. Most recently, at the time of writing, disclosure has been furthered through revelation of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and its activities. Relatedly, an interesting list of research publications was released by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA, 2019) and US navy protocols for UAP reporting adjusted. 207 The examples are illustrative; ‘angels’ are also taken as an ET form, and the ET forms listed may be further distinguished (e.g. more than one type of grey) – as, for example, by Scott Jones and Angela Smith (2014) in a type of non-ordinary version of Notes and Queries for ET, thus a supernormal anthropology.

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dispensed with. The experiential core of ‘enlightenment’ is maintained, but converted to ‘awakening’ (so, becoming ‘awake’ – or ‘awakened’, colloquially ‘woke’). Awakening occurs as a becoming, becoming open to a loosely defined type of (supernormal, paranatural) experience. Thus ‘initiation’ itself goes through a death and rebirth as ‘awakening’. Using the initiation metaphor, human is coming of age, which demands a new maturity for planetary survival involving a reflexive appreciation of ourselves as a species. Awakening and ascension then combine as the initiation of Gaia.208 Spirituality itself is subsumed within the new ‘5D’ form, now revealed as a twentiethcentury transformative that functioned to bridge the old theistic systems to the presentfuture epoch. As a categorical and conceptual development, this involves the production of a new, post-spiritist language. As well as the move from ‘planes of existence’ to ‘dimensions’, for example, ‘revelation’, ‘visions’ and similar become or expand to include ‘downloads’ (employing the contemporary computer metaphor to express the experience of an instant receiving of ‘information’). This sense of a discursive transfer is expressed in publications with verbal proximities resonant of the [init]-[myst] combination (e.g. going from ‘Spiritual Emergency’ to ‘Your Awakening’ [Lucas, 2011]). And ‘knowing God’ (the religious expression) – rendered as ‘cosmic consciousness’ (the spiritual transition) – now becomes ‘unity consciousness’. Similarly, ‘god’ itself becomes ‘source’ (or equivalent; see note to Appendix 5).209

208 Which

functions as a planetary life-system counterpoint to a personal initiation into ‘death’ (and this is scaled up to the universal level, and beyond e.g. Currivan, 2017). 209 In theo-neurology, the shift is observable in research sampling: e.g. in some ways developing a lead from an investigation into the ‘Neural Correlates of a Mystical Experience in Carmelite Nuns’ (Beauregard and Paquette, 2006) – or rather their recollection of such experience – current investigation by Garry Nolan and Christopher (Kit) Green (into a role for the density of caudate- and putamen-connecting nerve bundles as an ‘antenna’ for ‘anomalous’ information) has involved the introduction of UAP experiencers.

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Conclusion This conclusion summarises the main points of the book and adds some further comments. In four sections, it restates the discursive developments analysed, adding a potted history, and it overviews the contemporary, integrated suggestion, adding a retelling of the story from a mystico-spiritual perspective. The first two sections treat of initiation chronologically, in a simple, linear fashion; this re-orders the information given through the focus on initiation studies as a histiography. The third section reviews the reconstruction of the anthropological idea of adult initiation for a continuing, contemporary relevance. The fourth section recounts the de-mystification of initiation and its reclaiming. A story of discourse As George Stocking (1971) wrote in his history of the establishment of Ethnology as an independent Section (H) of BAAS, ‘What’s in a name?’ Indeed, what is in a name? Well, quite a lot in the case of initiation, we may say. This book has focused through out on the name ‘initiation’ – or rather, the usage of init- forms – principally, for a story about how the category of initiation developed and might be applied today. Basically, this has been work of two parts, the first researching history and the second recommending mystery. Thus, on one level, it may be regarded as an analysis of the operation of the notion of disenchantment and the rupture of the modern. It does not seek to show an actual disenchantment – in reality, of course, the truth is probably somewhere in between the diagnosis and its critique (cf. Sterenberg, 2013: 11). Rather, the conclusion from this case study – of initiation – is of a sense of the mental (and emotional and spiritual) conditions in which the notion that there was such a thing (the disenchantment) could grow – while also suggesting a counter-narrative, through both the anthropological production sacralising liminality and the complimentary development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century spritisms (notably, the discourse of shamanism). The historical part of the work here has been a history-making rather than history as such. It was depicted a long and complex process marked by a settling on init- and dropping of myst- terminology as anthropologisation promoted a sociological conception that radically changed the subject. In narrating this history, routes backward and forward in time were taken, across different geographical settings and specified by various themes – returning, Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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more than once, to the nineteenth-century establishment and institution or the modern making of initiation (mostly in the UK). A more conventional treatment of the subject might have been to assume the category, to define ‘initiation’ and then use this as a given to work chronologically through from a historical starting-point, segmenting the narrative through time-period chapters. Clarity would appear to be a strong point of this approach, since it would be easier to follow the story with a mimetic mental restructuring of the past (mirroring the temporal passage, that is, with the movement through time represented by a parallel textual progression). In summation, therefore, a chronological listing of the supposed development of initiation is presented below. One problem with a standard presentation and a reason why it was not adopted here is that it would lose in thematic clarity what it gains in chronological simplicity. This would be one anticipated result of having to keep several thematic balls in the air through each periodisation. Just as or more importantly, however, it would not represent the category construction very well. A significant part of this construction was retrospective and revisionist, so a presentation of progression would itself bring problems. Further, the lockstep of a periodising approach would probably fix fluid things a little too stiffly. In fact, the mimetics are perhaps better served with a back-and-forth narrative, for currents of thought washing through times and across centuries. As recounted, the category emerged through the discursive development of naming and renaming, mostly with translations from Greek, first into Latin and later also into modern languages, including English. This grouped disparate and far-flung traditions – ever more closely, one could say – into ‘mysteries’, or similar, and then also ‘initiations’, where these referred to practices and ideas then current in (and characterising) and which had preceded the Greek world and then the Roman and its Empire – thus, the ancient and classical makings of initiation. It evolved with Christianity – a second making, it could be numbered, expressed through ‘the Mystery’ (i.e. of God). Then the history largely jumps to the Renaissance – another making, of rediscovery and publications; and then moves to a penultimate making, with a confluence of pre-modern into modern, including new English translations of old texts inserting the discursive terminology. And then came the final making and disjunct, with the socialising shift and splitting from all ‘mysteries’ and ‘Mystery’. In terms of the construction of the idea of initiation, therefore, it seems quite appropriate to present the story in hindsight, roughly from the second half of the nineteenth century. What this throws into relief is the cleavage. For not only is our subject a complex category that emerged and developed over time, but one also that broke so strongly with its past that it is not entirely obvious there is a single category. In fact, the subject as a whole appears better presented as a category dynamic, as the discursive evolution of one category into another, as a story of paired identifiables. The overarching category of initiation is conceived now as a historical function of two, of the discourses of the mysteries and initiation and the movement from one to the other. 264 

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Then, we see a bridging across the gulf with the transition marked lexically during the period when init- and myst- were combined as a stock phrase for ‘initiation into the mysteries’. But not just this. Prior to the initiation turn that came with modern anthropology, the English language discourse of the modern mysteries, primarily through freemasonry, made heavy usage of admit- forms (‘rites of admission’, ‘candidate for admission’, ‘[be] admitted into…’, etc.). At this stage, there was more than one future available. Thus it was that, along with lexical items like ‘[be] introduced/ [into]’ and ‘[be] made’, the Latinate forms were creatively applied at a gathering pace through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to translations of works originally written in Ancient and Hellenic/ Church (Koine) Greek, as well other languages, partly via the Latin translations (so going sometimes directly to English and sometimes from the original to Latin and then English). The idea of admission carried the sense of permission, thence the structuring of authority and control and mystique; the idea of initiation emphasised entry and beginning – and the mysteries. Here was the pre-making of the modern (itself already prepared long before by French Jesuits in North America). Suddenly, almost, the vigorous anthropological treatments, especially in Australia, were recording and detailing as initiations those tribal practices that were primarily related to the life course. Some of these new studies continued to concentrate on religious aspects. They intersected with the adult status signification (especially in North America), or else worked exclusively (in Russia). But mostl did not. Referring to ‘medicine man’ and ‘shamanic initiation’ – here, the neologism ‘spirit-worker’ – a sense of mysteries was retained. Indeed, the making of shaman was intimately involved in that of initiation, closely involved and a partner in rite. A new line in myst- was supported, even as new spiritualties revived and replaced and transcended (Christian) religion. But mostly not. This process comprised the first stage of the anthropologisation of initiation, which was also a sciencesation and secularisation. The hardening of emphasis on a sociological approach from the end of the nineteenth century led to a downplaying of the subjective or experiential aspect of initiations, to the extent that psychology did not employ the discourse – or hardly at all and barely even in its psychoanalytic/depth and life-course expressions, which covered some of the same ground. In a similar vein, the science of psychology itself took a more behaviourist than Freudian turn, which was a quite anti-mystery development. As a result, this covering of ‘initiation’ became ‘covert’, rarely mentioning by name the rites of people growing up and coming of age. Thus, the anthropologisation of the mysteries was established. This involved also a historicisation of the subject on the basis of civilisation and societal development, finally condemning initiation as practice to its decline and death. Essentially, initiation could not survive in complex societies, and for many centuries or longer, in fact, its illness had been quite terminal. Now, initiation could only be practiced as partial, restricted to specified settings, mostly religious and other religious-type (‘secret’) organisation settings, so pit square against the modern age. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Yet, the mystery never let go its hold on the human imagination. Although dropped by the human science of anthropology, hived off to religion and the new spiritualties, it endured in that mainstream of enlightened advance. The mystery could only be applied as metaphor now, but it wrote a grand poem. From Van Gennep’s rites of passage, Turner’s took the ‘liminal’ while Eliade ploughed his own course of ‘death and rebirth’, and human culture in general was enriched. The technicalities of distinction in the ‘liminoid’ and ‘limina’ never convinced, but there now developed a post-initiation discourse for post-modernity; so, a kind of re-making, again. Although the nature of the entry and exit was uncertain now, this did not need to matter with attention keenly directed to the passage itself, focused on the ‘betwixt and between’ routinely observed in all manner of places in a Western world of change and revolt. The new initiation was reflexively into initiation itself and the latest new times of the American century. Nevertheless, with ‘initiation’ itself still fixed to puberty-adolescence and adulthood in tribal contexts of the developmental past, the mysteries had been delimited. The historicisation confined them through the anthropological discourse to the ancient and its relics. And maybe initiation could have died, lost in its own passageways, had not globalising energies also taken up the colonial, now post-colonial reading of independent traditions, transformations and migrations, and another new generation coming through enjoyed liminal rites, as a culturally given and eternally expressed in new forms. So, the subject of initiation studies finds itself in a strange bed today. It’s not a hospital bed, not at all, but it rarely speaks its name. Meanwhile, what of the mystery? As the concern with religion waned through liberalising progress, the discursive shift was encased. The mysteries came to claim just a minority interest, as a specific focus of study, among classicists and archaeologists and in religious studies itself – and even there, the human science input was primary, the mysteries treated as maturity initiations, religious induction as a sectarian entry, according to the central core thesis of the discourse. Thus it was that the New Age claimed the religion, mysticising maleness and the alternative drumbeat for escapes and opportunities. And the One, the Mystery, or God fused with ecological concerns for Mother Earth as Gaia. The esoteric thread of initiation has certainly been developed and, like its (post-) Victorian spiritualising forebears, very much in a modernising vein – employing the latest scientific information, the technique of science, with a faith in science (its aspect of rational procedure) but not the faith of science (its aspect of Mystery denial). Thus, where once there was a spiritism of magnetism and electricity, employed in consideration of the psychical etheric, now there is recourse to the possibilities of quantum entanglement, resonant nonlocality and conceptions of multi-dimensionality. The ideas evolve, the language changes. ‘Initiation into the mystery’ is ‘awakening’, and the equivocations of entry, into and through with levels of attainment and a life-long process of perfectibility, is mysticised once again, now with the level-up gone global of ‘ascension’.

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 Through its focus on discourse, the history-making presented in this book has further developed the old one. This can be expressed through a listing of rite types involving different contexts and practices and thus conceptualisations grouping initiation as practice. Presented sequentially, as a single story in an approximate chronological order of occurrence, this offers up a histiography of initiation. Essentially, it is a conventional treatment of the material history of initiation through time, thus a standard abstraction. A listing of seven such conceptualisations or groupings is suggested here: 1. Rites that we suppose to have been performed in prehistory (the Upper Palaeolithic, Stone Age) – but about which we actually know little or nothing. 2. The various practices of developmentally simple and more complex tribal societies and nations – which have been studied in great detail over the last couple of centuries. 3. Rites in the ancient world as specified by the eastern Mediterranean, as Greco-Roman – of which we have developed a reasonable body of knowledge, but still with some significant gaps, especially in relation to practice. 4. The rituals of Christian history, starting from the Apostolic period, and also of other major religions and sects – of which we know quite a lot. 5. The (Late) Medieval, Renaissance and subsequent esoteric involvements of secret orders and fraternities – of which our knowledge is uneven. 6. The fading rites into work during industrialisation and modernity – of which we have had quite direct knowledge, including though living memories. 7. Various passage rites today – including aspects of the above, still developing. Although standard periodisations of History and the Western tradition have been generally assumed in this book, there has also been a special emphasis on particular moments in the discourse construction, such as the mid-to-late 1800s (including the 1840s in particular). Here, the histiography indicates the way in which initiation studies as a whole divides time – generally employing, however, a standard periodisation. As is quite usual, these periods show a teleological logic of a telescoping chronological length and clarity from the past to the present (of longest-to-shortest and hazy-to-sharp). Before briefly summarising each, two points ought to be noted. First, although this list covers groupings worldwide throughout history, starting from the oldest and working to the present, it is obviously Eurocentric, especially at groupings (3) through (6). This is partly due to the written, textual evidence – of initiation studies – which is quite closely linked to the development of ‘civilisation’ (as conventionally understood), although it is also a function of the particular (personal) perspective from which it is compiled. This represents a limitation of the present work, therefore, and a point of departure for critique and further development of the subject. It would be interesting to compare this list with a histiography made for other centres of civilisation through the ages, or any given territory, for that matter. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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How different and how similar, for example, might an initiation studies histiography look for China, or India? How would that be related to ‘discourse’, and what might that imply? A second and parallel point is that the reconstruction of initiation as suggested and broached in the later chapters of this book indicates a major revision of the histiography, probably from grouping (3), perhaps (2), but minimally (6). Most obviously, as suggested in Chapter 10, we could introduce systems of education – in groupings, thus, with monasterytutor through school-university to mandatory state provision. Basically, the destiny of demise would be replaced by growth, fragmentation by variety. Ultimately, such a history would tend toward a narrative of human development from perspectives like socio-political and economic advance and pluralities in relations of identity and concepts of the person. And any regrets for the loss of an initiation – and of rites in general, for that matter – would be rather a yearning for the imaginative of a certain type or one particular style (itself a further regeneration). A potted history of initiation Essentially, the seven groupings or conceptualisations provide us with a complete chronology for initiation that runs thus: (1) Stone Age > (2) Tribal > (3) Greco-Roman > (4) Christian > (5) Renaissance > (6) Modern > (7) Today. As indicated in the idea of discursive development, the categorical unity that holds the listing of seven groupings together has itself been an emergent property in and of the narrative (re)production. And it is from this very discourse that the first grouping is produced. In fact, we cannot even say that the historically original rites (1) were performed at all, since the emergence is one made backwards in time from the known, and there is insufficient evidence in this regard for anything more than supposition and hypothesis. Indeed, although this speculative grouping is supposed as the oldest, and although it has old roots, being long ago conceived as a point zero to human history, it has only recently been detailed in a modern form. Along with archaeological evidence presented since the 1980s, the contemporary version (1) is now supported by various contemporary technologies and readings of the evidence. But to repeat, this grouping is essentially an educated guesswork. First, a designation of simple tribal societies is made (taking the evidence for human developmental origins in the subsistence basis of hunting and foraging and the social structuring and cultural practices of small and undifferentiated settlement and territorial units associated with this). Then, the practice of initiations in this context, at least as observed among tribal societies that are extant, or have been, is applied to those that are not, or rather, to the prehistorical evidence for them (in caves, on rock faces, etc.). Actually, identification of this grouping is not so common, so, as a relatively standard grouping, that relativity must be stressed. However, its inference is supported by the various elements of initiation as teleologically read backwards with the sense of a singular or ‘golden age’, where the entropic logic of the conventional history is reversed. 268 

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The next grouping, of tribal practices (2), is also based on contemporary empirical data and placed in time through the conceptualisation of human history as developmental. In fact, the tribal structures of (1) and (2) are essentially the same, except that (2) advances to include also more complex societies based on horticulture and also agriculture, and consequently more complex and disparate initiations. In the history-making, the primary difference between (1) and (2) is that the primitive subject of the former is indirectly inferred from rather scant direct evidence, whereas that of the latter is directly inferred from indigenous peoples and nations and their rituals observed today – ‘today’ in an anthropological sense, stretching back to the modern European origins of this from the 1500s. It cannot reach the actual past of the developmental reality projected, of course. At both the evidential and analytical root of this was the maritime exploratory and colonial encounter with the other as ‘primitive’ versus ‘civilised’, especially in the New World and the Global South, where tribal societies and even imperial nations and later federations (Inca, Iroquois, etc.) were essentialised as living artefacts (by reference to the European advancement). Fundamental to this reasoned but nevertheless remnant perspective also was the perception of the primitives’ pre-Christian (religious) belief systems and unscientific (magical) practices, identified especially with practitioners (named ‘conjurers’, ‘medicine men’, etc.). The societies were originally understood by reference to the Classical world, which thence, from the early 1700s (perhaps before), led some ( Jesuit) missionaries, who had themselves gone through an initiatory system of entry, to ascribe to the primitives the ritual practice of ‘initiation into mysteries’. These writers tended to adopt a heterodoxical position that involved the identification of a single spiritual commonality through the ages, the true religion. They cited Church Fathers as well as Roman and Greek writers, like Plato (so, the platonic and neoplatonic tradition). A chronology also emerged within this grouping, with assumptions and discussions about worldwide diffusion from the Middle East (the Judaic siting of Biblical prehistory) as well as their distillation (the rites as losing purity, their essence). This developed through other writers on religion and human history, including freemasons, who had developed their own version of the one true religion. Later, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, it was the initiation concept applied to this grouping (2) that was to morph into initiation as life-stage rite – the passage from puberty and adolescence and the attainment of adulthood. Here was the discursive category shift, when the religious idea of the mysteries was dropped along with the earlier centrality of the spirit-worker role. It can be expressed as the move from ‘The youth initiated into the mysteries becomes a medicine man’ to ‘The youth initiated by the elders becomes a man’ (wherein the new anthropological usage is not metaphor or experience but abstraction, a widened application and thence broader conceptualisation). This grouping (2) then became the most studied, as further discursive development through the nineteenth century was linked to the progress of (human) science (ethno-anthropology). Thence, the chronological siting of the tribal was established as pre-Biblical in origin. Later considerations included a sex-based subhistory of gender, with female rites as declining. While the internal chronologies – related Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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to diffusion (including, now, that of ‘shamanism’), distillation and sex were all revised, the main chronological siting of the grouping was not; indeed, it was now, as the nineteenth century closed, that the broader entropic thrust of the standard history was fully established. The next oldest grouping is that of the ancient rites (3). This brings together several practice types as cult-traditions identified by god-figure and location or region of origin. Linked to a spread of agrarian socio-culture that had moved west from the Fertile Crescent, these ancient rites spanned a millennium at the very least (to around 300 CE). They seem to have been originally productive of mystical experience, although increasingly formalised over time, and can be distinguished simplistically as ‘Greek’ and then ‘Roman’. This glosses over an uncertain picture of manifold and complex geo-cultural dynamics – which includes frequent contemporary reference to uncertain or legendary origins (to ‘Zoroaster’, ‘Egypt’, etc.). We have textual knowledge of this grouping, with the Greco-Roman rites alluded to and commented on in a great many ways but not much described, since their reporting was traditionally forbidden. Secrecy facilitated efficacy, it would appear, as part of the magical and social technique of mystification. Pictorial (image) and archaeological (site) evidence affords various clues and quite a lot of detail, though these are limited in themselves, needing to be contextualised for interpretation – thus, not so unlike (1) in this respect. Overall, through combining the various information sources, there is a reasonable confidence in our knowledge of these rites in general, despite the lacuna around the details of actual practice. The grouping together of these rites that emerged in (Ancient/Hellenic) Greek-language texts constitutes the material origin of the discourse. This was most widely done using tele- forms, but also myst- forms and others, and then through Latin texts, when init- forms were introduced as a collective – along with myst-, now Latinized, like other ‘technical’ terms, such as illumin- for phot-/ phos- (while others, like tele- were dropped). Thus, this grouping (3) establishes the point of origin for the category of initiation as the ancient and classical rites, although it is already one with an entangled evolutionary history. This new lexis was re-established during the first centuries of the Christian period, again by reference to the past (generally pejorative, in this case), primarily in (Church/Koine) Greek and then later in Latin. The grouping of religious and sect rites (4) is situated during what is generally regarded as the development of monotheistic religion, marked off from (3) because the advent of Christianity spelled the end of the mysteries (in the histiography, at least). Initiations into other religions and sects are not necessarily situated in the same timeframe chronologically, therefore – Zoroastrian and Jewish ( Judaic) ritual is (supposed as) much older, for example, not to mention others, wider afield from the European perspective – but these are implicitly placed as developmentally equivalent, or similar, and the effective history is made post-mysteries and pre-Medieval. This grouping involves the insinuation of a belief system into practice – or, the deployment of initiation rites for new religious purposes –the developmental addition of dogma (theology) to poetics (myth). The general sense of the Christian rites is of a (continuing) long-term decline in value (potency, application) after 270 

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a strong start, with a dissipation in potency that was the price of the spread for a hegemony – or, the reduction of spirituality in the ‘descent’ from religion to politics. Yet it is also in the historical development of this grouping during the first five centuries that the (neoplatonic) seed for a future revival of initiation practice is placed, in addition to a further fixing and development of discourse, now in the first dedicated texts. The grouping of the Late Medieval, Renaissance and later esoteric practice of secret orders and fraternities (5) is materially related to the recovery of ancient texts and discursively to an uptake of the (neo-)platonic tradition and identification of a prisca theologia (which was to feed into the later identification of the chronologically earlier tribal rites). Of the actual practices of initiation from, say, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, relatively little is known beyond that of the mendicant orders, since heterodoxical organisations were necessarily secret and rites hidden. The concept of ‘pagan’ was developed, with a hegemonically defined meaning (as heterodoxical) that squeezed the developing traditions and cults of the esoteric and magical (including alchemy), aided by the gathering Inquisition in response to Protestant Reformation. The parallel Catholic Counter-Reformation, however, included the development of new Orders, induction into which revitalised the practice of Christian initiation (notably, here, with the Jesuits). This had a direct impact on the discursive development of initiation through the application of the category to tribal rites (3) – and increasingly manifested in the fraternity of freemasons, which directly and indirectly impacted on the development of the category in ethno-anthropology – including its specification of tribal (3) ‘secret societies’. This took a further, co-developmental form that also saw freemasonry and the new ethnology moving away from the vocabulary of admission toward that of initiation (from admit- to init- forms). Thence, the life-staged (puberty/adolescent > adult) tribal initiation concept came to dominate, establishing the modern category and its application as a discourse of initiation. The grouping of rites into work (6) is generally conceived of as medieval entries into knightly orders and craft guilds that declined over time with the end of feudalism and then the advent of industrialisation. These are thus taken as (if ) remnants from the ‘previous’ groupings. This then becomes an important part of the story of initiation practice insofar as it marks, along with the decline of Christianity and esoteric fraternities, the demise of initiation in the West – the wider concept under which Europe was now housed, before becoming the ‘First’ and ‘the developed world’. In other words, this marks the final transfer of initiation from practice to discourse – according to the conventional history, that is, in terms (now) of adolescent > adult rites. It completes the narrative of fall – from the implicit ideal (1) and widespread tribal (2) through mysteries (3) performance and a smaller, more specialised and/or less potent religious (4) and secret sect (5) application – to obscurity, irrelevance and disappearance. The fall, like most relatings across these groupings as materially connected, involves a further making of history – an evolutionary version of the kind simply (and simplistically) expressed by the lineage traditions of the prophet individuals passing down the one true Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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religion in a direct line of succession from the first initiation, itself equivalent to (1). And all of this was still linked to the human advance from bands/tribes to states (socio-polities) and from magic/religion to science (cultures), as well as from hunting/gathering to industry (techno-economics). But then we come to the recent developments of post-industry and a post-modern twist undermining and radically revising the discourse. First, religious, sect and other entry rites, including tribal (adult) rites (7) are still performed and developing, in some cases quite quickly and vigorously. Research into the latter in particular has received impetus from independent programmes and post-colonial studies in a globalising world. This has had the effect of relocating the ‘tribal’ and other to ‘tradition’ (another) – partly as an expression of the contemporary in which the orientation remains quite modernistic, though, and dominantly urban. It does, nevertheless, incorporate an ongoing ritual development that gives the lie to any rumours about the death of initiation, for the moment, at least. In this context the evangelical ‘born again’ movement in the US should also be picked out as a revitalising force – as, indeed, are any ‘revivalisms’. Further, all of these rites (7) are now subject to analysis using the core thesis of modern initiation studies. Second, this routinely extends into the application of the discourse as ‘rites of passage’ to all sorts of transitions. Or rather, the category specified by the transition of discourses from that of the mysteries to that of initiation is now extended itself by transition to a discourse of passage rites that extends beyond the ‘rites of passage’ through adolescence. And it is here, in this post-initiation setting, that the possibility of a reconstruction is situated. Contemporary maturity initiation The last grouping above, today’s (7), may be extended with ‘contemporary maturity initiation’. This stands for the main thesis developed in the later chapters, that we can usefully identify and talk about adult initiation today in an advanced socio-cultural context. This involves a re-conception or new paradigm of initiation. Crucially, the contemporary refiguring of initiation is an integrative one, not specified as just for certain types of societal context (i.e. simple). This is enabled through its detachment from the old notion of ‘rites’ as pre-planned dramas, like formalised ceremonies. It assumes instead to look at meaningful action, which can be generalised as patterned, but whose patterning is something performed, actively generated, importantly by the initiate as agent, as well as by the non-initiate reader. This involves initiation as a way of looking at the world, of viewing one’s own experience, and where our other is the socio-cultural environment into which we grow. In other words, this new idea of initiation is expressly interpretive. Initiation is a way of seeing, reflecting, analysing, experiencing, not a thing in the world, like a ‘social fact’. Therefore, societies do not have initiation as such, but exhibit it in different ways, or rather, we perceive it (if and as we do). Thus, this approach does not address the contemporary situation as such – that is, not in particular. Any single life or community or socio-cultural conglomeration wherever whenever may be read in terms of process for initiation fixed to 272 

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maturation into adulthood. This approach is dubbed ‘contemporary’ partly because the emphasis on the activity of reading is post-modern and especially since it was complex (so contemporary) societies in particular that were denied initiation by the modern. The intent here in ‘reclaiming’ a notion of initiation, with a new meaning that has current relevance, crucially involves assuming to valorise the agency of the initiate (and thence to offer a new spin on an old notion of personhood). Initiates are no longer paradigmatically initiated as such, which is to say that we are initiated by life experience more than by elders. This evolves as a function of choices made, upon our own authority in the conditions found and fashioned, and not just or even mainly as a process of socialisation (from without). That is the orientation of the analysis, the motivation of the model. The revisionist conclusion to the old narrative of decline and disappearance becomes an assertion of contemporary maturity initiation in which the notion of embodied passage rite is retained but extended to an ending of ‘adult’ that is determined from within the discourse, importantly by the actor, oneself as initiate (and one’s peers and communities and the wider setting of the place and its systems and the times). Thus, the perception is of a phase of separation, death of the old; then transition, development, liminality, the nexus of betwixt-and-between opposition and inversion and moments of otherness and a-sociality; and finally (re)entry, with a recorporation (‘rebirth’ into maturity). How this is performed is unspecified, open to change and continual, personal reinterpretation. When and how and even whether it ends develops as a process of negotiation. Contemporary initiation operates not only through adolescence but also into and through ‘youth’. This is an amorphously self-, group- and socially defined, chronologically flexible life-stage, typically lasting to ‘adulthood’ in the mid-twenties or thirties or forties (with ‘mid-life’ as one ending). The length of extension is a function of many types of variable, ranging from personality, preference and need through family models and socioeconomic class and systems of capital to yet wider cultural expectations, restrictions and possibilities engaged in the production and resolution of life crisis. The sense of lessons learnt, tests and ordeals and general duress, status denied, marginality lived, communitas gained and lost, with adaption to responsibilities and duties – all this remains from the core thesis and initiation discourse. New to the contemporary passage rites discourse is an emphasis on the generation of new modes, on the initiate as subject actively creating a space, trying things out, making a difference, making a life, and the conceptualisation of this as the ritual, expressed at different levels of performance, in rites, rite forms and formations. Similarly, the introduction of psychoanalytical models and the mystical bent of depth psychology (Cattoi and Odorisio, 2018) adds the ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ dimensions related to personal fulfilment and self discovery, themes of loss and betrayal related to innocence and knowledge, puer escape, peak experience and trough, and then a slowing and de-intensification for a recommencement of life, and the integration of all this personal journeying and discovery as a sense of inner stability – so, the settling of

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adulthood and a coming to terms with one’s self. The sociological reading of anthropology is maintained, but with a new emphasis on the psycho-spiritual domains of identity and value. Among the typical scripts and normative developments is the linkage of the separation phase to formal education during adolescence (and beyond), because that is precisely the part most instituted by society. Archetypally, the separation is leaving the parental home, but the contemporary paradigm is also about moving through and then finishing education. Going forward, the imminent and ongoing re-conception of how education should be done – to what purpose and on which bases – will be a major determinant of initiatory experience and analysis. Incorporation then is paradigmatically into the world of work, itself a rapidly changing space of experience. Adulthood, however, is not gained there. Marriage and parenting, which paradigmatically define and mark maturity may still have that function. But they often may not. They still tend to operate within that dynamic, but they do not categorise as such. The separation phase of adolescent initiation as perceived in the reconstructed version of a contemporary initiation implies the relative freedom referenced as liminality – which is not to say that it is a freedom enjoyed. Or rather, perceived as anti-structural, the liberation of teenagers is primarily a freedom to reject and oppose. In this sense, therefore, this is a limited independence, defined by what it is independent of. Applying the initiation paradigm with adolescence as separation thus impels a further stage of a-structural liminality (even while playing adult-like roles). It is here that meaning is most made, where individuality expresses. This is the primary and paradigmatic initiatory location for the most profound development of meaning and ‘personal growth’ for ‘human potential’. Thus, among other aspects of the seeking – notably in sex and relationships, work and life interests, the development of a personal ethic and aesthetic – this is also the chief locus of a spiritual initiation directed at mystic realities and thus cosmic truth. Normative and typical styles for this passage are identified and developed less through governance than through social communication. A wide range of further issues are raised through considerations of open-ended initiations or a sequence of ‘failures’ – so where the archetypal and standard social settlings of adulthood do not occur or endure. As a category of sociological analysis, initiation emphasises peer-group dynamics and a generational (ageset) perspective that suggests the wider approach of a longitudinal, age-based structuring. For example, a major technological development of huge socio-cultural import is likely to somewhat bypass older people as tangential while being assumed by the young as a condition of life. A lifespan perspective more broadly has insights to offer on most domains of human interest, while as manifesto this makes the claim of youthism. Reviewing mystery Various ancient Greek terms and expressions, including words meaning ‘secret’ and ‘hidden’ and ‘rites’, were used over several centuries to get at what became conceptualised and then 274 

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named (Latinised, Anglicised) as ‘the mysteries’ and ‘initiations’ into them. Christianisation introduced the singular language of ‘the Mystery’ to refer to the divine, which also paralleled an ambivalence in earlier usage between the institutions of practice and the phenomenology of experience. Structurally, initiation became an action or event (so in time), while the mystery was the object of action (outside time). Divesting ‘initiation’ of ‘mystery’, therefore, reduced the hidden, the timeless, so the mystical. This occurred with the discursive thrust of ethno-anthropology, as its early interest in religion faded. While always sacralising initiation per rite, the continuing tendency of anthropology was toward a demystification of this through reduction to the sociological (family relations, political power, etc.), with structural, functional and symbolic readings that reduced the mystico-spiritual to culture. This also tended to remove individual experience from the narrative, a philosophically objectifying move that was also expressive of the inclination of the modernist worldview, culminating in philosophy’s own (logical positivist) vilification of ‘metaphysics’. Thus, the ultimate sacralisation of the liminoid and limina arose in the context of removing initiation as such, taking the anthropological age-status reading out of the analysis – which did not prove successful. However, the (nineteenth-century) period of capture by science and conversion to a discourse of initiation absent mysteries had also been that of new translations from Greek and Latin that introduced the discourse and included an array of esoteric and what may be loosely dubbed ‘mysteries texts’. As the burgeoning literate class consumed the printed tomes through the later eighteenth and especially nineteenth centuries, they would have imbibed the increasing usage of init- and myst- forms to translate the rather wide range of expressions used for the category in Classical literature, especially from Greek, of course. This then fed into the cultural conversation of the day, including though freemasonry. Thus, the anthropological capture was a gathering expression of the materialist worldview, hence atheism, and it was precisely at this point – at the very establishment of the new discourse, when ‘initiation’ came to refer mainly to adolescence and not mystery – that the rather occultish concept of spiritual initiation was born. Spiritual initiation can thus be appreciated as a function of the already hardened division of mind and matter and the victory of the latter, in which mind (subject) was reduced to matter (object). As a result, the idea of spiritual initiation operated in what was claimed as a grey area in between, interconnecting the two, with plentiful reference in its discourse to things like ‘incarnation’, ‘materialisation’ and ‘planes of existence’, and a concomitant assumption of the idealist inversion (the ultimate reduction of matter to mind). This emergent spiritual initiation was embedded into the emergent, alternative religious and esoteric context of Spiritualism and Theosophy supported by the import of ideas from Hinduism (Vedanta) and Buddhism for the modern incarnation of the one true religion. This was also the time when the first spiritual teachers migrated westwards from colonial India and settled in Europe and North America to establish centres of learning and practice embodying and spreading the new Indo-European religious philosophy of East-meets-West. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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The ultimate expression of the turn-of-(twentieth)-century spiritual initiation was mystical, presented as the Wisdom of the Ages, and later The Perennial Philosophy presaging New Age through a contemporary reclamation of human history: ‘among many contemporary primitives… is found…an esoteric pattern… for the initiated few’ (Huxley, 1946: 26). Yet, the first stages and progression on the path could be institutionally determined entries, akin to the passage into and through the ranks of age grades, fraternities and secret societies. This rather reflected the mysteries themselves, with the quintessential Eleusinian division of the Lesser and Greater. Indeed, in addition to difficulties with specifying (verbalising) the mystical – William James’ ‘ineffability’ – the conceptual ambivalence of the mysteries discourse was also a simple equivocation between two quite different types of entry, into socio-religious institutions (spirit roles, sects, etc.) and into mysticism (as experience) – or, as object-based and subject-based. Thus, mysticism was itself mystified. The former, institutional entry, typically employed a grading, exemplified in the spiritual initiation discourse by hierarchies of ‘levels’ and ‘Masters’ and suchlike. Generally, the actual expressions of this did not last well, if at all. But, the felt human need and unordinary experience – of homo religious – would always return to recover the subjective. Taking on the notion of ‘spiritual’ as inner, psychology naturally goes into this area, as did Jung. So with this in mind, we can adopt the nested modelling in which the progress is inward (through layers) not upward (through levels) – not high, to the top, but deep, to the centre – so inarchical. Then, a relevant lexical innerarchy gives the modelling of religious > spiritual > mystical. Just as religion without the spiritual reverts to an objective of external power, so does spirituality without mysticism becomes itself a loss of enchantment, an over-serious solemnity, a self-development that becomes acquisitive, with ‘meaning’ as a career, as spiritual capital. But mysticism itself needs a centre, if it is not to break apart from such ‘ego attachments’. Thus, the coming of age viewed as an initiation into adulthood may move into a phase of seeking that can be characterised as ‘spiritual’, and within this an experience or period of experiences of unordinary reality (supernormal, paranatural), and there may be something within this too. Analytically, the domain of the religious is the social (group) expression of the domain of the spiritual, which is the psychological (individual) expression of the domain of the mystical, which is the cultural (collective) expression of the domain of cosmos, the human (living) expression of that which goes by many names, such as ‘the One’, ‘the Mystery’ and ‘God’ – and ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’. The first experience of this, then, is the zazen diamond-flash is the yogic breaking of the knot between the third and fourth charkas, in order for the fourth chakra, the heart, to open. Notwithstanding the cultural and various spiritual specificities, simply, the experience is mystic union is enlightenment is cosmic consciousness is instant gnowing is the samadhis is nibana/nirvana is satori is purusha is meeting the Great Spirit is direct acquaintance with the Godhead Trinity, Holiest of Holies, the Matrix itself – and in the (semi-)metaphorical model of the phenomenal universe as a hologram, it is a becoming in coherent mind. We cannot be certain that this experience may occur as an essential expression of the human 276 

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condition qua homo sapiens, but the commonality appears sufficiently widely observed across times and places to qualify as a transcultural universal (implicitly, a working assumption already of theo-neurology). Its nature itself is of an unchanging, and it is in this sense that spiritual initiation as the Greater Mystery – so a cosmic initiation – has also been referenced in the mysteries-initiation discursive narrative by terms like ‘the ancient theology’ and its ‘first author’. And it is thus, from this root also, that the histiography starts from a supraperformative – that is, as an a-temporal categorical, characteristic of the species. Finally, the domain of the mystical is the cultural (collective) expression of the domain of cosmos, which is the anthropomorphic (trans-human) expression of not or non-god. If we divide the lifespan into four quarters, then youth and old age are opposites, with the former mystically characterised by an initiation into cosmos as life (death and rebirth), and the latter into non-god as death which is non-death (hence, the enduring spirit and karmic rebirth in transcendence of the human condition – and these as experienced, moreover, not just ideas): What we choose to make of our mental and physical constitution in the course of our life on earth affects the psychic medium… [of ] individual minds… [and] results, after the body’s death, in the initiation of a new existence… (Huxley, 1946: 246) This also paradigmatically fixes initiation as adult-making process during the first half of life to the via postiva, in which god is identified (by what it is, as the experience of cosmic consciousness), and the latter half of life similarly to the via negativa, in which god is identified by what it is not. At least, that is one reading of the oppositional logic at a mystical level. The main thrust of the present work as intended, however, has been less far-reaching, an attempt merely to (re)integrate the anthropological and the mystical in a spiritual notion of maturation, with an anthropological life-framing of adulthood today that includes a cosmic element as paradigm. Finally, this may be usefully applied to a contemporary vocabulary of awakening. It appears possible that the time of ‘initiation’ with all its spiritual connotations may have passed and a new era begun in which ‘awakening’ takes the place of ‘initiation’. While the new conception – if it really does prove to be that – may be similar in several ways, it also involves some contemporary and novel aspects. These may be identified in particular in respect to (1) other, non-human craft/beings, life outside of Earth and in other dimensions (UFO-ET), and (2) the radical reconstitution that follows. In this case, being ‘awake’ today is not quite the same as being ‘initiated’ or ‘enlightened’. The new vocabulary expresses an evolution for the new era. Thus, we might talk about the death of initiation and its rebirth in awakening. Such talk may be exaggerated, though, or at least premature. The old idea still offers perspectives that are not yet incorporated into the awakening-ascension cosmology. In particular, the concept of initiation gains from its anthropological history with analysis Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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of the human maturation process as socially constructed and developmentally specified through identified stages. Insofar as it is reconstructed with a broader sense of the rites of intent and a more inward orientation to psychological and spiritual aspects, ‘initiation’ can serve still.

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Appendices

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Appendix 1. The emergence of initiation studies in British anthropology (1872-1899) Initiation was barely mentioned in the institutional journals of British ethnology and anthropology during the discipline’s formative period, even though the subject had been covered since the very first readings to the London Society. After the 1860s, however this changed, and reference to the subject gathered pace. Tables 1 and 2 show this development for the journal articles published by the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, from its inception in 1872 to the end of the century, in 1899, divided, for a quantitative comparison, into three periods of approximately equal length that contain comparable numbers of articles. Table 1. Journal coverage of initiation by type (1872-1899, no. articles).

Initiation (wide) Initiation (narrow) Init- form

1872-1881

1882-1890

1891-1899

22 11 2

26 15 11

39 23 13

Table 2. Journal coverage of initiation by type and amount (1872-1899, no. articles).

Narrow

8 8 5 5 26

2 4 4 5 15

4 2 5 11

16 7 – 16 39

5 5 – 13 23

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

init-

Wide

2

init-

1 1

Narrow

2 8 1 – 11

1891-1899

Wide

7 12 3 – 22

1882-1890 init-

Narrow

Sentence Paragraph Page Section/article TOTAL

Wide

1872-1881

1 4 8 13 281

Appendix 1. The emergence of initiation studies in British anthropology (1872-1899)

The material itself is divided in two ways to get at the increase in coverage. First, a distinction is made between those articles (i) featuring initiation in any sense (assuming a wide conception), those (ii) employing the idea as understood according to a more narrow definition, and those that (iii) actually contain an init- form (the word ‘initiation’, ‘initiated’, etc.) (Table 1). Then, these divisions are further divided, mapped onto a scale that distinguishes by length, of the amount of text given over to the subject, with four categories ranging from sentence (not more than two or three sentences) to dedicated section or full article (Table 2). Increases are evident across each of the time periods for all measures of sense and mostly for length (especially at the session/article level). Methodology: article categorisation issues Article assignment was not always clear-cut and, in fact, was sometimes a relatively subjective, approaching arbitrary affair. To give an idea of this and the methodology used, some examples of problematic categorisation judgements are here listed. Specification complexity/ambiguity The following sentences were considered to meet the ‘wide’ specification at the paragraph level, but the penultimate detail on clipping hair upon a prayer at the ‘age of majority’ appears sufficiently ritualistic to qualify that sentence as concerned with initiation in the more, ‘narrow’ (ceremonial) sense. When arrived at the age of eight years, the boy is sent to some ghélung to commence his studies. These consist in learning to read and write and endure for two or three years... A girl having finished her thirteenth, and the boy his fifteenth year, they convoke the near relatives, and invite the ghélungs. After a short prayer before the bourkhans, the boy or girl having attained majority is introduced, and his or her hair clipped on the temples. From this moment they are considered marriageable, and they shortly become betrothed. (Kopernicki 1872, 406) A categorisation of ‘narrow, sentence’ was settled on, valorising the narrow sense as the relatively stronger one on the basis of ‘quality over quantity’. (N.b. This extract also exemplifies the education-initiation linkage, notably, perhaps, when the ritualistic element is placed in a wider context and not made a special focus of dramatic interest.) Vagueness Published in Volume 9, Simpson (1880, 388) referred to the ‘great festivities’ of the South American (Gualaquiza) Jívaros, ‘held when a child is, at three or four years of age, [and] initiated into the art and mysteries of smoking’. While the reference to ‘festivities’ and idea 282 

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Appendix 1. The emergence of initiation studies in British anthropology (1872-1899)

of an introduction (to smoking) may be considered as indicating initiation ritual, the usage of ‘initiated into the mysteries’ seems metaphorical and the young age seems to preclude the child-to-adult transition. Considered as initiatory but not an initiation as such, this is recorded as using the wide meaning of initiation and as not containing the init- form (even though literally it did, the metaphorical usage was more attendant upon than expressive of the discourse). Repetition and length Man’s (1883) paper, concluding a series of three (on the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands), contains several relevant paragraphs in various places (e.g. on Food, 350) that refer to the dedicated section (‘Initiation Ceremonies’) of the previous (second) article. This piece also has other references, such as a whole section on children’s’ tattooing but without any mention of ceremony (331-333). As a compromise approximation, it is categorized under ‘init- form’ and ‘page’. Short articles Occasional initiatory references occur in articles not counted here as too short. This condition is introduced as a heuristic, to keep the total article numbers similar and their length comparable across the three periods since the later nineteenth century Journal issues contain many pieces of just a page or two. For example, on the ‘secret religion’ of the ‘Ansairee in Tarsus, Asia Minor’, it is reported that Bent (1891: 226) noted ‘there are many curious points analogous to freemasonry in connection with the initiation of a new member’. This should normally be counted as under init-, but the piece is just a short report of the text read, amounting to barely over 300 words.

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Appendix 2. Usage of ‘initiation’ and selected terms in published works (1820-2008) Figure 1 shows data for the proportions of English language publications since 1820 (in any country) using the terms ‘the mysteries’, ‘initiation’, ‘rites of passage’ and ‘shaman’. The works are taken from a general English corpus (2009, 2012) using the Google Books Ngram Viewer (at books.google.com/ngrams) (earlier data, from the eighteenth century, are available, but these tend to be skewed, giving overly dramatic effects due to the low number of books produced at that time). Usage of the mysteries is shown here to have developed in the 1840s and declined during the 1870s-90s; initiation rose to prominence through the 1850s, plateaued during the 1860-1880s, and then rose sharply again the 1890s. The mysteries never recovered after that, indicating the ‘capture’ of the discourse by the new science (or, the replacement of 240 220 200 Millionth percentage

180 initiation

160 140 120

shaman rite of passage

100 80 60 40 20 0 1820

the mysteries 1840

1860

1880

1900

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

Figure 1. English language publications using the terms ‘initiation’, ‘the mysteries’, ‘shaman’ and ‘rites of passage’ in %, based on Google Books Ngram, corpus: English, smoothing: 10. Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

285

Appendix 2. Usage of ‘initiation’ and selected terms in published works (1820-2008)

the mysteries discourse with the initiation discourse). Increased shaman usage during the first half of the twentieth century also indicates a displacement of the idea of the mysteries. The half-century 1890-1940 may be regarded as denoting the foundation or ‘invention’ of initiation (or discourse of initiation, or, the establishment of initiation studies). The usage of initiation rose strongly (again) after from the 1940s with interest from British social anthropology and American psychoanalytically oriented anthropology and sociology. It peaked around 1980, since when it has fallen back to 1960s’ levels. The data for initiation in works of fiction are similar, indicating a parallel development of academic work and the popular imagination during the ‘golden period’ of the modern making and re-making of initiation. That this reflects initiation’s meaning in the human sciences, related to ritual (as opposed to, say, the experimental initiation of chemical processes) is shown by its parallel tracking with rites of passage. The latter peaked in the 1990s, from a zero level before the 1950s, indicating (in part, at least) the take-up of Van Gennep’s work by Gluckman and then by Turner (following translation). The continued rise of interest in shaman, which previously, from the 1960s, had climbed together with initiation and rites of passage, suggests that the recent (relative) decline of interest in initiation and rites of passage is quite specific and not related to a falling away of interest in the wider (spiritual) subject matter.

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Appendix 3. Extract from Phaedrus, by Plato Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not without philosophy, may acquire wings in the third, recurring, period of a thousand years… And therefore, the mind of a philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, because he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what he is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect… …Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty; he would like to fly away but he cannot; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below; and he is therefore esteemed mad… But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and may have lost the memory of the holy things which they saw there… Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not know what it means, because they do not clearly perceive… They might have seen beauty shining in brightness, when, with the happy band following in the train of Zeus, as we philosophers, or of other gods as others did, they saw a vision and were initiated into mysteries which may be truly called most blessed, and which we celebrated in our state of innocence; having no experience of evils as yet to come; admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body… …Now he who is not newly initiated or who has been corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other… he Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

287

Appendix 3. Extract from Phaedrus, by Plato

consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But he whose initiation is recent, who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world is amazed when he sees anyone having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him… then… the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. And as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wing begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends under the whole soul – for once the whole was winged. During this process the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence – which may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the time of cutting teeth – bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and tickling; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow wings, the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called emotion… and is refreshed and warmed by them, and then she ceases from her pain with joy… Phaedrus (249a,d, 250c,d-251,d); trans. Benjamin Jowett (1875: 125-128) Note on three texts/translations Four init- forms are used in this section, which is taken from the Jowett (1875) translation (second edition, originally 1871). These four uses are indicated in Table 3 by bolded textreference numbers (249d-251a). By way of a case study, we see that the four uses here compare closely to the three in the recent, Nehamas and Woodruff (1997) translation. (Although some translations issues are deemed problematic and worthy of note by these translators, this – the usage of init- terms – is not one.) Comparing the last two of the four (250e, 251a) init- uses in the piece quoted in these two translation show they are synonymous and similarly treated – indicative, it appears, of a lack of change in translation over the last century. Thus, init- forms are still preferred over other constructions, such as myst- forms and other/original terms. However, while first two instances (249d, 250b) in the older translation include the stock [init]-[myst] phrasing, the recent version avoids this (in different ways). In fact, in the whole book (Phaedrus), Jowett’s translation uses six init- forms, four of them in the [init]-[myst] phrasing (shown in the table with shaded boxes); Nehamas and Woodruff use four init- forms (also shown with shaded boxes) – so some reduction there – but not one of them with the phrasing. In the whole

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Appendix 3. Extract from Phaedrus, by Plato

Table 3. Comparison of init- usage in a gloss/commentary and two translations of Phaedrus (Thompson, 1868; Jowett, 1875; Nehamas and Woodruff, 1997). Thompson (1868)

Jowett (1875)

gloss/commentary

trans.

Nehamas and Woodruff (1997) trans.

‘Quasi initiationis expertes’

without being initiated into the

without having seen reality,

[= lacking initiation,

mysteries of pure being

uninitiated

uninitiated; drawn from

is ever being initiated into

is always at the highest, most

technical terms]

perfect mysteries

perfect level of initiation

[Described as:]

were initiated into mysteries

were ushered into the mystery

248b 249d 250b

full of phrases borrowed from which may be truly called

that we may rightly call the

the Eleusinian rites; using

most bless

most blessed of all

he who is not newly initiated

a man who was initiated long

he whose initiation is recent

a recent initiate

251a

the secret rites celebrated by

the initiation of which I speak

a consummation…

253c

his love-frenzied admirer

into the mysteries of true love

secure[d by] this friend who

technical predicates of the mysteries only minds fresh from the initiatory rite

[Described as:]

250e

ago

has been driven mad by love

an initiation into the mysteries of philosophy

book, the modern translation has a total of four myst- forms and the old one seven. Thus, it is specifically the [init]-[myst] combination that is rejected. From around the same, nineteenth-century period as Jowett’s translation, a Greek version with English gloss/commentary by Thompson (1868: 51, 60-62, 70-71), comments directly on the first and fourth (of the six listed) init- uses, with a gloss that is like the translations. The first (248b) does this with a Latin quotation, and goes on to explain the Greek expressions for ‘the mysteries’ (τελη [telé] and τελετai [teletai]), and thus for ‘adepts’ (ἀτελεῖς [a-teleis]) as referencing those who have not completed (in relation to tele-), That is, the technical terminology is explained, giving the origin of the init- translation. These nonadepts, apparently, were ‘Those who depart, deeply frustrated, and disappointed of the wished-for spectacle’. Thompson’s comment on the third use (250b) similarly references (and names as such) the ‘technical’ language and also argues (strongly) in favour of a metaphorical interpretation (anti [the C18th] Warburton and pro [the C19th] Lobeck). Apparently, Plato did not value Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Appendix 3. Extract from Phaedrus, by Plato

the actual mysteries, just relics were shown as the secret, and it was really ‘the initiation of the philosophic soul’ that was ‘the most blissful of all initiations’. This argumentation would seem to be a function of a general de-mystification of the mysteries at that time, precursor to the move in anthropology expunging myst- terminology from the initiation discourse (or, the move from a mysteries to initiation discourse). There are issues with the sixth use (253c) for Jowett, who removes the pederastic element. Nehamas and Woodruff creatively use ‘consummation’ for the initiatory reference (given as ‘teleute’, in a note).

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Appendix 4. Six chronological schema for a staged lifespan (adding initiation) Carl Jung (1931) 12

35 - 40

Childhood

65

Youth

Middle life/maturity

Old Age

Charlotte Bühler (1933) Biological midpoint 15 Childhood

25

45 - 50

Youth

Adult I

65 - 70 Adult II

Aging -->

Erik Erikson (1950) 1.5 3 5 Trust Initiative Autonomy

13

21

40

Identity

Industry

65

Intimacy

Generativity

Ego integrity

Robert Havinghurst (1953) 5/6

12/13

18

Childhood Adolescence Early Mid

35

60

Early adulthood

Middle adulthood

Later maturity

Roger Gould (1972) 16 18 22 (I) (II) Must leave parents

28-29 Being adults

34-35

43

50

60

(I)

(II) Resignation Mellowing Questioning and ‘omnipotentiality’ warming up

Gail Sheehy (1976) --------------- first half of life --------------------->

[Regeneration]

[Elderhood]

Adolescent initiation Sep-Lim-Inc.

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Appendix 5. A model for mysticism as template for initiation

CONTINUUM CATEGORY

LAYER OF CONSCIOUSNESS

social

group

psychological

individual

collective

mystical

human cosmic cosmic being mystical spiritual

expanding becoming

religious INITIATION TYPE/FOCUS

joining ACTIVITY

Figure 2. Modelled from the perspective of spiritual initiation, based on an inarchical axis of mysticism; the arrows point inward in initiatory (liminal) terms from (dimensions of) communitas. This can be regarded as a topography for the language game of ‘god’.

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Appendix 5. A model for mysticism as template for initiation

Note on the meaning of ‘god’ The theistic statement ‘God exists’ may be taken as an assertion of experience of that named ‘god’, which may be referred to as a ‘gnowing’. Not to gnow is to be ‘not in the gnow’, so outside of gnosis, thus a-gnostic. Theism may be contradicted, however. The anti-theistic view is expressed propositionally, thus: The statement ‘God exists’ has a truth value, and that value is False. The more extreme, a-theistic view involves a second-order denial: ‘The statement “God exists” has a truth value’ has a truth value, and that value is False. Here, the assertion that propositions about the theistic statement have no truth value can be taken to mean that such propositions have no meaning. They are non-sense. This denies (stands outside) the first-level contradiction (since the opposition of theism and antitheism itself becomes meaningless). Hence, it is an expression of a-theism (as a second-level contradiction). We can understand anti-theism as indicating no reference (‘god’ doesn’t stand for anything that actually exists) and a-theism as no sense (actually, it doesn’t even mean anything). Thus, the theist responds to the second proposition first, giving a sense to ‘god’ through the language game, meaning the way this word is employed in relation to other ideas, or words for ideas. This is a function of the template for initiation. The template gives an explanation of the meaning (sense) of the idea of ‘god’ by indicating how it stands in relation to other words, thus ideas and their associated networks of meaning. The reference of ‘god’ is then taken to be first to experience, gnosis, that is, to a phenomenological truth (the actual experience) of cosmos as numinous space-time (taken as a condition of experience). This is the epistemologically prior (actually first experience) from which we infer the metaphysically prior (logical grounds of experience) as an ontologically prior (logically first existing) non-god as a ‘trans-human’ truth, which ordinarily has no name in English. In the same way, for example, that the (positive) identification of a hill proves the (negative) land of which is consists (as that which is assumed for it to be identified), or that culture proves nature in which it partakes. (Resting, thus, on an inarchical inequivalence of opposites, the two terms, such as ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ have a logical equivalence and are apparently equal, but actually are metaphysically unequal; the metaphysical inequality gives ontological priority to the one that the other assumes – in this case ‘nature’ and ‘non-god’). The assertion of non-god can be taken to constitute a trans-theism. Just as the negative ‘nature’ is named (like a positive), so can be non-god, too – e.g. as ‘source’. Here, ‘source’

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Appendix 5. A model for mysticism as template for initiation

could be used as an equivalent to ‘god’ but not equal to it. In this sense, ‘source’ would be non-god or ‘beyond god’. Then, to get to god ‘in the world’, beyond the enclosure of the phenomenal subject, we start with the assertion that this gnowledge of the singularity of space-time implies the possibility of the (human) experience of acausal connection and the gaining of information at a distance. When this type of experience occurs, therefore, god is inferred – in the same way, for example, that a puddle shows the rain (i.e. modally, not necessarily or sufficiently). That is, the reality assigned to the supernormal and paranatural experienced is taken as a proof of the reality of that which is experienced that implies its likelihood (i.e. god). This constitutes an inferential proof of god drawn from initiation into cosmos.

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Index A Aborigines’ Protection Society – See APS Adler, Alfred 212, 222 admission 58, 70, 85, 129, 158, 184, 221, 249 admit- 70 adolescence (including: rites at ~) 27, 136, 147, 161, 181, 189, 201, 207, 236, 241, 254 – See also puberty adolescent (including: ~ initiation) 28, 34, 37, 75, 127, 137, 144, 167, 186, 189, 202, 218, 219 – See also pubertal age sets (including: age grade) 54, 145, 181, 208, 276 Ambrose (Aurelius Ambrosius) 116 ancient wisdom – See perennial philosophy Anderson, James 71, 77, 81 Angekok (angakok) 130, 133 APS (Aborigines’ Protection Society) 69, 81 – See also Ethnological Society archetypes 132, 136, 147, 179, 200, 213, 229 Aristotle 61, 97, 103 Assagioli, Roberto 223, 238 Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis) 61, 116, 120 awakening 150, 223, 238, 244, 261

B BAAS (British Association for the Advancement of Science) 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 81, 134, 183, 263 – See also Ethnological Society

Bacchus (including: Bacchanalian) 63, 65, 76, 91, 97, 102, 107 Bailey, Alice 223 Bantu 150 baptism 37, 53, 57, 62, 63, 68, 78, 79, 112, 116, 119, 122, 131, 171 Barham, Francis 79, 102, 103 Bastian, Alfred 132 Bell, Catherine 191 Bessnier, Niko 31, 33 Bettelheim, Bruno 30, 199 Blackmore, Susan 245, 256 Blavatsky, Helena 93, 249 Bleeker, Jouco 36, 143 Bleek, Wilhelm 52 Bloch, Maurice 165 Bly, Robert 23, 29, 33, 44, 84, 87, 92, 162 Boas, Franz 132, 202, 234 Bourdieu, Pierre 147 Briffault, Robert 28 Britannica – See encyclopaedia British Association for the Advancement of Science – See BAAS Bucke, Maurice 239, 244 Bühler, Charlotte 203, 291 Burder, Samuel 78 Burkert, Walter 106, 108, 123, 138

C Catlin, George 85, 131 Chambers – See encyclopaedia

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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Index

Christianity 58, 61, 66, 78, 92, 98, 111, 130, 241 Church Fathers 61, 66, 96, 113, 117, 120, 122, 243, 269 Cicero 79, 102 circumcision 25, 30, 31, 45, 54, 75, 78, 119, 120, 147, 180, 184 Citizen Degréndo 49 Claudia M. 247, 249, 250, 256, 257 Clement of Alexandria 97, 113, 116, 120 cohort 180, 196, 205, 220 Collins, David 45 communitas 33, 151, 186, 190, 192, 196, 205, 210, 219, 220, 222, 233 cosmic initiation 237, 249 Crowley, Aleister 93, 249 Currivan, Jude 237, 261

D Dampier, William 45 dancing 49, 64, 85, 86, 133, 134, 146 Daniell, W. 75, 129 Dante 80, 99, 100 De Acosta, José 61, 67, 68 death (initiatory/during initiation) 64, 67, 86, 91, 100, 103, 133, 135, 136, 151, 160, 178, 196, 214, 244, 256 – and rebirth – See rebirth De Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier 64 Degréndo, Citizen 49 De las Casas, Bartolome 60, 69 Demeter 91, 101, 103, 106, 113, 114, 163 Derrida, Jacques 92 Dieri 180 Dionysius (the Areopagite, PseudoDionysius) 117, 121, 251 Dionysus (including Dionysian) 24, 97, 106, 107, 113 Dodd, David 166, 169 Douglas, Mary 151, 159 328 

Dowden, Ken 163 Durkheim, Émile 132, 163

E education 50, 119, 135, 160, 171, 181, 221 Eleusis 76, 93, 101, 115, 136 – Eleusinian 63, 97, 101, 166, 276 Eliade, Mircea 36, 55, 135, 143, 161, 164, 165, 182, 190, 226 Ellis, William 48, 74 encyclopaedia – Britannica 57, 66, 120 – Chambers 57 – Rees’ Cyclopaedia 58, 75 – Wilkes' Londoninensis 58 Erikson, Erik 203, 204, 210, 211, 291 Ethnological Society – See also APS, BAAS, Journal – London (including: Anthropological Institute) 51, 60, 69, 73, 76, 80, 128, 131, 134, 181, 281 – New York 52, 82 – Paris (including: Observateurs de l'Homme) 48 Eucharist 112, 116, 118 Eyre, Edward 46, 70, 180

F Faivre, Antoine 95, 98 fasting 65, 76, 83, 101, 112, 116, 129, 137 feasting 49, 68, 85, 86, 102, 112, 130, 146 Ficino, Marsilio 96, 98 Forman, Robert 253 Fortes, Myer 150, 188 Fortune, Dion 238, 241, 249, 252 Foucault, Michel 183, 205 Frazer, James 52, 93, 99, 130, 135, 151, 163, 188 freemason 73, 75, 82, 86 freemasonry 66, 69, 91, 96, 125, 128, 158, 283 Freud, Sigmund 25, 30, 211, 215, 222, 223

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation

Index

– Freudian 203, 211, 212, 218, 252 Fry, Christine 206

G generation 25, 145, 150, 152, 153, 177, 181, 183, 195, 205, 220 – See also age sets (including: age grade) Gluckman, Max 60, 144, 150, 151, 168, 182, 188, 202 Gould, Roger 203, 207, 291 Gregory – of Nazianzus 116 – of Nyssa 117, 118, 251 Grey, George 46, 98 Grof, Stanislav & Christina 223, 224 Gulliver, Phillip 181

H hair 68, 146, 165, 180 Hall, Stuart & Jefferson, Tony 186, 202 Harrison, Jane 132, 150, 163 Havinghurst, Robert 203, 291 Herdt, Gilbert 30, 31, 32, 82, 200 Herodotus 104, 165 Hillman, James 219 Hodgkin, Thomas 69, 70, 81 Hopi 31, 110 Howitt, Alfred 52, 55, 82 Hull, Robert 74 Huron 63 Hutchinson, Thomas 129

I init- 50, 51, 57, 70, 76, 80, 83, 87, 97, 99, 102, 105, 114, 129, 143, 154, 166, 170, 181, 183, 188, 199, 200, 214, 223, 227 Inuit (Eskimo) 133 Iroquois (Seneca) 62, 66, 82, 86, 147, 208, 269 Isis 63, 104, 106

J Jameson, Anna 83, 216 James, William 108, 255, 276 Janssen, Diederik 26, 31, 36 Jesuit 61, 120 Journal (London Ethnological Society/ Anthropological Institute) 51, 69, 75, 128, 131, 134, 181, 183, 281 – See also Ethnological Society Jowett, Benjamin 109, 110, 288, 289 Jung, Carl 132, 203, 212, 213, 222, 223, 224, 226, 229, 252, 291 – Jungian 24, 213 Justin Martyr 113, 120

K Khoikhoi (Khosian) 150 King, Richard 69, 75 Kwakiutl 133, 234

L Lafitau, Joseph-François 62, 76, 120 La Fontaine, Jean 26, 30, 35, 37, 43, 87, 95, 110, 152, 168, 191 Lang, Andrew 53, 66, 103, 104 Leach, Edmund 146, 148 Leland, Charles Godfrey 133 Leland, John 54, 58 Lewis-Williams, David 161 life crisis 144, 170, 222, 226 – See also spirirual emergency liminality 32, 55, 136, 149, 168, 178, 186, 190, 192, 196, 205, 209, 219, 224, 226, 232, 238, 255 Lincoln, Bruce 164, 166, 178 Londoninensis – See encyclopaedia Lukoff, David 223, 224

M Malinowski, Bronislaw 190

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

329

Index

Marcia, James 204, 205 masonic – See freemasonry Mead, Margret 25, 27 medicine man (including: medicine dance, medicine bag) 37, 83, 85, 91, 104, 127, 130, 131, 135, 137, 214, 236 migration (as passage rite) 171, 209, 266 Miles, William Augustus 75, 76 Mithras (including: Mithraic) 63, 75, 92, 106, 111, 113, 215 Morgan, Lewis 82, 86 Moses 57, 68, 77, 94, 96, 98, 117 Murdoch, George 25, 28, 34 museum – Ashmolean 74 – Berlin State Ethnological ~ 132 – British 52 – Smithsonian 82, 91, 133 myst- 59, 97, 99, 102, 104, 114, 121, 125, 154, 227 mystical initiation 229, 234, 237

N Ndembu 150, 196, 198 Nehamas, Alexander & Woodruff, Paul 289 neoplatonic 58, 97, 114, 124 neurology (inluding: theoneurology) 200, 239, 261 Newberg, Andrew 239, 253 Noah 61, 73, 77, 94, 98 Notes and Queries 50, 51, 52, 70, 73, 184, 188

O Ojibwe 44, 83 Oliver, George 75, 77, 79, 82, 158 Oshahgushkodanaqua 83, 230

P Pallas, Peter Simon 132, 135 Pawnees 104 330 

peak experience 84, 149, 215, 216, 219, 221, 273 – See also trough perennial philosophy (priscia theologia, ancient wisdom) 96, 98, 99, 109, 120, 125, 166, 243 Peterson, Thomas 193 Peters, Richard 185 Piaget, Jean 203 Plato 61, 68, 79, 80, 95, 96, 103, 109, 110, 112, 120, 183, 287 Plotinus 96 Prichard, James Cowles 70, 78, 80, 81 priscia theologia – See perennial philosophy Proclus 96 Pseudo-Dionysius – See Dionysius pubertal (including: ~ initiation) 34, 43, 135, 137, 161 – See also adolescent – pre-pubertal 37, 43, 54, 168 puberty (including: rites at ~) 25, 27, 37, 38, 43, 47, 50, 63, 85, 129, 136, 145, 163, 180, 183, 201, 212, 240 – See also adolescence

R Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred 181, 188 Ramsey, Andrew Michael ('Chevalier') 75, 77, 94 Reader, Ian 169 Reade, Winwood 76 Read, Hercules 52, 73 rebirth (including: death and rebirth, second birth, reborn) 37, 63, 77, 84, 92, 93, 94, 99, 101, 109, 124, 135, 160, 161, 163, 192, 197, 201, 214, 215, 221, 223, 261 – See also resurrection, regeneration Redfield, James 36, 169, 221 Rees’ Cyclopaedia – See encyclopaedia regeneration 94, 139, 145, 237, 291 – See also death, rebirth Reich, Wilhelm 211, 221

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation

Index

Reik, Theodor 25, 30, 199 resurrection 28, 99, 136, 242 – See also death, rebirth Richards, Aubrey 27, 60, 139, 188 rites of passage 26, 28, 29, 31, 43, 55, 92, 136, 144, 163, 180, 181, 186, 190, 192, 195, 198, 199, 203, 208, 210, 224, 242, 244 – genre 150, 172, 179 ritual practice – See circumcision, dancing, fasting, feasting, hair, singing, tattoo, tooth, washing, baptism, Eucharist Roberts, Bernadette 256 Robertson Smith, William 54, 66, 93, 120, 158, 159, 182 Roscoe, Irving 34 Rossetti, Gabriele 80 Rubruck (Willem van Ruysbroeck) 131, 135

S Schlegel, Alice & Barry Ill, Herbert 26, 28, 34, 167, 183 Schoolcraft – See also Oshahgushkodanaqua – Henry 76, 83, 85, 91, 130, 137 – Jane Bamewawagezhikaquay 84 Schurtz, Heinrich 54, 55, 166 Sellon, Edward 76 shaman 130, 131 shamanic initiation 37, 44, 91, 127, 134, 145, 161, 196, 223, 230, 232, 234 shamanism 28, 91, 92, 128, 161, 167, 223 – See also spirit-worker Sheehy, Gail 203, 291 Shirokov, Vladimir 160 singing 49, 103, 133 Smith, Alan 241, 251 Smith, John 67, 137 Snoek, Jan 165 soothsayer 62, 65, 66, 130, 132 sorcerer 61, 66, 127, 130 – See also spirit-worker

Spencer, Baldwin & Gillen, Francis 135, 180 Spencer, Paul 54, 189, 207 spiritual emergency 224, 261 spiritual initiation 33, 35, 38, 44, 48, 66, 92, 96, 127, 145, 164, 169, 196, 213, 215, 225 spirit-worker 127, 167, 173, 215, 229, 252, 254 – See also medicine man, shaman, sorcerer Stace, William 217, 238, 254 Stanbridge, William 129 Steiner, Rudolf 223 Stocking, George 49, 53, 81, 99, 263 Stokes, John Lort 46 Strabo 63, 102, 114 Strawley, James Herbert 115

T Taplin, George 26, 52, 180 tattoo 46, 147, 180 Taylor, Thomas 97, 103, 121 Thompson, William 289 tooth, knocking out 45, 52, 78, 100, 129, 147 trough 164, 222, 226, 236, 273 Turner – Edith 150, 152, 196, 219, 226 – Turnerian 150, 178, 187, 210 – Victor 32, 33, 55, 60, 87, 143, 150, 168, 178, 190, 196, 205, 233 Tylor, Edward 30, 52, 53, 130, 131

U Underhill, Evelyn 121, 124, 223 Ustinova, Yulia 105, 109, 110

V Van Gennep, Arnold 28, 55, 63, 66, 136, 143, 144, 165, 168, 171, 181, 189, 201, 209, 244 Virgil 99 Vizedom, Monika 26, 28, 152, 168, 182 Von Bunsen, Christian 80

Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation 

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W Waite, Arthur Edward 98 Warburton, William 54, 57, 58, 77, 100, 101, 289 washing 62, 68, 112, 146 Webster, Hutton 55, 137, 145, 166, 180 Weckman, George 37, 143, 227 Woodman, Marion 164, 220, 221

Y Yates, Frances 95 Yogananda 244, 249, 250, 256 youth 46, 68, 109, 119, 149, 152, 158, 185, 202, 205, 212, 216, 219, 239, 243, 255, 260 – See also adolescence (including: rites at ~)

Z Zoroaster 75, 77, 80, 94, 98, 270

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