The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion by Mircea Eliade

Author:Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, History
ISBN: 9780226203867
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1959-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

Initiation and the Modern World

Toward a Definition

The term initiation in the most general sense denotes a body of rites and oral teachings whose purpose is to produce a radical modification of the religious and social status of the person to be initiated. In philosophical terms, initiation is equivalent to an ontological mutation of the existential condition. The novice emerges from his ordeal a totally different being: he has become another. Generally speaking, there are three categories, or types, of initiation.1

The first category comprises the collective rituals whose function is to effect the transition from childhood or adolescence to adulthood, and which are obligatory for all members of a particular society. Ethnological literature terms these rituals “puberty rites,” “tribal initiation,” or “initiation into an age group.”

The second category includes all types of rites of entering a secret society, a Bund, or a confraternity. These closed societies are limited to one sex and are extremely jealous of their secrets. Most of them are male, constituting secret fraternities (Männerbünde), but there are also some female societies. However, in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, the Mysteries were open to both sexes. Although they differ somewhat in type, we can still classify the Greco-Oriental Mysteries in the category of secret confraternities.

Finally, there is a third category of initiation, the type that occurs in connection with a mystical vocation. On the level of primitive religions, the vocation would be that of the medicine man or shaman. A specific characteristic of this third category is the importance of the personal experience. I may add that initiation in secret societies and those of a shamanic type have a good deal in common. What distinguishes them in principle is the ecstatic element, which is of greatest importance in shamanic initiation. I may add too that there is a sort of common denominator among all these categories of initiation, with the result that, from a certain point of view, all initiations are much alike.

Puberty Rites

The tribal initiation introduces the novice into the world of spiritual and cultural values and makes him a responsible member of the society. The young man learns not only the behavior patterns, the techniques, and the institutions of adults, but also the myths and the sacred traditions of the tribe, the names of the gods and the history of their works; above all, he learns the mystical relations between the tribe and supernatural beings as those relations were established at the beginning of time. In a great many cases puberty rites, in one way or another, imply the revelation of sexuality. In short, through initiation, the candidate passes beyond the “natural” mode of being—that of the child—and gains access to the cultural mode; that is, he is introduced to spiritual values. In many cases, on the occasion of the puberty rites the entire community is religiously regenerated, for the rites are the repetitions of operations and actions performed by supernatual beings in mythical time.

Any age-grading initiation requires a certain number of more or less

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.