Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth –
Mircea Eliade (1958)
Sometimes
the smallest books can be the most gratifying and educational. This slim, 136-page volume (not counting the
large Notes and Index sections) is loaded with extra jelly. Translated from the
original French by one Willard R. Trask, Mircea Eliade’s writing shines as it
explores and compiles our knowledge of Initiations, and the various rites and
symbols used by all of humanity for this purpose. It is an amazing piece of writing by the man
who was Chairman of the Department of the History of Religion at the University
of Chicago.
As
Eliade differentiates at the start of this book, there are essentially two
types of initiations. Both seek to
“kill” the previous version of the initiate, in order to rebuild, teach, and
create a new human being. The most primordial type is the “puberty” initiation. In this type of initiation, whether for a
male or a female child, the purpose is to end the period of childhood, with its
lack of responsibility and participation in adult society, and to “create” a
full adult, capable of participating and perpetuating the sociocultural
knowledge of the tribe.
Male
and female children are removed from their families for an extended period of
time, ranging from several days to over a year in some tribes. The earliest, simplest initiation rituals for
boys consist of the separation from the mothers, whose children are then led
away from the tribe by the shaman and elders.
The children are symbolically “buried” under branches and blankets,
where they must sit and wait. This is
the time of symbolic death. All around
them, their male elders dance, ritualistically, and through the songs and
dances teach the children what is happening.
They are experiencing a death, the death of their carefree
childhoods. They learn that in this
death they are taken up to the abode of the gods, and private, secret knowledge
is given to them. This knowledge is what
makes them new men in the eyes of their tribe, giving them a cosmology and
reason for existence. After a period of
time, they are released from their “grave” and return to the world of their
people, assuming the full role of an adult male in the tribe. Their mothers mourn
them as if they truly died, for they no longer reside with their moms and aunts
and cousins and sisters. Instead, they
now belong to the men of the tribe, until such a time as they themselves marry. Most simple initiations function in this
manner, with the exact details of the instruction and lessons given changing
depending on the tribe.
The
more complex puberty initiations of men take on far more danger and pain. There is the addition of deprivation, such as
long days spent in the wild without clothing, or without fire or food. There is the use of pain, or ritualistic
surgeries, such as circumcision and scarification, or even the risk of death
against animals or the elements themselves.
Whereas the simpler initiations explain the cosmology of the respective
tribe involved, the more complex ones seek to recreate the cosmology, with the
initiates taking the place of the initial hero who, through either the will of
the gods or his own human intelligence, attains wisdom and knowledge equal to
the gods and shares it with his fellow men.
These initiations help the men inculcate the new generation with the
history and ancient truths of their tribe.
The young men who return from initiation are reborn as full humans,
ready to participate in the world around them.
The
initiations of females differ from the initiations of males, both in method and
purpose. Females have a special clock
which dictates their maturity, unlike men.
This clock being the initial start of menstruation. Female initiations are even more secretive
and esoteric than the male ones, for it was the ability of the females of any
species to perpetuate life that provided humanity with its first taste of the
infinite. Women and their bodies were
the initial symbols used to explain the world around us. The world of women required a separate
initiation.
The
initiations of young women do not revolve around death and rebirth, but instead
focus on attainment. The onset of
maturity is a time for celebration, and the young women are gathered together within
a space reserved solely for females. One
of the greatest taboos in the world of tribal humans is that of a man entering
the sacred spaces of a woman. The
punishments are severe and swift. In
many tribes, if a man interferes with the initiations of the women, the women
have the right to kill that man in order to protect their secrets.
The
young women are taught about their cosmology and how the universe/earth is a
womb, producing the life seen all around.
They are taught to understand that the process of life is universal,
which is evident after studying the animals and plants around them. The initiates learn of their cosmic role in
the process of life, and how to care for each other. These initiations also helped bond all of the
tribe’s women together, helping foster mutual altruism. Women likely held the secret of biological
procreation for centuries before males found out.
One
of the critical ideas that Eliade brings is that the rituals and symbols used
during these initiations were not just mimics of the initial creation process,
but were intended to manifest the sacred and allow the initiate to recreate the
very events that created the world around them.
Each initiation is a recreation, literally, of the initial birth of our
universe.
The
other type of initiation is that of the shaman.
There are three ways to become a shaman.
The first is when the elders or elder shamans choose an individual child
(usually male, and the offspring of a shaman) to be taught and trained. Another is when a child actively seeks to
learn the ways and wisdom of the shamans, as if born to do so. The third method is when the child’s mental
state, attitude, and behavior is so erratic and bizarre that they are then
pushed to shamanism so that they may learn to control their minds. This last method is tribal human’s way of
dealing with the mentally ill or unstable among them, allowing that person to
have a place in their society, even if it is one removed from the day-to-day
world of the tribe, such as the shaman’s.
Most
cultures keep their shaman separate.
They live in privation, do not take part in hunts, and rarely interact
with the rest of the tribe. The shaman’s
life is spent fine-tuning their connection to the divine, whether through
prayer, fasting, drug use, chanting, or any other such method. It is this rigor which allows them to commune
with the spirit world, detect malicious entities causing harm or illness among
the tribe, see the far past and the far future, and travel out of their bodies
to what mystics refer to as the Astral Plane.
The shaman is feared as much as he is needed. Their respective initiation ceremonies shed
light on this.
Whereas
in puberty initiations the initiate spiritually “dies” and is “reborn,” the
shamanistic initiate is instead fully recreated. The shamans speak of how, during their
initiation, their skin, muscle, and sinew are stripped away, leaving just a skeleton,
which their god then re-creates, adding new material until the shaman is
reconstituted as a new type of being, one capable of existing in the profane,
material world (symbolized by his keeping his initial skeleton), and in the
supernatural divine world (symbolized by the new organs, muscle, and skin
grafted onto him by the gods). Once
recast as a shaman, they climb the World Tree, the Axis Mundi, and have access
to the upper worlds of the gods and the lower worlds of demons and
spirits. Shamanistic initiation is
mentally traumatic, and some initiates do not make it back from their foray
into the divine. Recreating the mythical
death and rebirth of their god’s/universe’s creation has that effect on some
people.
I
found this book fascinating, and resonant to my previous readings on the
topic. By focusing solely on
initiations, Mircea Eliade avoids discussions of theology, allowing the reader
to think about initiations as a continuing human endeavor. Eliade describes how, even after the advent
of revelatory religion, and monotheism, initiations for other
organizations/groups continued to use the framework described above, that of a symbolic
death, and a rebirth into a new state of being, a more truly “human”
state. Anyone with knowledge of the
Masonic initiations into their 3rd degree will see the
correlations. Books such as this provide
us with knowledge that expands our minds, and helps us understand that human
consciousness is an ongoing process, constantly drawing from the deep wells of
our past shared humanity, and providing deeper and richer meaning for our
lives.
(This book can be downloaded and read here: https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.6032/page/n9/mode/2up )
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