In the course of our lives we pass through many initiations. And the word initiation itself ( from Lat. initiare: to begin, originate) might conjure up all sorts of mystical rites you may witnessed or heard of.
Across indigenous societies worldwide, the rites of passage into adulthood followed sacred biological and spiritual rhythms. For boys, a deliberate process of testing - physical trials, spiritual challenges, and elder guidance - that dissolved the childhood identity to birth the man. For girls, the arrival of the first bleed- menarche - honoured as a mystical awakening, that opened the gates to womanhood. These weren't mere biological events, but community-held transformations where the entire village participated in the initiate's rebirth. (initiation into belonging)
Thresholds as a Living Breath
So what are the initiations?- What is their purpose?
Initiations are thresholds we cross in order to move from one state of being into another, where one version of us dissolves, so another may breathe. In its essence every initiation is a new beginning, a birth in a higher octave of existence- where the song stays the same, but we hear new notes.
After a boy passes his rite of passage, after a girl sheds her first drop of blood- they step into life with new eyes- these are no longer the eyes of a child, but of one who has touched life’s mystery- a man forged by trial and a woman anointed by her own wisdom.
And all true beginnings imply a change—and an ending, too.
You cannot go through an initiation without losing something. That is the law."
Malidoma Patrice Somé
(West African shaman and author)
After a coming of age ceremony, the child is no longer a child; it has shed its cloak of innocence and crossed a threshold of no return.
In some indigenous cultures as Navajo Kinaaldá, the girl’s old toys/clothes are burned or buried, marking the end of childhood. In others, like the Apache Sunrise Ceremony, after her first bleed, the girl "dies" as a child and is reborn as a woman. She wears white (funeral color) and is mourned by family. The ritual includes four days of isolation (as a symbolic underworld journey)
When we have matured enough and stand at the end of a particular experience, when there’s a lesson learned- we are invited to move one step higher. And the next step, as it often happens, terrifies and calls us simultaneously.
Our First Initiations
Our first initiators in the material and dualistic world are our parents. Regardless of whether we think they did a great or not-so-good job, their energetic blueprint—along with our individual destiny—shapes our path in life.
Generally speaking, our mothers map (initiate) the feminine for us, and our fathers, the masculine. This goes beyond perceptions of sex and gender; it includes the energetic dynamics within us.
The feminine teaches about union, connection, being, warmth and care, the eternal truth of “We Are One”. And the masculine offers the gifts of clarity, truth, direction, discernment, and the necessary realisation “We Are Separate”. And we first receive these primordial energies through our human parents- imperfect vessels for divine archetypes.
In early childhood, we couldn’t consciously understand these experiences. The Gene Keys and Rudolf Steiner speak of cycles of evolution and stages of incarnation—the first seven years of life, while we land in matter, imprint us unconsciously. Until at least age seven, we lack a developed sense of a separate self and our consciousness is still swimming in the cosmic dream soup of oneness with our mother. This is where our physical patterns are hot-wired into our physical structure- our posture, breathing patterns and our relationship with the physical world through touch. When we learn that life is safe and loving ( mainly through the presence of our mother), our physical body relaxes in its natural harmony. The ego (or "I") and our sense of true separateness begin forming afterward.
The second stage of soul incarnation occurs between the ages of 7 and 14—with the development of our energetic body; and the third stage- 15 to 21 years- where our mental body is fully formed.
Depending on how we were parented during those formative years, some essential soul-level initiations - what my teacher Katie O'Mahony identifies as initiations into safety, belonging, loving care, and a true sense of home - might have been missed or inadequately held for us.
For generations now, we've lived severed from Earth's natural rhythms - and this disconnection means our parents, and their parents before them, were never fully initiated into life's sacred transitions.
If our mothers were never ritually celebrated as they crossed into womanhood—if no elders guided them through the sacred thresholds of marriage and motherhood—how could they stand firm in their power? If our fathers were never welcomed into true manhood—if they never severed the umbilical cord of energy still tying them to their own mothers—how could they become pillars of strength?
When initiations are skipped, we parent from unhealed ground and the child cannot feel a solid foundation that holds it.
The ones who once guided the tribe members through these thresholds with wisdom and ceremony- the Elders- have long vanished from Western society (and most modern cultures). What remains is a hunger - we spend our lives asking for those missed initiations through: toxic relationships (seeking the love initiation), consumerism (seeking the prosperity initiation), burnout, depressions and midlife crisis (seeking the purpose initiation) and so on.
We've medicalised menarche (turning it into problem that needs a fix) and abandoned boys to invent their own initiatory tests through video games, porn and street gangs. Perhaps this explains why psychedelics have made such a comeback - they're the modern world's desperate attempt at self-initiation when traditional containers have collapsed and the Elders are gone.
Marriage as Initiation
In my tradition, marriage is not just between two people. It is a merging of two families, two communities, two lineages. The couple are merely the doorway through which the spirits of these worlds unite. Marriage is a ritual that demands we grow. It is not about happiness, but about becoming vessels for something greater than ourselves"
Sobonfu Some “The Spirit of Intimacy”
I love the work of Sobonfu Some, the Dagara elder and author of The Spirit of Intimacy, and her wisdom and views on marriage and union as sacred initiation.
When two people come together with the intention to love each other for a lifetime, an entire energetic vortex is stirred up.
The more conscious we are of this, the more readily we’ll open to the essential support and nourishment of our communities. A union—a relationship—cannot thrive under the isolating pressure of ‘doing it alone.’ We see this today: we expect to be everything for each other—lovers, best friends, parent figures—and this mountain of expectations and needs to be met by the other becomes so heavy that the union crumbles beneath its own weight.
I have walked through the fires of divorce myself and I have often wondered: How different my life could have been if I were grounded in my power as a woman, guided by loving elders?
The Unspoken Part of Some Initiations
Paradoxically, even the most joyful initiations—menarche, childbirth, marriage— naturally carry whispers of grief. In traditional cultures, this grief was ritualized.
In my homeland, Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains, brides would traditionally sing mourning songs (laments) that honour this duality ( the “Ela se vie, previva” song). These songs give voice to her sorrow: for the maiden she will no longer be, for the parents she must now leave behind—symbolically dying as ‘their daughter’ to be reborn as ‘another family’s. In some other parts of Bulgaria there was a ritual of hair-cutting: a bride’s braid (symbol of her virginity) was cut or ceremonially unraveled.
This ritual wisdom recognises a sacred truth: all true rites of passage demand surrender. What we celebrate outwardly, we mourn inwardly—not as failure, but as the necessary death that makes rebirth possible.
Childbirth is another threshold—a literal and symbolic death of the maiden (the childless self) and birth of the mother. Yet modern culture often celebrates the baby, but silences the mother’s grief for her former identity and skips rituals to honour this transition, leaving women unable to process the loss.
Like the Rhodope brides, new mothers experience a dual reality: joy for the new life, sorrow for the old. Without ritual containers (like mourning songs or rituals), this grief can morph into postpartum depression (PPD).
Symptoms of PPD often includes: Mourning freedom, spontaneity, bodily sovereignty; yearning for the “before” self; guilt for feeling loss amid societal pressure to be “grateful.”
Without rituals and Elder women’s guidance to help new mothers metabolise the paradox, PPD often becomes stuck grief—a soul-level mourn for an unmarked passage.
Grief as Initiation
Mourning loved ones, —whether a break up, claimed by sudden shock or the slow unraveling of illness—is itself an initiation. We are thrust into the abyss of the Underworld, forced to face our loss, our own mortality and inevitability of life’s seasons.
This is no metaphor. Grief is the most ancient of rites—the one we cannot refuse, the most unwanted, but most transformative initiations of all. “For everything we love, we will lose”, writes Francis Weller in his book : The Wild Edge of Sorrow- Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred work of Grief.
Yet, beneath Initiation’s many faces, the same pulse beats- of change, growth and renewal. Just like a spiral- always at the edge of the unknown, touching Life’s mystery.
Mundane Initiations
The truth is we’ve crossed and keep crossing more portals than we realise. The question is: “Do we want to be awake while crossing them?"
Alongside our big thresholds and life-shaping moments, we also have our daily initiations, monthly cycles, annually turns of the year— micro portals hidden in plain sight. We wake up every morning and initiate a new opportunity to meet the challenges and the blessings of what’s ahead of us-
Did we speak our truth or shoved it down again?
Did we pick up the same old quarrel with our partner or chose to be responsible for our own feelings first?
How did we meet a challenge at work or or losing our job?
These are just few examples of how the miraculous meets the mundane and has the power to transform it.
Final Words
Initiation is not a one-time event, it’s an ongoing art of becoming fully human. Every initiatory process’ deeper meaning is to strip us of outdated structures, old identities and frozen in time belief systems. Each crisis, each awakening, each moment of shattered certainty is another sacred threshold and an altar.
May we meet them all with Grace.
-Hrissi
