Initiation- The three wombs at the tomb...
Most of us come to our initiation through our dreams. Unfortunately many of us just write them off as nightmares and try to forget about them soon as we wake. Others of us sign divorce papers or four year contracts in our new professions. For a few others it is the new zest for life that is the beginning of the climb off our cities streets. The initiation comes many years too late. For that man on the street, the initiation could of been seeing his best friend die from a Heroine over dose.
Initiations are our wake up calls to our adult lives. It is the psychological break from the mother. Youths in Aboriginal tribes of Australia are ripped away from the false security of their mothers as the bull roarers are whirling in the air and the men of the tribe come disguised as monsters with feathers glued to their naked bodies. These men initiated fear which is to be the beginning of the break from the old world of these children into the next of adulthood.
Robin Hood plays throughout the middle ages served this role as well. Traveling gypsies played the part of Friar Tuck to preside over the ritual with a may queen picked to play Maid Marian. The male youth who have come to of age in the spring would all play Robin to consummate their adulthood with the May Queen, Marian. That was the easy part for next they had to overcome the pubescent egos represented by another gypsy playing Prince John. Once the immature ego is conquered the Lion King Richard arrives into the breast of each youth as he becomes an adult. For the Lion is the symbol of solar awakening and rebirth. The Surnames Robins and Robinson that predominate Britain are the children conceived from Robin Hood rituals. Here the youths leave behind the Oedipal lives of their past and enter that of their father's to search out women of their own.
In ancient Cave Bear Cultures, the Men of the tribe would push the initiates through a dark slimy tunnel that opened onto a large expanse where all the secrets of the hunt and adult male life were related to the youths. Then the men passed the youths back out the birth canal into society as adults. The shock and response is to be the same as a squirrel cornered by a bear, the courage to turn and strike to save its life. The courage in the face of fear to become an adult. No Bishop slap or degree will equal the right response.
"The Problem is not new, for
all ages before us have believed in gods in some form or another. Only
an unparalleled impoverishment of symbolism could enable us to rediscover
gods as psychic factors, that is, as archetypes of the unconscious....Heaven
has become has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and
the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But the
heart glows, and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being."
Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
In Tropical tribes initiations act much like the British, with one exception.
The copulating of the male youths with the male queen happens on a platform with four beams holding a roof over the others. The last youth who copulates with the may queen is killed with the queen as they knock out the beams and the roof collapses on them. Merging male and female into the life and death cycle. You won't have to die in such a fashion to get the metaphor, but you must die to a way of thinking to become an adult.
Dorothy was never the same after the tornado? Are you prepared to die, the kingdom of god is laid before you. Have you crossed that bridge over the moat through the skull to the castle of your mind? Do you fear the anxiety of Pan as you enter the forest alone. You have to die alone as well as be born again. Will you allow me to kill you? Then read on.....
In life we suffer through many little deaths, the ego deaths. The death that happens to our lives when we move away from home for the first time, the death to the title of husband as we sign the papers, the death of our student personas as we accept that degree, and the like. Death happen in many forms and guises. This is represented with the monthly death of the moon and the snake that sheds its skin. Also it is the goddess who can bleed for a week and live. The shedding of the monthly egg, the symbol of the new soul. Women, eggs, moon, and snake are ancient revered symbols before mans fall when the Garden of Eden was written. Man had found the power of sperm! In Cambodia during the Vietnam War, many Cambodians died from loose bullets falling upon the village as men shot machine guns into the night sky to stop the sky snake from eating the moon. For the phases of the moon at that time of year looks like a giant black snake eclipsing the moon as it passes its jaws around it.
From all of these little ego deaths of the moon, women, and snake comes the death of the soul. The Phoenix rises out of the egg to be burned by fire to rise again from the calcination through another egg. This symbol is the eagle and the lion. To be born again as the eagle is to leave this existence for another, like Guatama. The Lion is to be born again of the earth as a Bodhisattva The one who can travel between both is the Griffin, the symbol of Christ in his Mercurian role as guardian of secrets. The Lion and the Griffin perform the return. So will you allow me to kill you. Will you enter the tomb in the fashion of Lazarus. Will you allow Christ to free you from your tomb. How long have you been lying in there already?
Now who watches over you as you lie in the tomb. Well of course the women.
Mary of Bethany and Magdalene wait in the house adjacent from the tomb they laid their brother in. It is Spider Women who gives the Living eagle feather to the Navaho Twin warriors for protection from their father along with the warning about the rocks that crush, the reeds that cut him to death, the cane cactus that tear him to pieces, and the boiling sands that will overcome them. Who is the spider women? She is the mother who has prepared us for good or bad to cross over into adulthood. She is the one that provided us with the knowledge and the ability to use it up to this point. But it is for us alone to cross over and be atoned with the father as the twin War Gods of the Navaho.
Spider Women asks, "Who are you, and whence do you come?" Upon hearing this the youths shrug. The first importance of the runes is to seek your past. Then she asks what they are doing." Whither do the two of you go walking?". Next the runes ask what you are doing now and how does that have to apply from where you came from. Youths reply they are going no where in Particular. Neil Young in the movie Made in Heaven, when the youth Elmo is crossing over the threshold asks him the same question.
Neil Young replies" When you do not know which way you are going, any way is good." They only climbed down her ladder because they had nowhere else to go. Their intuition had led them. Like Erik, in Erik the Viking, searches out Freya. She asks him if he had ever seen the sun? He replies it was in a distant far removed memory. The Navaho youths were in search of their father the sun as well. Freya asks Erik what is it he is looking for, as Spider Woman asks the Twin Gods. The Spider Woman after the youths reply in ignorance of what they are doing four times, does she ask if they are seeking the father. But Erik will be looking for the woman he had killed and his father god, Odin. Erik killed his anima and is looking for his mate. Both of these women describe the challenges the youths must face and where to find their father. Also these women describe the real threat of the fathers who might want to kill them.
The conflicts between father and son abounds through lore and myth. It is Luke confronting Darth Vader; Arthur facing Mordred on the flip side; Twin War Gods facing their father; and Hercules challenging Zeus. This happens when the youth no longer needs the father for survival, but guidance. This could be blocked by the father who is vacant, the father who is scared of being replaced in his occupation, the father who is afraid of death, the father who is in the power of a higher grip, or the father who has not crossed the threshold himself. Darth Vader was the distant father who was in power of the Emperor who lived in fear and destruction for anyone who would push his threshold. He was always choking people who had questioned or failed him. The throat is the home of orders and directions. It is where power is manifested into matter. He stole peoples voices. As his was supported by machinery with someone else at the keyboard. If the son crosses the threshold, the father is forced to soon cross over. This is the power of the black dragon and the senex.
The Spider Woman teaches the youths to be pollen.
"Put your feat down with pollen. Put your hands down with pollen. Put your head down with pollen.Then your feet are pollen, your hands are pollen, your body is pollen, your mind is pollen, your voice is pollen. The trail is beautiful. Be still."
Here the mother teaches the youth to follow their instincts . Your journey will be of chance, the actions of your hands will be Zen, your mind will be receptive, and your voice reactionary. This is guidance from Obi Wan Kenobi, use the force. It is Parzival releasing the reigns of the horse.
The trail is beautiful is a reminder to overcome the fear and desire trap and be still. To put yourself in the hands of the god or goddess. To trust your fate or river that is the current of your own individual life. Be still is a calling to leave behind all goals and just do. Just do it and be still.
To be pollen is to drift in the wind. In the runes Ansur is the power of breath. It's feminine counterpart is Laguz, the power of water. Once you leave the water, you must first cross into the air. Satan crossed through the ocean between heaven and earth to enter the air of the sky before he landed in our world. To be of pollen is to follow the force, of our life.
Women teach us to listen to our own voice. They give us joy, comfort, justification, and reassurance. Men do this in reverse and add personal justice and retribution. But with the coming of the suffrage movement, women began sitting on a fence.
More and more women became borderline mothers represented by the dichotomy of the good witch and bad witch. The Bad witch is always trying to conqueror kingdoms or block their children from their fathers. As the bad witch is trying to wrestle with coming to the father, they prevent their children from getting there before her. Also these women become concerned with social status and goal orientation of wealth. They leave behind faith, hope, and instinct for their children to find on their own. Raising the children is left to others. That is what Mary Poppins is all about. This happened in between and after the two World Wars that left men reeling with their emotions. Most repress them in work, drink, and family. These men became indoctrinated by the armies concepts of making anyone in opposition to you non human and the concept of no I in team. These men returned to a society full of entrepreneurs who pursued individual dreams. To advance against these minds they formed conservative groups to reflect their lives in the military. Only now is the army debriefing soldiers to return to the society of the individual. These men come in two types, the victim and the aggressor.
Those who lived through the battle field at all cost who left morality or scruples behind on one side and the ones that came home emotionally and physically injured on the other.
The victims often feels that he never left behind anyone on the battlefield and wonders why he has been left behind in society. The aggressor helps no one but himself and makes allegiances that only buffer his survival interest.
Both are in the grip of strong desires and fears. So men of the GI generation and their wives sit on the fence at odds with both sides. Can any of them learn to walk the fence instead. To cross the razors edge?
In many cases we can not look toward our parents to bring us across the threshold because they never crossed it on their own. Finding Nemo is about a father who is crossing that boundary to catch up to his child. But most parents of this type only cross over with much resistance and conflict.
Can you take a leap of faith, for you are on your own now.
Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin is propietor of Docspond Life Coach Services providing Individual Counseling, Group facilitation, and key note addresses that speak to the heart of the mission while delivering the bottom line finacial growth. Helping millions find their bliss and return meaning to success! Read more Life Coaching stories at the Guide to life, filled with animation, photographic Essays, and movies covering mythology, world religions, and psychology to make your life a better place. Also, it is just damn fun!
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