Fear and Ecstacy

I realize that in my last post in this column, I left a number of dangling threads which have been irking me since I hammered them out. If you’re a skeptical thinker, I’m sure you caught many of them yourselves. However, my thoughts lately have been gravitating back to yet another subject that I’ve left dangling in the wind. (The expansiveness of these topics is undoubtedly why the material that I consider relevant to Immanence of Myth has been in and out of devolopment for nearly a decade now.) That subject is initiation, which is something that has played a pivotal role in all human lives, within all societies, in one form or another… that is, some would say, until recently. I’d like to take issue with that stance, informed though it may be, after we’ve dealt – at least in passing – with what initiation is.

So first, I’m going to provide some earlier defining thoughts on the subject of initiation, from writing in the drafts for the Immanence of Myth, and then get to related topics. Eventually we may return to those earlier “dangling threads,” as well. As I warned when I started this… it is all a work in progress, and though these works are crammed into a linear thread in final form, they come about more like convoluted neural nets. (Fancy that!)

There are many works available that systematically explore the vicissitudes of initiation within tribal and so-called primitive or archaic cultures. At the forefront of the works that deal with this subject within archaic culture is Mircea Eliade’s Rites and Symbols of Initiation, which covers the various functions which initiation can serve, and provides elaborate examples of all of them, from the shamanic process of rebirth to that of the men’s rites whereby a boy becomes a man. Though a sketch of these ideas will serve us in regard to dealing with the main issue of this chapter, I will avoid elaborate restatement for the sake of brevity.
That issue is initiation, its importance, and its relevance to our “modern” lives. Initiation is in fact such a constant in the cultural body that it is evident in one form or another in nearly every human culture that has ever existed before the industrial age, at which point it became notably absent. This absence has produced a very real psychological crisis, although as we will see in many ways the initiatory impulse has merely transferred itself, oftentimes to behaviors and beliefs which only shallowly fulfill that impulse.

This impulse is not merely the need to belong to a social group, although that is one of its exogenetic outcroppings. Lying submerged under such conscious needs is its prefiguring function: to forge our being, almost like a tool, for a specific purpose. For instance, one of the most common forms that the initiatory ceremony takes is that of the adolescent transformation. Before the ritual, whatever it might be, one exists in the world of childhood concern, and afterwards, the initiate is both individuated, in a specific, culturally prescribed manner, and consigned to the service of a particular role, offered by the symbolism of the ceremony. Such ceremonies are only truly effective when they make such a shock on the organism that the psychology is quite literally transfigured. In these cases, the symbolism usually involves death and rebirth: death to the old life, and the birth of the new. Children are ripped away from their parents, tortured, or otherwise terrified in the name of the transformation. This comes along with the archaic recognition of the sacrifice: the need to lose in order to gain.

Such transfiguration can hardly be a possibility for most modern individuals. For one, we are already individuated, and well aware of our self motivation, even at the expense of our own in-born needs. The initiatory ceremonies that persist are, by and large, pale imitations of those that came before. Modern baptism does not truly re-consecrate the individual, neither does the bar mitzvah or induction ceremony when joining an academy or a new career. Strangely, the closest thing that most Americans experience to the adolescent initiation are the bastardized rites of the fraternity. Yet, though they may approach the extremes requisite for psychological transformation, these pranks are so devoid of effective symbolism that at best they can only hope to enhance a feeling of belonging to the group, which as we already discussed is a mere outcropping of the initiatory complex.

Though many are able to find “initiations” in their own experience, which mark the transition from one phase of life to another, we are as a whole stumbling about in the dark. Those of us willing to actively consecrate ourselves to a spiritual or social task may not feel this absence, but those psychologies which require the imposition of an external force to bring about this change are likely to be forever lost, adrift from situation to situation, ever struggling to find a truly elusive meaning or purpose. These are the very types who are most at risk for indoctrination in cults, in the military, etc. because that psychological need can be so great that it strangles out the voice of reason.

Because of all of this, an initiatory formula more appropriate as a model for the “modern psyche” as a whole is the heroic or shamanistic initiation. Joseph Campbell was well aware of this, and dedicated a majority of his life to clothing this message in various forms and disseminating it. For this, he has received a lot of flak in the academic community, yet I would suggest that often the academic insistence on restraint is in fact a symptom of a form of creative sterility, which could never effect an initiation of any kind. In my humble opinion, we need more teachers like Joseph Campbell, and fewer scholars.

Be that as it may, the model of heroic or shamanistic initiation is more relevant because it is either willed by the individual, taken on as a task or a test, or it is conferred by the very energies of life– one is thrust into the initiatory crisis and must either muddle through it, or drown. In the case of the shamanistic mode, it is well recognized that a psychological illness, or “otherness,” is requisite. However, the shaman gains the title precisely because he has been rendered whole by the trials and ultimate re-consecration of the self (as shaman). In this way the shamanistic worldview and experience, though superficially similar to what we consider mental illness, is in fact its diametrical opposite.

A distillation, (or simplification), of this initiatory formula as it relates to our exploration here: first, crisis and the plunge into the “sub-conscious,” then self exploration, and ultimately self knowledge or mastery. The nature of the crisis differs from individual to individual, however the first two steps of this process are easiest to express as the ancient Greek aphorism: “know thyself.”

For most, this is easier said than done. It has been acknowledged by many social scientists that most Westerners are almost neurotically afraid of self analysis. The inner world, to many of us, is a complete mystery, terrifying and absolute darkness. There are some of us, to be sure, who can’t help but go spelunking in there, fewer still who live there all the time.

There are no absolute guides in this path, and without any sort of shamanic or heroic tradition, there are few true mentors or teachers. Psychologists of past generations began to open these doors, only to have them slammed shut when the institution, indeed the industry, went pharmaceutical. The experiential practitioners went private. Many went underground, and consequently we are forced to sort the wheat from the chaff by trial and error or word of mouth alone. Artists, too, are natural explorers of the interior psychological spaces, but in our mass market culture, many of them are forced to either pander to the outside, surface world of fashion and appearance, or languish in dark caves themselves. When an artist expresses psychological truths, they commonly seem to fall on deaf ears with an audience so obsessed with plot, action, and everything else external.

To many other cultures, this “fear of the mirror” is more than a psychological affliction: it is a spiritual one. It is a condition that shamans, yogis and the like have long served to help cure. Yet to the indigeonous practicioners of these arts, how strange we must seem– coming to their lands in khakis, asking for a brief tour of ourselves, so that we can return to the Village and tell our friends about our Ayahuasca visions over sushi. We obsess, and ask whether the contents of such visions could be “real.” Cracking open our heads must be a true challenge for them when dealing with us. As a civilization, we have come so far in terms of capability in the outside world, and as a result have left ourselves far behind.

Thankfully, we needn’t merely resort to the tribal method of shamanism: it is fairly likely that those songs and symbols no longer truly reach us, and if they do, it can have a regressive result. The true value is in the formula, which – I know from personal experience – can be effective and transformative without requiring a trip to the Amazon.

Another element of the shamanic initiatory formula is that ecstacy becomes a transformative tool, and in many ways fear becomes that which must be overcome, rather than a tool unto itself. Truly, many of the trials faced in this sort of initiation are terrifying; but in the shamanic mode, success, (in the form of transformation), is acquired through overcoming fear, whereas in many adolescent rites the fear is in fact the transformative force.

Next- forms of initiation in our modern lives in that bipolarity of fear and ecstacy, and thoughts from my own personal experiences with it…

About the author:
James Curcio has been consciously dedicated to the production and analysis of modern myths since the age of sixteen, and subconsciously arguably since birth. This exploration has taken the form of collaborative novels (Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning in 2007, Join My Cult! in 2004), essays on myth and culture (The Immanence of Myth, presently in development, “Living The Myth,” Generation Hex 2004, “Hillbilly Tantra” in Magic On The Edge in 2005, and “Dying Gods” in Lemon Puppy, in 2003), Internet “round-table” musical albums and podcasts, (subQtaneous: Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation in 2005, Babalon’s Descent in 2001 and posthumous Dreams And Reflections in 2005, Bedtime Stories With The Antichrist in 2004-2005 and The G-Spot in 2005-2006), and various art and media collectives. Most recently, he is co-founder of Mythos Media.