Tag: initiation

Initiation of Self by Soror Brigantia

No one can initiate me.

People can perform a ceremony for me to increase the likelihood that initiation will occur or to empower me in some way, but the only person responsible for my initiations in this multiverse is myself. The word initiation means to start, to transform, where one thing ends and another begins, like a rite of passage. However, an individual is never going to experience that rite of passage unless something has already begun to change within them. There is a degree of personal initiative in initiations; one has to be ready and willing, and able to make the change.

I can stay the same if it pleases me and remain rigid in my sense of self and cling steadfastly to my own ideas about how I am. Or I can embrace the variety of life, the unknown, the adventure and take on new ideas, new selves and different ways of being in the world. In my opinion embracing and initiating self-change is the more interesting way to live as opposed to staying in the same stream throughout this entire incarnation. It is, however, fraught with dangers, as one steps into the unknown, not knowing if your decision to leave the comfort of your self was the right one. This one change can bring about a whole host of consequences, some good some bad, and at the end of it, one is not the same person they were at the start.

A chaos magician is likely to want to embrace the change as the orderly life of staying the same is a prison of security for the adventurous soul. However, even a chaos magician can struggle with change on occasion. Sometimes change is something that happens to us, and it’s not always good, sometimes it is tragic and not welcome. This is where we need to allow ourselves to feel the grief, the loss and the despair without self-judgment. It is OK not to feel OK and you do not have to pretend otherwise. Eventually one will have worked through the grief, and the chaos magician, the embracer of change, will allow their old self to flutter away and build a new life on new foundations.

Having spent time working with self-change and self-initiation, the processes of recovery become smoother, as one does not cling to the old. A chaos magician is accustomed to personal metamorphosis, which I have found to be of great help in dealing with grief. The concept of, something has changed and it will never be the same again, does not hold the same fear when creating change is part of one’s personal magical practice.

It’s my opinion that all magical practices, whether it be chaos magick, Thelema, Witchcraft etc. bring the most benefits when your chosen path aids you in dealing with everyday life by increasing your choices and range of responses to life situations.

Through Shadows and Fire – Initiation and Becoming – by Coral Carte

To me, initiation signifies a profound shift in consciousness, a movement into new realms of awareness, generated by acquired knowledge or an intentional journey. Often for me, the process becomes an “initiation by fire,” as the transition can be intense and transformative. The experience of initiation might unfold through formal rituals—such as joining a magical order marked by ceremony or trial—or through the subtle awakening of inner knowledge that reshapes one’s perspective on life and the craft itself.

Initiation, by its nature, is as varied as it is personal. Some initiations are marked by intensity or even danger—consider the harrowing initiation rites in certain fraternities or secret societies. Yet others emerge through a profound, life-altering shift. In my own journey, each journey through deepening levels of awareness has carried the unmistakable signature of initiation, demanding that I move beyond the boundaries of former selves. Even marriage held the gravity of an initiation, a crossing of a threshold into a new way of being, later deepened through the painful and transformative experience of divorce. Each of these transitions required letting go of previous identities, shedding what no longer served, and embracing what lay beyond with faith and courage.

Each initiation I have encountered has been preceded by—or coincided with—a “dark night of the soul.” This passage through deep internal conflict, severed me from familiar beliefs, dissolving identities that no longer fit. In those times, I was stripped down to essentials, brought closer to my core values, and granted access to hidden reservoirs of knowledge within. Through this process of inner transformation, I adapted, grew, and integrated new roles and perspectives, each initiation calling forth a more refined version of myself.

Though challenging, the dark night of the soul wields its own transformative power. Once its shadowed path has been traversed, one often emerges lighter, more attuned to purpose, and realigned with a deeper connection to self and the world. In this way, initiation and the dark night together form a rite of passage, a journey through shadows into expanded awareness, reshaping understanding and laying a foundation for future transformations.

Fear and Initiation by Soror Quas 274

Imagine you have a secret. A big secret.

This secret has caused you a lot of pain in the past, so you’ve learned to hide it from people. You need to make sure that nobody knows about your secret; because if they found out about it, they would hurt you wouldn’t they?

You obsess over this. Every day you fear everyone around you is going to hurt you because of this secret. Over the years you’ve gotten so used to carrying that fear that you don’t even notice it anymore. But you are living in fear. Every conversation you have is dipped in fear. Every time you walk past a stranger on the street there is a tingling of subtle terror. You’ve become crippled. The weight of this internalised fear has left you a husk of a human being…

One day you are exposed to something big, bigger than you have ever experienced before. It makes you feel more than you have ever felt before. You feel limitlessness expand within you, it drowns out everything you are. Everything about you seems so small when contrasted against everything that is.

Then it happens, you realise that the secret that has crippled you for so many years is out, and there’s nowhere to run. The fear reacts, it thrashes and it burns. But it is drowned by the madding echo of infinity. Everything about you just seems so funny; your entire existence feels like one big joke. You spent years living in fear and for what? You laugh. You laugh harder than you have ever laughed in your life. Pure fire burns within you, it burns your fear to dust, but in the process it scorches all the structures that had been so readily nurtured by this fear for all those years. It’s violent and it doesn’t feel good. It takes a while, but eventually you put yourself back together again. You’re pretty sure you’re different now. That fear is gone now. It’s strange and it takes some getting used to. What’s going to replace this fear? Who do you want to be now? And most importantly, does it even really matter?

On initiation – a novice perspective by Frater Runkorp

An initiation is a rite of passage and as such it should, according to anthropologists and historians of religion, contain three parts: separation, a liminal phase and aggregation. Given that we are deep in the season of the fall, right on the cusp of winter, I want to dwell a little on the second part – liminality, the in-between aspect where transformation occurs.

Liminality is a threshold, steeped in symbolism, a stepping away from the normal everyday world and into a state of between-ness where the everyday falls apart and gives space for ambiguity and discomfort. This symbolic death can be vulnerable, scary or even painful, but it is a necessary break from the ego, the shedding of identity in which can be found the spark of the new self.

There are of course several reasons for going through an initiation and for entering a liminal phase. It is a rebirth, a gaining of understanding, an introduction to powers and mysteries, an experience that can set you on a path to illumination, awakening, or to deep personal change. Most of us go in and out of these spaces several times on our magical journeys. In an order, such as the IOT, the initiation also holds another meaning. It is a shared experience of being stripped down and given a new role. It is a social transformation that becomes a source of strength through the sharing of the stories of initiation. In this the order becomes a part of the internal narrative of “us who have gone through the upside-down-world and emerged on the other side”. As a novice, you are not fully part of that community. You may very well feel welcome, included and respected, but you haven’t travelled the same path as everybody who is on the inside. For the novice, the initiation is the –coming-of-age-story of their life within the order.

image and text by Frater Runkorp