Excerpt from King Warrior Magician Lover by Robert Moore
"First, we need to take very seriously the disappearance of ritual processes for initiating boys into manhood. Almost all these ritual processes have been abandoned or have been diverted into narrower and less energized channels—into phenomena we can call pseudo-initiations.
Once ritual as a sacred and transforming process has been discredited, what we are left with is what Victor Turner has called “mere ceremonial,” which does not have the power necessary to achieve genuine transformation of consciousness. By disconnecting from ritual we have done away with the processes by which both men and women achieved their gender identity in a deep, mature, and life-enhancing way.
We get the dominance of Boy psychology if the ritual processes by which these identities are formed become discredited
Boy psychology is everywhere around us, and its marks are easy to see. Among them are abusive and violent acting-out behaviors against others, both men and women; passivity and weakness, the inability to act effectively and creatively in one’s own life and to engender life and creativity in others (both men and women); and, often, an oscillation between the two—abuse/weakness, abuse/weakness."
Comments