Male Initiation

I have spent the last 22 years teaching men to heal the wounds of our fathers.  Our circles are built for this deep masculine soul work.  My gang initiation as a 9 year old New York street boy has given way to the initiation of grown men.  We have been drawn together to rediscover this ancient rite of passage that our culture has sadly and dangerously forgotten.  The old earth based cultures have always known that a man cannot take his rightful place in the tribe unless he separated from the mother.

In these tribes, the young boys would sleep in the huts or houses with the women.  When the boys reached the age of 8 or 10 or 12, the older men would come to the houses in the middle of the night, and steal the boys away from the mothers.  The women would put up a mock resistance, yelling and crying and pleading with the men not to take their little boys.  But after the men had taken the boys away, the women would laugh and chat and drink tea and smoke.  The little boys that remained would be very confused.

The fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins, and older boys were all part of this grand design.  They would take the young initiates into the mountains or the forest or the jungle or the desert and teach them the ways of the tribe.  The boys would be steeped in the mythology of the culture, listening to the stories of their collective past.  The men would teach the boys how to use the tools and weapons that were vital to the survival of the tribe.  They would learn about the animals and the plants…how to hunt, how to listen and learn from the natural environment.  They would teach them the songs, the technologies, and the ways of men.  They would teach them about women, about men’s and women’s bodies, and how to treat women and children.  The boys were asked to perform some kind of heroic deed, and their survival was not always guaranteed.  They would feel pain and great discomfort.  Each boy would be left alone at night and have to fight for his survival.  He would often come face to face with his own animal spirit.  When he returned, all the men would celebrate.  It was weeks, months, or maybe even a year that the boy did not see a female.  Upon his return, the mothers would grieve the loss of the boy and welcome the return of the man.  Each young man would know his rightful place in the tribe.

Over the years, with the development of modern and post-modern culture, men have lost this essential rite of passage.  Boys grow up without the active involvement of older men.  Fathers spend very little time with their sons, and even when they do, there is no real transmission of ancient wisdom and soulful material.  The father himself is lost, for he was not initiated either.  A man cannot teach what he has not himself learned, and so we have lost boys seeding lost boys.  Men pay a dear price for this loss, the sons pay the price, and it continues over the generations.  And the sad thing is, most men don’t even know it.