All traditions are created for the purpose of giving form to essential transitions. They are the passing down of customs and beliefs from one generation to the next.
We all have some experience with traditions. We have our own family traditions and if you work for an organization you will be familiar with workplace traditions.
Every culture has traditions that can be traced back to folktales and songs and these enduring traditions exist for one reason: catalysis.
The word catalysis comes from the Greek word katalysis which means dissolution.
Because of their ability to shape culture, traditions have been manipulated by religious and political institutions to further their materialistic goals. This does not mean that religious or political traditions hold no value. Most are based on esoteric content and people who absorb and work with the symbolism do eventually experience liberation.
In fact anyone with esoteric knowledge can create a viable tradition.
The value of tradition lies in its symbolic language. It is this language that communicates the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors.
To understand this, imagine you are a great-great-great-great… ancestor discovering something so important that you wish to pass this knowledge onto your successors but since you don’t write you do the only thing you can do…
you tell a story and maybe, sing a song. The energy expended in the retelling and performing of that story and song results in a matrix that lives on in Time and Space.
These mediums of transmission - myth, story, poetry, song - make it possible for you and I to learn something profound from our ancestors.
These mediums are the immortal voices of our ancestors.
They also allow for mediation to flower. By this I mean, a process of communication opens up not only with lost aspects of ourselves but with our ancestors and other metaphysical entities.
Many traditions mark rites of passage which gives structure to our lives much like the seasons do.
Nowadays esoteric knowledge in so-called Western societies is passed on almost exclusively as an intellectual exercise. People read a book, complete a short course and decide they’re initiated. But nothing changes. They are the same and everything and everyone in their environment is the same.
Because…
To be initiated one has to participate in traditions and rituals.
Magick cannot be grasped through intellectual effort.
For true initiation to occur you have to participate, you have to commune…
Commune: an exchange of feelings and thoughts
And this participation cannot be limited to the visible and material - also known as the Middle World.
For those of us determined to re-enchant the world, this realization that focus has to shift beyond the visible hits hard in our middle years. We find ourselves at the gates of the Underworld. If we are lucky enough to sit at the feet of wise elders and teachers we do not show up unprepared.
Astrologically, the planets Uranus and Saturn, commence and complete this initiation between the ages 40-60.
The goal is liberation from a great number of falsehoods, but more specifically, personality.
Why personality? Because personality is developed. Your birth chart reveals the exact process of how you go about developing a set of personality traits in order to fit in with your environment and culture. This, psychotherapists everywhere will tell you, falls under the process of integration.
However, neither Uranus nor Saturn (and your Spirit) are interested in adding more to your psychic plate. They are invested in disintegration.
It is in our encounter with the Dark Goddess, the Queen of the Underworld, AND her guardians that we learn how to unburden ourselves so we can be reborn.
I’d love to know,
are you navigating midlife or approaching forty? Do you feel like you are in a process of initiation?
This is the first essay in a short series on Alchemy and Magick. I love comments! If you enjoyed this essay and look forward to reading more like this one please let me know.
Further reading:
Reclaiming the Crown - The Archetype of Queen
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkenstein and Samuel Noah Kramer
My second Saturn Return is going to happen somewhere between 2029-2031, if I'm doing the math right, when it slides back into Gemini. I will be 60 in 2031.
Besides Long Covid, I'm also navigating through perimenopause, and if that isn't midlife, I don't know what is. 😜
I'm turning 32 this month and I have been feeling like alot of shifts and transitions. Things definitely feel out of my control and I feel like I'm relearning alot about myself