Initiatory Experience Research Articles

‘Peace is Pretty Good fun. Maybe Even Better than War!’ On Bitwa o Kozi Dwórby Józef Hen

The article attempts to interpret the novel Bitwa o Kozi Dwór (1955) from the perspective of spacestudies. Following the research of Yi-Fu Tuan and Florian Znaniecki, it analyses the experienceof war playing as an important ritual for domesticating space and, at the same time, an importantevent in characters’ biography. Józef Hen’s novel tells the story of a group of children looking fora place to play football in pre-war Warsaw. Kozi Dwór seems to be perfect for this, but the boysfrom Obozowa play there most often. The two groups fi ght several times, but eventually join forcesto form a football team and defeat boys from richer families in a match. The article proves thatthe ‘backyard war’ is an initiatory experience at the level of identifi cation with a specifi c place,confl ict resolution or interpersonal relations. Not only does Hen use a well-known theme of children’sliterature, but at the same time tells an autobiographical story. The researcher posits that,as in Nowolipie Street, the writer recalls a world that vanished during the Second World War,but does not elaborate on its end. The battle of Kozi Dwór, however, is not only a foreshadowingof the tragic fate of this generation, but also a recollection of the Arcadian landscape of childhood,when peacemaking was easier.

Ensnare

The present research blends archetypal and feminist perspectives, along with current research into the hemispheres of the brain, to investigate the psychological implications of the pursuit and attempted murder of Ambrosia, a nymph and nursemaid to Dionysus, by King Lycurgus of Thrace in Ancient Greece. A depth psychological story of psychic activism, feminine liberation, and transformation, “Ensnare” builds around a single image from a piece of Greco-Roman artwork—the attack and attempted murder of Ambrosia by Lycurgus, whose deeds evoke the destructive forces of literalism, monotheistic temperaments, intolerance to diversity, exclusively rationalistic attitudes, and patriarchal systems that deaden the imagination and imperil the unfolding of soul. Theoretically, this project of creative womanhood relies upon Hillman’s (1975) four modes of re-visioning psychology: personifying, or imagining things; pathologizing, or falling apart; psychologizing, or seeing through; and dehumanizing, or soul-making. Following Hillman, “Ensnare” invites the reader to find and make soul through a non-literal attitude of fantasying that creatively engages the imagination and images of female empowerment from the myth. The aim of this imaginal engagement with the mythological figures of Ambrosia, Lycurgus, Gaia, and Athene is to discover and partner with the archetypal presences who supported Ambrosia’s liberation as we work to bring the meaning of her initiatory experience to our own ideas and ways of being.

The Mystery of Totality in Mircea Eliade`s A Spiritual Adventure

four-act play A Spiritual mentioned several times by Mircea Eliade in his autobiographical texts, has recently been offered to all those fascinated by mysterious imaginary world of literature written by Romanian scholar. Professor Mac Linscott Ricketts, devoted to introducing readers around world to Eliade's work, has managed to discover text of this play, written in 1946, in Eliade Special Collection of University of Chicago Library. A Spiritual Adventure was published for first time in January 2012, in English translation, in journal Theory in Action. Professor Ricketts also discusses making of this mythical text. For interpretative endeavour that we propose to undertake in following lines, Ricketts' paper, The Writing of A Spiritual Adventure, is an important starting point.Initially entitled Euridice, this play extends scheme of Hellenic myth, as it is structured by idea of experiencing via unitiva, beyond human will, through divine grace. Folded around mystery of being, story reveals ''the absolute reality of which teaches a human being ''techniques of partcipating in Divine Nature. As Eliade explains in his Soliloquies, ''noncontradiction is acceptable only in one kind of madness: love. Love is beyond fragmentation and contrast because it is autonomous, absolute, sui-generis revelation2.In realm of potentiality, first steps are taken through mirror of a magic space in Danube Delta. Here we witness dialogue conducted between Tudor Manciu, a young playwright who is afraid of spiritual sterility, and Alexiu, his down-to-earth friend. Thus we leam about Tudor's fascination with a genius composer, Mihai Barbura, who decided to withdraw from world and understand otherness in seclusion of Delta. mystery of famous musician is revealed due to Ctefania's presence, to whom artist confesses about his decision to wait for his dead wife's return from other world. This is beginning of a fascinating inner dialogue that gradually extends towards others, showing infinite possibilities of human consciousness as a bridge between heaven and earth. After engagement and marriage to Ctefania, Mihai Barbura's identity reveals contradictory complementarity between mythos and world of fragmentation. Barbura renounces his fame, which places his existence under sign of an external myth, in order to be only Petru Baranda, an ordinary man who wishes to fulfill marriage in heaven and on earth as well. Ctefania does not recognize her husband in simple man who apparently does not know anything about miracle of creation. She loses herself in despair and sin only to remodel her spiritual structure in harmony with rhythms of a cosmos that reveals its splendour. In final act of play, game of potentialities unfolds on a theatre stage. Tudor Manciu critically examines dress-rehearsal of A Spiritual whose message touches actor's hearts within limits of their level of perception. young playwright meets Ctefania again, as if by magic, to receive another invitation to noncontradiction, to madness of love, only one that offers certainty of immortality.Mircea Eliade's play seems to suggest that spiritual adventure of man requires existence of multiple levels of reality, harmonized in that structure of human consciousness through which Eliade defined sacred. Consequently, deciphering meanings of this mythical story entails relating to initiatory experience of search for centre, as it is reflected by religious traditions of mankind, so mysteriously enshrouded in Eliadean writings which are seen, inspired, and which seem to stem from high realms of soul. Professor Ricketts selects from journal excerpts that illustrate state of grace which overwhelmed writer when the mental film of a literary work attempted to make its way into his consciousness so that it could then be transferred, through work of art, into collective memory:For some time now, before falling asleep, I've been tempted again by obsession of a play I first saw one evening in December 1944, walking along deserted terraces of Estoril, when I was staying with Costes. …

The Disenchantment Complex: C.G. Jung and the modern world

In his 12th year Jung had a fantasy about God shitting upon Basel cathedral. With this initiatory image of unrelenting disenchantment, the boy Jung emerged not only into personal adulthood but also into the particular form of adulthood corresponding to post-enlightenment modernity, i.e. disenchantment. However, Jung attempted first to halt the inevitable progress of the fantasy and then to neurotically disown it by a petitio principii, thus effectively invalidating the full effect of the initiatory experience. This paper explores the way in which Jung's soul fixated at the point of disenchantment, so that this ‘disenchantment complex’ became the ground of his whole psychological project, instituting a split that was to become literalized in his two homes: ‘Küsnacht’ and ‘Bollingen’.

Why Poets Theatre Now?

My initiatory experience of “poets theatre” occurred in the fall of 2002. Writers, scholars and artists were gathered at SUNY Buffalo for a conference called Prose Acts, which focused on the West Coast literary and cultural movement now commonly referred to as “New Narrative.” Among the participants in the conference, organized by music and art critic Brandon Stosuy, were Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, Robert Gluck, kari edwards, Matthew Stadler, Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Dodie Bellamy, and Kevin Killian. At the close of the conference, Killian staged his play The Vegetable Kingdom (co-written with the San Francisco-based designer, Rex Ray). In The Vegetable Kingdom, the participants of a game show with the same name as the play go in search of Linda McCartney, who one of the participants claims to be her biological mother. On the way, the game show’s co-hosts attempt to pit McCartney against her arch-nemesis, Yoko Ono. This attempt culminates in a hilarious scene in which a stoned-out-of-her-mind McCartney and super mystical Ono face off. The dialogue is peppered with witty plays on pop cultural reference (one of Killian’s signatures) and high-camp humor. The result is a carnivalesque, topsy-turvy, post-identity politics play paved by critical intelligence.

Serious Singing: The Orphic Hymns as Religious Texts

In the wake of Albrecht Dieterich, in this paper I try to show how the overall arrangement of the hymns in the Orphic hymn book follows the progression of a nocturnal ritual. I insist on the frequency with which the hymns talk about the fear of meeting a divinity or a phasma that would be in an unkind and violent state and could drive the initiates into madness. Thus, the hymns construct the mystery experience as an event that is, at least in part, dangerous and frightening. This concern with madness as a possible negative result of the initiatory experience is just one aspect of the role Bacchic (“Orphic”) initiation played in healing madness sent by evil demons, and it conveys a seriousness to these rites that makes them into something very different from the hobby of some placid burghers. Far from being only the songs that accompanied the tryphé of a Bacchic social event, the hymns point to the emotional complexity and seriousness of Bacchic mystery cults.

Le «rite de passage» chez Amin Maalouf

This study attempts to analyze the inner development of Tanios, protagonist of Amin Maalouf's novel, The Rock of Tanios, by interpreting the important symbols which punctuate the spiritual metamorphosis of the main character and associates it to an initiatory experience. What is noteworthy is that the author describes his character's “entire life”as “nothing but a succession of passages”and divides the narrative structure of the novel into nine “passages”each of which corresponds to a crucial stage in Tanios' existential initiation and physical transformation. Even the symbolic significance of the number “nine”will shed an interesting light on the protagonist's mystical quest which modifies profoundly his interiority. This quest resembles an initiation marked by trials, suffering and deprivations which purify the soul and predispose it to a renaissance, final stage of the initiation.This study will proceed by a sustained observation of Tanios' physical and mental changes in order to highlight and decipher...

Strategies of Concentration and Diffusion in Isaiah 61

AbstractThis article analyses the rhetorical strategies of Isaiah 6 and their relationship to the paradoxical commission to speak so that the audience should not understand. In particular, I look at strategies of concentration and diffusion, how the chapter directs attention to the prophet and his initiatory experience, and directs attention away from the vision of God, the moment of encounter, and the consciousness of the people. I divide the chapter into three parts (w. 1-4, 5-8, 9-13), respectively characterized by divergence, convergence, and divergence again. In the third part, the rhetorical technique is more complicated, in that the centrifugal dynamic is reinforced by failed attempts at focus. Throughout, synecdoche is the preeminent instrument both for directing attention to the participants and away from them. In the last verse, there is a shift from metonymy to metaphor as the principal poetic device, and thus a transference from a narrative, historical paradigm to a diffused alterity. The chapter is thereby decentred; since it is generally regarded as a key chapter in the book of Isaiah, the book itself is unstable. I conclude by discussing the commission as a model for the reading process, and wondering whether the metaphorical equivalence of fullness and emptiness subverts the entire rhetorical structure I have delineated.

The yellow brick road: Coming of age in the wilderness.

Abstract The adolescent drive to “grow up” is the same drive that causes the tree to shed its leaves in the Fall. Yet we are not preparing our children to face a winter crisis that will come. Our failure to provide them sanctioned rites of initiation has resulted in their inability to find and know their place in the world. Yet they feel an overwhelming need to follow the ancestral way, to set forth on the “yellow brick road” mat leads to mature understanding. The initiatory experience of nine teenagers at the School of Lost Borders illustrates their hunger for experiences that heal childhood wounds and bring them face to face with their true nature, as reflected in the mirror of the wilderness.

Re‐visioning Clients' Pathology Into Initiatory Desire

A perspective of therapy is presented that re‐visions clients' pathology into desire for initiatory experience. Initiatory experience is understood as a symbolic template that lies over the biological and psychological developmental life cycle. A symbolic perspective is taken of clients' presenting problems in order to provide meaning to the symptoms and to eliminate the constraints that accompany diagnoses, treatments, or both. A developmental foundation is laid in support of the clinical application of this perspective in what will be called symbolic therapy. Anthropological and psychological models are reviewed in order to clarify the historical genesis and modern application of the ritual of initiation. Finally, a case study is offered to further explore this view of therapy.

The Sacred Journey

The Sacred Journey details a brief (5-session) treatment in which a woman in her early thirties reconnects with her broken past. She has to use her non-dominant arm to play in the sand, as she broke her right arm a few days before therapy started. In the course of treatment, she reconnects to herself as a child with life-threatening asthma, and discovers that dinosaurs can turn into jewels. Shamanic literature is discussed through Lori's use of quartz, and in the context of a broken bone as a shamanic initiatory experience. Lori goes through the "night-sea-journey" and finds the Self. Symbols Lori used included dinosaurs, jewels, spiders, Barbie, feathers, moon, the tree of life, grapes, the mermaid, pillars, and the butterfly.

L'alternative de la vision et de la possession dans les sociétés religieuses et thérapeutiques du Gabon.

A. Mary — Vision and Possession: An Alternative in Gabonese Religious and Curative Societies. Vision, as an initiatory experience calling for the absorption of a hallucinogenic drug (eboga), has been retained by the Fang bwiti cuit as a privileged medium of surreal communication. It displays a number of traits differentiating it from possession as practised in other Gabonese therapeutic cuits. The relations of complementarity or exclusion between vision and possession in the religious and curative field demarcate the male-dominated bwiti societies from the women-controlled ombwiri communities. The combinatory laws pertaining to these two kinds of initiatory experience govern the logic of ceremonial activities, the conception of worship, the calling up of spirits or genii through trance-inducing dances or mask parades. Since independence, there has been a weakening of the significant oppositions between vision and possession, together with a shifting of functions. The stressing of the divinatory use of vision, issuing from the constraints of a neo-colonial situation, the fight to dominate the ritual scene bear witness to a new distribution of power in favour of women, with political and social meaning as yet ambiguous.

The Effect of Spiritual Exercises on the Integration of Self-System

The application of a symbolic interactionist approach to the phenomenon of the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola suggests that individuals engage in this experience in an attempt to reconcile conflicting self-systems that arise in disparate social situations. A study of forty-six Jesuit novices was conducted over a four-month period, during which novices underwent intensive spiritual exercises. Results of the analysis confirm that the thirty-day initiatory experience did have a significant integrative effect on the self-systems of individuals in the sample. From the standpoint of symbolic interactionism as stated by G. H. Mead (1934), an individual's affinity for experiences such as the Jesuits' thirty-day spiritual exercises may arise from the failure of interpersonal relationships to generate for the individual a consistent definition of self. Mead (1934: 154) states that the ultimate outcome of the socialization process is the emergence of a unified definition of self embodied, so to speak, in the generalized other; however, Cottrell (1969: 553) has maintained that, within our complex urban society, role expectations in various social situations may be so mutually exclusive as to preclude the successful emergence of a unified self-system. Thus, a constellation of self-other systems arises-each significant to the individual and yet incompatible with its counterparts-rather than a single generalized other, as postulated by Mead. Assuming that such conflict is abhorrent to the individual, as the vast literature

The marine engineer today

There is revolution everywhere on the maritime scene and the password is rationalization. Rationalization of work; rationalization of equipment; rationalization of dock facilities; rationalization of cargo; rationalization of ship operation. A new philosophy permeates, the whole industry, throwing up new concepts and challenging old ones. Ships are becoming more and more specialized in design and function in order to meet the need for rationalization both in its technical and commercial aspects. Giant tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships spearhead the revolution but many extremely forward looking new concepts of cargo handling and transportation systems are already in the pipeline. On the ship itself a technological revolution is progressing towards inevitable comprehensive automation as a remedy for economic ills. Diagnosis shows that the chronic shortage of certificated seagoing engineers, superimposed on the urgent necessity for increased economy and higher efficiency over the whole complex of shipboard operation, leaves little alternative to the automation prescription. It is true, of course, that automatic control of isolated individual elements of machinery has been featured at sea for a long long time. The escalation, however, in recent years from individual isolated application to overall centralized automatic control of the machinery from a control station sited inside the engine room (or outside), is indicative of the palliative and remedial action of the medicine as prescribed. It is only fair to state, however, that initiatory experience of ‘automation’ some years ago, especially in the oversell of electronic equipment by firms with no marine experience has made many shipowners justifiably sceptical about the prognosis.