Initiate

The term ‘initiate’ — encompassing both the noun (one who has undergone initiation) and the verb (to begin, to admit into mystery) — occupies a structurally pivotal position across the depth-psychology corpus. From Jung and Kerenyi’s philological excavation of the Greek muein (‘to close,’ applied to eyes and mouth alike) through Eliade’s comparative phenomenology of puberty and mystery rites, the initiate is consistently figured as the subject of a controlled ontological rupture: a dying to one mode of being and a rebirth into another. Eliade insists that archaic man does not consider himself ‘finished’ on the natural level of existence; initiation is the technology by which he becomes fully human. Neumann and Moore extend this logic into developmental psychology, reading initiatory structures — the ordeal, the symbolic death, the elder’s sanction — as indispensable scaffolding for masculine individuation. Von Franz and Estés bring the initiatory schema to feminine psychology, locating in the mystery-rite tradition resources for understanding the animus’s passage toward the ‘fully initiated feminine.’ Burkert grounds the discourse in the historical specificity of Eleusinian practice, while Bly diagnoses modernity’s crisis as precisely the collapse of elder-mediated initiation. The central tension throughout is between initiation as collective rite of passage and as individual psychic transformation — a distinction that resolves, in Jung’s framework, into the claim that ritual initiation enacts what individuation demands.

In the library 14 passages

The word for ‘to initiate,’ μυεῖν, means ‘to close,’ and is used for eye and mouth alike. The initiate, μυούμενος, remained passive, but the closing of the eyes and the entry into darkness is something active.

This passage delivers the etymological and phenomenological core of initiation: a paradox of willed surrender, in which passivity itself constitutes an active inner act, anchoring the entire mystery-rite tradition.

Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C., Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949thesis

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in essence it consists in a complete change in the novice’s ontological status… the man of the primitive societies does not consider himself ‘finished’ as he finds himself ‘given’ on the natural level of existence.

Eliade establishes initiation as the primary technology by which archaic humanity achieves full personhood, framing the ontological transformation of the initiate as the defining structure of religious formation.

Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis

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experiences of the initiate who takes part in a sacred rite which reveals to him the perpetual continuation of life through transformation

Jung situates the initiatory ritual experience within his taxonomy of transformation, identifying it as an archetypal enactment of the transcendence of life rather than mere symbolic representation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis

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the death penalty attaches to betrayal of the secret of the Kina to women or the noninitiate… Here the term ‘secret’ is quite applicable; for the Kina is observed only by men.

Neumann demonstrates through ethnographic material that initiatory knowledge constitutes a guarded boundary between initiated and uninitiated, with the secret society functioning as a sacramental institution structuring masculine identity against the feminine.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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a στέφανος was put upon the initiate and invested him with his new state, new fate… that the initiation, like the receiving of the τέλος of marriage, was felt as a change of fate is clear.

Onians traces initiation through the symbolism of crown-investiture, establishing that the ritual conferred a new ontological destiny on the initiate, structurally parallel to the fate-change enacted by marriage or death.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

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With the change of fate and state received by him who was ‘initiated’ we may relate that of the priest. His holiness, his new role, new fate, appears likewise to have been embodied in the band or crown about his head.

Onians extends the fate-change analysis from initiate to priest, showing that the material symbol of investiture embodies the transformative ontological shift common to all initiatory structures.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

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Initiation of Western men has continued for some time in an altered form even after fanatics destroyed the Greek initiatory schools… Much of that chance or incidental mingling has ended.

Bly diagnoses modernity as suffering from the erosion of structured elder-mediated initiation, arguing that the informal transmission of masculine soul-knowledge has been severed with culturally damaging consequences.

Bly, Robert, Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990supporting

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among all the adult mystai, there was always one child chosen for initiation. He was subsequently called the boy ‘who was initiated from the hearth.’

Burkert documents the exceptional case of child-initiation at Eleusis, illustrating that the mystery tradition deliberately extended initiatory transformation across age-categories, linking the domestic hearth to the cosmic drama of the rite.

Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting

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his initiation into the wild self, as he becomes animal in nature for seven years… in preparation for showing and acting true to the soul-Self of the newly initiated woman in day-to-day life.

Estés maps the initiatory structure onto the animus’s passage through wildness, arguing that the animus must undergo its own initiation into instinctual nature in order to serve the psychic integration of the initiated feminine.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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The sacrifice in the vision is of an initiate who has undergone the experience of the solificatio.

Jung identifies an alchemical figure as an initiate who has undergone solar transformation, reading the decapitation symbolism as an extraction of the arcane substance consequent upon completed initiation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting

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His face was covered so that one could not see it, and his body shone like the sun. He came down and did not speak for a long time.

Von Franz presents the figure of Earth Initiate from Maidu cosmogony as a creator-deity whose veiled luminosity and descent from above carry the structural markers of initiatory concealment and hierophanic revelation.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995aside

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one passes through a series… The realistic thinking of midlife has as its necessary goal the righting of a balance, the restoration of the person to a humble but dignified relationship to the universe.

Hollis treats the midlife passage as a secular analogue of initiatory threshold-crossing, in which inflated youthful identity must be sacrificed to a more genuinely individuated relationship with existence.

Hollis, James, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, 1993aside

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