I Spake As A Child

Before I get off on a bunch of wacky shit about aliens, let me just start with something everybody can relate to: growing up. That’s what this is really all about. How do we know when we’ve passed from one phase of our lives to the next? The famous line from 1 Corinthians 13:11 reads:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

At what point in your life do you feel like you had finally “put away childish things?” For many of us, it never happens. Or if it does, it takes many years and a great deal of trial and error and confusion. This was not always the case though. If you look at pretty much any so-called “primitive” cultures, you’ll see that they had extremely powerful rituals to turn you into a man or a woman at the proper time. These were often extremely cruel, and happened at a young age. But the point is that they happened. Many people today find their identity adrift, never having made the all-important psychological leap from youth into adulthood.

A blog called Gut Rumbles has a nice essay on this:

We don’t do those simple, effective rites of passage in Western civilization. We keep young people guessing all the time. We don’t provide a clear line of demarcation between youth and adult. I know that I NEVER felt as if I were a grown man until my father died, and I was 40 years old at the time. I had a wife and children, a good job and I owned my own home. But I wasn’t certain that I was grown up.

He then goes to list various passage points in modern culture, but notes that even through getting your drivers license, losing your virginity, and all the rest - the lingering doubt remains. The passage is never quite final for most of us. I know a great many people who are in their twenties and thirties who say they still feel like a 12 or 13 year old essentially.

Forever Young

Ask around. You’ll generally find that people who feel this way will say they feel somewhere between mayb 12 and 15 years of age (well, at least for guys - I’ve never asked a girl this question). The reason here, of course, is that this corresponds generally to the age where puberty strikes. During puberty, you undergo a dramatic physiological shift into sexual maturity. You must adapt to the immense and inescapable changes your body undergoes. Your childish attitudes towards sex (ie, thinking that girls have “cooties”) are no longer appropriate, and will not function properly in an adult context. Consequently, it becomes necessary that you transform your mental and emotional state to match your new potential physical abilities and responsibilities.

Some people make this transition successfully on their own. And some do not. Some people may transform during a short time, and others it may take many many years. Primitive puberty initiation rituals functioned to make sure that everyone had a fairly uniform experience, and that their vulnerable young minds were conditioned and patterned according to the symbols, traits and values which were desirable within the culture.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell talked extensively (I think in The Power of Myth) about the lack of a potent universal rite of passage in our culture. One of the interesting points he made was that street gangs arise spontaneously to fill this gap (among other reasons, of course). Children undergo elaborate gang initiation rituals at a point of what Robert Anton Wilson calls “imprint vulnerability”. Out the other end of this they become fully-fledged gang members, completely in tune with a complex hierarchical system of authority and an arcane system of signs, symbols, rituals and language.

For an easy proof-of-concept here, imagine a 13 year old gang member walking up to a stereotypical white guy in his thirties who works in an office, has a fancy car and a 401K, but not much self-confidence. While the cheesy office dude might have the trappings of socially acceptable maturity, the gang member has the psychological transformation to back it up. Even if a confrontation between these hypothetical characters wasn’t violent, it’s more than likely the office guy is going to feel a twinge of fear at the approach of the aggressive dominant youth. He might start sweating, or cross the street to avoid the “thug” or clutch his wallet more tightly to himself. In some way, the fear of lawlessness probably connects to an inadequate feeling of manhood. The office guy fears the gang member, because the gang member isn’t afraid to “do what he wants”, and the only recourse the office guy has is to call on another dominant man - the police officer - to help him.

Campbell also writes in the prologue to The Hero With a Thousand Faces:

In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid [as is provided by initiation rituals]. We remain fixated to the unexorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood. In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal is not to grow old, but to remain young […]

Primitive Initiation Rituals

If we as a culture are lacking proper mythological rites of passage, it would probably make sense for us to become acquainted with ones used in traditional cultures. Robert Anton Wilson writes in Prometheus Rising:

Among the Zuni Indians, the male at adolescence is kidnapped by masked “demons” who carry him away from the tribe (away from the mother and other imprinted security figures.) He is dragged out into the desert and threatened with whips. Then the masks come off, revealing his maternal uncles, and in that moment of imprint vulnerability the tribal “secrets” (the local reality-tunnel) are explained in a way that leave an indelible mark on his consciousness. Similar rites of passage are found in all tribes, few as cleverly designed as this one. Symbolic and diluted versions survive in Bar Mitzvahs and Confirmation ceremonies in our local mega-tribes.

Check out the controversial Indian Spirit Dance on Vancouver Island for a more contemporary example of this in Native American culture. Frazer’s classic The Golden Bough also has some great examples of this sort of thing:

The people of Rook, an island between New Guinea and New Britain, hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with wooden masks, go dancing through the village, follow by all the other men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then the procession moves through the village again and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys and will not disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro and so forth.

Such practices survived via Aboriginal groups in Australia and other places, and a great many of them (as far as male children are concerned) use circumcision as the central component of the rite of passage. This website has a fantastic (and graphic) account by an anthropologist who was allowed to witness the ceremony. After chanting, drumming and a great deal of other preparation:

Suddenly the song stopped. One of the men in the circle gave a sign, on which the others rose and took up prescribed places. Two of them got down next to each other, on hands and knees. Two others took the boy by his arms and legs and slung him upon the back of the two kneeling men; and two or three other men came forward to hold the boy in position, face upwards. A stick was put between his teeth for him to bite on. One of the boy’s uncles, old Minjena, now joined them and with a sharp flint bent over the boy and performed the circumcision.

A few days later, they performed another fairly gory ritual:

With a sharp knife they performed a deep operation which, without depriving the young man of his power of propagation, yet regulated the use of it to special occasions. A hole was pierced right through his sex organ near the root, and there was inserted into it, at either end, a splinter to keep the aperture from growing together again. The object was to ensure that henceforth the urine and the sperm would be ejected through this little hole high up on the sex organ, instead of by the normal channel. Only when the lad put a finger on the hole, and kept it there, would the fluids in future be able to pass through the proper outlet

Ritualized Homosexuality

Such activities may seem overly harsh, but they serve as an unforgettable physical reminder of the transformation which has taken place. The frequency with which genital mutilation occurs in these settings, of course, plays very heavily upon the imprint vulnerability occuring at puberty. Other activities which may occur in conjunction with this, or separately included ritualized homosexuality as is thought to have been the case in ancient Crete.

The initiation of the adolescent into manhood included, among others, a mock abduction of the youth by an adult, as well as a pretend chase of that person by the boy’s family. Nevertheless, his choice and the kidnap was an honour for the boy. Then the man and the adolescent retired to the countryside for two months and the initiation included hunting, political and sexual education.

Some tribes in Melanesia and Australia practice(d) ritual sodomy as well. It is thought to have a magical effect on the boy’s development:

Semen is essential for boys growth - the rituals are therefore obligatory. Semen is not viewed as being naturally developed in boys, but it has to be planted in them. It is essential, therefore, in their eyes that boys participate in the ritual. Growth of boy during puberty is viewed as proof of the ritual. All the groups practice rituals in secret away from women and children - Shamings, beatings and death can result from a boy telling of the rituals

Interestingly in these cultures, homosexuality is not really practiced outside these ritualized outlets for it. To the astute observer, this whole thing begins to sound extremely similar to the so-called hazing rituals which occur in fraternities, sports teams and even prisons. An article about hazing has a good (if graphic) quote which relates to the above:

In a well-publicized case on Long Island in New York, a junior and a senior football player sodomized several jayvee players at a football camp with broomsticks, pine cones, and golf balls. The coaches were in a different cabin and reported that they were unaware of these events. The reason the acts were discovered was that one boy experienced ongoing intense pain as well as rectal bleeding that soiled his sheets and underwear. He asked his mother to take him to the doctor. When the latter asked what had caused these injuries, initially the boy was hesitant to respond but finally revealed what had occurred. Obviously many acts of hazing are not reported because of embarrassment and/or fear of retribution (one learns that “tattling” is strictly forbidden).

The Sports Illustrated article noted hazing “is firmly entrenched in an American sports culture that values tradition, team bonding, leadership hierarchies and assertiveness.”

This is an extremely accurate description of the value systems of men’s groups in primitive societies, favoring “tradition, team bonding, leadership hierarchies and assertiveness“. The whole point of an initiation ritual is to imprint someone with the values of the new group which they are joining. They “put away childish things.” They become a part of the group first and foremost, submitting themselves and their desires to the authority and tradition of the group.

This helps us understand very easily why secret societies are always said to have bizarre arcane rituals. Skull & Bones, the Yale fraternity that George W. Bush and John Kerry both belonged to is said to have a kinky little ritual of it’s own:

To preserve the purity of the Skull and Bones blood, one of the most crucial aspects involved in initiation is the infamous masturbation session while lying naked in coffin and spilling deepest, darkest, personal sexual fantasies and sexual history. […] Any signals of resistance is a sign the initiate is unwilling to surrender himself for the benefit of the Order […]. “Ritualistic psychological conditioning” aligns with the stunt in the casket. Autobiographies are documented in great detail, expanding personal files, accumulated research on each initiate, prior to “Tap Night.” The story telling sessions would petrify a psychiatrist, psychologist, and psycho-therapist, but for the members, “sharing time” is “bonding time.” Intricate notes compiled as additions “for the record,” to ensure a collection of black mail material, if any leakage, the file supplies an immediate plug.

[Jeff also has an interesting article about ritual homosexuality in occult practices.]

In Our Midst

Conservative dipshit Rush Limbaugh has even made statements comparing the Abu Ghraib prison abuse to fraternity pranks, hazing, and even Skull and Bones initiation. He was of course trying to say all these things were “fun” and a “way to blow off steam”. But the similarity between all these is certainly striking, and people who found themselves in any of these situations would invariably suffer a dramatic psychological transformation as a result of it. Their outlook on life, themselves and their allegiances become inevitably changed through intense rites of passage.

Now that we’ve looked around a bit though, it’s starting to seem like maybe we’re not wholly without rites of passage as a culture. Maybe they still exist, but rather than being universally applied to all, they are generally performed on those who enter into a particular subculture or tightly-knit social group. They certainly don’t need to be as harsh or graphic as what we’ve described here, but it is necessary that they deliver a sufficient psychological “shock to the system” as to cause the utter transformation of an individual in preparation for a new life role.

Going back to Joseph Campbell, we also find that when such rites of passage are lacking in outward life, they may spontaneously arise within the dreamworld of those who require them:

Most amazing is the fact that a great number of the ritual trials and images correspond to those that appear automatically in dream the moment the psychoanalyzed patient begins to abandon his infantile fixations and to progress into the future. […] The ageless initiation symbolism is produced spontaneously by the patient himself at the moment of the release. Apparently there is something in these initiatory images so necessary to the psyche that if they are not supplied from without, through myth and ritual, they will have to be announced again, through dream, from within - lest our energies should remain locked in a banal, long-outmoded toy-room, at the bottom of the sea.

Aliens & Other Freaky Shit

Alright. I know you’ve been very patiently waiting for me to connect this up to aliens and other weird shit, so here goes.

[If you’re still getting your feet wet with all this, I might recommend also reading my article: Weird Entities & Culture-Bound Syndromes]

Okay, so the possibility I’d like to explore here has to do with UFO encounters and Ritual Abuse as being examples of what Campbell is talking about above: spontaneous rites of passage arising in the dream world. I know some people will chafe at trying to “explain away” such things in these terms. But I’m offering it instead as a possibility to expand our study of this, rather than limit it to one exclusive explanation for all cases.

This article has some interesting stuff about traditional shamanic initiations and UFO encounters and also Near-Death Experiences. It’s a touch too New Agey for me, but has some interesting stuff in it nonetheless. Consider this passage, especially in light of what we’ve already talked about:

In UFO abductions, the individual is “taken” […] asleep, in a state of helpless paralysis, or otherwise somehow entranced. […]. The next stage of the journey is “the examination” in which the individual, already usually highly uneasy if not frightened to the core, is forced to endure a variety of intrusive procedures — apparently the UFO equivalent of the initiatory ordeal or dismemberment ceremony. It’s noteworthy, by the way, how often the abductee will say that this examination took place in a round or curved chamber. We know of course that a round hut or circular enclosure of some kind is a staple in traditional initiations, as Kannenberg (1986), herself a UFO abductee, has pointed out.

Doesn’t that seem creepily similar to what we’ve been talking about? In traditional culture, the adolescent male will be ritually kidnapped, and his kidnappers may even be dressed in costumes as monsters or spirits. They then take him to a secret sacred location, and perform bizarre horrible physical procedures on him. Just think of the classic “anal probing” that has come to be so frequently associated with UFO abductions. Or you could draw a parallel between the primitive notion that boys must be inseminated with the UFO practice of having something implanted inside of you: a chip or tracking device, which ensures your continuing mystical connection to the event and the kidnappers. The article continues, stating that:

the UFO abductee may learn that his experience, though it has conferred upon him certain new skills, insights, and understandings, has also served to isolate him somewhat from his community. Like the NDEr [Near Death Experiencer], he, too, has had his passport stamped with an extramundane imprint and returns from his strange sojourn with divided and complicated allegiances to that world. As a result, he may find that he is inwardly conflicted and frequently estranged from his family and fellows, something of an alien himself.

In a traditional setting, after the initial freaky physical procedures, the initiate is then told the secrets of the tribe. Of course, in that case, when he rejoins the world, he is a proud member of it. With the UFO abductee, as stated above, this is not the case. The same thing, I’ll wager, is at play in some ritual abuse cases. Who knows if they are “Real” or not, but the fact remains that they are psychologically extremely important events, which change peoples’ lives drastically.

The UFO abductee and the Ritual Abuse victim has undergone an otherworldly initiation procedure, but no outward social structure exists to support him symbolically. The mythologically lacking culture-at-large ends up just calling him “crazy” and dismissing his experience out of hand. These experiences are “impossible” within the symbol system our culture accepts as real, and as a result people who have such experiences are systematically rejected.

But just like in Jurassic Park, here too “Life finds a way.” Thanks to the internet, to books, and movies and support groups and weird conventions, we’re able to see people bonding who have shared non-ordinary spontaneous initiation events (UFO’s, Ritual Abuse, Near Death, etc). While the culture-at-large sees such things as meaningless nonsense, to the initiated, it’s a whole different ballgame. Robert Anton Wilson excellently explains this elsewhere in Prometheus Rising.

At this point a certain amount of arbitrary nonsense is of great value. That is, the new reality-tunnel or symbol-system should contain pitfalls (gross violations of previous reality tunnels and common sense) […] The neurological and sociological function of such “nonsense” (which makes the Rationalist gasp in shock) is to sharply segregate those within the new reality-tunnel from those outside. This makes for group solidarity, group-reinforcement, and a strong sense of alienation and discomfort when on rare occasions it is necessary to talk at all with those outside the brainwasher’s semantic system.

Whether or not people who have UFO and other weird experiences are necessarily “more grown-up” than those of us who toil through ordinary reality is open to debate. What seems obvious at this point though is that there are a great many ways for a person’s life to be radically altered. It may come from outside by being part of a culture or other group - or lacking that it may spontaneously jump out of your weird dream life. The trick though, I think, is not to go looking for space aliens to cut off your penis and make you into an adult. The trick is to understand the patterns that underlie all these varying weird phenomena, and then try to apply them to your own life. It may be a little less exciting, but with proper preparation, you can establish your own rites of passage to help guide you and others through your life, and finally “put away childish things.” Although, if you did, maybe you wouldn’t be able to read about aliens and other weird bullshit any more…

[For a further investigation of these themes, check out my article Trauma-Based Mind Control]