Ritual

“Initiation accompanies a psychological response to each new stage in life. We know by now that psychosomatic health depends on living each stage of life psychically. To fail to keep pace can mean illness or psychic stagnation.”

Rafael Lopez-Pedraza

Rituals played a major role in the lives of the ancient Greeks. The Greeks recognized that engaging with ritual facilitates psychological development. Rituals help people to move to the next psychological stage of their lives. Often rituals took the initiates through a metaphorical death and rebirth, which mirrors the process of psychological death and rebirth which is critical to conscious development. In order to have a richer, deeper perspective about ourselves and the world, we often have to let outdated views die. We also may have to let go of parts of our identity or our egos that don’t serve us anymore. It's easy to get stuck in old images of who we were in the past and not recognize who we are today. We may keep trying to hold onto our past at the expense of our future.

Our culture has lost many of the initiations that help people to move to new stages of life- although there are still a few such as graduation. We can create our own rituals to honor endings and welcome in new beginnings such as an empty nest, or taking on a new job, or retirement or divorce. They help our psychic life to remain present to where we are today.

The role of ritual in psychological transformation is not just true for individuals, but also for groups such as communities and organizations, who also need to redefine who they are and what they value. This often requires a conscious sacrifice of group identity.

The image of the Goddess Athena emerging from a lotus is from the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece, led by the goddesses Persephone and Demeter. Although little is known about the mysteries as their secrets were closely guarded, it is understood that the initiates went through a metaphorical death and rebirth in order to achieve psychological growth.