The phrase “rite de passage” was first used by the anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep in 1909 to describe any ritual which marks or makes a change in a person, a community, in nature or in any other aspect of human experience. Baby namings, weddings, funerals, initiations, seasonal rituals and general elections can all accurately be described as rites of passage.
Rituals are not just to do with religion, but are a fundamental aspect of human social and personal life the world over. Ritual may be religious, political or secular; for an individual, a family or a community of any kind. Ritual can be described quite simply as a symbolic action or series of actions. Most magic, then, can be said to be a ritual. And, in a sense, every rite of passage is an act of magic – they are rituals which bring about change, whether on the physical or the psychological plane – or most often, both. Weddings, initiations and elections all create a change in and of themselves. Yet even rites of passage which only mark, rather than bring about, a change – such as baby namings, funerals and seasonal rituals –ideally effect a change in awareness or consciousness for the participants.
In any rite of passage, some kind of authority is invoked to empower the ritual – to make the change “stick”. That authority may be that of the individuals involved, or it may be that of the community, of the state, or of the divine. For those who are members of a religion, or are part of a community of faith, the authority of the divine and of the community still holds the greatest import; for an increasing number of people, their own authority may be enough. But today in British society as a whole, despite (or perhaps because of) the established legal position of the Church of England, and encouraged by the atomisation of society accelerated by industrial capitalism, communities have by and large ceded their authority to the state and its bureaucracies. In particular, the state has firm control over those three points of life celebrated with ritual in almost all human cultures: birth, marriage and death. In Britain, all three must, by law, be registered with the state. This hold is perhaps increasing – as of this year, 2001, civil registrars in England and Wales offer civil baby naming ceremonies, as well as weddings.
But such civil ceremonies are rarely satisfying, rarely meaningful. The appeal to the authority of the state does not provide a personally meaningful experience (except, perhaps, for true fascists, for whom the state is their higher power). Many people speak of their registry office weddings as empty occasions, in which they felt they were part of a production line. The alienation inherent in state centralisation is experienced in a very personal way. The bypassing of community has created a quasi-parental relationship between the individual and the state, but the state is not concerned with meaning, but with law – not with empowerment, but with maintaining control.
The relationship between the Church of England and the British state is also relevant here. Church of England rites of passage have become symbolic in some social circles of inclusion and acceptance in the hierarchy on which state and Church are based. Although for many, Church of England rituals are indeed profoundly meaningful, part of a deeply held faith, for others such rituals are entered into not on the basis of the meaning inherent in the ritual itself but of the place in society it implies. A Church of England white wedding with “the full works” demonstrates an actual (or, more often, a desired) social status.
But it is not just in relation to Church and state that rites of passage are entwined in politics and power. In our current, alienated, atomised society, we tend to have an idealised view of pre-colonial, pre-Christian, pre-state cultures. Small communities may indeed offer an opportunity for collective living and decision-making, when entered into with that intent. However, small communities do not naturally abide by communitarian ideals, and what “common” values do exist are often brutally enforced on the lives and bodies of those who do not – or may at some point cease to – agree with or abide by them. This enforcement is often carried out by the very means of rites of passage themselves. We only have to think of East African initiations into womanhood which involve varying degrees of genital mutilation, or any number of other violent customs imposed on both young and adult women and men the world over.
All rites of passage shape categories of person which are “allowed” to exist in a community, a society, a culture, either challenging or reinforcing the status quo. They also shape the ways these categories are arranged, ordered and related to one another, thus shaping the lives of the community or society as a whole, as well as the lives of the particular people going through the ritual. Rites of passage can reinforce the continuity of a society, or initiate new ways of relating; support old power structures, or herald new paradigms.
I would like to return here to the concept of rites of passage as magical acts. As with all magical acts, clarity of intent and purpose are vital to the outcome of rites of passage. This clarity is central to ensuring that the change which occurs is indeed the one which was desired. I have, for example, heard of many people who got married without much idea of what marriage meant to them, only to find that the fully-formed archetype of “MARRIAGE” completely took over their lives after the wedding, in a way they would not have previously have believed, and which certainly wasn’t what they had intended for their relationship. Yet other couples, who have been very clear about what marriage meant for them and the kind of relationship they wanted, and who have made these the central focus of their wedding ceremony, have found their married life to unfold according to their hopes and desires.
I believe this principle applies to all rites of passage. Exactly what changes are we trying to effect in our rituals? What values are we embodying? What kinds of people, what kinds of relationships, what kinds of community are we creating? When people, as individuals, couples, families or communities, choose to celebrate the turning points of their personal and collective lives in personally meaningful ways, such rites of passage offer the opportunity to make magic, creating personal and collective meaning, reflecting and reinforcing the values, relationships and the shape of community we want – ultimately the shape of the human world, and our relationship with the worlds of animal, plant, earth and spirit. What more important magic can there be!