We Need Our Rites of Passage

Some musings and a meditation video for you

Over in the Ariadne’s Tribe Facebook group, we recently had a conversation about rites of passage. It began with one of our board members, Dana Corby, suggesting that the coming-of-age rites in Ariadne’s Thread could be used for transitioning as well as for adolescents moving toward adulthood.

What a great idea! The rituals - for male, female, and nonbinary people - are essentially rites of rebirth. So it would be appropriate to use them at any age. And the more rituals we have to acknowledge and support the changes that trans people go through, the better.

Then several other group members mentioned the need for rites of passage for the other kinds of changes we go through in life, as children and adults - changes that don’t fit under the umbrella of the Official Big Ones like birth, marriage, and so on.

What might constitute a “doorway” in life that needs a rite of passage? How about the ending of any kind of relationship - romantic, friend, work/career - or any change you feel the need to acknowledge in some kind of formal way, like moving to a new city.

The various stages in adulthood could do with rites of passage, if you ask me: moving into each new decade, reaching menopause, even having surgery or surviving a serious illness. We move through so many doorways in life; taking the time to witness how those segues change us is helpful, meaningful, healing.

So I dug out one of the meditations I wrote for the Minoan spirituality online course I taught several years back. If I teach an online course again, it will be with different material, so I thought I’d share this one with you all.

It’s a fairly long meditation, at 14 minutes, so allow plenty of time. I made a pretty video to go with it, because YouTube LOL - but really, you should listen with your eyes closed so your mind can create the perfect images just for you instead of the ones I selected.

So here you go. One general-purpose Minoan-themed rite of passage meditation. May it bring you peace!