The Doorway to Adulthood: Sacred Initiation in Our Twenty-first Century World
by the Sacred Fire editorial team
In our modern cultures that seem to worship eternal youth—that state of being that gives us permission to be in constant pursuit of our individual pleasure and enjoyment—what will it take to help us grow up?
In today’s world, becoming an adult might seem to be about hitting a well-recognized milestone like receiving a driver’s license, voting for the first time, or reaching legal age for drinking alcohol. For others, the moment of stepping into the workforce, becoming a parent, or making a major investment in home or career might seem the significant step. However, for traditional cultures (and that includes most of the villages of our great-great- or great-great-great-grandparents), becoming an adult was a sacred matter. Initiation into adulthood was a universal human practice, common to most societies, and it is still practiced by intact traditional cultures to this day.
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