Change and initiation: magic for this purpose

Magic of change and initiation aims at transforming the practitioner or the world. It covers rites of passage, shamanic initiation, the initiations of Vodou and Santeria, the alchemy of Europe, the Middle East and China, and the ceremonial work of orders such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It asks how a person becomes a priest, a healer or a magician, and what a change of state is believed to involve.

Passage and rebirth

Many initiations follow a pattern: leave the ordinary, endure a trial, receive new knowledge, return changed. Shamanic callings are often described as an illness or visions followed by training. In Vodou and Santeria, initiates are shut away, dressed in white, and given new status in a house. Many societies have coming-of-age rites for boys and girls, some of which, such as female genital cutting, cause real harm and are opposed by health and rights bodies.

Alchemy and the self

Alchemy in Egypt, the Islamic world, India, China and Europe sought to transform substances, to prolong life, or to refine the soul. Chinese neidan turned the body into the furnace, and European writers such as Paracelsus linked metals and medicine. Carl Jung read alchemy as a map of inner change. Many alchemical remedies were poisonous, and mercury and arsenic killed seekers. The same ideas run through monastic life, where a new name, a new robe and a vow of poverty or obedience mark the change from one person to another.

Orders and secrets

In Europe, orders such as the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, and later groups built graded systems of initiation, drawing on Kabbalah and Hermeticism. Modern Wicca has its own degrees. Such groups depend on secrecy and hierarchy, and some have been accused of exploitation or abuse by leaders who held power over members. In many Indigenous and African traditions, initiation knowledge is closed to outsiders. The end of alchemy came from the rise of chemistry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though a few writers kept the language of inner change.

What scholars see

Anthropologists, following Victor Turner, call the threshold state liminal, a time in which people are between roles. Psychologists note that shared ordeals bind groups together. Practitioners speak of becoming someone who can carry a responsibility, and the community sees them differently afterwards, which may be the main change. Initiations may also be refused or repeated, and teachers say a rite is only the start of what a person has to do.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Orunmila: unknown Yoruba artist, CC0, source

Astral projection: Hereward Carrington, Sylvan Muldoon., Public domain, source

Sunda Wiwitan: Greenland4, Public domain, source

Chakra: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Tantra: William Clark, Public domain, source

Vamachara: painting by an Indian artist. Date [between 1800 and 1899?], Public domain, source

Baphomet: Eliphas Levi, Public domain, source

Shiva: Indianhilbilly, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Kali: Raja Ravi Varma, Public domain, source

Aghori: Retratistadelsur, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Brahma Kumaris: Tamasin Ramsey, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Fire (classical element): Correogsk, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Astral body: Rad el Baluvar, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Kalachakra: Nabin K. Sapkota, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Change and initiation