The Power of Rituals

(The Book of Exodus: Foreskin on the Foot)

On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’ So he let him alone. It was then she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.’

I have no idea why God wanted to kill Moses (or was it his son?) after he had just commissioned him to face Pharoah and free the Israelites. And I have no idea why Zipporah, Moses’s wife, decided to respond to this threat by cutting off her son’s foreskin and rubbing Moses’s feet with it! (I imagine Freudians would have a few things to say on the matter.) Who knows! But it worked. Rituals are powerful.

My son recently turned eighteen; passing through the threshold that separates a boy from a man, but without an established communal rite of passage to mark such a momentous occasion. We used to initiate our children into adulthood, and some of these ceremonies still happen in western civilisations, but usually in a fairly traditionalist way, around the age of puberty, when our biology dictates that we are ready for parenthood. Of course, now, we don’t believe that the physical capability to fertilise eggs or have our eggs be fertilised, is the time to declare someone an adult. What is adulthood anyway? Is it just some legal freedoms, burdens, and responsibilities? Is it about alcohol and money?

I certainly wasn’t intentionally welcomed into adulthood. And in those more liberal days, you could get served in pubs and clubs by the age of fifteen with no real bother. I suppose some folk had big parties thrown for them with speeches, symbolic gifts, and such. I didn’t. And I know my son doesn’t care at all for drinking. But I wanted to do something significant. And I wanted it to say something about adulthood. I needed a ritual.

So, I made one up – remembering that everything was made up at one point in time. Even the most ancient of traditions were new-born rituals at some stage in our evolution, like circumcision, for instance. I also remembered what Christ taught us, when he, and his disciples, were breaking the rules of the ritualistic day of rest, the holy Sabbath:

‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.’

Rituals were made to serve us - not enslave us in dogma, legalism, and exclusivism. Which is why they need to evolve, adapt, and change with our rapidly evolving world. Otherwise, as Christ implies, who is serving who? At best religious rituals are services. Sadly, they are often duties and deadlines - confused with the spiritual substance they are meant to lead us towards. But if they don’t work, break them. Leave them. Forget about them.

‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.’

Now then, ancient boy-to-man rites of passage invariably involved some form of suffering - often a surprise abduction followed by a near-death experience. Indeed, the full-submersion baptism is a watered-down (quite literally) version of a ritualistic drowning, in which the initiate was held under the water until a trippy near-death experience was induced. And of course, occasionally the man holding the initiate under (usually an uncle) would mess-up his timings based on the quantity of bubbles reaching the surface, and would accidently kill the young chap. I think we can all agree that Baptisms would be far more engaging with these kinds of stakes! Anyway, there are many levels to the importance of inflicting some sort of near-death experience on the initiate. We all clearly need a good dose of mortality to keep us grounded, humble, and soulful. But also, we need to find meaning, purpose, and a relationship with suffering to live an adult life of service, work, wisdom, and love.

So, I considered the abduction and near-death-experience thing – but concluded that my son would suffer far more meaningfully with what I ended up concocting: a ceremonial giving of symbolic gifts in front of family and friends during a party at which we had promised no speeches. Now, technically this was not a speech – it was much worse – it was a ritual wounding of embarrassment and cringe, of which only a parent can inflict. He said he would have preferred the ritual drowning.

Firstly, I unveiled The Philosopher's Stone (bought from one of my son’s favourite Harry Potter stores ‘The Shop That Shall Not Be Named’). Partly because he loves the Harry Potter books – it's probably his equivalent of sacred scripture, but also because I thought it was an excellent alchemical symbol for the goal of adulthood: wholeness not goodness. Integration not separation. It’s about making beauty, meaning, and magic out of those dark, oily, and base materials of life of which we had no control – including the psychological wounds inflicted by our parents! It’s about turning our lead into inner gold. The goal is soul.

Secondly, I gave him my signet ring. This was a ring I had had made several years ago when I decided to try and initiate myself into some sort of bespoke rite of passage - on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, in the middle of the night, under a full moon – during which I tripped and fell and cut my hand on the dark volcanic rocks. It seems that some form of wounding is integral and inevitable! Anyway, I wanted to give my son my signet ring as a symbol of permission. And, of course, at one time the signet ring has a seal of literal authority, and was even used to stamp and approve financial transactions. I spoke about how he had permission to go on his journey – that he wasn’t here to please me, or his mother, or his grandparents, friends, or anyone. He had permission to go wherever he wanted, with whomever he wanted, and do whatever he wanted.

Thirdly, I gave him a charm made from black Whitby Jet and silver, fashioned in the iconic shape of the cross-keys of York Minster. We used to go fossil hunting at Robin Hood’s Bay when he was little – and it is still very much a favourite place of ours to go for a walk. I reminded him that Jet was essentially fossilised trees from the Jurassic period. And I gave it to him as a symbol of his shadow. I explained that the shadow is the key to unlocking the secrets to achieve The Philosopher's Stone. I said that adulthood was a time to face the parts of himself that he may have repressed, denied and rejected as a result of his culture, family, and tribe. But these dark, primitive, dead-seeming elements are the key to becoming whole. And like the Jet, we can turn this deadwood into a precious gem.

Fourthly, I gave him two framed photographs: one of Prince Harry, and the other of Catherine, Princess of Wales (partly because I am a Monarchist, and have on occasion tried to indoctrinate my children in this profoundly absurd and wise form of governance - pragmatically, psychologically, spiritually, and culturally - happy to write about this at some stage – feel free to cancel your free subscription at any time! My wife is a fervent republican, and we still love each other. She’ll even watch a Royal Wedding or a Royal Funeral with me. True love). Anyway, these were to symbolise the contradictions, paradoxes, and conflicts we must somehow resolve and hold in order to achieve the wholeness of The Philosopher's Stone: the traitor and the saint, the assertive and the submissive, the head and the heart, the body and the soul, the extrovert and the introvert, the active and the passive, and so on and so forth. It’s not Harry & Meghan vs Will & Kate - it’s not whose side are you on!! It’s not either/or. It is both/and. We must learn to harness our inner Prince Harry and dare to leave the tribe to honour our soul’s desire, purpose, and calling (and experience the rejection, persecution, and abandonment involved in such quests). And yet, there are times to honour our Catherine, Princess of Wales – and sacrifice desire, hold it together, play the game, surrender our story, and forgo our freedoms, for the sake of our role, country, and The Firm. At the heart of The Philosopher's Stone is a paradox.

Finally, I gave him a copy of ‘Psychology and Alchemy’ by Carl Jung because it is traditional in rites of passage for the initiate to be handed down the wisdom of his culture – and I think Alchemy is a wonderfully rich world for the soul to explore its journey to wholeness - bringing together the material and the spiritual, the theological and the psychological, the mystical and the scientific, in one large pot of contradiction. And of course, The Philosopher's Stone is the goal of alchemy.

And so, it was appropriately mortifying for my son, and for a few other folk I suspect.

But interestingly, a week or so later, my son decided to leave his prestigious ballet school in London to study A Levels. My wife believes that this ritual played a part in stirring his realisation and subsequent decision - and she is an incredibly, wise, insightful and grounded being (despite being a republican).

My son had been doing ballet since he was very young and was very good. He turned down a place at The School of American Ballet in New York and had just completed his first year at English National Ballet School in London. His eighteenth party was in London at the beginning of his second year. He phoned us a week after The Philosopher’s Stone Ritual to tell us that he really didn’t want to be a ballet dancer and wanted to study A Levels. He said he had only just allowed himself to ask the question of his future in ballet – and expressed that the main barrier to pulling out of his prestigious school was the act of telling everyone.

It was an incredibly courageous move, and not one that many would make – either because they had invested so much time and effort already, or because they were too greatly rewarded by their tribe for the status such things can afford. It was also difficult because he really liked his fellow dancers. But he did it. He took the road less travelled, and a week after the phone call, we returned to London to throw him a leaving party with his ballet friends.

Now, I have no idea whether the ritual played its part or not. Perhaps it did. It certainly makes more sense than rubbing a foreskin on a foot to fight off the powers that be. But then again, I haven’t actually tried that old trick - perhaps for my daughter’s eighteenth! Oh no, hang on, that’s not going to work.... I’ll think of something.

But either way, I think the power of rituals lies in their physicality – we are creaturely creatures. We cannot separate the material from the spiritual. We need rituals – which matter with matter. We need things to eat, drink, hold, breathe, and see. We need breads, wines, stones, salts, incense, stretches, steps, beats, drones, dances, shouts, chants, laughs, hums, pictures, sculptures, poems, waters, fires, ice, and earth. As the Franciscan Priest, Richard Rohr, once said (possibly quoting someone else):

We don't think our way into new ways of living

We live our way into new ways of thinking

Amen