rites of passage

Are there any grown people anymore? Our modern cultures have rid themselves of most all rites of passage. This is not a good thing. Such rites give individuals a sense of who they are and who they are in relation to others. Think about wolves. Pups are, for rather obvious reasons, are not allowed to go on hunts with the rest of the pack until they are the proper age. At that time, the pup goes to the hunt and becomes a fully fledged member of the pack. Now look at the American culture. When is a boy supposed to be a man or a girl a woman? Most people never have the experience of becoming an adult, and therefore we suffer for it. Many meander in an endless uncertainty and self doubt. (There are some exceptions.) Even the military has rites of passage. After a grueling boot camp recruits become army soldiers or marines in a ceremony in their honor. Look at the Native American vision quests. A person went off into the wilds with nothing to find the purpose for their lives and the answers to their questions. Not to mention a guiding force. Thing is, one was not supposed to return until you had your vision. It could be a couple days. It could be months. The Massai people of Africa send their young people, desiring to be warriors, out and away form the village for an entire year to survive on their own. These rites test ones will, internal strength, character, psychical endurance, and intelligence, and they are necessary for a person. Even Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days fasting and praying. He confronted the devil with his temptations and won before he began his three year ministry. The Buddha had his time as well when he was sheltered from the storm by the cobra. In short, we should not hope to make a difference if we dare not test ourselves because we cannot succeed if we are never tested, and if we know we are safe and secure from failure, we are not truly tested.

in response to a question

Meditation relates to art the same way that violence, depression, joy, sex, fear, and love relate to art. People’s art is always a reflection of something in them. Early people were awed by the power of great beasts and so depicted them. They also portrayed pregnant women a thing which ensured the continuance of their species and represented the wonder of the creation of life, something people have always been fascinated by. (It was not early pornography as one of my old roommates believed. At least I hope it was not just about large breasts or my opinion of our species may drop a bit) They portrayed creatures that died so that they could live, and kept charms and relics to try to obtain the power of the animal. They were enraptured by the things that allowed survival in a very brutal and difficult world. Calm meditations have also been an important part in the life of all peoples, and it will be reflected in their art or in the process of making the art. No where is this more evident than in the older East Asian ink paintings. Many of their works were meditations both in the creation process and in the subject matter. Plum and cherry blossoms, sedate old grove forests, mountains with waterfalls. tigers and cranes. Grace and power. Beauty and death. Rebirth and violence. Stillness at the edge of movement. And, the kami, the soul and God. If not these things, what do we ponder? With the exception of some commissioned works (perhaps not even there) artists find a way to represent what is important in their lives one way of another. Some have shown the horrors of war while others created images that lend to a calm meditative state to be observed at anytime, and still others create images out of their unconscious brought to light by dreams or deep meditative states, and to many other things to list.

pseudo spirit

Art and the realm of the spirit have always been connected. Many art objects have operated as spiritual focus points and were made too be such. Such art objects would be used in religious rites and ceremonies, or for the purposes of healing, communing with other spirits, foretelling the future, acting as wards to keep evil spirits at bay, and to attain the power of other spirits among other uses. Several of the tribes and cultures of the American southwest made incredibly elaborate sand paintings to heal the ill. These works took tremendous amounts of time and energy only to be wiped away for the sake of said ailed person. The gothic gargoyles and many totems (not really meaning pacific northwest) were meant to drive off demonic beings and warn spiritually dangerous places.
People all around the world made necklaces of things like bear or lion claws not only to show off their individual courage in taking the animals but also to gain some of their power as well. The best example for this I can think of is the Norse berserker warriors. (where we get the term going berserk) These men would put on the skin of a wolf or bear and become possessed by the animal’s spirit for fighting in war. One can observe the same phenomenon in several Native American cultures, especially among some of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. For certain rites and rituals the craftsmen would construct very creative masks, very stylized and formalized, of the heads of different animals of importance like the bear. Impressively some of these masks could be opened up by the dancer wearing the mask in order to show another elaborately carved, often human, face. Once the dancer or shaman was fully adorned the person would either symbolically play the part of the animal or spirit and the performance is like a prayer, or the dancer actually (tribe dependant) become said creature or become an avatar for the spirit of the animal.
In rites such as these, we see some of the earliest and most earnest forms of performance art. Even the simple dream-catcher is a charm meant to have an impact on our spiritual affairs. By catching some dreams and letting others go by into our minds they affect us. Drums used for ceremony would be decorated and demon masks carved out of wood served ritual roles in West Africa (where I grew up) a place where little if any piece of art was made without some blessing or curse bestowed upon it. This is the reason why I become discouraged with many people crafting things to look like objects made by shamans because they look cool while disregarding or not believing in the spiritual consequences of such pieces. Artworks such as those mentioned should not be approached frivolously their spiritual power is inseparable from their beauty. At the end of the day it reminds me of the way people treat bible stories.