The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

So yeah, I was wondering - you're starting your own religion (be it reconstructionist, original, or imported from somewhere else); you may believe in the deities, principles, etc., but you still need initiation. Now, who can initiate you if there is no officialized clergy? Can you initiate yourself? How appropriate would it be? If you're not initiated, but start initiating others so they could initiate you, how appropriate would THAT be?

There's two different things going on here, and you're conflating them.

There are initiatory experiences, in which something happens, and you gain insight or understanding or depth of understanding or something like that (which, in a religious context, is often about something to do with deity.)

But initiation in a group context is about entry into the group, normally through shared experiences with other people in the group that give you shared things to work with. That's a human thing, not a deity thing.

Normally, what happens with initiatory *traditions*, therefore, is something like this:

1) First Person has an experience or set of experiences that they find moving, meaningful, important, illuminating, etc.

2) First Person figures out ways to share these experiences with others (this may require some trial and error testing, and a lot of poking at things. It's not like people reliably wake up and go "I know exactly how to transfer this to other people!" one morning.)

3) New Person wants to have similar experiences / insights / understandings / learn things that First Person is doing. First Person sets up situations that will give the same or similar experiences, or at least stand a decent chance of doing so. Often in the initial stages, First Person and New Person work closely together for a bit, and try things out, and it's usually pretty obvious when things click into place and they're connecting on a different level than previously.

Usually this method of transmission gets a bit better as it's further refined, but there are a lot of things where you sort of go "Okay, we know this group of things has this effect, but we're not exactly sure which bits do what, so we can't leave any out in case something goes wrong and we end up missing something important."

(And, in witchcraft trads, at least, I think there's a certain aspect of different parts of the initiation doing similar things, but registering or effecting people differently, and you need the sum total to add up to enough to make the initiation work, but some people get a lot out of piece A of the initiation, and some people get a much smaller amount, but get a lot more out of piece B. So if you change either Piece A or Piece B, the thing may not work as well for some number of possible initiates, but still work for some.)

In some cases, there are also some explicit other parts - for example, my witchcraft initiations included a direct explicit 'we are joining you to the current of this tradition' part which wasn't about me having experiences or new understandings directly, but about my initiators giving me access to that current (like you might give a friend a key to your house: very deliberate act.)

Also, bear in mind that these days, there are a number of other initiatory groups around, and *new* initiatory groups tend to start more easily when at least one of the people starting a new one has experience in other initiatory groups, because there's a whole lot of 'how do we express key concepts and experiences' stuff that's transferrable even if the specifics are different. Groups started by people without that experience can work, but they have a higher risk of crashing and burning in some problematic ways.

The role of the deities? My experience is that the deities don't precisely care about the specifics of the initiatory rituals (except for the parts that are directly about them) so much as they care about whether those initiatory rituals lead to the deities involved getting the service and worship they're interested in. So they care about, say, prayers and invocations and such to them, but somewhat less about the framework of the ritual (if there isn't a known one for them) or how the humans decide to prepare for initiation, or cosmetic details.

(But at the same time, cosmetic details like decorations or clothing or other choices can matter a lot in the human experience of the event...)

So yeah, I was wondering - you're starting your own religion (be it reconstructionist, original, or imported from somewhere else); you may believe in the deities, principles, etc., but you still need initiation.

 
Most religions are not mystery religions requiring initiation.

To become a priest on the other hand would definitely require some kind of initiation, as a priest actually needs specific skills to do their job.

Nope. Not everywhere at least.

Greek and Roman priests were appointed by their city council for a year or a slightly longer term of office, and, when the term of office ended, someone else was appointed. It was just a minor step in career, leading to more influential duties, like being an army officer or a governor of a province. Greek and Romans had a very political and non-surpernatural view on priesthood: It was basically like becoming an MP. Mystery religions was the exception: In them, priesthood was lifelong and initiation was a prerequisite.

That was also the reason, why the Greek held Egyptian religion in awe, when they became aware of it. In Egypt, priesthood was life-long, often went in the family, and there was at least some sort of appointment ceremony (I don't know the details), so the Greek - erroneously - interpreted this to mean that all Egyptian religion was a mystery religion. The funny thing is, that, by time, the worship of Isis and Osiris/Serapis outside Egypt changed into the very thing it had been supposed to be.

Well I assume they would choose people who could do the job rather random dudes.

But I was really thinking of the more permanent priest role than the more temporary 'Roman style'. I just think that this type of priest is more familiar today.

They weren't entirely random: They generally belonged to the upper crust of society, and were expected to soon be promoted to a higher step in their career. And I was really thinking of priests in the Roman provinces of Dacia and Thrace, since that seem to be the area of interest for the threadstarter. Until I receive reliable information, that religion in Thrace was organized 'Egyptian style', I will assume that it was organized 'Graeco-Roman style'.

They weren't entirely random: They generally belonged to the upper crust of society, and were expected to soon be promoted to a higher step in their career. And I was really thinking of priests in the Roman provinces of Dacia and Thrace, since that seem to be the area of interest for the threadstarter. Until I receive reliable information, that religion in Thrace was organized 'Egyptian style', I will assume that it was organized 'Graeco-Roman style'.

 
While there's not much known about the Thraco-Dacian religion, researchers generally point to a class-type society, where there were two classes - peasants and nobles. The nobility were alowed to become priests (and to wear short hair, though I'm not sure if this is important in this case), but there seems to be a debate on whether or not all of the nobility were priests. Personally, I don't think they were because the priests are described more as monks, and that'd be impractical, since nobles would have to refuse the life of luxury, and most importantly - procreation. On the other hand, such a possibility does exist because the priests had three casts of their own: the Kapnobatai (literally "those that walk the clouds/ though smoke" - interpreted as actual monks, or highest-ranking priests serving at mountain-top temples); the Ktistai (the founders of people - interpreted as a cast of healers), and the Polistai (founders of cities - interpreted as a cast of teachers). Nothing is mentioned of them becoming priests temporarily to attain a higher position in society (though of course, it may just not be known as yet).

I'd actually start a separate thread deicated to what I know of the Thraco-Dacian religious system, but I don't exactly know which sub-forum to stick it into, since it would mention both festivals, rituals, general descriptions, and some particular details.

That is a VERY interesting information! Thank you! It would have been interesting to know, if Thracians and Dacians had terms of office or a perpetual priesthood, but I understand if sources are scarce. There are lots of gaps in what we know about Norse religion as well.

I guess there is lots of information available in Romanian, Moldavian and Bulgarian, that is not ascessible in English (or Swedish). Do you know anything about a Horseman-god popular in the Balkans in late antiquity? I have been wondering if the Scandinavian perception of O∂in could have been modified in the 5th-6th century due to influences from Goths, Herules and Nordic mercenaries returning from sejours in the Roman Empire.

 
From what I could figure, the Thracians/ Dacians were relatively 'barbaric' compared to the Greeks or Romans - they lived in tribes and nations, similar to the pre-colonial Americans (Indians). Sure, there were bigger cities, but they were few, and power in kingdoms was heavily decentralized (each nation and tribe within a kingdom seemed to have acted on its own, and they'd only come together during wars and whatnot). In fact, the Greeks helped develop the Odryssian Kingdom, whereas Dacia seems to have been developed under the rule of select individuals (Deceneu, Burebista, Zalmolxis), who were said to have learned from the Greeks (the god Zalmolxis, in old texts, is discribed as a man who was either a slave or an apprentice of Pythagoras, and later returned to Dacia and re-educated his people, giving them medical and astronomical knowledge, at some point 'dying' and returning in godly form). So they're a high chance that on an under-national (in tribes), priesthood was a life-long position, whereas in the ruling cities, they could have been appointed. But since there were casts of priests, they could have been both.

The problem with information on the subject is that there's a lot of speculation and even more intended disinformation. I don't know of Bulgaria, but in Romania, during Ceausescu's reign, the whole Dacian or Roman-Dacian heritage bit was used for propaganda. So one has to consider the available information very carefully. I think the Nazis did something similar to Germanic/ Scandinavian lore during the war.

Hmm, the topic name is a bit strange...oh! Hi!

So yeah, I was wondering - you're starting your own religion (be it reconstructionist, original, or imported from somewhere else); you may believe in the deities, principles, etc., but you still need initiation. Now, who can initiate you if there is no officialized clergy? Can you initiate yourself? How appropriate would it be? If you're not initiated, but start initiating others so they could initiate you, how appropriate would THAT be?
I mean, sure, some of us out there can say they were chosen by a deity as prophets or whatnot, but what about those who weren't but still feel the need to do it?
Any ideas?

 
There is always someone who goes first. I'm the first person in century's to awaken to witchcraft in my ancestor line. No one did that to me. Maybe my specific Gods and Goddess put me thru an ordeal. Isn't that the traditional way? If Your the first then be grateful and move forward.


May the wind always be at your back.