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TOTW: Inititiation and Anarchyland

The focus here is not on ritual itself, but on opening up something in hearts and spirits that has been locked away so long that individuals can barely remember the source – Malidoma Patrice Somé

I remember on more than one occasion sitting in an Anarchist study group, hearing others discussing modern society’s lack of initiatory experiences, and never really particularly to that critique in any meaningful way. Although my disconnect or disagreement didn’t condense into words then, my mindset then was something like:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things

When you reach a certain age, surely you just leave behind what is old, through sheer will or natural maturity, it doesn’t have to be a whole ordeal or anything, it is both obvious and just simply happens. My thinking about that is quite a bit fuzzier these days, not only in relation to my own life, but also when looking at something like Anarchy.

It’s easy enough to see the hollowness of what passes for initiation in Modern/Western/Whatever Society. Getting a driver’s license, joining the military, the permission to buy and consume alcohol, rent a car, etc. While sitting behind the wheel of a large, very fast metal weapon is indeed a visceral, and perhaps even somewhat revelatory experience, I doubt it holds the same transformative power of something like capital-r Ritual. With that in mind, I’m interested in the ways that something like Anarchyland affords a kind of initiatory experience, and where it falls short.

There are some pretty clear ways Anarchy acts as a space of initiation. Facing death (even if not particularly consciously) while fighting cops in the streets, understanding your simultaneous power and powerlessness in the face of the state and institutions, finding elders to learn from, and perhaps even discovering something that feels like community, family or home, however fraught all those words and concepts might be; all these and more can be had in the Anarchies. And yet, in my own experience I’ve often felt in a strange liminal space between childhood and adulthood, no longer a boy not yet a whatever-comes-after-that. I imagine that others in Anarchyland have either felt similarly, or at least witnessed less-than-ideal behavior from others inhabiting that space.

And so, I’m interested in how others have thought or are thinking about ritual and initiation in the Anarchist space, with all the uncomfortable, cringey conversations that implies. How might we build out Anarchyland to be more conducive to rites of passage, and how do we conduct them? Is this all new-agey bullshit which, among other sins, doesn’t deconstruct notions of childhood, gender, or society enough? Are we far too fucked up to understand, let alone withstand, Ritual? Is there any way to bring ritual and initiation into Anarchy in a way that feels more appropriate than ape-ing Indigenous cultures to which many Anarchists have no connection? Or is ritual simply hiding just underneath the surface of Anarchy, and we simply need know where to dig?