Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Subcategories

Initiatory Rituals

26 of 272 entries in Rituals. Click any to see everything it connects to.

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The rites that admit a person into a tradition, an order or a stage of religious life, from baptism to formal initiation into an esoteric order, grouped by the shared function of marking entry regardless of how different the traditions performing them otherwise are.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Rites that admit a person to a status, community or degree of knowledge not previously held. The atlas records that such rites exist, who confers them and what they are held to accomplish; where a tradition holds the content of its initiation closed, that content is not reproduced here. 2
Origins
Whose Classification This Is
Initiation is treated as a species of rite of passage on van Gennep's 1909 three-stage scheme - separation, liminality, incorporation - as elaborated by Victor Turner in 1969. The scheme is a comparative frame devised by its authors, not an account any tradition gives of its own rite. 2
Directory
Category
Rituals 1
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 2
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The Initiatory Rituals

This group holds initiatory rituals, the ceremonies by which a person is admitted into a religion, order or degree, or consecrated to a sacred role. Initiation typically enacts a symbolic death and rebirth, marking the passage into a new spiritual state.

The browser will find initiatory rituals from various traditions. The entries describe each rite's form and meaning, noting the tradition and the admission or elevation it enacts.

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