Re: "Ernalda sleeps" initiation

From: Jennifer Geard <geard_at_verso.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:46:50 +1200

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:04, Mikko Rintasaari wrote:
> I just want to add to the previous that I found the ideas, of Ernalda
> initiates facing worse and worse things so that eventually they'll have to
> choose to sleep as the goddess, quite brilliant.
>
> I'll save that for the later _Ernalda_ initiation. After a few days of
> thinking about it and researching I still think that in the first
> initiation all boys and girls will have to learn Heort's and Hengal's
> secrets and face the end of the world. At the end of everything it's not
> just the men that fight. Every living non chaotic thing faced Chaos in I
> Fought, We Won. Men, women, boys, girls, grandparents...

Or, as it's put in Thunder Rebels: "The Heortling Rites come first, which make children into adults, individual and recognized. Heort and his wife Ivarne taught these rites to everyone, and all Heortling clans use them today." (TR 58)

Could I suggest that those who are engaging with this thread read Thunder Rebels pp. 58-60 "Becoming People"? We've discussed this before on this forum, but certain ambiguities in the writing mean that we could still have some fun stitching together the various bits about what goes on in the initiation process and elaborating on the initiations described.

As I see it, the HQ initiation sequence goes something like this:

1. "The Heortling Rites": Heort stuff (possibly the same for both sexes) + initiation as a communal worshipper of Ernalda or Orlanth (sex-segregated). The Orlanth/Ernalda initiations are described in TR 60. "The Ernalda initiation" is actually a generic initiation into the many aspects of the Great Goddess. This is the Ernalda initiation you need to have done before you can become a Vingan.
2. Two+ years of learning and testing to match the initiand to a place in society by trying out cults and presumably career placements.
3. "Initiation or devotion to a specific deity".

I really like Alison's telling of the Ernalda quest, but it feels to me like it would work better in the RQ milieu where one initiation did it all. Does it still work if it's the final stage-3 initiation, and not part of the sorting process? Or should we add it into the Heortling Rites (stage-1) after the Great Goddess communal initiation? I think it would be useful then to give the initiands a clearer idea of who they were, what their strengths and weaknesses were, and where they should be heading.

Cheers,
  Jennifer

-- 
Jennifer Geard


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