Die Methode des Selbst, uns zu berufen, besteht darin, uns in eine Krise zu manövrieren, so dass wir gezwungen sind, auf die Botschaft zu hören. Natürlich kann uns die Tatsache, dass wir durch diesen Prozess geleitet werden, völlig unbewusst sein (und meistens ist es auch so). Aber für das archetypische Selbst stellt das Leben ganz einfach einen fortlaufenden Initiationsprozess dar, eine andauernde Abfolge von Tod und Wiedergeburt. Robert Moore/Douglas Gilette, Der Magier im Mann, S. 81, Verlag Walter, Solothurn, Düsseldorf, 1995

A woman does not have to be a biological mother in order to be an initiate into the maternal aspect of the Goddess; it comes through her own embodied maternal and feminine nature. Jean Shinoda Bolen]], Jungian analyst

Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception. Dan Millman

Acceptance of illness is often part of a larger acceptance of self that represents a significant mental shift, a shift that can initiate transformation of personality and with it the healing of disease. Dr. med Andrew Weil, Spontaneous Healing. How to Discover and Enhance Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself

Vulnerability, humility, softness, and resignation are vital. If you try to hang on to what you believe to be true about yourself, it hurts. In the end, you have to agree to your death and resurrection. That’s the journey of the initiate. Stuart Wilde

The males of most cultures will ordinarily define themselves by external performance, self created ordeals, and ego affirming tasks – unless they are offered a very real inner world and larger outer world that is even more alive and challenging. […] Older cultures seemed to assume that unless the male is led on deliberate journeys of powerlessness, he will normally seek and abuse power. The only external power that you can trust is in men who have also found their real inner power. Power it seems is the key fascination in the male soul and in every male archetype. It does not go away by churchy preaching or cultural poverty. It just takes disguised and different forms and finally comes back to defeat most worthwhile projects or worse, keeps them from ever getting started. If the male does not experience his power and his possibilities, if he does not let others educate it and tame it, power needs/ego needs tend to control his whole agenda. It does not go away. Primal cultures understood this to an amazing degree, and they took steps to insure that it would not keep happening and subverting their community. Father Richard Rohr, OFM, Made not Born: Men and Power, presented by Malespirituality.org, July 2003

In every culture […] there was one universal element in historic initiation – grief work. The young male had to be taught somehow the way of tears'. He had to be taught how to cry. In fact, if I were to sum up this whole spirituality of initiation in a one liner, it would be this; the young man who cannot cry is a savage, the old man who cannot laugh is a fool. Father Richard Rohr, OFM, Sadness, Yale University Address to Medical Students, presented by Malespirituality.org, November 2005

Initiatory events are those that mark a man or a woman's life forever, that pull a person deeper into life than they would normally choose to go. Initiatory events are those that define who a person is, or cause some power to erupt from them, or strip everything from them until all that is left is their essential self. Michael Meade, storyteller, author, mythologist

Rebirth always passes through the doors of death; we need to acknowledge that for the new to come, something has to die. The purpose of a rite of passage is to become more alive by dying to the old. When our culture denies death, we cannot become more alive through liminality. Michael Meade, storyteller, mythologist, ritualist, co-editor of Crossroads. the Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage

There may be no time more suited to the study of rites of passage than threshold between the end of modernity and the uncertain future of humanity. Michael Meade, storyteller, author, mythologist

A culture dies when its dream becomes lost, when the march of history crushes its dream in the dust of time. Michael Meade, storyteller, mythologist, ritualist, author of The Water of Life. Initiation and The Tempering of the Soul