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Initiations (lat. initiato – sacrament) are rituals that come along and consolidate changes in status as well as the transitions from one state to another. Psychologically speaking, initiation happens when a person lets go of his habit of living unconsciously and finds a way of living consciously.

Initiation is not about knowledge, it’s about mystery. Initiation ritual is always a “mysteria”, a “sacrament”. By the end of its rituals neophyte’s existence changes drastically, he becomes a part of both human society and the world of spiritual, sacred.

There are many initiations-transitions during people’s lives, both small and big – from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to youth, from youth to maturity, from maturity to senility.

As for female initiations, the first one comes when a girl has her first period and, thus, enters childbearing age, which creates many problems for her parents. What is the problem? The problem is that she has a mature body and a childish mind, that’s why the girl becomes prey to adult morally bankrupt men.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the author of women’s “Bible” Women Who Run With The Wolves says that when she works with older teenage girls who are convinced that the world is good if they only work it right, compares herself with an old gray-haired dog: “I want to put my paws over my eyes and groan, for I see what they do not see, and I know, especially if they’re willful and feisty, that they’re going to insist on becoming involved with the predator at least once before they are shocked awake. At the beginning of our lives our feminine viewpoint is very naive, meaning that emotional understanding of the covert is very faint. But this is where we all begin as females. We are naive and we talk ourselves into some very confusing situations. To be uninitiated in the ways of these matters means that we are in a time of our life when we are vulnerable to seeing only the overt”5.

However, there is no way one could become conscious and grown-up except to have one’s own experience and make mistakes. The ability to use one’s woman power and chose suitable partners will reward all the hardships of the way.

Another important female initiation is making a union with a man, which opens up new horizons for her. At first this relationship is immature, and the woman is forced to live as if two lives – inner hidden life and outer apparent life. This is very similar to the life of Tsarevna The Frog from Russian fairy-tale who is forced to appear in the form of a frog by day, and shed her frog skin by night to become Vasilisa the Beautiful who could do magic: bake bread, weave carpets and mesmerize by her perfection. It takes power and courage to be true to oneself whenever and wherever possible. To make this happen your male partner should not be ashamed to reveal you to others and go to get you on a magic steed far-far away to defeat Koschei The Deathless himself. In the fairy tale this man is Ivan Tsarevich, but psychologically speaking, it is not about a man, it is about animus archetype. To put it simply, from the very beginning of her life a woman should accept her masculine side – bravery, courage, vigor, strength, self-sufficiency and independence of authorities to become whole.

Childbirth is the third big initiation for a woman. It means discovering her creative power to make, produce, and I don’t mean just literally, but also figuratively. Everything we make: things, ideas, projects, books, children, even ourselves, our life-story are products of our creativity. If we can’t find our purpose in life at this point, we risk becoming infertile, because for our body this means betraying oneself. Infertility is a message that a woman lost her way in life, lost her purpose, cannot hear the voice of her soul.

Finally, the third big initiation is going from childbearing age to late maturity. Milton Erickson said that with the first period a girl becomes a mother – it’s joy; with the last period she becomes a grandmother – it’s happiness. Now the goal is to cultivate powerful qualities valued by people in the young generation. Now she is the person who initiates others, she has the power to punish and pardon depending on whether they succeed or not. In fairy-tales such a person is the one who gives the gifts – Old Mother Frost, Baba Yaga – they reward the hero and punish the anti-hero. In real life this is a wise mentor who feels “like an old grey dog” when looking at cocky young people. The main challenge of this stage for a woman is to leave the territory where she felt valued, respected and in demand by our unconscious society when she was young.

Unfortunately, we as a culture are not any more mature and conscious than teenages. Carl Young noted in despair that for the most part our old people try to compete with the young. In the United States it is almost an ideal for the father to be the brother of his sons, and for the mother if possible to be the younger sister of her daughter6. Clinging to one’s youth as well as an adolescent clings to his childhood could become the main issue at this stage. This means a person is unable to leave the previous stage. The aging Queen from Pushkin’s fairy-tale of The Dead Princess And Seven Knights asked her magic mirror if she was the prettiest woman in the kingdom jealousy comparing herself to her step-daughter. And this is the question every woman asks herself when the time for this initiation comes.

Women experience each transition as internal and external transformation. Internal transformation is a near-death experience when old non-adaptive patterns of behaviormust die-away to give place to new ones. This “destruction-transformation-reconstruction” cycle causes suffering, pain, a range of negative feelings, nightmares on the subject of death. Externally these transitions were accompanied by different cultural rituals. Finally, as a result of each initiations a person become more and more conscious.