What is Initiation

An analogy of man's advent from prenatal darkness into the light of human fellowship, moral truth, and spiritual faith, initiation derives from the Latin initium, signifying a beginning or coming into being 2.

Mackey defines initiation as a symbolic passage into a new life, representing the disruption of worldly ties and a spiritual rebirth 3. Within its ceremonial symbolism, the shock of entrance signifies the disruption from former ties and the throes of a new birth, while the shock of enlightenment represents the dispersion of intellectual darkness and the arrival of intellectual light 3.

Wilmshurst interprets initiation as the awakening of the soul's dormant higher faculties, imparting enhanced consciousness and leading the postulant to dedicate his life to the Divine 1. Symbolically, he holds that a candidate's entrance allegorizes the soul's descent from an anterior spiritual existence in the "East" into physical mortality in the "West," where the physical form assumed by the soul is symbolized by the Masonic apron 1.

Waite emphasizes that initiation integrates the newly received candidate into the life of an organic whole, providing the auxiliaries of brotherhood, research pursued in common, and the pictured quests of ritual pageantry 4. He notes, however, that ritual alone does not automatically communicate the inner life of the sanctuaries, as initiation contains an incommunicable element that demands proper inner preparation 4. Claudy similarly observes that initiation offers an opportunity for spiritual rebirth, but its actual realization depends entirely on the candidate's willingness to look beyond formal ceremony and internalize the truth offered 2.