Prison as a Rite of Passage
I
In 1909, anthropologist Van Gennep published Les Rites de Passage introducing the concept of a three part structure to rites of passage. In the first part, the initiate is stripped of any social status. In the second, they experience a time apart, a liminal period of revelation and transition. In the final stage of re-assimilation, the initiate reenters society changed by the experience.
Prison is a liminal space – a place where one can be trapped, held apart from society, but also a place for revelation and possibly transformation.
II
A Word on Bonds
There is little so tortuous to the human psyche as isolation. When that heavy steel door seals you in, one’s cell can feel like a tomb. We dwell, the monkey mind turns feral, reptilian, and a body is likely to do anything to deal with the effects. Unless you have experienced it, you could not possibly understand.
Our federal penitentiaries essentially boil down to mental health asylums with only a doctor or two for hundreds. I could tell you stories that would bleach your hair.
One of the methods people commonly use to escape the torment of institutionalization is to make whatever friends will take them. However, bonds can be as dangerous later as they may be comforting in the present. I would advise a more selective process strongly. The same goes for practitioners looking to make contact with things outside of our material experience. Instead of reaching out for exterior help, I see spiritual practice as an inward journey. You can’t rely on bonds to do your work for you.
The cell in which I am currently housed was previously kept by a practitioner who called on and entreated everything he could think of or find. He referred to this place as being essentially a portal, painstakingly crafted. I do not judge, but this is not what I would have chosen. Adapting to this space and clearing it has been no small amount of work. Our bonds should not feed on us, but should be mutually beneficial in small ways to process information we gain honestly and on our own terms.
My own practice is targeted and sparing. I utilize mindfulness, meditation, visualization, and philosophical contemplation paired with heavy ethical study to go as far as I can. I then apply this theory and study with robust conversation with my mentor. I put the combined outcome to the wisest of my supports. I channel the accumulated result into a creative endeavour to find within myself the question I wish to ask.
When the celestial bodies align and the night is full, I perform my in-depth ritual with the purest intention I can. When I reach out, I know I am reaching in, and when I ask my Creator, I know I am asking myself. The answer I receive will always shake and thrill me. I know it is right because it is right for me. I earned that knowledge, which inevitably flowers into the beginnings of my next question.
I have learned that no one gives development or growth to you. A deeper sense of the world and your place in it cannot be forced, cheated, stolen, or taken. You need to do the work. Don’t go looking for some outside force to inform or carry you.
These beings don’t love you or at least, you had better hope they don’t. The light and beauty are just as dangerous as the twisted dark. I have seen some ruined just as totally by what they felt they knew to be angels, as I have seen others seem to be uplifted by the foul. It is all zero sum. I have witnessed the end of this road of dependence and its name is madness.
If I could distill what I’ve learned from my practice, it is: Face yourself. Own up. Look inward. Be still. Conquer what you are. Feel this. Burn. The Gods have no respect for weakness and you wouldn’t want them to. Do not look to escape. Be.
The strongest bond you can make is with yourself. The only real power is in letting go. The easy way is, in the end, the hardest, and vice versa. Look inside.
Grow.
III
The Importance of Hospitality
A recent study by Crime and Justice Research Alliance revealed that men with stable or increasing religious beliefs did not have better reintegration related outcomes. During the time spent in prison, religion helped to reconcile past mistakes and create an aspirational future self. Religious practices could act as potential catalysts for transformation; and a religious community as an informal social control.
But contrary to expectations, a strong faith practice did not lead to better reintegration. There are numerous barriers to positive reentry; finding and maintaining jobs, securing housing, renewing ties with family and friends. These basic concerns can prevent religion from effectively supporting the reentry process.
As illustrated by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, physiological and safety concerns precede even the need for love and belonging. How does a struggling parolee find community and the self actualization that may accompany religious practice? What are our responsibilities as members of a faith community?
The virtue of Hospitality is ubiquitous in Western Pagan culture with roots that go as deep as our ProtoIndo European ancestors. In Vedic India, the failure to offer food to a guest was the equivalent of failing to offer food to the Gods. This theme reappears in stories throughout the diaspora, and is evident in works such as the Norwegian Havamal, the Irish wisdom texts, and modern neo Pagan lists of Noble Virtues.
It is hospitality that holds communities together. It creates relationships and strengthens bonds. In the context of a rite of passage, it is what the faith communities owe the initiate. How do we, as a community of faith, extend hospitality, and welcome the stranger, the initiate, home?
Gwen Armshaw is a Pagan chaplain working in the Canadian federal prison system. She has been a practising Pagan since 1986. She is currently the Vice Chair of the Pagan Assembly of Nova Scotia and a co- host of the podcast Three Witches and a Druid.
Wesley Day is currently incarcerated in a federal penitentiary. He is a seeker who has been practising with a mentor for the last three years. He is travelling East to find a better way.
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