Re: initiation
In this lifetime, we suspect we're getting a reverse shaman treatment - punted into a different world, taken apart and put back together by the natives (except that in this case the natives are humans, not spirits), and sent back.
We've also been initiated into two engineering honors societies, if that counts. One still keeps its initiation ritual secret. That had a powerful effect on Val, who was inclined to take the secrecy of such things seriously. She was already into magic and gained a new appreciation for the use of initiatory and/or secret ritual - and we still remember the group's secret motto, which we suspect our fellow initiates forgot before the sun was down that day.
At least one of the guilds back home had its own initiation ritual, after all of the pushing and testing that all of the guilds and professions required. The only part of that ritual that any of us remember is getting a piercing, when the folk likely to qualify for the guild in question weren't likely to let anyone poke them through with a piece of metal on a voluntary basis otherwise. By that point, though, we had the kind of trust in one another that would let us let another of them into stabbing range - at least while there were witnesses. (Paranoid? Oh yes, we were.) Given our degree of self-reliance, being taken into the group and expressing willingness to rely on our partners there, as we would otherwise only rely on ourselves (not even gods or Source), it was the closest thing to a spiritual experience that Rhun and I ever got in that lifetime.
-Shainin
"All knowledge is worth having." -Phedre no Delaunay
"Everything has a price." -Jaenelle Angelline
"I think if you try, that's being your best." -Echo
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