The Art of Manliness - #505： A Man's Need for Ritual

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.680 For thousands of years, men's lives were structured by rituals, rituals that helped

00:00:14.700 them mark significant events, make sense of the world, and move from one phase of life

00:00:18.260 to the next. In our modern age, our lives are largely devoid of rituals, and my guest

00:00:22.180 today says we're worse off for it. His name is William Ayotte, and he's a poet, men's

00:00:25.960 group facilitator, ritual leader, and author of Re-Enchanting the Forest, Meaningful Ritual

00:00:30.360 in a Secular World. We begin our conversation discussing William's introduction to the power 0.76

00:00:34.460 of ritual, why rituals have declined in Western culture, and what makes a ritual a ritual.

00:00:39.000 We then discuss the history of the mythopoetic men's movement, kick-started by Robert Bly

00:00:42.860 in his book Iron John. William then unpacks why it's important for men to undergo a rite

00:00:46.960 of passage, why it's never too late to participate in one, and how men can have multiple rites

00:00:51.320 of passage over their lifetime. We also discuss how to give your son a rite of passage. William

00:00:55.280 also provides some ideas for daily rituals you can incorporate in your life, provide

00:00:58.560 more meaning and enchantment to existence, and we enter a conversation with William's

00:01:02.000 advice on how to get started with a men's group. After the show's over, check out our show notes

00:01:05.520 at aom.is slash ritual.

00:01:15.640 William Ayotte, welcome to the show.

00:01:17.560 Hello, Brett. Good to hear your voice.

00:01:20.160 Well, good to hear your voice. So you wrote a book that I really enjoyed,

00:01:24.560 Re-Enchanting the Forest, Meaningful Ritual in a Secular World. You are a poet. You have 0.68

00:01:31.320 led rituals for men and for other people as well, and you're making the case that even

00:01:37.180 though we live in a secular world, we need more rituals. So what got you down the path,

00:01:42.300 started down the path of exploring the power of rituals in human life?

00:01:45.440 To be really frank and honest, I think it was necessity. I was in trouble personally. I was

00:01:51.520 about 30 years of age. I was isolated. I was cut off. I was hurting. And at a certain point,

00:01:59.960 I discovered that my past was even darker than I had pretended. And I joined a men's group. 0.65

00:02:05.340 And it turned my life around. We were doing ritual in that space. And it really changed

00:02:12.960 everything. It was like discovering a new map of the world. And at that point, I think that I kind

00:02:18.600 of altered the way I saw things in the world and altered the way I saw myself. And that was a big

00:02:25.820 experience.

00:02:26.480 I mean, before this experience with the men's group and the rituals they did there, 0.69

00:02:30.980 I mean, what was your experience with ritual before? Was it just in the confines of church?

00:02:34.940 No, I'm not a churchman. And though I come from a family of churchmen, oddly enough, but

00:02:41.220 I had experienced ritual because I had been to an English boarding school. I had been to national

00:02:49.760 football matches. You know, in the way that the Super Bowl is a ritual, the FA Cup final in the

00:02:56.160 United Kingdom is a ritual. So I was used to the ritualization of things. But I hadn't really

00:03:02.060 experienced deep healing rituals. I hadn't experienced those sort of things. And it wasn't

00:03:08.660 until I got into a men's group, which was literally a ritual men's group, as defined in those days,

00:03:15.360 that I began to realize that rituals served me and served a deeper part of me.

00:03:21.560 So there are still rituals today, even though we might not think of them as rituals, like you said,

00:03:25.780 like a sports game is a ritual. There are civic rituals that every country has.

00:03:31.980 But there aren't the type of rituals that we, like the sort of the healing, the transformative

00:03:36.260 rituals that there used to be. Like, why has there been a decline of that sort of ritual,

00:03:42.460 particularly in the West? And what do you think of the consequences of that have been?

00:03:45.440 That's a good question. I think there's been a hijack of the Western mind. It's been in place now and

00:03:52.580 growing for the last hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, I don't know. There's a

00:03:57.760 constant move towards reason and detail and logic at the expense of empathy and compassion and

00:04:06.960 imagination. So if you like, it's a shift from the right brain to the left brain, though I'm not

00:04:12.620 altogether sure about that. But it appeals to the masculine, and I do know that. I mean, we like

00:04:17.940 lists and clarity and measurement, nerdy stuff. It's all good. But over time, we lose contact with

00:04:25.500 that other wilder side of ourselves, with the sensual and the imaginative part of us. And if that bit of

00:04:31.980 us, if that's the bit that loves ritual, and we separate from it, then at that point, the rituals

00:04:38.860 we do begin to hollow out, and they have less meaning, and they become empty, empty ceremonial.

00:04:46.440 Is that making sense?

00:04:47.840 That makes sense. This is something that Nietzsche talked about, about the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

00:04:53.180 Absolutely. And ritual is about descent. It is about Dionysian descent. And we live in an

00:05:00.740 Apollonian ascendant society. We want to get up there. We want to get into, and we like to get

00:05:08.560 into the spiritual. We're not so keen on getting into the soulful.

00:05:12.320 What do you think? So what's the difference between the two?

00:05:14.140 I think we are talking about Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian distinction. I think that there used to

00:05:21.320 be ancient mysteries and what we might think of as the soul, the psyche, it needs to experience, it needs

00:05:30.440 to feel, it needs to go down, if you like. Whereas there is a quality in the human spirit that wants

00:05:38.920 to rise up to, it wants cleanliness and sort of intellectual rigor. It wants a view, it wants to see

00:05:47.640 from above. And that's not the case with the soul. So I think that's a distinction we can make. And

00:05:53.020 certainly in men's work and in the work that I was doing, have been doing over the last 30 years, I think

00:05:57.560 that's very true for me.

00:05:59.020 Well, before we get into talking about the type of rituals that you talk about in the book, let's do some

00:06:03.220 definitions here. We're going to be Apollonian here for a second.

00:06:07.760 Good idea.

00:06:08.820 What makes a ritual a ritual? Are there certain components that need to be in place?

00:06:12.940 Yep. Well, you enter a different space when you enter a ritual. You cross a threshold. Your psyche

00:06:20.860 or your soul, let's call it what we will, enters a different territory, either a place, a physical

00:06:27.320 location, a difference, or an imaginal territory, a sphere, a place where you can do ritual work.

00:06:35.900 The ritual then, the ritual itself then gives your soul a message. So there's a distinction that says

00:06:44.580 that a ritual is a symbolic action through which the soul or the psyche can receive and understand

00:06:51.960 a message. You know, the reality is the soul, and I'm using the word soul here, and you may choose to

00:06:58.640 use the word psyche, Brett, but I'm using the word soul. The soul is a bit like a chicken. It can't

00:07:04.320 count. It doesn't do data, but it can and does operate in symbols. It sees pictures, and it

00:07:12.300 understands pictures. And for instance, I have a wedding ring on my finger here. When that ring was

00:07:18.180 put on my finger, I understood that that was a symbol that meant my life had changed irrevocably

00:07:24.960 and radically for life. If I were to take that ring off my finger, if I were to ritually take it off,

00:07:31.620 then my life would change again. So that's what I mean by a ritual that actually touches the soul.

00:07:39.600 The symbol touches the soul. Is that clear?

00:07:42.340 That makes clear. So there needs to be a space that you go into. There could be some sort of

00:07:47.120 tool or implementation, like a ring and every other...

00:07:50.960 Yes.

00:07:51.260 Or in a church, it could be like the Eucharist or like the tools of the ritual.

00:07:55.060 I mean, there's a kind of a commonality to ritual around the world, which is, you know,

00:08:00.700 and of course, it's the human rule of free, isn't it? There's a beginning, a middle, and an end to a

00:08:06.560 story. You start a joke, you tell the joke, you tell them you've finished a joke. This is true in

00:08:11.800 three-act structure in movies. It's true too in ritual. We have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

00:08:17.800 So they're all very significant, and they have very important roles to play within the ritual.

00:08:24.820 And it sounds like, too, an underlying thing that for this all to happen, for this place to mean

00:08:30.300 anything, the tools to mean anything, the action to mean anything, there has to be this underlying

00:08:34.340 intent, correct?

00:08:35.720 Absolutely. You need an intention. And in a way, the intention gives you a root map, a plan. But the

00:08:43.900 intention is, you have to hold that very clearly in your mind, I'd say in your heart too. But that is

00:08:51.180 a, you need to know why you are there, because that's what anchors you in the reality at the same

00:09:00.180 time as you're entering into this mythical, mystical, misty space that can be ritual.

00:09:06.740 And in these ritual spaces, they don't have to be like a special building or a special room. Like you

00:09:12.140 could possibly create one just in your closet? Or if you just go outside, that can become a sacred

00:09:17.920 space, a place where you could do a ritual?

00:09:20.800 I did rituals in rehab centers for years. I've done rituals in the most simple of places,

00:09:26.920 in garages, in gardens and sheds, in all sorts of different places. It's about the space you create.

00:09:34.520 It's like an empty space into which the extraordinary can come. It's not about the bells and the

00:09:42.940 whistles. It's not about the building, though it's, hey, isn't it great to have a wonderful

00:09:46.340 building? You know, I remember walking around Westminster Abbey and thinking, this is like

00:09:51.060 putting your fingers in the plug. But you can do a ritual anywhere.

00:09:54.640 Okay. So we decided to define what a ritual was. There needs to be a place, a time set aside from

00:10:01.020 the profane, I guess is what they would say. There's tools that can be used possibly, not necessarily.

00:10:06.300 There is an action that you do that's symbolic, that speaks to the psyche or the soul. And there

00:10:10.840 has to be this underlying intent beneath that. So that's how you create the ritual. And you also

00:10:16.560 said that a ritual is like a story with beginning, middle, and end.

00:10:19.900 Yes. Yes. There are stages, phases, call it what you will. This guy called Van Genep,

00:10:27.380 who wrote a book on rites of passage, started off a whole process of study. And he would say that there

00:10:34.660 were three stages to a rite of passage, a separation, an ordeal, and a return. Now, in our secular world,

00:10:44.900 words like ordeal can become a little bit over-larded and overloaded, if you know what I

00:10:50.640 mean. So in my work, I tend to think of separation, transformation, and return. Ceremonially, we can do

00:10:57.960 all sorts of things. But a decent ritual needs those three distinct phases, stages. You can do it going

00:11:05.800 up in an elevator. It's not about time. You can do it going up, as I said, in an elevator, if you want.

00:11:10.680 But as long as you go somewhere different in the landscape of your mind, you have separated. You've

00:11:15.540 made a change. Then something transformational can happen, and you need to return. That's very often

00:11:22.600 the bit in rituals that we forget, actually, is the return. We need to ground ourselves. We need to come

00:11:27.500 back to the here and now. I think of it as ritual hygiene. We need to take care around that, because

00:11:33.980 otherwise, we can kind of get lost in that lovely ritual space, that liminal space that we talk about,

00:11:41.020 and we can wander around in that for years.

00:11:43.760 Well, you gave a good example of this that I've experienced personally. A concert is a ritual,

00:11:48.940 in a way. There's a space where you set aside to play music, and you listen. But then you have this

00:11:56.860 transformative experience, possibly, but then it just ends. That's the feeling you're talking about,

00:12:02.160 like, not returning. You just, like, end it, and then you just, like, walk out, and you feel kind

00:12:05.360 of like, whoa, what just happened? Absolutely. And that's why so many people find it so hard to

00:12:09.800 leave a good concert, because they're plugged in. And no one said, oh, by the way, guys, it's over now.

00:12:15.820 Thank you very much. So long, and thanks for all the fish. They've not had the closure that they need

00:12:23.260 to be able to get back into the world, because the concert is very often a magical experience.

00:12:28.780 It's an experience of the other, whatever we care to call it.

00:12:32.160 But at that point, we are fully committed to that, and that's quite difficult. So we need something

00:12:38.620 that clearly says, thank you very much indeed, which is why in theater, you used to have the

00:12:43.800 lights coming up, or a curtain being drawn. It's a closure. It's, thank you very much. We're done now.

00:12:52.220 So I want to point out, too, that this story, or these phases of ritual you pointed out,

00:12:57.760 this is also something that Joseph Campbell talks about in his book.

00:13:01.300 Absolutely.

00:13:01.940 Right, Hero of a Thousand Faces, The Hero's Journey.

00:13:04.280 Yes. And the hero's journey is, in itself, a classic rite of passage. It is a journey of descent.

00:13:13.740 So it's Dionysian. You go into an underworld. You meet guides and strangers, and you fight battles,

00:13:22.220 and you discover a treasure, and you then, you are changed by the experience, and then you come back

00:13:28.400 over the threshold, and you bring your treasure back to the world. That's a pretty simplistic view

00:13:34.140 of it, but that's a very similar journey. And Joseph Campbell, in his wisdom, saw this recurring

00:13:42.860 again and again and again in mythologies around the world. I would say that it also happens in

00:13:47.600 rituals around the world. But then I would.

00:13:49.980 Well, I mean, it does sound like a ritual is, essentially, you are acting out this archetypical

00:13:58.760 story of the hero's journey.

00:14:00.340 I think these were the mysteries of old. You know, we talk of the Eleusinian mysteries. We

00:14:05.780 talk of ancient mystery rites. I think these rituals, these often, I imagine them to be initiatory

00:14:12.980 rituals, I think they followed a prescribed route. And certainly, the rituals I know in the

00:14:19.220 indigenous world tend to follow a route map and a pattern. And they are all about dissent 1.00

00:14:24.800 and ordeal, and some of them are true ordeals, and to return and to come back and then to re-enter

00:14:33.220 society. In certain rituals in Africa, when you have been through an initiatory ritual, you return

00:14:41.620 to society with a different name. You are that different.

00:14:45.300 So let's talk about another component of rituals is the communal aspect of it. Do you need a

00:14:52.020 community to have a ritual? Or can you do it by yourself? Or is it like the community part,

00:14:57.200 like make rituals more powerful?

00:14:59.140 I think communities, I think we're ritual-making animals, aren't we? I mean, there are good reported

00:15:04.320 stories of chimpanzees creating communal rituals. This is not a thing confined to humankind. But we are in

00:15:13.660 community ritualistic. I think that community makes for better rituals in many aspects. I think it makes

00:15:22.960 for deeper, more powerful rituals. Certainly, the notion of the village as a basis for a ritual is very

00:15:34.260 powerful. And the gathering together, and sometimes these communities can be instant communities. I mean,

00:15:40.780 a men's gathering is an instant community of men from all over the world. But it forms a community of

00:15:46.480 like mind and interest. And at that point, the rituals deepen. And of course, this is the important

00:15:53.360 thing in this work of dissent, is that you can create depth through creating trust, through creating

00:15:59.780 levels of understanding. And that's what gives rituals added power. You can certainly do a ritual on your

00:16:06.840 own, and it can be transformational. But if you're starting out to do ritual, if you're wanting to explore

00:16:13.020 the notion of ritual, I don't think you can really do any better than finding yourself a ritual men's 1.00

00:16:17.500 group and sitting in a circle with men and working out what works and what doesn't work in ritual space.

00:16:24.820 Well, let's talk about this men's work that you've been talking about. In the book, that's how you got

00:16:29.680 your start. You joined a men's group and you started taking part in ritual. And you talk a bit about

00:16:34.640 Robert Bly. Now, some of our listeners might remember Robert Bly. They're old enough to remember he

00:16:40.900 wrote Iron John. And he really kind of kickstarted this mythopoetic men's movement in the 80s and 90s.

00:16:47.080 But that's, he's kind of, you know, I think a lot of younger listeners might not know about him and the

00:16:50.800 cultural impact he had. So talk a little bit like what Robert Bly was trying to do with Iron John and the

00:16:56.880 other stuff he was doing.

00:16:57.640 Yes. Well, he was a poet, a very fine poet and a brilliant translator. If you ever see any of his books

00:17:05.040 lying around in secondhand bins and bookshops and bookshelves, give them a try. They are really

00:17:10.880 good, solid pieces of work. And his translations are extraordinary. But, oh, we're now talking over

00:17:17.380 30 years ago, 35 years ago, he started traveling around America and around the world eventually,

00:17:22.940 giving poetry readings and opening up discussions. He's one of those guys who just likes to talk to

00:17:28.900 people. He likes to hear. He really likes the feedback that he gets. And what he was beginning

00:17:33.900 to perceive was that men, young men in America, were very often naive, as he would put them.

00:17:43.520 They were, they liked to be liked. They were kind of soft and kind of up in their heads and willing

00:17:52.260 to please and a little bit afraid of their own fierceness and their own energy. And he began to

00:18:00.440 look at that. And he began to think in terms of grounding these young men. And basically what he

00:18:07.580 was seeing, and if we return to Nietzsche, he was seeing the Apollonian in young men in, in the

00:18:15.460 generations below him. And he wanted to bring back the Dionysian aspect to help them to get through to a

00:18:23.320 more mature and aligned. And well, that's without putting words in his mouth, I'd say a more powerful,

00:18:31.960 mature masculinity. And he did that for some years. He, he wrote Iron John, which he, in which he used

00:18:39.200 story. And later in the workshops he did, he used poetry to address the issues that were coming up.

00:18:46.720 Fearceness, fierceness, wildness, the issues that we have around our fathers, the issues we have around

00:18:54.120 war, the issue, the deeper issues in men's lives. And he would use a poem to almost surgically to drop

00:19:03.400 into a subject, open it up. And at that point, men could begin to experience their, their anger,

00:19:10.940 their grief, their, their deeper feelings. And that's what he was really good at. He was very

00:19:16.300 brave. He was very imaginative. And he, he brought a lot of teachers out with him and signed up with

00:19:25.460 a lot of guys and, and traveled the world and did some remarkable work in his time. He also began to

00:19:33.920 hook up with indigenous teachers, with guys from West Africa and Guatemala, men from indigenous

00:19:41.480 cultures who brought a tribal sensibility with them. And that's when I kind of really perked up 0.66

00:19:49.020 and I began to see the huge possibilities of ritual in that. But he was a great lover of ritual.

00:19:57.820 And you can still see his influence today amongst men's groups.

00:20:01.660 Oh, huge. Yeah. Yeah. Like the whole idea, like a lot of men's groups, they focus on the archetypical

00:20:06.120 like ideas of masculinity, like, well, Draw Ruly was doing that 35 years ago.

00:20:11.220 Absolutely. And, and also we must remember that he teamed up with people like James Hillman.

00:20:17.580 You know, we're talking about great thinkers here. These are not, they're not weekend workshop guys in

00:20:21.860 that sense. These are, these are people who are deep thinkers who have really made the journey and

00:20:27.680 returned with their own gold, which they were sharing with us as men. So Michael Mead, James

00:20:34.520 Hillman, Robert Moore, Maladoma Somme, Martin Prechtel, John Lee, these guys, they were really

00:20:41.020 giving a gift and they transformed the lives of many men.

00:20:45.080 And you can still see it today. I think it's interesting. This, uh, Jordan Peterson phenomenon

00:20:49.040 that's going on right now, you know, say what you want about, but like he's tapping into that same

00:20:53.240 thing that Robert Bly tapped into 35 years ago. I think he is. And whether you go for it or whether

00:20:58.960 you don't, he's, he's beginning it, you know, he's begun, re-begun the debate. He's kind of got

00:21:05.040 people interested. Suddenly words like stoicism and rigor are back in, back on the agenda in a way

00:21:11.900 that they haven't been for a while. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:15.500 And now back to the show. So let's talk about the, the role of ritual in a man's life. So Robert

00:21:23.620 Bly, he saw that men were lacking of fierceness. They felt maybe lost. They were naive. How do you,

00:21:30.940 do you think it's because of a lack of ritual, like a rite of passage that men, particularly men in the

00:21:35.840 West, like lack? I think so. I think we've lost our, we've lost our natural, and I'm using the word 1.00

00:21:45.440 tribal here, but, but we've lost our natural tribal rituals of initiation for young men. We, we tend

00:21:53.900 not to go down that path anymore. And because of that, we, as young men, we self-initiate. We kind of

00:22:01.000 fall in love with death in a little bit of a way. We, we go stealing motorcars and we do extreme sports

00:22:08.340 and we get ourselves into fights and so on and so forth as a way of, of experiencing our manhood.

00:22:14.700 Now, the reality is you can't, no one can give you your manhood. You have to take it. But at the same

00:22:22.740 time, that needs to be done in a safe space where you can be tested, where you can be met by other

00:22:31.440 men, where you can learn about other men as you're going through a deep initiatory process. So that's a,

00:22:37.800 that's what we don't have anymore. And I think that's a, that's a real loss in our culture.

00:22:42.540 Yeah. I would say we've, I've heard people say, right, that we've replaced rites of passage in

00:22:47.920 a man's life with rites of achievement, right? It's like you get the job, you get the girl,

00:22:53.800 you get the money, but I mean, but it's like not fulfilling, right? Like it's, there's no beginning

00:22:59.700 to it. There's no end. You're not grounded. So you're always left like wanting more.

00:23:05.300 You know, when we think of achievement, once again, we think of rising up, don't we? We think of getting

00:23:09.920 up there, getting to the top of the greasy pole, climbing to the top of the pyramid. That is what

00:23:15.020 we think of when we think of achievement. It's very competitive. What we, what we tend to lose

00:23:20.160 sight of in that is that we, we're going up into our head at the same time. We're not connecting

00:23:26.460 with our body. And what Bly was giving us, what those sort of people would say was that there was

00:23:32.080 an understanding that these were messages to be embodied. I once, I have a memory of introducing

00:23:39.020 Robert Bly once in a, in an event in England, Southern England. And I said to him, well, what

00:23:45.300 do you want me to say about you? And he said, uh, just describe me as some kind of animal. I said,

00:23:53.120 okay. So I stood up and I said, well, this is Robert Bly and he's a bit like a bear. At which point

00:23:58.500 this voice behind me said, what do you mean a bear? And it was in his body. You know, that was it.

00:24:06.400 He embodied his thinking, his ideas. He was fully present in his life. He was totally authentic.

00:24:14.500 That's what he was giving us. He was giving us access to that in ourselves. And many of us,

00:24:19.160 by going up into our heads, by becoming heady and intellectual, we are avoiding our bodies,

00:24:27.120 but we're also avoiding our feelings. Let's say there's a man who's listening to this and they,

00:24:31.400 they wanted, they, they, they missed out on a rite of passage and like, say they're in their

00:24:35.020 thirties and forties. Is it too late for them to experience a rite of passage or is that something

00:24:38.560 they could do today? Not at all. Not in the least. Um, I think I did my first true rite of passage would

00:24:48.200 have been, I'd have been, Oh, I'd have been getting on for 40, if not over 40. It's not about, it's,

00:24:56.040 it's not about your physical age. It's about your psychic readiness. It's about your willingness

00:25:02.520 to undergo a transformational experience. Now, many men who go through such a rite of passage can go

00:25:09.380 through a rite of passage at the age of 20 and they don't actually do it because they're in their head or

00:25:14.400 they don't want to engage with it. That's fine. But usually by the age of 40, many men now have

00:25:24.660 had their, their life experiences has given them enough pain and enough grief and enough doubt

00:25:32.620 about themselves as men to really need to make some kind of a change. And that's the, those are the

00:25:42.200 kind of men that we used to meet. So, so it's not about age. It's about, has, has life knocked you

00:25:48.200 about a bit? And are you ready? That's the way it used to work. And I think that that age has actually

00:25:54.980 come down with issues around pornography and globalization and work and, uh, and, and things

00:26:05.160 like the Me Too movement and things like climate change. We are under pressure in a different sort of a

00:26:11.920 way. And to balance all that with the need to provide, cause that hasn't gone away. So the age

00:26:19.580 old need to provide, provide, and also to balance that with the need to be the new sensitive man that

00:26:27.720 we hear about. That's a stretch. And at that point, men are under enough pressure to want to gather with

00:26:35.000 other men and have a good look-see. And the best way to do that is through a ritual.

00:26:40.540 And what does that ritual look like? I mean, I imagine it's going to be different for depending on the

00:26:44.440 group you're a part of or your cultural background, but like in general, what is that going to look

00:26:49.460 like? Uh, very often it's about meeting. Oh, I don't know, up to, up to a hundred, 200, 300 strangers.

00:26:57.200 So, so immediately you have that male question of, uh, oh, is this going to come off? You know,

00:27:06.640 have I done the right thing coming here? So then you spend some time getting to know other men,

00:27:15.440 small groups, hanging out with men over dinner, whatever that might be. And you begin to build a

00:27:20.640 level of trust. You then get to the feelings, uh, sometimes around anger and irritations that

00:27:28.160 need to be expressed before you can all go into a ritual space. And that's the bit that brings out

00:27:35.680 the creativity that brings out the, the need to really, really undergo something. Men see that

00:27:44.300 they're building something together, this process, and that they go through it. Usually with someone

00:27:50.460 who's got enough wisdom, I suppose, to, to say, well, we, there are other men have gone down this

00:27:56.540 path before. It is okay. You're going to get a stretch, but it is okay. And I imagine for a lot

00:28:02.320 of these young guys or men, the same problem that Bly saw 35 years ago, this naivety, this lack of

00:28:09.320 fierceness, like probably a lot of that transformative work they're doing is like getting in touch with that

00:28:14.960 sort of fierceness within them. Yes. And, and also it's not just the fierceness, Brett. Sometimes it's

00:28:22.600 the empathy and the compassion. Sometimes it, what can be stunning for a man is to stand in a circle of

00:28:30.440 men feeling vulnerable, feeling exposed, feeling open, and to experience the tenderness of men.

00:28:38.560 That's not often talked about. And that was a salutary lesson for me. But I went into the hole,

00:28:48.080 I went into my grief, I went into my deepest pain. And there were men, strangers who supported me and

00:28:55.400 helped me through that. That was astonishing. I didn't expect that. I didn't think I had the right

00:29:01.620 to expect that. My past had set me up not to receive. Does that make sense?

00:29:06.360 Yeah, that makes sense. And to receive that kind of tenderness, that kind of care and nurture,

00:29:12.080 something I'd always put into the feminine pigeonhole, something I'd always denied in myself

00:29:19.300 and denied in other men, to actually receive that kind of empathy, that kind of tenderness,

00:29:24.720 the kind of stuff that you see on a battlefield after the battle, the kind of stuff that you see

00:29:29.940 when boxers put their arms around each other after a fight, that kind of intimacy,

00:29:35.660 that kind of understanding of each other. That's often the case. So there is the fierceness,

00:29:41.400 there is the search for a kind of a deeper masculinity. But there's also the search and

00:29:48.340 the discovery that it's layered. There are more things than just that kind of aggression.

00:29:56.280 There's assertion. There's assertion. But it's something else too.

00:29:59.440 Right. And imagine that one of the goals of the ritual is to integrate all those different parts.

00:30:04.680 Absolutely. And to come away feeling a sense of belonging and wholeness and connection. At its

00:30:12.320 best, that's what a ritual gives you. You actually feel, in a sense, bigger. I like to think it's a bit

00:30:22.260 like you're a snake sloughing off a skin. Well, if you don't slough off the skin, you can't grow.

00:30:28.660 Like a lobster, if you don't lose the shell, you can't grow. And that's a bit what it feels like.

00:30:34.460 You feel a little bit, a little bit raw, a little bit edgy, but you know you are growing. You know

00:30:41.960 that something immense has happened. And at its best, that's what happens in those kind of rituals.

00:30:47.180 And where can men go to find groups that do things like this?

00:30:52.620 Oh, I think they're around. I mean, you can see them in most cities, rural areas. You can put out

00:31:00.620 feelers and just say, you know, I'm really interested in joining a men's group. And of course,

00:31:06.160 if there isn't one, you can form one. That's what happened with me. I was at a workshop,

00:31:12.300 a seminar with a guy called John Lee, who'd come over to England. And he did the classic thing.

00:31:17.900 He said, there's a guy down here at the front of the room wants to start up a men's group. I would

00:31:22.920 suggest that any man in the room who is not in a men's group should come down here and join this man.

00:31:28.440 So I went down there and there were six or seven guys down there and we formed a men's group. And

00:31:32.400 it was absolutely fantastic. It was a gift, a huge gift to me. And at some point, we looked at each

00:31:37.940 other and said, who was the man down the front of the room? And John had just done a nice thing.

00:31:42.900 I think he just said, well, here's the guy. And we all came down and we were all that man.

00:31:46.480 There was no one man saying, I want a men's group. So my sense is that we can all get together with

00:31:52.100 other men. You can put an advert online. You can email your friends, email people in the expectation

00:32:00.100 that a high proportion of them will say no, or they'll be too busy, or this is woo-woo, or this is 0.98

00:32:04.980 rubbish. However, there will be men who are in the same space and say, yeah, I want to do that now.

00:32:11.280 And then there's a lot of stuff to read. There's a lot of stuff to work with. And there are workshops

00:32:16.000 and all sorts of things. There are people out there still.

00:32:18.800 Well, as I was reading this book, particularly the section on rites of passage, you know, I have a son,

00:32:23.980 he's eight. He's kind of getting that, he's getting pretty close to adolescence. And I've been

00:32:27.760 thinking about, well, is there something I can do to add a rite of passage, create one for him?

00:32:33.240 You know, cause we have some in our own faith, but I want something like, it's like, it's a family

00:32:36.560 one. What can fathers do? Like, what would a rite of passage look like for their son? Like what age

00:32:43.080 should they do it? What are some of the, at least, and it doesn't have to be, I think a lot of guys

00:32:47.060 are going to listen to this, they're going to follow this exactly to the T, but like, I think more I'm

00:32:50.140 looking for just sort of general ideas of what a rite of passage for a young boy really would look

00:32:56.480 like. Yeah. Well, I think it has to be triggered by the boy by that. I mean, there's a point at which

00:33:03.760 a boy starts paying attention and he's clearly engaging sexually at some level. He's looking

00:33:10.240 at girls or whatever he's doing. And he's, you know, he's out there, he's looking around. And at

00:33:14.940 that point in traditional cultures, regardless of orientation and sexuality, the, the, the boy

00:33:22.480 would be oiked out of the family home and taken off to the initiation hut. And I think that that's 0.86

00:33:28.700 something that fathers can do for their boys. However, and I'm going to maybe be a bit heretical

00:33:33.740 here. I don't think fathers should ever initiate their boys. I don't think they should initiate their

00:33:39.820 sons. Now they might be present when he returns for the last part of the ritual, but they shouldn't

00:33:46.460 be there initiating him because it's about a separation. Remember? And I said, we need to separate.

00:33:52.480 And at that point, it's about developing the trust with the men, creating the group of men whom you

00:33:59.920 can all trust to initiate each other's boys. There's some great work been done through people

00:34:07.020 like Michael Mead and over in this country, people, things like Band of Brothers and those sort of

00:34:12.300 outfits where, where they've worked with troubled youth. And that's the kind of stuff where you can

00:34:18.300 really work with youth to give them the challenges they need. And if a boy is looking over his

00:34:26.500 shoulder at his dad the whole time, how's dad reacting? How's dad taking this? Maybe he doesn't

00:34:33.380 say what he needs to say because dad's in the room. That's why I think dad needs to step out momentarily

00:34:39.820 to give the boy his chance and then to meet him when he comes back in and says,

00:34:48.020 I can see there's something different now and then give a blessing. Is that making sense?

00:34:53.420 Yeah, that makes sense. So let's say you have that group of men that you trust and willing to do a

00:34:59.120 rite of passage. What would that rite of passage look like? Was it just like go out to nature? Is it

00:35:03.980 like, I mean, what is that? I think you gather, you need to gather more than once. You need the boys

00:35:10.780 to see the men and to size them up and also to size each other up incidentally. But you need to,

00:35:18.540 the boys need to hear the men kind of modeling manhood. They need to see what it's like to be a

00:35:26.220 man and they need to hear what it's like to be a man, to be brought to your knees or punched on the

00:35:32.500 nose or betrayed or lost or all the things that we achieve as men, not to have that infected upon

00:35:39.840 them. And I've heard of groups in America where they shame their boys ritually so that they know

00:35:48.240 just how bad it can be out there. Well, if anyone does that in a room to boys, they've got the wrong

00:35:53.860 idea. That's not what kids need. They need something that is going to help them to stand up

00:36:00.180 and basically shaming them doesn't do it. So you need to, so you need to have the sense of a

00:36:06.380 community that the boys are a part of a community. And then you can possibly go away and set up this

00:36:12.920 separation that I'm talking about. You set up a special event and that's when you begin to really

00:36:19.040 bring your creativity to bear. You study rites of passage. You know, you study people like Michael

00:36:24.520 Mead or those kinds of folks and you, you, you, you see what they're, you see what they're, what

00:36:29.240 they're offering and you see the kind of things that can be done for boys and you, you give them a

00:36:35.540 challenge. You give them a journey if you like. It's almost like recreating, uh, uh, Joseph Campbell's

00:36:41.140 descent into the underworld. You give them tasks, you give them challenges, you give them those kinds of

00:36:46.880 things. And remember they're young, so they're not necessarily going to be doing much of the

00:36:51.580 expressive work. They're going to be so full of testosterone that they're not really going to be 0.79

00:36:55.960 able to, to weep in the way that a 45 year old man would weep in an initiatory process. But he is, uh,

00:37:03.180 any youth is going to be able to respond in the moment to any kind of a challenge like that. And when

00:37:10.740 they rise to it, they need to be seen to rise to it and they need to be given either a skill or a means

00:37:18.960 to get through the world or a route map, a sense of what the world is. Now the group of men can show

00:37:25.260 what the world is like. They can give the boy a route map. And, but once he begins to express

00:37:32.360 himself and he shows that he has this, some skill, some gift, maybe he sings a song, maybe he's a bit

00:37:39.200 of a tear away and he's got some other skill that needs to be named and blessed and brought out into the

00:37:46.340 open. And that's the bit that he takes home. That's the, that's the thing that is seen by the

00:37:53.220 group. And that is the thing that is blessed. Is that making sense?

00:37:56.480 That does make sense. And another, I think, point that I liked that you made in the book,

00:38:01.500 we talked about this earlier, is that even though you might've gone through a rite of passage from,

00:38:05.160 from boyhood to manhood, that doesn't have to be the only rite of passage you go through.

00:38:09.640 There are other parts of your life, transitory periods where another rite of passage would be

00:38:14.600 useful. Like say you're moving from middle age to elderhood, right? That, that might call for a

00:38:19.620 rite of passage.

00:38:20.540 Yeah, absolutely. And I think there, there, there are innumerable rites of passage. I mean, there's,

00:38:26.460 oh, what we, there's a new job, a new location. There's a moving from one, one level of status to

00:38:33.640 another, if you like, in our culture. And there's also this, this, the, the move from being single to

00:38:40.220 marriage to, to moving into fatherhood, to, uh, moving into old age. I've, um, been undergoing,

00:38:46.540 I underwent a, uh, a ritual which was given to me, uh, in the far North of Sweden, up by the Arctic

00:38:52.760 circle, uh, uh, by some Sami people who basically rebirthed me into old age. Nice. I didn't realize it

00:39:03.720 had happened until I got home really, but it was a very powerful ritual. And it, it has set me up for

00:39:09.720 my latter years. I'm 66 and it kicked off a whole series of explorations. And it feels like I've

00:39:18.200 been undergoing that kind of an initiation over the last two, three years now.

00:39:22.940 We've talked about some like transformative, uh, ritual, like particularly the rite of passage,

00:39:26.920 uh, cause I think a lot of men are keyed in on that, but you talk about in the book,

00:39:30.080 there are rites of passage or not even right. There are rituals that you can do on a daily basis.

00:39:35.420 They're small, but like, first off, like what are those types of rituals? And like,

00:39:40.440 what do you think the benefit of doing something like that is?

00:39:43.020 Well, there are, there are, there are rituals that can appear really crazy. I mean, we can

00:39:46.460 ritualize anything, you know, that's a, uh, we can, you know, by doing it more than once

00:39:51.920 in a sense, we are ritualizing it. I used to have a, uh, as a writer, I used to have a ritual

00:39:57.840 of every day sharpening every pencil and putting it back in the pot, which is really interesting

00:40:04.540 because I'd already started writing on a laptop, but that was my ritual. And what it did was

00:40:09.160 it, it concentrated my mind. It got me to pay attention and to focus. So those are, those

00:40:14.640 are little rituals we can give ourselves. For me, it doesn't have to be a big event, but,

00:40:19.840 uh, by repeating little things, by paying attention, by seeing things, by opening up. In my case,

00:40:26.940 I, um, I use blot, which is a little gift, a little sacrifice. That's a Scandinavian word,

00:40:33.920 blot, that means, originally means blood, sacrifice. And, but that's a little gift. I carry

00:40:40.160 little gifties around with me, little beads or stones that I can just give in gratitude

00:40:45.560 for my day. I can give in gratitude for the place where I'm going. What it does is it brings

00:40:52.320 my attention down to those things around me and it gets me out of my head. It gets me connected.

00:40:59.540 And I think those are very important. We don't all meditate. I'm not a great meditator,

00:41:03.340 for instance. I like doing Tai Chi and I like Ji Gong and I like those kinds of things,

00:41:07.500 things that involve some kind of activity, but I'm not so good at sitting on my butt and meditating.

00:41:14.940 So these things give me a way of entering into the world in a slightly different way.

00:41:20.900 And of course, in doing that, I get, I move from my intense focus. And I think we all have that

00:41:27.400 these days, kind of like a concentration on doing things, doing them right, doing the next thing.

00:41:33.720 And I moved to a softer focus where the, where things can come in from the edge of my vision,

00:41:41.240 new ideas, new thoughts, in my case, a new poem. Something comes in those moments.

00:41:48.240 And that's what a little momentary ritual on a daily basis can give.

00:41:54.300 The blood, that was new to me. So as you say, when you say sacrifice, you give the little gifts

00:41:58.980 that you like, sometimes you just bury it in the ground. Like that's what you do, right?

00:42:02.280 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

00:42:03.840 I thought that was kind of cool.

00:42:04.980 Thank you. Thank you for this. Sometimes I will do it in honor of whatever it is I think that has

00:42:12.100 happened in this place. So I will leave a little pebble or a stone in a forest.

00:42:17.520 Very often just press it. And then when I walk away from it, it's none of my business,

00:42:22.240 but I will leave it there honoring what has happened there. Now I live in a country that is

00:42:32.400 layered upon layered upon layered with thousands of years of history. I'm lucky. I live in Wales,

00:42:38.680 just on the border with England. And there I have enough history, but every now and again,

00:42:44.080 I'll go for a walk and I'll get a sense of something and I'll make a little gift in honor

00:42:49.900 of those men and women who live their lives, who've worked the land, who've hunted here,

00:42:58.420 who have fought and died here, who have whatever that might be. But I will, in an imaginal way,

00:43:05.560 I will honor them. It's almost like an ancestral thing. Is that making sense?

00:43:09.620 No, that makes sense.

00:43:10.500 And at that point, I am connecting with a greater whole. Now, I also choose to honor nature.

00:43:18.100 My view of a creator, of a God, is not of a creator. It's of creation. So I like to be a part

00:43:25.460 of that. And my way of connecting with that is by giving a gift, by making the connection. In exactly

00:43:32.500 the same way as in a church, you put some money in the plate. It's no different, really. But it does

00:43:38.040 open up a more direct and it gives me an opportunity to speak. I think there's something

00:43:43.820 very important in speaking out loud. I don't have any embarrassment now about speaking out loud when

00:43:50.040 I do a private ritual. Speaking that brings you present, your persona, your sound is very important.

00:43:57.680 Well, I think for a lot of people who are listening to this, I think they're probably intrigued by

00:44:01.480 rituals. But at the same time, they're afraid to pull the trigger on it because it feels weird

00:44:08.060 or it's woo-woo. So what do you say to those guys? Make the case, make the hard sell for giving

00:44:17.140 rituals a try. How's it going to improve their life or maybe change their life? Let's do the hard sell.

00:44:26.400 Hard sell. Oh, gosh.

00:44:27.680 That's not very ritual-like. It's interesting when you talk about the fear, the fear of the

00:44:34.900 woo-woo and the weird and the strange and all that stuff. I think that's part of it. I think that's

00:44:40.860 part of what we're talking about in this drift towards the rational and the logical. What it

00:44:47.120 means is if we are afraid of that weirdness, then we tend to cover it up with something else. We tend to

00:44:55.100 shame it or put it down or say, oh, well, it's just a load of rubbish. But in actual fact, 0.99

00:44:59.640 it's good to go with the fear. Poet William Stafford used to talk about, there's a fear out

00:45:04.540 there. That's your life. Go with it. Explore it. Now, that's an interesting notion. And of course,

00:45:11.180 that's what you can do in rituals because you kind of unzip a little bit when you get into a ritual

00:45:15.820 space. That's a very, very important thing. It helps you to enter into the deeper feelings that

00:45:24.120 very often we don't go to. I call it gas work, which is grief, anger, and shame. These three in

00:45:32.560 men, they seem to be inextricably linked much of the time. So we feel very angry, but we wrap it in shame

00:45:38.320 or we feel very sad, but we wrap that in anger so that we don't have to feel sad. We don't have to

00:45:46.060 feel the grief. In a ritual space, you do feel those things with other men. And that's a very potent mix

00:45:53.160 and it cleans house for you. It really does clean house. If you're in any way addicted, if you've got

00:45:59.200 a difficulty, most of us at some point or another start ritualizing our entry into addictions,

00:46:06.560 be that drink, drugs, sex, food, whatever it is, we have a ritual way of doing it. Well,

00:46:13.320 there's a ritual way of coming out of it. We can give ourselves rituals to come out of the

00:46:19.380 underworld of that addiction, of that behavior, whatever it is. So these are really powerful

00:46:25.320 tools that we have at our disposal. And if we share them with other men, if we have other men to

00:46:29.940 witness us, to see us in our, let's call it our unzipped state, you can really do some good.

00:46:38.700 You're also preparing for the future to mark the difference between the past and all its shadow,

00:46:45.420 all its difficulty, all its unhappiness, and a clearer, healthier future. That's when you come

00:46:51.120 out. That's when you can receive the blessing. That's when you can really get the benefit of that

00:46:55.560 ritual. So it can actually do an awful lot of good for you.

00:46:58.760 Well, the way you describe it, I mean, it sounds kind of like therapy, but without

00:47:02.360 going to like the doctor, right? Because I mean, a therapy, like, even if you go to like a

00:47:06.760 traditional, like traditional therapy, it's sort of a ritual. There's a space you go into.

00:47:12.020 Absolutely.

00:47:12.760 There's this person who's guiding you through, you know, things in your life.

00:47:16.800 Yeah. It's, it's, it's therapy without the talk very often. It's therapy by doing. It's a ritual

00:47:24.140 action in a therapeutic space. Now, the reality is there were ritual for millennia before there

00:47:34.380 were ever therapists. You know, if we've had, what is it, James Hillman, you should say we've

00:47:38.220 had, we've had, uh, uh, we've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting

00:47:42.100 worse, but that was a way of actually having a good look at what, what therapy and the therapoise,

00:47:46.940 the, the, the, the journey into therapy gave ritual does that, but it does it without the

00:47:53.480 intellectual stimulus that can take months and years to get to the point. I mean, many

00:47:58.920 of us, we go into, we go into therapy on day one, we have a good cry and then we kind of

00:48:03.160 hide ourselves for months. Well, in a ritual, you tend not to hide. You can, you can finesse

00:48:10.100 it, but you know, you're only cheating yourself.

00:48:12.440 Right. Like therapy sounds like it's Apollonian, right? It's a very high level.

00:48:16.600 It can be, it certainly can be. I mean, there are, no, there are some great body therapies

00:48:22.540 out there. There are some great body related therapies that, that touch the, that touch the

00:48:28.040 soul, that really touch the soul through the senses, through the body, through a kind of

00:48:33.020 like a reflective space, things like Pesso Boyden system, psychomotor, those kinds of things,

00:48:37.620 really solid body therapies. Those I think are fantastic. And of course we mix and match these

00:48:45.640 days, don't we? We do a bit of this. We do a bit of alternative stuff. We do a bit of therapy. We do

00:48:50.440 a, maybe go join a 12 step fellowship or a piece of recovery work or all these things. They can

00:48:55.900 support each other, like the different legs of a stool so that we don't fall over.

00:48:59.960 Well, William, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

00:49:05.020 I've enjoyed it immensely. I have to say, well, I've got a sad little website,

00:49:08.260 which is williamayotte.com. And there, if you want to go and have a look there, you can express,

00:49:15.320 there's a place where you can sign up and express an interest in the kind of work that I'm doing.

00:49:20.240 So we're currently thinking about another second ongoing group training people here in the UK,

00:49:27.200 but also I'm thinking about setting up an online training seminars around the ideas of ritual.

00:49:35.060 So if you want to go and sign up there, I think it asks you where you might be coming from, or by that,

00:49:41.020 I mean, which country you're living in, then we can kind of get back to you and ask a little bit

00:49:46.140 more about that. There is the book, of course, which is Re-enchanting the Forest, Meaningful Ritual

00:49:52.100 in a Secular World, and that's available on Amazon and other outlets. And let's just not make it all 0.98

00:49:59.320 about me. You can get in touch with other men. There's a lot of stuff out there. And I think that

00:50:04.760 once we feel the call, and it is a call, it might be through my work, but it might just be that the

00:50:13.020 idea of ritual brings you in contact with other men. That's really worth it. On my website, I've also

00:50:19.100 got a questionnaire for men, which I'm setting up, which will be giving me the material and the

00:50:25.460 information to check out many things. I'm writing a new book for and about men in the wake of

00:50:32.640 globalization and climate change and feminism and the internet, how that has changed our lives.

00:50:41.140 So I want to hear from men. So anyone who wants to sign up to that questionnaire would be very

00:50:45.880 welcome. So that's about it.

00:50:47.560 Fantastic. Well, William, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:50:50.040 Great. It's been really good. Thank you very much, Brett.

00:50:52.480 My guest today was William Ayotte. He's the author of the book, Re-Enchanting the Forest.

00:50:56.320 It's available on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:50:59.900 williamayotte.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash ritual. We can find links to

00:51:05.480 resources. We can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM

00:51:16.780 podcast. Check out our website, artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archive. There's

00:51:21.020 over 500 episodes there. We've also written thousands of articles over the years on things

00:51:24.860 like rituals and the power of rituals and how to incorporate rituals in your life. But also we

00:51:28.260 have things on personal finance, how to be a better husband, better father, physical fitness, you name

00:51:32.140 it, we've got it. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you take one minute to give

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00:51:47.400 listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - May 06, 2019

#505： A Man's Need for Ritual

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