We need new rituals, new initiations to affirm masculinity. What would men's rituals look like that are in touch with the Core of the Earth? That speak to this heart of magma that is beating inside all of us: its wild, liquid fire? The rituals currently offered to men do not serve this furious aliveness.
A week ago, Germany celebrated so-called Father's Day, the classical holiday where men spend time with a group of male friends. The way I have perceived this ritual for most of my life goes like this: we blow your brains out with booze and then we roam the streets as a bunch of ungrounded, latently aggressive lost soldiers, looking for a a place to act out all the suppressed anger, fury and rage.
Now I also see the potential that is hidden there: it's a way of releasing pressure and of connecting to something more archaic.
It's tribal, it promises a sense of letting go, it offers a getaway from dosmeticated life, trapped in the role of provider or nice guy. Channeling some of the despair about the shallow lives that consumer society is offering to us... I'm all up for that.
So what bothers me with these rituals? Exactly that there is such huge potential in there. Events like Father's Day contain a lot of nourishing, empowering elements that might stem from ancient rituals that might have been more connected to wild nature and an essence of freedom. But as they are appearing now, they are complicit and enmeshed with a culture that is suffocating life on this planet and that is actually dead already.
They offer an emptied version of something actually nourishing. Just like most of the porn out there is selling a promise of sexual liberation but actually just gives you the exact amount of pleasure that you need to keep going. Nothing to lift you out of your cage.
In a similar way the most common rituals of manhood keep us trapped in patriarchal loops. Like a regression to becoming teenage boys again, eagerly trying to demonstrate that they are kings. Going wild and then crawling back under mommy's skirt, to emerge with an even bigger craving for power and freedom. A dangerous mix that made many men, like me, believe that they don't like to hang out with groups of other guys: the drinking rituals, the numbness, the narrow range of emotions and intimacy allowed to share with other men in these spaces.
Where's the brotherhood that actually nourishes, empowers us, that connects us to the ancient knowledge of our place in creation?
The Archetype of the Immature King is still ruling much of the world: cold, calculating, controlling. Afraid of the chaos of Life. At war with nature. A lot of our actual power is blocked by the dominance of this archetype.
There are so many more, ready to emerge.
These archetypes are not at all more harmless or weak. They are actually much more threatening to the status quo than the suit-and-tie guy, the one sitting in a tank, the one mining the Earth for precious metals. And there is a deep desire for these new embodiments of the masculine to rise: Earth fathers, passionate lovers, generative adults. Archetypes that are offering trust, stamina, willpower, ease. That see through the deceit of false power and control, that cut through they veils.
These archetypes will sprout from our hearts, they will rise from the roaring earth awakening, they will be fostered by a caring, supportive circle of brothers.
It's on us to dare to claim this power and to call it forth from each other's hearts.
The old civilization is dying. Earth is calling us to become good ancestors. To become fathers, uncles and brothers of a way of life that can regenerate ecosystems. With good sex, living food, free expression for all genders and sexualities. Where life force is actually unleashed in a way that is sustaining life.
What do the rituals of this coming world look like? I tapped into a gentle whispering about that. But it's a collective effort. So join me, fellow men. No more lone wolves.
One of the ways to investigate this is BROTHERHOOD OF WILD GODS, a combination of online sessions and an in-person retreat.
It's starting soon and you can find all about it here: https://www.danielbernhardcremer.com/wildgods: But that's just one piece of this puzzle. Brother, reach out to me if this touches you. I need you by my side.