The Initiatory Touch

[_zeezrom]

The temple initiatory ceremony is such a paradox!

On the one hand, we have this ultimate of spiritual, religious experiences. We are at our most vulnerable. We have stripped ourselves of our walls and egos. We place our bodies and minds at the foot of others. They touch us softly. We can almost feel the breath from their lips as they speak holy rites.

On the other hand, we are awkward and numb. We go through a ritual because we don't see another way. The person performing the rite is wholly disconnected from our intimate life. The world outside has no idea what we are going through.

Certainly, this was a unique, powerful, beautiful, ugly, thought provoking, numbing experience.


un teint immaculé, bruno dayan for l’officiel #128, 1998

[_Harold Lee]

Mm nope, it was just weird.

[_zeezrom]

Mm nope, it was just weird.

I feel it is impossible for something like this to be "just weird". It is too complex an experience to be just one thing.

[_Sethbag]

Hey, back in the old days they actually washed a person, literally, in a tub, and annointed with copious quantities compared to what most of us experienced, even prior to the most recent changes (which I've never experienced).

How'd you like to have been stripped down butt-ass naked and scrubbed in a tub as part of a religious ceremony?

[_moksha]

The initiatory is part of the restoration of all things.

How'd you like to have been stripped down butt-ass naked and scrubbed in a tub as part of a religious ceremony?

I once experienced such a scrubbing on a stool in a Japanese bath (the tub came after the rinsing) in San Francisco and I had to pay for it. While I did not receive a religious experience, it still felt good. Might have been even more pleasurable if there was someone behind the screen peeking, but this was in the 20th Century.

[_RockSlider]

With my teen years filled with drugs, drinking and much sin, and having no clue as to what would happen in the temple, I remember my amazement at the old man washing me, with a promise that I was clean or could become clean, and then anointing me with the great promise of the endowment.

I always loved the initiatory, because of that special touch, and cannot imagine the current politically correct version that has removed exactly that key concept of the laying on of hands and touch of dedicated and specialized blessings.

It's a shame the touch is no more.

Of course the same goes for the loss of the five points of fellowship ... yes touching is bad