The Lexicon
Transformation and the path
Initiation
Initiation is the threshold rite by which a seeker is taken across from one level of being to another, a deliberate passage that confers not merely information but a new capacity of soul. It always involves a kind of dying and a kind of birth, the ending of the old condition and the entrance into a wider life. In the mystery schools the candidate was led blindfolded through ordeal and revelation, emerging as one who now knows from the inside what before was only rumor.
Carried by 30 teachers · across 5 traditions · 7 quotes
In the Theosophical mapping, initiation is the structure of the whole spiritual evolution: each step marks the clearer shining of the inner fire and a deeper realization of unity with all that lives. The outer ceremony is only the visible token of an inner expansion that has already taken place or is being sealed. To be initiated is to be admitted, by readiness and by grace, into a degree of awareness that cannot be reached by the unprepared.
In their words
Each initiation marks the passing of the pupil in the Hall of Wisdom into a higher class, marks the clearer shining forth of the inner fire and the transition from one point of polarisation to another.Alice Bailey
To attain the sanctum regnum... there are four indispensable conditions — an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which nothing can break, and a discretion which nothing can corrupt.Eliphas Levi
We have made you neither of heaven nor of earth... so that as though the maker and molder of yourself, you may fashion yourself in whatever shape you shall prefer.Pico della Mirandola
There is no religion higher than truth.Helena Blavatsky
The mysteries are revealed only to those who have prepared themselves to receive them.Iamblichus, paraphrase of On the Mysteries