Initiation In The Minotauromachy Analysis

Initiation in the Minotauromachy

The chanting begins. The rising and falling tone sings for hours, stamping itself on the young boy’s mind. There are no women, only the men of the tribe. The hypnotic monotony of the chant begins to relax the child, who lies on the dusty Australian ground between two of his elders. This is an Aboriginal sanctuary, where rituals are performed, often bloody. This one is no different.

The chanting stops. The men grab the boy. Stretching him out, they put a stick in his mouth. And with a sharp flint, the boy is circumcised. His mother is not able to protect him from the men. He, himself, is not able to fight back. But now he is like his fellow tribesmen: circumcised. He is one with them; they are the same, no longer dual or separate. He’s not a boy anymore, but a man, and a man of his society. “The rest of the men now resumed their rhythmic chant and beat the earth with their boomerangs” (Bjerre 31). The initiation is done.

In Pablo Picasso’s great 1935

Here are two opposing feminine forces, and he didn’t know how to deal with the duality of them. Therefore, his inner conflict made itself known in his art. His unconscious came through, for he had not come to terms with his own minotaur yet.

Campbell notes on dreams, “The dangerous crises of self-development are permitted to come to pass under the protecting eye of an experience initiate in the lore and language of dreams” (Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces 5). Picasso had been using his art to fight against this duality of mistress against wife, and he used a maturing figure to do so. His unconscious speaks: maybe he, himself, should mature, and fix the turmoil he’s caused. Picasso uses the initiation ritual as a way to overcome one’s faults, and become one with the good, with one