This Book Talks About the Lost Tribal Rituals That Helped Boys Become Men

A lot makes sense in light of it.

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Manhood is a strange topic for its object, the purpose and substance of men, has never been set with certitude.

It’s impossible to define what a man ought to do with his life. It’s equally impossible to assert when a boy stops being a boy and becomes a man, and how his role, status, and responsibilities should change with it.

To solve this problem, ancient tribes and civilisations had established a series of rituals aimed at helping boys transition. The Romans, for example, introduced the boys to civic society during the Toga Virilis, a male initiation rite that was abandoned as the Empire christianized.

Fortunately, some principles of initiation remained within the institutions of the Middle Ages, where the boys were either taught by their direct families or by preceptors and mentors.

It was only much later, during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870), that the masculinity crisis we’ve inherited today began as fathers left the fields for factories while children were sent to school.

The advent of materialism and the cultural loss of what the poet Robert Bly calls the “mythological layer” have erased from popular memory even the hint…