By David Magallanes / Guest contributor
When my daughter had her quinceañera celebration some thirteen years ago, I thought about the Latinas in her age group who didn’t have one. Either the family was too financially stressed, or they simply didn’t believe in a celebration that “advertised” that the young lady was now available for marriage (though marriage wouldn’t even be considered legal in our society at that age).
I felt that I had a deeper reason for hosting this celebration than to “throw a party.” In American society, we often ignore or downplay the major transitions in life. I wanted to celebrate my daughter’s coming of age and let her know that she was embarking on a new journey, filled with possible adventure and fraught with hidden dangers, now that she was about to exit childhood.
Throughout history, a girl’s transition to womanhood was regarded as something of grave import, something sacred, something transcendent. It was celebrated in ways from charmingly simple to highly elaborate. The ancients used to have a profound appreciation for the mystery of female life-giving power. The depth of that appreciation has diminished over time and across the ages in modern Western culture.
In his book, “Emerging From The Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women’s Initiation,” Bruce Lincoln describes in fascinating detail the extraordinary level of loving attention that other cultures bestowed upon a young lady entering the sacramental realm of potential motherhood. According to Webster’s dictionary, the word “chrysalis” signifies: 1) the pupa of a butterfly, the form of the insect between the larval and adult stages and in a case or cocoon; 2) the case or cocoon; 3) anything in a formative or undeveloped stage. The fact that “butterflies” are invoked would take on special significance if we were to explore the mythical dimensions of Mexican womanhood.
It is fitting, then, that this image of “chrysalis” serve as a symbol for that mysterious transition, in a girl’s early teen years, from niña to mujer. This chrysalis, within which the girl is mysteriously transforming from a girl to a woman, is likewise an entity that evokes wonder, mystery, frustration and pain, the latter particularly for fathers who are not particularly privy to female maturation and its inscrutability with regard to their daughters.
In “Emerging From The Chrysalis,” Mr. Lincoln informs us that our own Navajo people rejoice when a young girl experiences her first menstruation, “because it indicates that she is ready to bring forth new life.” Whereas the more sterile Western culture considers a girl to have become a woman when she is physically capable of bearing new life, the Navajo, as did many other old cultures, insisted that “the girl must also be ritually transformed.”
Mr. Lincoln recounts to his readers the utter reverence with which other civilizations marked a girl’s most glorious change. The Tiyyan caste in India, for example, used to have the girl on the verge of womanhood stand at the foot of a coconut tree and water its roots. But this simple act was pregnant (no pun intended) with symbolism and significance. The coconut tree, after all, “stands at the center of the earth, supports the heavens, connects all the realms of the universe, and provides food for all living creatures.” The girl, then, “became ready to take on the responsibility for nothing less than the maintenance of the entire universe…”
It is this awesome ability and power of women to “maintain the universe” that has fueled both reverence toward and loathing of women. It has inspired adoration of women and placed them on vertiginous pedestals, as is witnessed in the art of countless civilizations, including those that preceded modern Mexico and Europe; but it has likewise aroused fear and dark suspicion in the hearts of their male counterparts, leading to the witch hunts and massacres of females that form the more obscure vestiges of history — a history not so distant or foreign, having occurred in our own United States and historically not that long ago.
— The preceding was an excerpt from a future book by David Magallanes, who is the creator of his own enterprise, Real World Projects, a speaking, writing and Internet marketing business dedicated to the advancement of the American Dream. An emerging branch of Real World Projects is Edifiquemos, a Spanish language enterprise. David may be available for speaking opportunities. To contact him and for more information, you are invited to visit and explore his web sites at www.realworldprojects.info and at www.edifiquemos.com. His e-mail is dmagallanes@RealWorldProjects.info