The Gye-Nyame Journey, Warrior Training & Rites of Passage Program
Mythic Experience Warrior Society
The goal behind the Gye-Nyame Warrior Training & ROP Program is Self-Mastery. Using a system from ancient times called Rites of Passage. This model was set up by simulating the hero’s adventures of ancient cultures. The initiate who went through the experience basically retraced the steps of the Mythic hero and learned the lessons that held his community together. In order to accomplish this, ancient people would take the Initiate (young person, or person in transition) through 3 basic steps:
- SEPARATION - During the Separation Phrase, the initiate (young person, student, or person in transition) would be separated from community, and prepared for their mythic journey. Usually they would be given access to a world usually unseen by the uninitiated. They would stay in this ritualized, and ceremonial world until they had graduated successfully from the process.
- INITIATION - During the Initiation Phase, the initiate would be introduced to principle, values, rules and ways of the community. They would learn how to become productive members of the society, and also be plugged into all the resources that the community had to offer.
- RE-INTRODUCTION - During the Re-introduction Phrase, the initiate would be re-introduced to community as a full member, and would be given full rights of the position that they learned about during the Initiation Period.
What is Rites of Passage???
We can look into our present society and see different processes of Rites of Passage at work. We now mainly participate in the process without fully knowing that we are being put through a Rites of Passage process. For example, let’s look at a high school football program. All the young men who are willing to be on the team receive a call (coaches' invite, or announcement over the PA) notifying anyone who is interested that football tryouts will be taking place. All the youth who were interested shows up. This is the beginning of the separation phrase. After tryouts, in most programs, the initiation phase takes place during the dreaded two-a-days practice ceremony, where the young men are pushed to their limits learning the rules of football, the rituals of the game, and even the secret language of the team. After two-a-days are over, the team is re-introduced to the community during the first game showing off their new acquired abilities. We can see this same process in other sports, military training, gangs, fraternities, sororities, colleges, and even in the corporate world.
This process can be studied more in depth by reading such authors as Joseph Campbell's master work “Hero with a thousand faces" and "The Power of Myth", Malidoma Patrice Some’ "Of Water and the Spirit" and "The Healing Wisdom of Africa", and various other authors who look at R.O.P and the mythic journey of the Hero from different cultures.
When we provide young people with something that they can view as theirs, then it is easier to get their full participation. To make something like this work requires outside the box thought, which is why The Gye-Nyame Nation Builders have developed a program (“Warrior Society”) that the youth can belong to and become members of. We have organization and are exposing our young men and women to a curriculum that is changing their lives. This group is considered to be an urban version of the “Boy Scouts” by some, and we focus on the recruitment of young people that are at risk.