Fatherhood as an Underworld Initiation
In the ancient Egyptian myth, Osiris, the just king, is betrayed by his brother Set, who tears his body into pieces and scatters them across the land. Isis, his devoted wife, gathers the fragments, re-members him, and through her magic conceives Horus, the falcon child who carries the lineage forward.
This cycle of dismemberment, remembrance, and renewal has always struck me. It is a map of initiation, a story about death and rebirth, and the way lineage is carried through love and devotion.
For me, this myth found its way into my life the moment I stepped into marriage and, later, into fatherhood.
Before Fatherhood
Becoming a father was never in my plans. My life was devoted to searching for meaning in other ways: studying Eastern traditions, practicing meditation, journeying with shamanism and indigenous wisdom in Peru. I moved between jungle and Andes, guided by medicine men and women, drinking in the lessons of sacred plants, learning to see the world in terms of energy, spirit, and intention. I was also guiding people into this work. I thought this was my spiritual path of service to others.
But it was only when I met my wife that the true descent began.
I had a dream of her when I was eight years old. Synchronicities and decisions were crucial to finding each other in this lifetime, but that story belongs to another article. Marriage itself was an initiation. It stripped me of the illusion of being a man who could move freely, without ties, doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Suddenly, I was accountable—not only to another human being, but to the vows and prayers I had spoken.
Marriage exposed my projections: the stories I carried about women, about union, about what I wanted and feared. It was a descent into the shadow, where I had to face what was real in me and what was merely illusion.
This was my first dismemberment.
The Call to Fatherhood
When my wife and I chose to welcome a child, a new dimension opened before me. I remember the moment of the pregnancy test as a wave of excitement, but also uncertainty. I didn’t know what it truly meant, only that everything had changed.
Pregnancy was a trial in its own right. Care, patience, nourishment, support, presence—none of these came without great effort. Then came birth, the great threshold. We chose a home birth, a water birth. Labor was long and grueling, but in the end, I received my son with my own hands, feeling the support of our ancestors surrounding our house in the forest. We lit a candle to cut his cord, we prayed, and he entered our lives.
The real initiation had only begun. Sleepless nights, diapers, pre- and postpartum struggles—all of these drew me deeper into the underworld. The lonely man I was before simply could not survive here.
The Dismemberment
This is where myths become so powerful on a psycho-spiritual level, and the myth of Osiris and Horus came alive for me. Osiris is torn apart, scattered. To become a father, the old self must be dismembered. The single man, the spiritual seeker, the one who thought freedom meant moving without ties—that man cannot remain. Pieces of him must be left behind.
And yet, like Isis gathering Osiris’ fragments, fatherhood is also about remembrance. To re-member is not only to put the body back together, but to remember the soul, to recall why we are here, to align with a deeper purpose. Fatherhood forces you to ask: What do I want to pass on? What is worth carrying forward into the next generation?
When Horus is born, he is not only the son of Osiris but also the continuation of his father’s lineage, carrying the renewal of life after dismemberment. In the same way, my wife and children carry me forward, but they also transform me. They require me to grow into a man I did not know I could be.
Trials of the Underworld
Now, with our second child, a daughter, the cycle continues. The sleeplessness, the exhaustion, the balancing of work and family—it is another descent, another trial. But each trial chisels something essential in me.
I see clearly how fatherhood is an alchemy. Old ways dissolve. New forms emerge. I question everything: marriage, birth, medicine, spirituality, parenting, education. I see the patterns of my father, my grandparents, the lineage behind me, and I choose what to keep, what to transform, what to release.
The underworld initiation of fatherhood is not a single event. It is ongoing. It breaks us down, piece by piece, and then asks us to re-member ourselves again and again, each time at a deeper level.
Re-Membering
Horus, the falcon, is the vision of renewal, the sharp-eyed one carrying the sky. He represents the restoration of balance, of justice, of continuity. In my own journey, fatherhood calls me to embody this falcon spirit: to see further, to protect, to guide, to carry forward not only my own life, but the lives entrusted to me by the divine.
Fatherhood is an initiation of dismemberment and re-memberment. It is sacrifice—to make sacred—service, and surrender. But it is also abundance, miracle, and the deepest soul medicine.
The path I once thought was spiritual—journeys to jungles, visions with medicine—prepared me. But the real initiation was here all along, waiting in the ordinary and the sacred: in marriage, in birth, in sleepless nights, in carrying children, in building a home.
This is the underworld initiation of fatherhood. To descend, to be broken, to re-member, and to rise again—not alone, but as part of a lineage carried forward in love, soul, and divine will.
An Invitation
If you are a father, or about to become one, know this: you are walking a path as old as myth itself. You will be dismembered. You will be tested. And in that breaking, you will be invited to transform in a unique way.
Fatherhood is not just about raising children. It is also about raising ourselves. To become the men our wives and children need, we must confront our shadows, encounter the unconscious, and bring forth the hidden material that shapes our lives. This is shadow work and is essential. It is how we transmute wounds into wisdom, fear into presence, and pain into strength.
We don’t walk this path in isolation. Just as Horus carries his father forward, our children carry us, but we also need our wives and others to forge us gather ourselves.
I share my story as an offering, a reminder that fatherhood is a sacred initiation, an underworld journey that calls us into deep transformation. May we enter it with courage. May we walk it together. And may we, piece by piece, re-member ourselves into wholeness.
