--- title: What does it mean to become a True Adult? description: "In animist cultures, becoming an Adult meant far more than growing up physically or taking on adult responsibilities: it meant connecting with your true Soul and taking your place in the web of life, usually through an initiation at adolescence.…" url: "https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/wiki/what-does-it-mean-to-become-a-true-adult/" updated: "2026-11-10" category: Growing up tags: - Adulthood - Bill Plotkin - community - Elder - Eldership - "hunter-gatherers" - initiation - interdependence - Maslow - psychotherapy - rites of passage - Rogers - soul - True Adult --- # What does it mean to become a True Adult? In animist cultures, becoming an Adult meant far more than growing up physically or taking on adult responsibilities: it meant connecting with your true Soul and taking your place in the web of life, usually through an initiation at adolescence. Without such initiations, ours is a society of children in adult-sized bodies, and true Adults are rare. Becoming one is a lifelong process of growing into Soul, and an Elder**Elder (True Elder).** The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. [More about this](/wiki/what-is-a-true-elder/) is an Adult who has later stepped back into an advisory role. ## What is the difference between an Adult and an adult? Being connected to your Soul. In animist cultures "being an Adult meant far more than just taking on middle-world**Middle-world.** Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. "If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world." [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-is-the-middle-world/) adult responsibilities in the tribe. For being an Adult (rather than just an adult), meant being connected to your true Soul. It meant knowing your true Human nature."^[1](#note-1) Adulthood was about belonging, not standing alone: "In an animist tribe, being Adult was about interdependence, not independence."^[2](#note-2) See [What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?](/wiki/what-is-the-adult-and-what-does-healthy-inner-leadership-look-like/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "We Are Something Else Too". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "What an Adult Really Is". ## What are the qualities of a True Adult? There are around thirty, drawn from Paul Francis's Lower-World**Lower-World.** The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-is-the-lower-world/) Guides**Guides.** The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman's power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. [More about this](/wiki/who-are-the-guides/), from anthropology and from psychotherapy. The list begins: "Is grounded, present, and embodied." It includes being open to feedback, setting healthy boundaries, owning one's power without handing it over or abusing it, being congruent and compassionate, contributing to the community, and treating "others with respect and dignity, including the other-than-human members of the community, too." It ends: "Lives ethically, honourably, and with integrity."^[3](#note-3) Some qualities may surprise a modern reader, such as "Does not take more than their fair share of resources". In hunter-gatherer tribes, "keeping surplus for oneself was to behave like a child."^[4](#note-4) The list is work in progress, not a fixed set of rules: "The point here is not whether the list is "right" or not."^[5](#note-5) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "What an Adult Really Is". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "What an Adult Really Is". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "What an Adult Really Is". ## Why are true Adults so rare? Because we no longer have the initiations that made them. "These days, we no longer perform these initiation ceremonies, of course. The result is that true Adults are extremely rare in our society." Instead, "we live in a society not of Adults but of adults; a society of children in adult-sized bodies."^[6](#note-6) Most people are "unconsciously playing out childhood patterns in their "adult" lives". Paul has met only a handful in his life.^[7](#note-7) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "We Are Something Else Too". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Real Adults Are Rare". ## How can we tell a child in an adult's body? By the marks of childhood that are still there. A child tends to overestimate their own influence, like the child who believes that turning around three times will stop their parents arguing; this is magical thinking, and growing up means learning the limits of our influence and power, that we are not God. A child does not yet know what they are responsible for, and often does not want to take responsibility, because responsibility does not come naturally; it is a healthy story we have to be told. Children often get involved in the drama triangle**Drama triangle.** The persecutor-rescuer-victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. [More about this](/wiki/what-is-the-drama-triangle/) of victim, rescuer and persecutor, and they tend to take more than their fair share. Children who are never taught otherwise "grow up to be monsters", and the state of the world around us, its politics included, is characterised by all four. See [What is the drama triangle?](/wiki/what-is-the-drama-triangle/) ## What were initiations and rites of passage for? To end childhood and root a new identity in Soul. Hunter-gatherer initiations, held around adolescence, "were designed to dismantle the middle-world identity that someone had constructed in their childhood, and replace it instead with a new identity. An identity rooted in their Soul and which grew from it".^[8](#note-8) "This is because finding your Soul is an initiation into Adulthood."^[9](#note-9) The anthropologist Arnold van Gennep described three phases of such rites: separation, transition and reincorporation. In the middle, [liminal](/wiki/what-is-liminality/) phase, "You are essentially taken apart and reformed, like a pupa in a chrysalis." See [What is a rite of passage, and what did we lose when initiation disappeared?](/wiki/what-is-a-rite-of-passage-and-what-did-we-lose-when-initiation-disappeared/) and [Who was Arnold van Gennep, and what are the three stages of a rite of passage?](/wiki/who-was-arnold-van-gennep-and-what-are-the-three-stages-of-a-rite-of-passage/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Initiation". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Real Adults Are Rare". ## What does animism say about adulthood? That an Adult is someone who has taken their place in the web of life. Becoming an Adult meant "stepping up to take your place on the Earth as an interconnected-being, a part of the web of life and a member of the great tribe of all the Peoples**The Peoples.** The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. [Read the full answer](/wiki/who-are-the-animal-plant-and-stone-people/)."^[10](#note-10) The traits therapy develops in people very much match the descriptions of healthy hunter-gatherer adults. The only major difference is that therapy does not usually reconnect us with the other-than-human world. Learning this template of maturity is "part of what the animist Original Instructions**Original Instructions.** The animist roadmap: the stories, principles and templates for living in right, reciprocal, non-hierarchical relationship with self, others and the more-than-human world. A template to be translated to the present, never commandments. [More about this](/wiki/what-are-the-original-instructions/) are all about." 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "We Are Something Else Too". ## How do we grow into Adulthood today? Gradually, and without needing drama. "Becoming an Adult is a process, not an event, and will take time."^[11](#note-11) Finding your Soul "does not have to be a dramatic one". Paul's own path was traumatic, and there is nothing about doing it that way that he can recommend.^[12](#note-12) There are exercises for reflecting on how Adult you are and the Adults you know; the second ends with the thought that "it is your responsibility to choose to be an Adult in your life."^[13](#note-13) See [What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction?](/wiki/what-does-rewilding-soul-mean-and-how-do-we-discover-our-gifts-and-life-direction/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Meeting Your Soul". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "A House Built on Soul". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Exercise 13: How Many Adults Do You Know?". ## Why does becoming an Adult matter to the world? Because not growing up harms more than ourselves. Not truly growing up and taking our proper place in the world is harmful not just to us personally; it damages the world itself. As [Bill Plotkin](/wiki/who-is-bill-plotkin-and-what-is-soul-initiation/) wrote, "The world cannot be whole until you take your place in it." The True Adult list itself is full of qualities that serve others: supporting people, enhancing social cohesion, acting for the greater good. ## What is an Elder? An Adult who has stepped back to advise. "Physical age no more makes one an Elder than it makes an adult an Adult." "An Elder is someone who once held that Adult role, but who has come to the point in their life where they have stepped back into an advisory and supportive role, instead."^[14](#note-14) Elders are not powerful figures who demand respect; that idea comes "from a Taker cult power-over perspective". Rather, "the Elders embodied Soul, and not just their personal Soul, but the larger Human Oversoul**Oversoul.** A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. [More about this](/wiki/what-is-an-oversoul/), too."^[15](#note-15) See [What is an Elder?](/wiki/what-is-an-elder/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Six, "Tribes Need Elders". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Six, "Tribes Need Elders". ## How do Adults and Elders work together? "Adults decide, elders advise. Child, adult and elder are three different roles and stages in life."^[16](#note-16) A true Elder has qualities of their own too, beginning with one who "Seeks to empower other people" and "Supports the Adults in a Tribe".^[17](#note-17) Their presence is healing in itself: "People often report that being around Elders makes them feel calmer and more grounded, less anxious, more at ease, more optimistic and hopeful."^[18](#note-18) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Five, "The Psychological Patterns of Healthy Groups". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Six, "The Qualities of a True Elder". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Six, "Meeting the Grandfathers and Grandmothers". - [What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?](/wiki/what-is-the-adult-and-what-does-healthy-inner-leadership-look-like/) - [What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction?](/wiki/what-does-rewilding-soul-mean-and-how-do-we-discover-our-gifts-and-life-direction/) - [What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?](/wiki/what-are-soul-spirit-the-middle-world-self-and-the-body/) - [Why does Therapeutic Shamanism bring shamanism and psychotherapy together?](/wiki/why-does-therapeutic-shamanism-bring-shamanism-and-psychotherapy-together/) - [Can initiation be recreated today, and what makes a modern rite of passage safe?](/wiki/can-initiation-be-recreated-today-and-what-makes-a-modern-rite-of-passage-safe/) - [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/) (Chapter Four, what an Adult really is; Chapter Six, Elders) - [all courses](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/shamanic-courses/)