This is a question I've given some thought to, and one complicating factor as I see it is that in traditional societies, once you passed your rite of passage, everyone treated you as the new category (even if a bit provisionally - being a newly minted "man" was not the same as a more established one, but it wasn't a child). In a society like ours that lacks common standards, you might run into the problem of celebrating the adultness of your child, and then him or her being treated like a child by neighbors, employers, the government, and so forth.
That being said, judging by my own life and other folks I know, a big part seems to be taking responsibility for your own decisions, especially big, irreversible ones. In my own case, I didn't feel much like a grown-up until I joined the army against my parents' wishes, but after doing so, I've related to them (and the rest of life) as much more of an adult.
I'm not sure where exactly occultism comes in here, though, other than a handy storehouse of rituals and a path for taking spiritual responsibility for yourself.
Lastly, I hesitate to bring this up because it is so divorced from modern life (with good reason!), but a book I've mentioned a few times on here before, The One-Eyed God by Kris Kershaw, argues among other things that Odin is the Norse version of an Indo-European God who was the leader of the coming-of-age warbands that seem to have been a feature of Indo-European society and of which you see reflexes in such diverse places as the berserkers, the Spartan Krypteia, Indian myths, and Celtic Bardic schools. Roughly, the idea is that adolescents went through a phase of being outcasts from normal society in which they learned what they needed to know to be adult men in their tribe, which included fighting and religious lore. At the end of this phase, they got reintegrated and got to be normal, adult members of the tribe and they put the wildness behind them.
Assuming you don't want your children to go steal from your neighbors and kill people, some of the potentially transferable ideas seem to be: 1) Flagrantly breaking unbreakable rules: These groups would sneak around and raid and kill and such like. The point back then was that adult men in the tribe might have to do these things in war, and so you had to get past the "follow the rules because you were told to" approach and instead learn to decide when to follow rules and when to break them. 2) Learning to be a part of a non-familial group: There are different social dynamics in being a follower, comrade, or leader, and these groups helped young men learn those. 3) Learning the lore, rituals, and other things needed for religious practice: I suspect this was a necessary counter-balance to the first point. If you're going to start being expected to make decisions on a firmer basis than "because someone told me to", you need a better understanding of your place in the cosmos.
Anyhow, again, all of that is likely more anthropological than occult, and might all be stuff you've encountered before, but hopefully, something spurs some thoughts or further investigation.
Re: Germanic Astronomy and Neglected Occultism
That being said, judging by my own life and other folks I know, a big part seems to be taking responsibility for your own decisions, especially big, irreversible ones. In my own case, I didn't feel much like a grown-up until I joined the army against my parents' wishes, but after doing so, I've related to them (and the rest of life) as much more of an adult.
I'm not sure where exactly occultism comes in here, though, other than a handy storehouse of rituals and a path for taking spiritual responsibility for yourself.
Lastly, I hesitate to bring this up because it is so divorced from modern life (with good reason!), but a book I've mentioned a few times on here before, The One-Eyed God by Kris Kershaw, argues among other things that Odin is the Norse version of an Indo-European God who was the leader of the coming-of-age warbands that seem to have been a feature of Indo-European society and of which you see reflexes in such diverse places as the berserkers, the Spartan Krypteia, Indian myths, and Celtic Bardic schools. Roughly, the idea is that adolescents went through a phase of being outcasts from normal society in which they learned what they needed to know to be adult men in their tribe, which included fighting and religious lore. At the end of this phase, they got reintegrated and got to be normal, adult members of the tribe and they put the wildness behind them.
Assuming you don't want your children to go steal from your neighbors and kill people, some of the potentially transferable ideas seem to be:
1) Flagrantly breaking unbreakable rules: These groups would sneak around and raid and kill and such like. The point back then was that adult men in the tribe might have to do these things in war, and so you had to get past the "follow the rules because you were told to" approach and instead learn to decide when to follow rules and when to break them.
2) Learning to be a part of a non-familial group: There are different social dynamics in being a follower, comrade, or leader, and these groups helped young men learn those.
3) Learning the lore, rituals, and other things needed for religious practice: I suspect this was a necessary counter-balance to the first point. If you're going to start being expected to make decisions on a firmer basis than "because someone told me to", you need a better understanding of your place in the cosmos.
Anyhow, again, all of that is likely more anthropological than occult, and might all be stuff you've encountered before, but hopefully, something spurs some thoughts or further investigation.
Cheers,
Jeff