Initiation is the sixth album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released May 23, 1975 on Bearsville Records.

With this album, Rundgren fully embraced the synthesized prog sound he had begun exploring in more depth in his work with his band Utopia.

In The Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopedia of Rock, Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden wrote, "Initiation (1975), despite the pretentious flirtations with half-baked versions of Zen Buddhism and Alice A. Bailey's "A Treatise On Cosmic Fire" that influenced his lyrics and Eastern mystic scores, contained a perceptible undercurrent of his former melodic invention while one could ascertain traces of self-parody and wry humorous debunking of what Rundgren appeared on the other hand to be holding up as valid.

At a shade over one hour Initiation is also amongst the longest albums ever made, evidence of his engineering abilities, if not his sense of self-control".

[3] When asked if Rundgren had influenced his music, with perceived influences of Initiation on Queen Elizabeth and Rite², Julian Cope responded that he and Thighpaulsandra loved "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire", "but we both bemoaned the fact that it was recorded so long before ambient music had been defined that Todd treated it as an ever-evolving, almost prog-rock piece.