Path of the Warrior Pt. 1: Evolution

At the recent Pagan Pride Day I gave a presentation regarding the path of the Warrior.  This of course was based on my own attempts to define the Pagan Warrior of our age as opposed to speaking for all Warriors everywhere.  While I felt at the time that the message was heard and understood by those in attendance I also feel that I fumbled about with it a bit more than I had intended.  My intention now is to add a bit of depth where my where one hour of semi-nervous rambling could not.

The purpose of all of this is to update the contextual definition of “the Warrior” for our modern times while paying homage to the warrior in antiquity.  Any time I think about doing something like this I have to remember that if we go back far enough, every piece of matter,  in the universe, organic or otherwise, shares a common ancestor.

This will be a series of Nine posts (Nine being a number of great significance to me) that does not strictly follow the same course as the original material in my presentation but will remain close enough that those who attended will recognize the meat of the animal from the taste of it.

I also wish to take a moment to point out a few things that you, dear reader, should know before I go on.  I have a generally decent grasp of many topics, history being one of them but I am by no means a Historian or an Anthropologist.  What I do is  pay attention to things and draw conclusions from them and as I discuss many of the topics I will be covering here I will be making many generalizations and sweeping arguments.  However, when it comes to such generalizations I am not attempting to gloss over he subject(s).  I am not a paid professional sociologist (is there such a creature?) and this is not a dissertation.  I wish only to give enough information that a person reading this might be able to understand how I reached certain conclusions.  Much of this information comes to me because I honor my ancestors and in my mind I can see them living their lives and I feel their echoes as vibrations down the strands that connect us.

I will not be citing a lot of information here.  I have looked at arguments and opposing arguments and I do not feel a need to justify my beliefs by relying on someone else to tell me whether or not they fit the letter of popular theory.  What I am hoping to do here is flex my intellectual muscles a bit, let my observations and beliefs be heard and perhaps some people will look at these things and it will cause them to desire making their own queries leading to their own evolution of beliefs.  I am not trying to convince you to believe what I believe, I am merely mapping out for others from where I draw many of my conclusions…which are also constantly evolving.  Of all the things that I will communicate through this series of posts, there is one unifying theme; The power, majesty and balance of the natural universe around us.

Keep in mind also that this is a male perspective on things.  I firmly believe that women are equal to men in the way that for our every weakness they have a strength and for their every weakness we have a strength.  It is that balance that allows both masculine and feminine to work together in a way that supersedes typical gender stereotypes, on both Macro and micro levels.

The Warrior in Antiquity

Our first warriors were the Hunters of our early Hunter/Gatherer tribes of around 100,000 years ago when we climbed down from the trees and discovered that meat was tastier when cooked on a fire and it was hard to find large game from 30 feet off of the ground.  Hunters, often males but also females to a less frequent degree, were the first to fashion the crude weapons and tools that would assist in hunting large game effectively as well as fending off predators.  About 70-80,000 years ago we began our arc towards agriculture, learning how sunlight and soil affected growing things and learning the natural rhythms and cycles of nature.  We were acutely aware of those cycles then and the balance they represented as we carved circles and spirals in the rocks and painted our stories on cave walls.  Once agriculture commenced, the amount of energy we were able to extract from our environment preceded a pattern of rapid population expansion.  It was now much easier to simply stake out a territory and grow crops in it, moving on only as the season or nominal crop yields dictated.

While aggression among competing tribes was certainly not unheard of prior to agriculture, the inception of sustainable resources within territorial boundaries was a game changing advance in human social evolution.  With population expansion came increased population pressure and territorial expansion to establish increased resources for an increasing number of hungry mouths.  With this expansion came the likelihood that boundaries between tribes competing for those resources would cross one another and bring firmly entrenched tribal entities into conflict.

As tribal warfare escalated into more drawn out conflicts the people that had once been spear tossing hunters and tribal defenders evolved into the first martial artists to meet the demand for continued survival of the clan.  We fought these brush wars with one another for about 60,000 years or so until our social evolution had reached a point where we began to build permanent settlements, towns and cities which evolved further into early civilizations.  Tribal leaders were often chosen from the warrior elite likely as a result of fear.  The greatest warriors had shown that they were capable of protecting the tribe and as a result a great warrior was considered a great leader because his honor and the favor of the tribal gods was clearly upon him or her.  Again, it’s important to point out the distinction that women, while less likely to be warriors were not excluded from being warriors by the same types of gender roles we create in more modern society.

During this time the warrior elite enjoyed a steady rise in both power and esteem among their people due to the spoils of war.  Considering that warriors were more often male, I believe that this is where the underpinnings of institutional Patriarchy began to develop.

I am going to segue here for a moment from the historical to the spiritual as I believe this particular subject has a great deal to do with the imbalance we currently find ourselves in with the earth.

Let’s travel back once more to our hunter/gatherer culture.  The division of work among males and females has been a hotly debated topic in anthropological circles since the inception of the science and the first archaeological digs took place that unearthed evidence of our Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures.  What we consider “sexist” attitudes about the division of work between the sexes in such times does not apply in the same way today as it did back then.  In our early history the division of labor was created according to what worked not what was considered “fair” by today’s standards.  It’s important to remember that these were people who had none of the technology we enjoy today.  Life was difficult and hard.  In fact, I would challenge anyone to drop everything for six months, go into the wild and survive in an early tribal culture the way our ancestors did.  I doubt that there are many people who could last more than a month, I doubt I would last much longer than a week.

As I have pointed out a few times now, hunters were more often men than women.  As my wife likes to put it “It’s hard to chase down an elk with boobs that are heavy with milk and a baby on your hip.”  Women, due to childbirth were often gatherers for the tribe which helped them develop a distinct and direct wisdom of the vegetation.  Flora was used for food and healing, sustenance and cleansing.  This wisdom was learned and passed from mother to daughter in a matrilineal line.  Women had rights as equal members of the tribe in such early cultures and were often given raised status as they grew older much as the men were.  Due to the need for a child to cling to its mother, it generally fell to the women of the tribe to raise and instruct children until they were old enough and mature enough to fend for themselves.  This enabled the tribe to pass its knowledge from generation to generation, both male and female in a seamless line.  In this way and I believe this still holds true, women retain and pass on the ancient traditions and knowledge of our ancestors.

I have a metaphor that I often use to describe this as well as the energy of the divine feminine and its relationship to the divine masculine.  The divine feminine is much like a wellspring.  It and its representatives in the physical world (women) are wells that are the receptacles of divine energy as it passes from the metaphysical universe into the physical universe.  They hold it and retain it here, much like the passed down wisdom of the ancients.  The wellspring of energy and knowledge that is the divine feminine is designed to work in conjunction with the divine masculine which is the metaphysical apparatus that channels that energy into the physical plane.  What’s important to remember about this metaphor is that men and women both have enough of both male and female within them that they can act independently to a degree but work best when working together.  I have known many women that form magickal circles in which men are excluded because their energy can be chaotic.  This makes perfect sense.  Since the dawn of patriarchy we have consistently separated ourselves from our own connection to the divine feminine and the divine masculine choosing more often the pleasures of the physical world of which there are many.  This self-exclusion from the source of our connection to the metaphysical explains a lot about what is wrong with our world and why it is so easy for a patriarchal culture to ignore the damage it does to the physical plane.   Women are not simply wells and possess many methods of transferring this energy and wisdom into the world and I have been very fortunate in my life to meet and get to know these sensational sources of knowledge and energy.  I will not endeavor to explain these methods here if only because I do not fully understand it myself.  I am however convinced that men possess the same abilities because we also have elements of both male and female within us, a concept that is often marginalized by patriarchal cultures.  However, it is important to note that we have evolved to need our mothers first and our fathers second and a child’s relationship with its mother is often a predicating factor in future behavior.  I believe that metaphysically this is also the case.

Where women, through that metaphysical connection to the metaphysical plane (or whatever else you wish to call it), holds that energy and dispenses it, the men take that energy and divert it to a specific use.  It is no mistake of nature that the likelihood of having a male child is slightly greater than that of having a female child.  The nature of energy is the same as the nature of water, it overflows into the physical plane through the divine feminine.  It is therefore important that there be a number of masculine focal points slightly greater than the number of wellsprings available.  This is an example where we can see nature maintaining a balance.

Men, by nature, are more attuned to the physical plane than are women.  This is in large part because of that channeling of energy into the physical world.  That is not to say that women are not attuned, it is simply to say that men are more preoccupied by the physical dangers of the world.  In a manner of speaking, it is the calling of men and especially of warriors, to protect women so that they may continue to be the vessels of divine energy.  You may be asking “Protect them from what?”, it’s a good question and my wife asked it right away after reading an initial draft of this manuscript.  That’s a question that is damn well worth answering too.  We protect them from the physical dangers of the world and they protect us from the metaphysical dangers of the world.  Again, this is an example of where their “strengths” make up the difference for their “Weaknesses” and vice/versa.

We can see the metaphor of well and fountain in the process by which our species and many others procreate.  The male channels life into physical existence by providing sperm to the female.  The female receives this seed, provides a nurturing environment for it and projects it back out into the world as another life.  The male as fountain and the female as wellspring demonstrate the circle of creation.  In Philip Carr-Gomms “Druid Craft:  The Magic of Wicca and Druidry, Carr-Gomm states something that is remarkably similar to  my own metaphor, something my wife pointed out as she is currently reading the book.

“The Wand represents the masculine principle of focus and direction, and the chalice represents the feminine principle of containing and nurturing.  Together they bring life and creativity into the world.”

It appears that both Carr-Gomm and I have come to similar conclusions:  Masculinity is associated with manifestation.

I want to take another quick moment to dispel any misunderstandings there may be regarding this metaphor.  I hate having to explain myself this way because there is a great opportunity here for people to misunderstand my meaning when I talk about this.  I do not believe in any way that women are inferior to men or that they are locked into my assessment of their metaphysical responsibilities any more than I believe men are locked into them.  The ideas that we have about the gender roles and stereotypes do not exist on a metaphysical level in the way we have enforced them in modern culture. I use this metaphor to describe things because this is how I perceive them and if it does not work for you, dear reader, to perceive it this way or if you think that my perception is sexist I would ask that you attempt to convince my wife (by all accounts a dyed in the wool modern feminist) that I am sexist and see how far you get.  The roles that our species played in the past were roles we had because they worked for our survival and as a species we developed instincts around those roles.  I do not feel that women are “baby making machines” or any other similar nonsense of that nature.  All I recognize is that they are the only ones that can gestate offspring and bring them into the world and that this qualifies them as mothers in a way that men cannot be.  In essence, men are more often warriors than women because we are expendable.  Two men and twenty women can repopulate a town, two women and twenty men cannot.

This is about the male and female energy and not about gender stereotypes.  My belief, in essence, is that we all channel both of the masculine and feminine energies and the degree to which we identify with one or another varies greatly among individuals.  Our ancestors understood that, instinctually if not consciously and perhaps the marginalization of these instincts has helped to disconnect us from these energies but we will revisit that later.

Let me now return to the subject that led me off upon both of the aforementioned tangents:  Patriarchy.

As we began to expand our influence and knowledge of plant and animal husbandry we observed an immediate physical outcome in the natural world.  Not only could we plant something and see it grow, but we could mate some plants to others and get desired results.  Men, being more attuned to the physical plane and preoccupied with the physical dangers of a world in which women remained more important to the overall survival of our species, became more preoccupied with that which threatened us…other men.  In physiological terms, both men and women are designed to have multiple offspring with multiple partners.  While our modern times often dictate that this is a morally offensive stance, the design of the male human body states otherwise.  That which defines this in terms of the female anatomy is more complex [insert random comment about female complexity from a purely male point of view here please] but no less compelling.  

The idea, in essence, is to spread our genetic information by casting a rather wide net with it and hoping it survives.  I mentioned earlier that the likelihood of having a male offspring is greater than having a female but it should be noted that the difference is something like .001%. That’s right, for every thousand females born there are a thousand and one males born.  Anthropology suggests that this number has rarely fluctuated and so we can make the observation that the above percentage has remained fairly stable over our history.  When we are talking about small tribal communities and even larger permanent settlements, cities and civilizations, the difference in the number of women from the number of men would be nearly imperceptible.  The current population of New York City is approximately 8,336,697.  Based on this number, that means that women are outnumbered by men by about 8337.  That’s very nearly 10,000 more men than women in that city alone.  The point is that for a gender that has a tendency towards wanting to spread their seed around, we have limited options based on those numbers.  In a culture in which women enjoy equality with men, it would be a buyer’s market for them and not for men.  However, when we look at how things work in our culture, women are manipulated into believing that they must jump through hoops to attract a man.  This equals patriarchy which is a basic undermining of the natural order of attraction.  In a culture that was not so hung up on sexual stereotypes, women have the pick of the litter and men should be jumping through hoops to impress them.  In fact, you can observe that in nature on a consistent basis when you see how many male organisms have developed intricate mating rituals to attract females.  My wife theorizes that humans may have once done the same thing since dancing presents the opportunity to display skills that would be considered very attractive to early primates, specifically; stamina, endurance, coordination and physical skill, but I digress.

As our “mastery” over the physical world began to take shape, a type of manifest destiny began to set in for male culture.  Men, predominantly the stronger more physically intimidating gender began exercising more and more control over the natural world around them by right of conquest.  Their physical dominance, need to secure resources and strong desire to propagate their bloodlines (although by this time that was largely a misunderstood and poorly executed instinctual drive) in a world that presented more physical threats than metaphysical ones allowed them to marginalize women and the divine feminine energies in favor of the more male, physical predominance.  In many cultures, the warrior, an ancient tradition of selfless personal disregard in favor of the tribe, gave way to organized and trained soldiers which then became armies which helped establish early empires like those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.  It was often that warriors rose to positions of leadership because it was their job not only to defend resources but acquire new ones.  In those cases, the spiritual honor of the warrior was recognized as having a legitimate impact upon the tribe.  The exception to this rule could be found all over the world in places where large scale civilization failed to take root and smaller tribal cultures remained steadfast.  To explore this point, I can look at my own ancestry as well as the traditions and history of Native American cultures which remain tribal in many ways even now.  Without intending to offend Native culture, for the purpose of this discussion I’ll be limiting my exploration to their warrior culture which remained largely intact up until the early 20th century when it remained largely untouched by the technology of the time.  Even then, I will avoid making any sweeping arguments as I have a great respect for the Native peoples of the land I live in and I do not wish to offend them in any way.

What we can see when we observe both Gaelic (to include Celtic) and Native culture is that both had a strong warrior tradition that existed as mostly oral history passed from generation to generation.  While these disparate peoples were separated by 3,500 miles of ocean they both had a similar evolution in terms of spiritual belief and practice as well as warrior culture.  Key to this is the common acceptance as the warrior being a figure of value to the tribe/clan because their welfare was of the utmost importance to the warrior.  In such cultures, it was the pride, glory and honor of the warrior that made them such a valuable resource and an indispensable member of their community.

In both clan and tribal cultures the warrior remained important parts of the community but were only a part, not the whole, of the social structure.  Male and female gender roles remained fluid dependent upon individual skill sets.  Women in Gaelic culture (as can also be seen in Scandinavian culture) enjoyed the freedom to become warriors which was less prevalent in Native American culture.  The Gauls often warred over territorial or property disputes where Native Americans were more likely to war over cultural issues.

In the case of Gaelic culture, which was all but wiped out by 800 CE (Common Era) the traditions of these proud people were captured by Christian missionaries who wrote them down and documented them before the oral traditions were all but wiped out.  The unfortunate outcome is that many of these tales had a decidedly Christian bent to them (such as a story of the Warrior Cú Chulainn returning at St. Patrick’s behest to explain to Lóegaire of the torments of hell)

Native Americans however retain much of their oral tradition even to this day and their stories are slowly being entered into the cultural record.  One of my son’s favorite stories is from the Native Tribes of the Pacific Northwest about how Raven brought light (the sun) to the world.  Stories like this one are more available now than they have been in the past and a deep cultural understanding of these oral histories and their significance is building.

Perhaps the two most important things to point out about these two cultures, as strikingly similar in some ways as they are different in others is that both recognized the importance and relevance of nature in the course of their daily lives.  It is easy for us to look at the history and idolize them for what we think they were like but in general the best we can hope for is to be able to view them in context without the eyes of our present culture to skew the observations we make.  This is most easily done by observing Native American history and culture because of that strong oral tradition that still exists.

In both cultures though there are practices which seem barbaric by today’s standards. We deserve though to observe the deeds of our ancestors while making our own indelible mark on tradition. As someone who identifies strongly with my own Celtic ancestry, I cannot pretend that they did not practice slavery and human sacrifice but I do not have to bring that forward as a modern practice.

As a species we have changed with the times and the level of technologies available to us. It is safe to say that there are few places left on earth untouched in some manner by human feet and our science and technology takes much of the mystery out of the world that we once enjoyed in earlier incarnations upon the earth. So too have our manners and instincts as a species changed.  Rapid technological advancement has rendered many of our instincts, once necessary for not only our own survival but that of our clan or tribe, unnecessary. We live in an era of excess and increased resources. We no longer have to fend off beasts in the wilderness or hunt them for food. Warriors became leaders (as I mentioned before) because they established and protected resources for the tribe. We no longer require these resources. At present, what we need is to decide upon an appropriate direction with the resources we have. It may be that someday we will need our warriors to again take up the mantle of resource acquisition and control but that time is not now. What we need now is help in determining the best use of resources.

There are many practices and traditions of our ancestors that may seem in some ways strange to us today. Throughout all of history, we can see that cultures were a product of the world around them and the times they found themselves living through. So too were our warriors, those men and women that placed their own lives and honor between us and the threats of both the physical and spiritual world. Honor, duty, benevolence and responsibility were common characteristics among warriors in different cultures all across the earth that developed codes of conduct for their warrior elite. We will discuss the successes and failures of these warrior codes in the next post.

Darkness

We all have darkness within us and have been taught that darkness is an awful and terrible thing, mostly by mainstream religions of which the vast majority of us were presented with first before we came to Paganism.

The problem with being fearful of the darkness within ourselves is that regardless of how we feel about that darkness, it is there and it is intrinsic.  When we ignore it or learn to hate, fear or despise it, we feed that darkness.

Summed up in context, what I refer to as "Darkness" is our selfish desire.  When a person does something that society labels as wrong it is usually the result of a selfish desire.  When we steal something from someone else it is because we want that thing and do not wish to have to pay for it or ask for permission to have it.  If we hurt another willfully, it is because we care more about ourselves than that person even though we can choose to limit how much we hurt them.  Murder is often about money or possession (the latter, especially in the case of domestic violence).  When you go from top to bottom it is easy to see that these actions all have a connective tissue that is about selfish desire and as a culture we often wonder exactly why people do such awful things to others without exploring the context of selfishness.

What's more is that we are told that it is wrong to be selfish and horrible to be selfish yet it is important for us to take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.  What a wonderfully confusing message!  The truth is that we have selfish desires because we do need to take care of ourselves.  Selfishness is often an emotion that is telling us we have a need that is not being met.  When I went to my wife last year and told her I wanted a new Katana, this was the price and that I doubted I would be able to get that price again soon, we had a long talk about it.  The use of a sword is essential to my spiritual practice.  It is one of the many tools that I use to connect me more powerfully to the Warrior spirit and nothing calls to me more than a Katana.  The fact is though, that I had a Katana already and even though I had reasons for wishing to replace it as a ritual tool, I could easily have gotten by without a new one for some time by using a wooden approximation or any number of other things.  At the time we had the money and could afford it as long as nothing major happened to either of our older vehicles that required expensive repairs.  A month after we bought the sword I had to put $1400 into my car.  So, was my sword purchase selfish?  Absolutely.  I wanted it and even though my wife (who controls the money in our house otherwise we would have a lot more swords) agreed, I could have gotten by without it.  I simply wanted it more than common sense would dictate and when my car needed repairs we had to make a deal with our mechanic to get them paid for.  I consider us fortunate that we were able to do that but the outcome could have been much worse if our mechanic wasn't such a great guy.  In essence, my sword became more important than his work even if I didn't know it at the time.  It was a good lesson.  I don't like that this happened, but I accept that it was a function of my selfish impulse and that is the key.

Understanding yourself and how dark impulses effect your judgement isn't a step forward in defeating them.  Winning against yourself in this way is not a win unless you understand where the impulse is trying to see a need met and what that need actually is.  In my case, I felt that having the sword fulfilled a spiritual desire to have a specific tool for several specific purposes.  I felt drawn to it and that it was drawn to me and even though we had to wheel and deal with our mechanic on it, all turned out right in the end.  In the future though, I need to stay my hand better when it comes to things like this because patience is the best manner of dealing with the darkness.

The darker part of ourselves is impatient.  It wants to clear the path towards what we want quickly so that we can get there faster.  It is the impulse to take something instead of waiting to have the money to pay for it.  It wants to possess and force instead of waiting patiently for the right moment or for the universe to put what we need in our path in a way that there can be an equal exchange.  It is important to know that and to accept that there are times when the darkness is right.  Sometimes we need to see our needs met immediately and without concern for others.  There are times when we need to take care of our own needs first.  Part of that equation is understanding what those needs are and whether or not it is the right time to see them met.  That is only one part of that equation though and its importance to the overall system is something that every person needs to struggle with to maintain a balance with their own darkness.

It is not wrong to be selfish.  What makes the darkness wrong is when it overwhelms every other aspect of your life.  I have struggled with this many times and will struggle with it further and I am okay with that.  It is a battle that I am willing to have every day if need be because when I struggle I learn.  When I struggle with my own darkness I acknowledge it's existence and give it breath.  It is a part of me and it is a part of everyone.  Failing to recognize this is what often leads people to convince themselves that taking from others without an equal or mutually beneficial exchange is okay.  It is then that such people cease to become a resource to their own community.

My wife put it best when she said that selfishness is pretending that hurting someone else is not going to effect you.  When considered in the context that we are all one, selfishness has as much potential to hurt yourself as it does others, especially when that selfishness involves withholding yourself from others.  When we allow our darker impulses to win, for whatever reason, we must remember that there is always a price associated with that and we must learn to understand we will pay that price regardless of whether we wish to or not.

There are many forms of selfishness and it is hard to discuss this topic without the idea of really awful and selfish acts (Rape, Murder, Child Molesting and others) popping into mind.  In the context of this discussion, the people that perpetrate such acts have gone totally over to their darker, selfish impulses beyond the degree that they have ceased to become a resource to their community.  In this context they have become a black hole into which people (whom are resources to their community) are dragged unwillingly.  Do not suppose for an instant that my discussion here indicates that by suggesting that we sometimes allow our "dark" impulses to hold sway over our decision making that I in any way support or encourage those with the selfish impulses mentioned above to do what they wish to do because it is simply "a part of them".  These are individuals who, in my opinion, should always and indelibly be extinguished from our communities.  That however is a discussion for another post.