He was born around 1835. To me, this is a rather perfect warrior face. He doesn't appear to be some bloodthirsty devil, but I would hate to face him in battle because he looks like he would be so damn composed and utterly fearless. As they say, he's deep.

In reading, I found out about Charles A. Eastman whose childhood apparently was split between the old Sioux world he was born into, and the new American one he was expected to join, and he did, becoming a physician.

I've included a rather well-known photo from the Carlisle School where you can see that a Giant Soul Fucking is underway. We all know that, but it's good to look at the truth sometimes. Before and after, as magazines are so fond of.

Rain In The Face, when an old man and on his deathbed recounted for Charles Eastman pieces of his life. He said that he had really died when he ceased to be a warrior, and that now his body would join his spirit, and that that was good.

Rain In The Face also recounted having a "brother friend" who was a warrior who he said he would have died for, and he for him. Wapaypay, the warrior he refers to was hanged in Yankton. He doesn't explain why, and there probably didn't have to be much of a reason. He doesn't go into any sexuality (though, I have a feeling that stuff was not talked of), and I don't know that there was any, other than, wasn't that love?

I miss these faces, and I don't know how I could unless it's some sort of tribal memory type thing that sounds more plausible when Carl Jung explained it.

These guys (and there aren't many of their images pre-Edward S. Curtis' "Noble Savage," post defeat available that I can see) are closer to what our ancestors must have been like, before Christianity infiltrated our cultures.

Look at the Carlisle School photo. That's what happened to all of us. It continues. And, as you wrote of beautifully in your amulets piece, you know full well the cost.

Eastman, beyond writing of the great warrior-chiefs like Rain In The Face who fought at the Little Bighorn, also wrote of his traditional Sioux boyhood at quite extensive length (I've only started reading it at gutenberg dot org).

His boyhood sounds rather agoge-like. Their world was completely imbued with spirit. It was everywhere, just as meaninglessness is everywhere in ours. Musn't all warrior cultures depend on spirituality? Mustn't all sexual relations be seen as purposeful to group survival in order to be seen as "sacred" rather than profane.

Do you think heterosexuality would be seen as sacred by anyone were it not responsible for life? We know women are seen as profane who flout this (sanctioned) use of their sexuality. Our orgasms, I think, are quite suspect, and women are still literally cut of from theirs' in some places, as you know.

When sex among men had purpose it was sacred, I think. Do people really think the Greeks (and Celts, etc.) were just being kinky? Pretty goddamn stupid of us, but we view it through our modern understanding of homosexuality, which as you explain all the time has become debased, devalued, and distorted.

Maybe we have profane sex for a profane society. Life is valued in neither place.

"Warriors" provide meaning. They aren't needed in our society. They get in the way.

Mammon must be anti-warrior because "warrior" is inherently spiritual and operates on a value system that values truth, honor, and the inherent value of all life. How can mammon operate successfully with truth, honor and life everywhere having inherent value?

Christianity, as you know, serves mammon. Look at the Vatican. How the fuck do they get away with talking about poverty, and taking a vow of poverty? To my knowledge that's why the Jesuits came into being, to explain everything away. I tried to stay away from their explanations after questioning things like the Holocaust. All can be explained. I left at 18, and feel spiritually safer, though not whole, for having done so. I remember this when reading about the "commited Catholic." I identify with his perversion. I know he doesn't see it as such.

As I've experienced it, Christianity is only meaningful to me in that it induces pain, and becomes kind of like "a cutter's" form of spiritual being. I hurt so therefore, I am. I sin, so therefore I am. I am unworthy, so therefore I am,... Utter meaninglessness gives us blessed relief from the intense sensations felt within the church.

I could not survive in the church. It fed a suicidal darkness within me that was with me from about 17. I can't put everything there, but it didn't help, and I wasn't looking for a protestant substitute (I do have my Catholic diginity). The most relief I found in our culture was provided by works that spoke of the emptiness of it. That was true. I belonged to that alienation. I could exist there.

Now, I'm remembering why I told my dad when I was a little kid after watching a local parade with tribal members in full regalia, many on horseback, why I wanted to be an Indian.

I think you help reintroduce us all to an "Indian heart" that Rain In The Face attributed to the white guard at a fort that set him free.

Bill Weintraub

Re: Their world was completely imbued with Spirit: Warriors and Warrior Amulets

12-21-2006

Thank you Frances -- a beautiful post.

Frances makes reference to my "amulets" piece.

Because that was part of another, very long message thread, I'm pasting it in below my reply to this thread.

Let's look at what Frances said:

I found Rain In The Face, a Sioux warrior (can't remember which band). I've attached his photo and I'm pretty sure it was taken before their final defeat because his expression seems great to me.

He was born around 1835. To me, this is a rather perfect warrior face. He doesn't appear to be some bloodthirsty devil, but I would hate to face him in battle because he looks like he would be so damn composed and utterly fearless. As they say, he's deep.

Yes.

Frances used similar language to describe Rory Markham, a mixed martial arts fighter, in a pic taken before a fight.

He's composed, and ready for battle.

And Frances speaks of "what must be for [these fighters] a spiritual practice grounded in their masculine physicality."

"a spiritual practice grounded in their masculine physicality" -- that's beautifully said, and true for any Warrior

In reading, I found out about Charles A. Eastman whose childhood apparently was split between the old Sioux world he was born into, and the new American one he was expected to join, and he did, becoming a physician.

I've included a rather well-known photo from the Carlisle School where you can see that a Giant Soul Fucking is underway. We all know that, but it's good to look at the truth sometimes. Before and after, as magazines are so fond of.

Yes.

The purpose of those schools was to destroy the old Indian culture and with it the Indians' fighting spirit.

There was a famous massacre of Indians very near where I used to live.

In California, the "Indian fighters" didn't waste time -- they just went in and killed as many Indians as they could.

Rain In The Face, when an old man and on his deathbed recounted for Charles Eastman pieces of his life. He said that he had really died when he ceased to be a warrior, and that now his body would join his spirit, and that that was good.

Isn't that true for all of us?

That having ceased to be warriors, we've really died?

And that we wait now for our bodies to join our spirits?

Don't kid yourselves guys, about what a man's existence without warriordom means.

Rain In The Face also recounted having a "brother friend" who was a warrior who he said he would have died for, and he for him. Wapaypay, the warrior he refers to was hanged in Yankton. He doesn't explain why, and there probably didn't have to be much of a reason. He doesn't go into any sexuality (though, I have a feeling that stuff was not talked of), and I don't know that there was any, other than, wasn't that love?

Sexuality was not talked of -- particularly not to Christians or anyone who might be a Christian functionary.

Such as anthropologists.

Native peoples quickly learned to be very guarded in what they said about sex.

There would have been sacred sex -- phallic bonding -- in the context of love between Rain In The Face and Wapaypay, however, because it would have not only been natural but necessary for the full development of their Warrior Natural Masculinity.

I miss these faces, and I don't know how I could unless it's some sort of tribal memory type thing that sounds more plausible when Carl Jung explained it.

That "tribal memory" is part of what Jung calls "the collective unconscious," which is not mystical, but biological.

The memory resides in your genes.

That's why the repressed continually returns.

The return of the repressed -- such as Warriordom, the Realm of the Warrior, the Warrior Ethos -- is an inescapable biological reality.

These guys (and there aren't many of their images pre-Edward S. Curtis' "Noble Savage," post defeat available that I can see) are closer to what our ancestors must have been like, before Christianity infiltrated our cultures.

Look at the Carlisle School photo. That's what happened to all of us. It continues. And, as you wrote of beautifully in your "amulets" piece, you know full well the cost.

Right -- the cost is the loss of the sacred from our lives.

And with it, in the case of Men, Masculinity.

Eastman, beyond writing of the great warrior-chiefs like Rain In The Face who fought at the Little Bighorn, also wrote of his traditional Sioux boyhood at quite extensive length (I've only started reading it at gutenberg dot org).

His boyhood sounds rather agoge-like. Their world was completely imbued with spirit. It was everywhere, just as meaninglessness is everywhere in ours. Musn't all warrior cultures depend on spirituality? Mustn't all sexual relations be seen as purposeful to group survival in order to be seen as "sacred" rather than profane.

Yes, and this is an utterly CRUCIAL point:

"Musn't all warrior cultures depend on spirituality? Mustn't all sexual relations be seen as purposeful to group survival in order to be seen as "sacred" rather than profane."

Yes to both questions.

Warrior cultures depend on spirituality.

Which is why we talk about spirituality.

And sexual relations between Greek warriors were viewed as necessary for the maintenance at a ferocious level of the hoplite bond.

And the hoplite bond was necessary to group survival.

In the male, sex and aggression are intimately intertwined.

Indeed, in my view, they're actually the same thing.

Both mediated by testosterone.

You cannot deny the one without denying the other.

Warrior cultures regard both fighting and sex as sacred.

As do we.

You cannot, in the case of the male, say that sex is sacred but fighting profane; or fighting is sacred but sex profane.

You can't do it.

Unless you deny that connection.

At which point, you've betrayed Men, Masculinity, Manhood, and Spirituality.

What Dave Sprowls calls the Sacred Bonds between Men exist to enable Men to Fight.

Those bonds are sexual.

And spiritual.

Even in our culture, we see it in the military and in the fight schools.

MAN SPIRIT

MAN FIGHT

MAN LOVE

You cannot deny one of those elements without destroying the other two.

Take away MAN SPIRIT, and Man Fight becomes aggression without honor; and Man Love becomes sex without honor -- promiscuity and sleaze.

Take away MAN FIGHT, and you deprive MAN SPIRIT of its MOST essential element.

Which is why Rain In The Face said "he had really died when he ceased to be a warrior, and that now his body would join his spirit, and that that was good."

And take away MAN LOVE, and the other essential in Man Spirit is now gone.

The Man who lives without MAN LOVE is only half a man.

The Man who lives without MAN FIGHT is only half a man.

And the Man who lives without MAN SPIRIT is no man at all.

Do you think heterosexuality would be seen as sacred by anyone were it not responsible for life? We know women are seen as profane who flout this (sanctioned) use of their sexuality. Our orgasms, I think, are quite suspect, and women are still literally cut of from theirs' in some places, as you know.

When sex among men had purpose it was sacred, I think. Do people really think the Greeks (and Celts, etc.) were just being kinky? Pretty goddamn stupid of us, but we view it through our modern understanding of homosexuality, which as you explain all the time has become debased, devalued, and distorted.

"When sex among men had purpose it was sacred."

THAT IS CORRECT.

SEX MUST HAVE PURPOSE.

The error that the analists and AIDS Inc makes is to present sex as "recreational."

Sex which is recreational quickly devolves into raunch and sleaze.

It is completely meaningingless.

SEX MUST HAVE PURPOSE.

"Do people really think the Greeks (and Celts, etc.) were just being kinky?"

Right.

Either you think that, as the analists do, or you have to face the TRUTH:

That these were MEN who Loved MEN, WARRIORS WHO LOVED WARRIORS, and who had NO connection to that present-day secularist concept of sex between men we correctly call analism.

Maybe we have profane sex for a profane society. Life is valued in neither place.

That's correct.

You can see it in the politics of AIDS.

Profane sex is used to prop up profane society.

Lives are lost.

Life is lost.

"Warriors" provide meaning. They aren't needed in our society. They get in the way.

No - we still need Warriors.

But it's true that the society, while paying lip service to warrior values, as a practical matter completely DE-values them.

Mammon must be anti-warrior because "warrior" is inherently spiritual and operates on a value system that values truth, honor, and the inherent value of all life. How can mammon operate successfully with truth, honor and life everywhere having inherent value?

Exactly.

That's why we use this formulation:

MANHOOD not mammon

In every generation, the Warrior drives the money-changers from the temple, and in every generation the acolytes of Mammon bring them back.

It's an eternal struggle.

MANHOOD not mammon

MASCULINITY not mammon

THE WAR GOD not mammon

And you can see the Temple as being in the real world -- which is how Jedi sees it, as the Planet -- or you can see the Temple as being yourself.

In which case the struggle is between your Warrior self -- and your money-grubbing money-changing self.

With most of you guys, most of the time your money-changing self wins.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

In his essay THE WARRIOR GOD, Robert Loring presents the WAR GOD as the archetype -- the model -- for the male:

Imagine a world in which men bonded closely with other men. A world in which natural male masculinity ruled the day instead of some pseudo-manhood known as male femininity. A world in which men were unafraid to show their feelings to other males. A world in which masculine men honored their own manhood and the masculinity of other men.

Imagine a world in which masculine male nudity was commonplace and socially acceptable. A world in which it was not a "sin" for men to sexually frot with other masculine males. A world, in which, male bonding was encouraged and supported. A world in which masculine men taught other males how to become truly masculine men of pride, honor, and fidelity.

Imagine a world in which the Warrior Ethos was something that was honored and esteemed instead of shunned and discouraged. A world in which natural male aggression was respected and valued. Natural male aggression would be self disciplined by such males as they walked through their lives living as honorable and noble Warriors.

The naturally masculine male would have a major place in such a world just as he did in ancient days when the Hoplites and others ruled the times. No longer would there be a war against the natural male, natural masculinity, or natural male aggression. Man would truly be once again MASCULINE MAN. Males would be unafraid to love their brothers in the natural bonds of the brotherhood of man. Males could simply be themselves.

...

The image of War God held as an ideal in the male mind makes that male begin to walk down the paths of masculinity and warrior. It makes him unafraid to simply be the masculine male that he was born to be. It makes him unafraid to show his naked chest and nude body to the world. It makes him unafraid to love other brothers and it puts him in touch with his own manhood and the manhood of all other males. The image of War God is a naturally masculine ideal. It is an image of natural manhood. It is an image and ideal that stands directly opposed to the lies we are fed by the modern world. Lies that seek to eat away and destroy our natural masculinity and male pride!

It has been written that our true battles in life are not against flesh and blood but against the dark powers of the air. This means that the true battles in our lives are in our own minds, individually and collectively. It is the human mind which is the true battlefield. It is in the male mind that the war upon manhood is being waged.

Since the dawn of time warrior societies such as those of ancient Sparta held the image of God as Warrior. Modern warriors must also hold the image of the Divine as Warrior.

"The Divine as Warrior"

Robert is correct.

When you look at some of those amulets below, you'll see symbols of the Divine as Warrior.

We must hold that image and not just image but IDEAL in our hearts and our minds.

Christianity, as you know, serves mammon. Look at the Vatican. How the fuck do they get away with talking about poverty, and taking a vow of poverty? To my knowledge that's why the Jesuits came into being, to explain everything away. I tried to stay away from their explanations after questioning things like the Holocaust. All can be explained. I left at 18, and feel spiritually safer, though not whole, for having done so. I remember this when reading about the "commited Catholic." I identify with his perversion. I know he doesn't see it as such.

Yes.

The man we call Commited Catholic is perverse.

And yes, he doesn't understand that.

He sent me some anti-Man Love encyclicals by various Church luminaries, including Popes John-Paul II and Benedict.

Well, I'm a Jew.

And for me, the great moral test of our time -- at least for Europeans -- was the Holocaust.

In Jerusalem, there's a memorial to the Holocaust, the Yad Vashem.

And within this memorial, there's a second memorial.

It's called The Righteous Among the Nations.

The Righteous Among the Nations were non-Jews who, at terrible, terrible risk to themselves, saved, or tried to save, the lives of Jews.

In many cases, the would-be saviours were caught, tortured, and killed, along with the Jews they were trying to save.

So the risk was terrible.

And anti-Semitism among Europeans was terrible too.

Which is why the list of The Righteous Among the Nations is short.

I strongly, strongly encourage people to go to the Yad Vashem website and check out The Righteous Among the Nations and those lists, which are organized by nation, and include some stories, survivors' accounts of what went down.

Two names are, conspicuously in my view, absent from those lists.

One is that of Karol Wojtyla, who during WW II was a young Polish seminarian, later Pope John Paul II.

Another is that of Joseph Ratzinger, then a student and briefly a German soldier, now Pope Benedict XVI.

That their names are not among the Righteous Among the Nations is not surprising.

Germany and Poland, where they lived, was Holocaust central, but if you look at the lists, you see that in Poland, where most of the death camps were located, less than 6,000 names are listed, and in Germany, sad to say, barely 400.

Nevertheless, SOME NAMES are listed from both those places.

Karol Wojtyla's and Joseph Ratzinger's are not among them.

Which means they failed the Holocaust test.

Doesn't mean they were bad people.

Most people failed the test after all.

But it does bring into question their assertions of over-arching and universal moral authority later in life.

So when someone like Commited Catholic sends me some pronouncements made by these men, whose chief claim to fame as I see it is an ability to rise through the Church bureaucracy, and who condemn Love between Men on MORAL grounds -- my response is that these are not people I would listen to on a moral issue.

Because for me they don't have moral authority.

Now, no doubt I've offended some Catholics.

Before you write, I strongly recommend that you read this article about anti-Semitic pogroms in post WW II Poland, and the Church's response;

and also A German Lesson: the Fallacy of One True Path, an article by Daniel Goldhagen, author of A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair.

In which he notes:

Christian intolerance -- its anti-Semitism -- was the sine qua non for the emergence of Nazi racial anti-Semitism and for the Nazis' capacity to enlist so many Christians in their war against the Jews. And although the Catholic Church was not responsible for the Holocaust, it is also a fact that, in many ways, substantial parts of the church avidly aided various aspects of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. The church, for example, supported the Nazis' and fascists' anti-Semitic race laws, and the Slovakian episcopate explained to the Slovakian nation why its government, headed by a priest, must deport the country's Jews. With regard to Jews, the church was not the fundamental antidote to the problem, but part of it.

So much for the Church and its moral authority.

Of course there were individual Christians -- Patrick's father was one and Archbishop Roncalli, who became Pope John XXIII, another -- who saw what the Nazis were and fought them.

But as an institution the Church and Christendom in general failed to fight the Nazis -- and the Holocaust -- in any meaningful way.

As I've experienced it, Christianity is only meaningful to me in that it induces pain, and becomes kind of like "a cutter's" form of spiritual being. I hurt so therefore, I am. I sin, so therefore I am. I am unworthy, so therefore I am,... Utter meaninglessness gives us blessed relief from the intense sensations felt within the church.

I could not survive in the church. It fed a suicidal darkness within me that was with me from about 17. I can't put everything there, but it didn't help, and I wasn't looking for a protestant substitute (I do have my Catholic diginity). The most relief I found in our culture was provided by works that spoke of the emptiness of it. That was true. I belonged to that alienation. I could exist there.

Yes, I understand.

Now, I'm remembering why I told my dad when I was a little kid after watching a local parade with tribal members in full regalia, many on horseback, why I wanted to be an Indian.

I think you help reintroduce us all to an "Indian heart" that Rain In The Face attributed to the white guard at a fort that set him free.

Thank you Frances.

It's in just such acts of resistance that any man -- or woman -- demonstrates that they have heart.

Now, before we close, I want to come back to this part of the post:

Frances:

His boyhood sounds rather agoge-like. Their world was completely imbued with spirit. It was everywhere, just as meaninglessness is everywhere in ours. Musn't all warrior cultures depend on spirituality? Mustn't all sexual relations be seen as purposeful to group survival in order to be seen as "sacred" rather than profane.

Bill:

Yes, and this is an utterly CRUCIAL point:

"Musn't all warrior cultures depend on spirituality? Mustn't all sexual relations be seen as purposeful to group survival in order to be seen as "sacred" rather than profane."

Yes to both questions.

Warrior cultures depend on spirituality.

Which is why we talk about spirituality.

And sexual relations between Greek warriors were viewed as necessary to the maintenance at a ferocious level of the hoplite bond.

And the hoplite bond was necessary to group survival.

In the male, sex and aggression are intimately intertwined.

Indeed, in my view, they're actually the same thing.

Both mediated by testosterone.

You cannot deny the one without denying the other.

Warrior cultures regard both fighting and sex as sacred.

As do we.

You cannot, in the case of the male, say that sex is sacred but fighting profane; or fighting is sacred but sex profane.

You can't do it.

Unless you deny that connection.

At which point, you've betrayed Men, Masculinity, Manhood, and Spirituality.

What Dave Sprowls calls the Sacred Bonds between Men exist to enable Men to Fight.

Those bonds are sexual.

And spiritual.

Even in our culture, we see it in the military and in the fight schools.

MAN SPIRIT

MAN FIGHT

MAN LOVE

You cannot deny one of those elements without destroying the other two.

Take away MAN SPIRIT, and Man Fight becomes aggression without honor; and Man Love becomes sex without honor -- sleaze.

Take away MAN FIGHT, and you deprive MAN SPIRIT of its MOST essential element.

Which is why Rain In The Face said "he had really died when he ceased to be a warrior, and that now his body would join his spirit, and that that was good."

And take away MAN LOVE, and the other essential in Man Spirit is now gone.

The Man who lives without MAN LOVE is only half a man.

The Man who lives without MAN FIGHT is only half a man.

And the Man who lives without MAN SPIRIT is no man at all.

Thank you Frances.

You're a true Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Bill Weintraub

Re: Their world was completely imbued with Spirit: Warriors and Warrior Amulets

12-21-2006

Guys, here's the amulets article Frances referred to:

My late lover Brett was an open and proud Man who Loved another Man.

And he found in that love a true spirituality, completely different from the false religions put forth by the "religious right" -- which is neither.

In Beatific, Luke Shelton says of his relationship with Stephen, "what Stephen and I were doing was, in its way, sacramental to us."

They were doing Frot.

Frot was Sacramental to them.

In Soldier Cockfight, Warrior Biggun refers to a "holy tryst":

I ground my dick against his and mixed our juices against our bellies, warm seed of men united in the climax of a holy tryst. I loved him right then for his power and strength, his beauty and raw energy, for the things which make us all men - the powerful, enigmatic brooding presence we all carry within us, the driving forces and lusts which draw us together in such beautiful combat.

"warm seed of men united in the climax of a HOLY tryst".

Don Frazer talks frequently of cumming in your buddy's climax:

Is there ANYTHING more quintessentially masculine than feeling your buddy's warm semen gush on your cock and belly while you ejaculate right in his climax?

Right.

The merging of semen is the merging of Manhood.

As a sacrament, it's a SYMBOLIC act -- and all the more significant for its symbolism.

In I love FROT, Warrior buddyrub says,

For me, cock-on-cock is the way to go, because you're two equals and you're sharing exactly the same sensations at the same time, and it's all caused by the same action. And when I feel our combined jizz lubricating our dick interface, my orgasm intensifies twofold.

Head-to-head is fun too, but ultimately, when we "take it home," rubbing the sensitive undersides together is really where it's at.

Best of all, you don't necessarily have to be gay to enjoy it. Every guy can join in.

Sorry about the clinical term "interface." It's the only way I can think of to describe it. I'd welcome some other descriptive term. But how can you describe in words the few square inches wherein men's souls converge?

"the few square inches wherein men's souls converge"

Frot is a Sacrament.

Frot is a Sacrament which unites the warm seed of men in the climax of a HOLY tryst.

Frot is a Sacrament which creates for Men's phalluses a physical and spiritual interface, those few square inches wherein men's souls converge.

Masculinity is a Divine Principle, Manhood a Divine Gift, and Frot a Holy Sacrament, the expression of True Male Spirituality.

Not false religion.

Armed with that knowledge -- and let that knowledge be your sword, buckler, and shield -- let's come back to the WAR GOD.

I said earlier, "Manhood not Mammon.

"Warrior societies weren't powered by money.

"They were powered by the sacred and loving bonds between men."

And I want to look at, in that regard, some amulets which were buried with the bodies of Jewish warriors who'd fought the Seleucid Greeks -- ca 168 BC.

These were the soldiers of the Maccabees, and the politics of that war are very complicated.

But basically it pitted Jews fighting for what they saw as religious freedom, against their Syrian Greek overlords.

What may surprise you, in looking at these amulets, is the Greek and other pagan imagery.

But the Greeks had been in that area of the world for at least a couple centuries at that point, and the Jews had absorbed Greek culture.

The Maccabees were of course opposed to any graven image, and they were chagrined to find these amulets on the bodies of their own soldiers.

But they were there.

Now, most of the figures are what scholars call the "Anguipede," which means the snake-footed god.

As I'll explain below, I don't think these were meant to be literal depictions of a god -- but rather symbols of powers which would provide protection during battle.

Let's take a look at these Warrior amulets:

This is a common figure.

He's holding a shield and a whip, which tells us he's a war god, he has the head of a cock -- a fighting cock -- and his feet are snakes.

These are all masculine and phallic symbols.

The Greek letters at the base spell out the Hebrew name for God.

Again, these are Hebrew amulets worn by people much exposed to Greek culture.

This is the same figure, now bearing the Greek war god Ares on his head.

Here's the same figure, this time accompanied by six-pointed stars of David -- symbols of the Jewish state -- and even a crescent -- almost 800 years before Islam.

So in these first three, we see cocks and snakes associated with war and of course masculinity.

This is the Greek sun god, Helios.

He's standing on a lion who's standing on a crocodile.

And to the left is a variant on the Egyptian god Horus.

This is a frankly phallic figure, with the head of a crowned lion.

And finally an eagle, with a snake wound around its feet which then becomes phallic.

The figure on the right is thought to be the Egyptian god Anubis.

So what you see are guys going into battle wearing amulets decorated with figures that are part cock, part human, and part snake -- and with erect gods.

There's also solar imagery, including the lion and Helios.

Because the sun is a symbol of Masculine Power.

What are we to make of these amulets?

Here's mythographer Joseph Campbell:

It is amazing, but now undeniable, that the vocabularly of symbol is to such an extent constant through the world that it must be recognized to present a single pictorial script, through which realizations of a tremendum [a sense of awe in the presence of the sacred or transcendent] experienced through life are given statement.

Apparent also is the fact that not only in higher cultures, but also among many of the priests and visionaries of the folk cultures, these symbols -- or, as we often say, "gods" -- are not thought to be powers in themselves but are signs through which the powers of life and its revelations are recognized and released: powers of the soul as well as of the living world.

First of all, Campbell says that "the vocabulary of symbol is ... constant through the world."

And, I would add, through time.

We're living more than 2000 years after the warriors who wore these symbols died.

But we recognize the link between cock, snake, phallus -- and aggression.

Male sexuality and aggression.

Male aggressive power -- Male sexual power.

These symbols are plain to us.

Campbell also says these symbols help us realize the sacred or transcendent -- a tremendum, something tremendous and awe-inspiring.

Finally, he says,

these symbols -- or, as we often say, "gods" -- are not thought to be powers in themselves but are signs through which the powers of life and its revelations are recognized and released: powers of the soul as well as of the living world.

So: what you see on these amulets are symbols of the Warrior God.

"signs through which the powers of life and its revelations are recognized and released: powers of the soul as well as of the living world."

The symbols are signs through which:

"the powers of life and its revelations are recognized and released"

"powers of the soul"

Here, by the way, is an actual amulet:

Cock, snakes, shield, whip -- and the name of God.

The figure wears a kilt so that the interface between his body and the snakes is left to the imagination.

Which is as it should be.

Because the snakes are symbols of his male aggressive power.

And it's through such symbols that the powers of the Warrior soul are recognized and released.

Bill Weintraub

PS

Here's a so-called avatar which I found on an internet fight site:

Our age is a lot more literal than that of the Maccabees.

Why?

For one thing, because of the religious right, we're MAN-phobic and homophobic.

We're afraid of frankly phallic symbols.

So cocks and snakes are by and large out.

For the moment.

NOT forever.

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.