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The Warrior Altruism of the Warrior God
5-5-2010
It was Easter last month, 2nd April was Good Friday, (guys did you get your chocolate eggs?) and as you know Easter is the day when Christians remember that act of ultimate Warrior Altruism in which the Warrior God allowed himself to be killed in that most gruesome way, crucifixion.
I say He LET this happen -- if you are not sure of what I mean read Matthew 26:53. And who did He do this for?
He did it for humanity, for the human race, for Mankind.
Which means that Men are saved not by "the church" or by what the pastor says or by the mighty dollar or by anything else other than the Warrior God's act of Warrior Altruism.
Happy Easter, and Warrior Love,
Brian
Also by Warrior Brian Hulme:
The credit crunch will NOT crunch my Manhood my Masculinity or my Warriorhood
CAN MY MAN TO MAN RELATIONSHIP DRAW ME CLOSER TO GOD?
14th February -- or -- EROS DAY?
Re: The Warrior Altruism of the Warrior God
5-17-10
Thank you Warrior Brian Hulme.
Guys, this has turned into a long reply, and for ease of reading therefore I've broken it into parts:
I'd like to be able to tell you that one part is more important than another, but, unfortunately, that's not true.
For example: There's a lot of information about Sparta in Part IX which those of you who are "philo-lakon" -- that is, Sparta-lovers -- will enjoy.
But Part IV, Warrior Eros, discusses issues which most of you really need to consider and think about.
So it's best that you all read -- all nine parts.
One way to do that is to read Parts I through VI -- Warrior Altruism through Warrior Witness; and then come back and finish with parts VII through IX -- Warrior Identity, Strength, and Rebirth.
Guys, I wanted to run this post from Brian because he sees something with great clarity -- and it's this:
Warrior Altruism is the Warrior's willingness to die for his fellow Warriors.
The Warrior God is, for Brian, Jesus Christ.
Now -- some of you reading this are believing Christians, some are non-Christians, and some of you dislike Christianity.
But what I want you all to see is that at the core of Christianity is, to paraphrase Brian, "the Warrior God's act of ultimate Warrior Altruism."
Again, you can believe that Christianity is real -- or you can believe that it was manufactured by the early church fathers.
Doesn't matter.
Whether the Christian faith is the creation of God or Man -- Warrior Altruism is at its core.
Why?
Because Warrior Altruism expresses something which is primal for human beings, and in particular, primal for MEN.
Christianity, though it had many female adherents, arose in a very Masculine and Masculinist culture; and one of its key competitors was an all-male mystery cult called Mithraism, which was aimed at the Warrior caste and class of the Roman Empire.
According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia,
Mithraism was emphatically a soldier religion: Mithra, its hero, was especially a divinity of fidelity, manliness, and bravery ... stress[ing] good fellowship and brotherliness ...
...
the Mithraists were strongly inclined towards asceticism; abstention from food and absolute continence seemed to them noble and praiseworthy, though not obligatory. They battled on Mithra's side against all impurity, against all evil within and without.
In short, Mithraism was a Warrior religion with a Warrior God at its center.
And Mithras too engaged in a painful struggle for the sake of all Mankind, fighting, capturing and then carrying a huge cosmic bull on his shoulders to his cave, where he sacrificed it and thus brought many benefits, such as grain, which you can see flowing from the wound in the bull's side, to human beings.
However, this struggle and sacrifice are different in a number of ways from that of Jesus, one being, as mythographer Joseph Campbell points out in The Masks of God, that "they represent a completely different reading of the nature of the universe and of man: a mystical affirmation as against a moral corrective, and a reassertion of the older, primitive, and generally pagan description of the sacrifice."
So -- Mithraism essentially affirms the universe as is, with a sense of the divine as immanent -- that is a sense of the Divine as inherent in the substance of the world.
Christianity, by contrast, worships a transcendent God -- a God who transcends the world.
Another key difference between Mithras and Jesus was that Mithras was a mythical figure, whereas Jesus was presented as a real human being who had lived and died in real time -- making his suffering and sacrifice, therefore, all the more poignant and powerful.
Nevertheless, it's clear that Mithraism, with its central storyline of a Warrior God who suffers so as to do good for Mankind, spoke to many, many Men in the Roman world; that it presented a real challenge to Christianity; and that had it not been brutally suppressed by the Christians after they attained political power, it might well still be with us.
Which is exactly why the Church eliminated it.
It saw Mithraism, as it did many so-called pagan cults, as a belief-system with staying power, and therefore a direct threat to its hegemony.
So -- Warrior Altruism, both in Men's lives and in a male religious context, was something which was well understood in the ancient world --
and which *still lives* in the hearts and souls of Men today.
Which is why, to return specifically to Jesus, the same idea -- about Warrior Altruism and Christ -- is expressed in Robert Loring's Jesus and the Truth message thread by Warrior JM:
I refer to His choice of crucifiction as "The Great Exchange". He exchanged his perfection for the imperfections of every man (and woman) in the world. His sacrificial act allows us to transcend the imperfections of the physical world upon our entrance into the spiritual world. Nobody reading this could accomplish this.
There is no greater man and no greater example of hardcore , no BS masculinity than that example by Jesus.
"These is no greater example of hardcore, no BS masculinity than that example by Jesus."
Hardcore Masculinity = Warrior Altruism.
Greater Love Hath No Man Than This
And that act of Hardcore Masculinity / Warrior Altruism, which is very male, is followed in the Bible by another male-male act -- the Resurrection.
In which God the Father not only restores his son to life, but gives him immortal life.
There are, of course, ancient, non-Christian, precedents.
Zeus, who was God the Father to the Greeks, gives at least two of his mortal sons, Herakles and Polydeukes, immortal life.
He also grants Polydeukes' brother Kastor immortal life -- eventually.
Zeus does that because of Polydeukes' own act of Warrior Altruism, in which, as Kastor is dying, Polydeukes tells Zeus that he wants to die too.
The Warrior's wish to die for and/or with his Warrior brother is very important and very powerful.
Zeus also makes his own male lover, Ganymedes, immortal.
For ancient Men, living in a society in which male lovers were the norm, this too was very powerful.
What's more, if we think of the West, the Western World, European Civilization, as made up of two components -- the Greeks and Christianity -- which is how most scholars see it --
then we can see two acts of Warrior Altruism at the core of Western Civ:
Thermopylae and the Crucifixion.
Thermopylae:
Leonidas of Sparta, ruled 491 - 480:
When the ephors said, "Haven't you decided to take any action beyond blocking the passes against the Persians?", "In theory, no," he said, "but in fact I plan to die for the Greeks."
When Xerxes wrote to him: "It is possible for you not to fight the gods but to side with me and be monarch of Greece," he wrote back: "If you understood what is honorable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs to others. For me, it is better to die for Greece, than to be monarch of the people of my race."
~ Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans
By blocking the pass at Thermopylae, Leonidas prevents Persia from conquering Europe.
And thus enables the Greeks to invent Western Civilization, including, according to classicist Victor Davis Hanson, "constitutional government, civil liberties, free exchange of ideas, self-critique, private property, capitalism, and separation between religious and political/scientific thought."
Of course, Christianity then came along and attempted to destroy, in the Middle Ages, much of what Hanson is talking about ...
but it couldn't.
In part because there are too many Greek ideas layered into Christianity itself.
Many a pope aspired to be to Europe what Xerxes had been to Asia.
Nary a pope succeeded.
Wasn't in the cards.
And Warrior Altruism is a big part of the reason why.
Leonidas and Jesus are two very powerful -- too powerful -- role-models.
So -- what I particularly like about Brian's post is his coupling of the Warrior God with Warrior Altruism:
Again, I know not all of you are Christians, or will see this from a Christian perspective.
And again, the important thing to understand is that you don't have to.
But --- I've been running this little box -- and big picture -- at the bottom of every post:
xxxxThis aspect of our work is the one that's most disturbing and indeed frightening to our opponents:
Here's what I say in that little box again -- and since not all browsers seem to be able to handle the box, here's the text alone:
This aspect of our work is the one that's most disturbing and indeed frightening to our opponents:
That we combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit.
Which is Warrior Spirit.
The Warrior God is the Guardian of that Spirit.
You may call him Jesus Christ as Robert Loring does.
You may call him Ares as did the Greeks.
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge
the vital role He plays in Your Life.
"We combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit."
Fighting Spirit.
Fighting Spirit is the Hallmark of Masculinity.
So:
Fighting Spirit is the Hallmark of Masculinity.
Fighting Spirit is Warrior Spirit.
The Warrior God is the Guardian of Warrior Spirit.
Which is why --
"What's important is that you understand and acknowledge the vital role the Warrior God plays in Your Life."
Because without the Warrior God -- you lack Warrior Spirit.
And without Warrior Spirit -- you aren't a Man.
Warrior Brian Hulme understands -- and acknowledges.
And so his life is rich in Warrior Spirit.
And rich in Manliness.
As we'll see in a forthcoming post.
And, guys, I'm talking about and stressing the concepts of Warrior Spirit and the Warrior God over and over again simply because males in our society have moved so far away from such concepts.
But throughout history, and certainly in the ancient world, Men were taught from earliest childhood about Warrior Spirit and the Warrior God and the importance of worshipping that God.
Which Brian does.
Once again, Brian's concept of the Warrior God is Christian.
Once again, yours doesn't have to be.
But as a Man, it's essential that You understand and acknowledge the vital role the Warrior God plays in Your Life.
So -- Warrior JM says
There is no greater man and no greater example of hardcore, no BS masculinity than that example by Jesus.
What you need is a Spiritual -- Divine -- example, a Divine model, of ultimate, hardcore, no BS Masculinity to guide your life.
The Warrior God -- Divine Guardian of the Warrior Spirit, of Fighting Spirit -- is that model.
Again, this is a question of spirituality -- of Warrior Spirit.
Masculinity is a Divine Principle.
Manhood a Divine Gift.
They're holy.
And Warrior Altruism too is a Divine Gift, a gift from God, which, in concert with and as an expression of Eros, male-male attraction, enables Men to band and bond togther.
Warrior Altruism.
Warrior Spirit.
Many, many Fighting Forces throughout history, including today the US Marine Corps, have held and hold the Spartans in very high regard.
Why?
Thermopylae.
And the Warrior Altruism it represents.
Don't believe me?
Ask a marine.
Masculinity is a Divine Principle.
Manhood a Divine Gift.
You need to think of both in just that way.
And you could do a lot worse than to start with the notion, per Warrior Brian Hulme, of the Warrior God's Warrior Altruism.
Which is a manifestation of Warrior Spirit.
And let me be clear with you.
The Ideal of Warrior Altruism is DIRECTLY opposed to our own culture's "ideals" of greed and growth.
Which are the two core beliefs of "economism," which, as theologian John Cobb explains, is the dominant religion in the world today -- and certainly in the US.
And let me just protect myself for a moment:
Cobb's article appears on a left-wing website.
But Cobb's article is not, in my view, left-wing.
It's simply descriptive of changes in societal norms and beliefs.
Cobb points out that "voluntary poverty" was an ideal in Christendom.
I have to point out that it was an ideal long before Christendom.
Many Greek philosophers lived lives of voluntary poverty.
Sokrates did.
Plato, so far as we know, didn't.
But Epaminondas, who was not only a philosopher but a great military leader, did.
As did, in theory, all of the Spartan Warrior Class, including the kings.
I'm not saying that was always true in practice --
but the Spartan ideal was austerity and equality.
The Spartan ideal was Austerity and Equality --
wed to Honor and Valour.
Which is why Plato modeled so much of his utopian Republic -- on Sparta.
So -- historically, both the ancient world and Christendom had the voluntarily poor and self-sacrificing.
We have the rich and famous.
There's a huge difference.
It's not that there weren't rich and famous people in Christendom.
But they were not the societal ideal.
They are, de facto, now.
And they do not go with, they don't offer any support for, Warrior Altruism.
Or the Warrior Ideal.
Interestingly, in that regard, The New York Times had an article recently about books written by American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
[emphasis mine]
Says Mr O'Brien, "They look at war as an aspect of glory, of finding honor."
"finding honor"
Why do these young men -- and women -- have to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to find honor?
Perhaps because they can't find it at home.
Mr. O'Brien says that's "almost an old-fashioned, Victorian way of looking at war."
Really?
On 9/11 the US was attacked and suffered grievous and largely civilian casualties.
Reasonable people may disagree on whether the current wars are a reasonable response to those attacks.
But defending your country is neither old-fashioned nor Victorian.
It's defending your country.
And it requires, above all, Courage.
But Honor matters too.
In the Victory Ode known as Nemean 9, Pindar speaks of the people of Aitna, a Greek city in Sicily, who, just because they lived in Sicily and Italy, were involved in armed conflicts with the Carthaginians, the Eutruscans, and sometimes with other Greek settlements in the area.
Although Aitna itself was only founded in 476 BC, some of the founding colonists would have, in 480 BC, the same year as Thermopylae, helped defeat a huge Carthaginian army at the Battle of Himera.
And then a Eutruscan fleet at the Battle of Kyme in 474.
So, as in any other Greek city-state, the Men of Aitna were Citizen-Warriors.
Here's what Pindar says about them:
My words are hard to believe, for the sense of honor that brings fame is secretly stolen by greed for gain.
~ translated by Wm Race
In a footnote, Prof Race says that "the sense of honor and self-respect ... gives one the courage to keep his place in a hoplite formation and turn the tide of battle against the opposing army."
Now, the word that Prof Race translates as "honor" is ambiguous -- it can also mean "shame"; but I can see why he thinks honor is the meaning Pindar intends, and I'm going to go with that.
Because what Pindar is saying here is what I've just said:
He's saying that only Men who have "souls superior to possessions" can withstand the spears of the enemy.
Otherwise, their sense of honor "will be secretly stolen by greed for gain."
Translation: a sense of honor cannot co-exist with greed.
It will be *secretly*, Pindar says, stolen by such greed.
Not stolen openly -- people will continue to pay lip-service to "honor" -- but secretly.
And he's right.
We can see that in our own society.
"Greed for gain" is the highest value in our present culture.
It's supposed to be exercised "rationally" -- but greed is what it is.
In the hoplite formation, the armed men aka hoplites stood shoulder-to-shoulder with shields overlapping.
And every man was dependent upon the man standing next to him not to give way -- or run away -- and break the line.
Once the line was broken, the enemy could pour through the gap and destroy the rest of the line.
So -- what Pindar -- and Race too -- are calling "honor," I would call Warrior Altruism.
The guy standing next to you has to be willing to die rather than put you -- and the rest of the line -- in jeopardy.
And Pindar is saying that Honor -- or Warrior Altruism -- "is secretly stolen by greed for gain."
Sokrates, as we'll see in a forthcoming post, says something very similar about greed and its effect upon society.
The point here being that once Honor has been stolen -- from a person or a country -- it's gone.
And what got my attention, as I said, in the Times' piece was the idea of young Americans having to go to the mid-East to find Honor.
There's a poem by Lord Byron which begins
You might want to look that one up.
And think about what happens when a Man has no Honor to Fight for -- at home.
So -- you can come to this website and read what you want to read and believe what you want to believe.
But we're involved in a culture war.
Analism is an off-shoot of hedonism, which, in our modern age, is a product of the forces of greed and growth.
When we talk about ideals of austerity and equality;
when we speak of Frot as a rigorous practice;
when we describe Masculinity as a Divine Principle and Manhood as a Divine Gift;
and when we advocate Strength and Honor, Phallus and Fidelity, Virtue and Virility --
we're taking stands which cannot be part of and which are indeed obviously antithetical to a hedonistic culture of raunch, kink, and sleaze, a culture of money and celebrity, a culture of anal penetration and promiscuity.
And you have to choose.
Brian has chosen:
The Warrior Altruism of the Warrior God.
Again, his Warrior God may not be *your* Warrior God.
But --
That should in no way diminish your appreciation of and admiration for what Brian has done:
Brian, a Christian, has managed, in this post, to make the connections between and among one of the central beliefs of Christianity -- Christ's willing sacrifice on the Cross -- and the Warrior God and Warrior Altruism.
Thus giving the concepts of both the Warrior God and Warrior Altruism, great and living force within in his own life.
That's what ALL of you have to do.
You have to give the concepts of both the Warrior God and Warrior Altruism great and living force -- within your own lives.
Which will then make it possible for you to *live* the Warrior Ideal.
Once again, it need not be in a Christian context.
But -- it does need to be in *your* context.
Christianity as an organized religion has done a lot of people a lot of harm.
We all know that.
So you have to find the context that's right for yourself.
Because -- if the Warrior God is the Divine Guardian of the Warrior Spirit -- of Fighting Spirit -- which He is --
then the Warrior God is also the Divine Guardian not only of Warrior Altruism --
But of Warrior Eros.
Which, after all, is what this website and this Alliance are obstensibly about:
Men Loving Men --
Warrior Eros.
The problem is that most of you are utterly clueless about the relationship between Warrior Altruism and Warrior Eros.
And that is greatly impeding -- indeed, self-impeding -- your lives.
Most people understand that *reciprocal* altruism plays a significant role in ordinary friendship and -- more importantly for our discussion -- in male-female marriage.
But when you look at male-male "relationship," Warrior male-male, which we call, correctly, Heroic Love, you completely ignore Warrior Altruism, which is nevertheless the male-male corelative of reciprocal altruism and thus ESSENTIAL to Warrior Love.
Heroic Love.
Translation: You can't have Warrior Eros -- without Warrior Altruism.
This is something which was very very very very very well-understood by the ancients.
Male-male among the ancients, and particularly the Greeks, existed in an Athletic and Martial context.
In a Combative context.
In a context ruled and informed by three Gods: Ares, Agon, Eros.
So: Male-male relationships were formed at the Palaistrai, the Wrestling Schools, where boys, youths, and men trained in wrestling, boxing, and pankration,
and which were also military training grounds.
When, in a place like Athens, the boys who wrestled and boxed at the Palaistra reached what was called Fighting Age -- which was usually 18 -- they started their "ephebic training" -- training in the use of the shield, spear, and sword.
Also at the Palaistra.
At Sparta, the "boys of fighting age" were called Eirens.
But it's basically the same deal.
Male-male relationships were formed within the context of the Agogé, much of which was training in various forms of nude hand-to-hand fighting, and then in fighting with weapons.
So -- male-male -- Eros -- existed in a Warrior context.
And Warrior Eros without Warrior Altruism would have been unthinkable to the Greeks.
For example:
We've talked about, in Plato's Symposium, the phrase, "There is no sort of Valour more respected by the Gods than this which comes of Love."
And what Plato's referring to is Achilles' willingness to die for his lover Patroclus.
Which is both Warrior Altruism and Warrior Eros in action.
And just this one image -- and it's just one of a relatively few paintings on ceramic which survived the millenia -- is incredibly rich in illustrating that point: Warrior Love is Heroic Love.
First of all, both Achilles and Patroclus are depicted in full battle armor.
They're Warriors.
They're Heroes.
And they're also Lovers.
Achilles is lovingly bandaging Patroclus' wounded arm, while Patroclus, who's sitting on his shield, looks at the arrow which penetrated it.
It's a scene of battlefield tenderness -- and Warrior Altruism -- between two Warrior Lovers.
Heroic Lovers.
And remember that Achilles is by far the greater Warrior -- there is, by definition, no greater Warrior than Achilles.
Yet he's doing the bandaging.
He's caring for his wounded Lover.
This was very very very very very meaningful to ancient Men.
It epitomizes Warrior Love, which is Heroic Love.
And the painting, by the way, is in the interior of a kylix or drinking cup, which would have been used, and no doubt passed around and admired, at a Symposium, an all-male dinner/drinking party.
And, as my caption indicates, the guys who attended these events were not just amorous "party-goers."
They were also Warriors.
The wrestling schools and the all-male messes -- whether they were the comparatively elegant Symposia of Athens or the bare-bones Phiditia of Sparta -- were used to strengthen the Warrior Bond.
So the palaistrai-gymnasia and the all-male messes were two of the three major institutions in Greek life -- the other was the military itself -- which supported Agon, Ares, and Eros -- Contest, War, and Love -- all three of which were inter-related and bound together.
Which brings us back to Plato and his Symposium:
"There is no sort of Valour more respected by the Gods than this which comes of Love."
The word Plato uses for Love is, of course, Eros.
The word he uses for Valour is, of course, Areté.
Which, as we've much discussed, derives from Ares.
Ares is the source of Areté.
And classicist Werner Jaeger says straight out that Eros is the Love for Areté.
If that's so, which it is, Eros is the Love for Warrior Spirit.
And Eros, as we know and as we'll discuss further, is generated by Warrior Spirit.
There's a feedback loop:
Further, when, in that same discussion, Plato says that a male lover is "a friend inspired by God" -- in my view, he means Ares.
Because he's referring back to the Iliad, and the fury and frenzy of battle.
And because to the Greeks in general, and Plato in particular, there are Gods, and then there's God.
So -- Ares is very important.
To Eros.
And it's the Warrior aspect of Ares-Eros or Warrior Love -- which produces one of its key aspects --
Here's John Boswell, the "openly gay" chair of the history department at Yale until his death from AIDS in 1995, writing about the ancient world:
Plutarch adduces with evident disapproval cases of husbands who allowed their wives to be unfaithful to gain some advantage, and then notes, "By contrast, of all the many [same-sex] lovers there were and have been, do you know of a single one who surrendered his beloved, even to gain favor from Zeus? I do not." (Erotikos 760B).
The proponent of same-sex passion in the Hellenistic Affairs of the Heart says that wisdom and experience teach that love between males is the most stable of loves. This prejudice [sic] was doubtless influenced by the Symposium of Plato, in which heterosexual relationships and feelings are characterized as "vulgar," and their same-sex equivalents as "heavenly."
This contrast exercised wide influence on subsequent discussions of love.
~ Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in PreModern Europe, 74.
In short, Fidelity was the NORM in Warrior "relationships" -- WARRIOR EROS.
Why?
Warrior Altruism.
Boswell doesn't use that term -- it's a term we coined in The Man2Man Alliance -- but the concept of Warrior Altruism is there in what he says next:
Boswell goes on to note that in Plato's Symposium, the character named
~ Symposium 179
Plato: "only such as are in love will consent to die for others."
Man2Man Alliance: Warrior Altruism: "The warrior's willingness to give his life for his fellow warriors."
And let's go back to Plato because he's a) really smart; and b) heir to a huge and centuries-old tradition of Warrior Eros:
Ares is important.
One of the things Ares does, in his role as Guardian of Warrior Spirit, is "inspire" Warriors -- the actual word in Greek translates as "in-God" Warriors -- with Fury.
Fury.
Our Warrior NW refers to a wrestling match as a "6-minute furious fight."
Fighting is furious -- you need Fury -- tempered by Wisdom -- to Fight.
Indeed, Pausanias tells us that there was a temple at Sparta dedicated to Ares "Theritas" --
Which means Ares Bestial, Ares Brutal.
Sounds harsh, doesn't it?
But these guys were going into battle to kill each other.
At that moment, you didn't want to be in-spired -- in-Godded -- by Ares the Gentle.
What you needed was Ares the Beast, Ares the Brute.
Just the way it is.
So -- I know it sounds as though Plato is saying the Fury is being inspired by the God Eros.
No.
It's being inspired by Ares-Eros.
Warrior Love.
That's what gives it its power.
So much so, says Plato, that Warrior-Lovers, "when fighting side by side, one might almost consider able to make a little band victorious over all the world."
Which the Sacred Band of Thebes, for a time, was.
So:
Eros matters.
Ares matters.
And Agon too is important.
Ares is the source of the word Areté -- no getting around that.
But Agon and Ares are very close.
Because Agon can mean both contest and combat.
Indeed, another Greek word, Athlos, which is the source of our words athlete and athletics, also means contest and combat.
In ancient Greece, athletai could be rivals on the playing field or the battlefield.
Or, more properly, rivals in Fight Sport or in armed combat.
So -- if there's a feedback loop between between Eros and Ares, there must be a feedback loop between Eros and Agon as well.
Warrior Eros is directly related then to both Warrior Agon, and Warrior -- War.
Which is why Plato says
Obviously, to the Greeks, the highest expression of Warrior Eros occurs in War.
But it can also occur, as we saw in Man2Man in the Middle East, in "agonic" situations.
As to what the exact relationship is between Ares and Eros and Agon -- we'll be getting into that -- in the future.
For now, what's important for you to take away from this discussion is that without Warrior Altruism, there can be no Warrior Eros.
As I said, most of you are clueless in that regard, and worse than clueless -- you're horrible.
Specifically, you're selfish.
Yet you can't have what you say you want -- which is a Warrior "relationship" -- without the component of Warrior Altruism.
You can have an analist relationship that way -- that's for sure.
And more than a few of you have been in those sorts of very selfish analist relationships.
I know because you've written to me and even posted about them -- in truly gory detail.
But now, you say, you don't want that -- and can't have that.
You are, you say, tempermentally unable to do anal -- which speaks well of you.
But you're unable to escape the non-sexual cultural components of analism -- which are greed and selfishness -- and for just that reason you stay locked out of what you say you want.
You need to figure that out.
You need to grow.
UP -- preferably.
Which takes us both back -- to Part III Warrior Ideal -- and forward -- to:
So -- we've now looked at the Warrior God and Warrior Altruism under the aspects of Warrior Spirit, Warrior Ideal, and Warrior Eros.
Time to talk about -- and why not? -- the big picture -- the Universe -- which, in Greek, is Kosmos --
In that regard, I want to say a word about Joseph Campbell, whose work I brought up at the beginning of this reply.
I sometimes cite Campbell in my writing, and some of you may think therefore that I'm a follower of Campbell.
Not so.
Campbell is brilliant, but he has an ax to grind -- which is not mine -- and he can be embarassingly homophobic.
And then there's this sort of statement from Campbell -- since I'm putting in an ellipsis, you can find the original on page 258 of his Occidental Mythology:
Heroism, according to Campbell, is found NOT in the will to reform, but in the Courage to Affirm, the nature of the universe.
That's all well and good, but it begs the question: What is the nature of the universe?
In the Platonic dialogue Gorgias, Sokrates takes on this question, debating sophists and rhetoricians who believe that the pleasurable is the good.
They are, in other words, essentially hedonists -- "if it feels good, do it" -- which is very close to the analists' "it's all sex and it's all good."
Sokrates -- and Plato -- disagree, and Sokrates, using his dialectic, demonstrates that not pleasure, but Virtue is the Good.
And he says,
Kosmos.
Kosmos = order.
But that's not all.
In ancient Greek, Kosmos also means good behavior -- and decency.
So, as is often the case with Plato and Sokrates, there are multiple layers of meaning in just one word.
And when Sokrates says, "that is the reason, my friend, why they call the whole of this world by the name of Kosmos," he's also saying that the world is about decency and good behavior.
That that's how the Universe works.
"Heaven and Earth and Gods and Men are held together by Communion and Friendship, by Orderliness [Greek= Kosmiotes], Temperance, and Justice; and that is the reason, my friend, why they call the whole of this world by the name of order [Greek = Kosmos]; not of disorder or dissoluteness."
Kosmiotes = orderliness, decency
Kosmos = order, good behavior, decency -- virtue
So -- to Sokrates, and Plato, the nature of the universe is order, and that order is a MORAL order.
Further, Plato believes that "between the moral and the physical Kosmos" -- between the moral and physical universe -- "there is perfect harmony."
And I agree.
And in this matter, per Campbell, of the difference between the will to reform, and the *courage* to affirm --
I, like Sokrates and Plato, am an affirmer.
I seek to affirm what to me is clear -- the essentially moral nature of the Kosmos.
It's the analists who are the would-be re-formers, who seek to re-form the universe into something it is not, into something which is inherently vicious and unnatural and immoral.
Remember what Danielou, a modern pagan and affirmer, says about the Phallus:
Danielou is there making an AFFIRMATION of the essentially MORAL nature of the Universe.
And the Moral Nature of the Phallus --
something virtually incomprehensible to our "civilization."
But to Danielou, who was a convert to Hinduism, it isn't.
He speaks of the Phallus in moral, holy, and sacred, terms.
He also speaks of "degradation and debasement," and says, "The man who scorns the very symbol of the life principle abandons his kind to the powers of death."
The male who dishonors his Phallus by sticking it in a hole full of shit; the male who dishonors his Phallus by letting himself get fucked -- those males abandon themselves to the powers of death.
And the males like you who understand that -- but who do nothing to prevent it -- you too abandon yourself to the powers of death.
So -- in my advocacy of austerity and equality; of Frot as a rigorous practice; of Masculinity and Manhood; and of Strength and Honor, Phallus and Fidelity, and Virility and Virtue -- I'm acting to affirm; and, for me,
Heroism is the Courage to Affirm the Nature of the Universe.
If we connect that idea with Plato's belief that between the moral and physical kosmos there's perfect harmony;
and with his endorsement, in both the Republic and the Laws, of what the Greeks called "Gymnastika," and which was by and large training and competition in nude Fight Sport --
We can see that, in the Greek view, as in ours, the Fighter Affirms the Nature of the Kosmos.
Every time a Fighter enters the Ring -- He Affirms the Nature of the Kosmos.
And at some cost.
Because it takes enormous Courage to Fight -- to Fight in the Ring.
The Ring -- the Ring of Naked Valour, the Ring of Men's Hot Raw Sweat, the Ring of Blood.
The Ring -- ManSpace, FightSpace, ManFightSpace.
Every time a Fighter enters that Ring -- He Affirms the Nature of the Kosmos.
The Male and Aggressive Nature of the Kosmos.
The Warrior Kosmos.
The Warrior Kosmos is a timeless aspect of the Kosmos.
And the Fighter affirms that Kosmos -- in the only way it can be affirmed -- with his very body and soul.
It is, ultimately, per Campbell, a mystical affirmation.
And an Heroic act.
It takes Courage to enter the Ring, Courage to Affirm the Nature of the Kosmos.
And doing so is, ultimately, ennobling.
Now, guess what?
Every time we witness for the Truth in the face of our opponents' lies -- we too demonstrate Courage.
Heroism is the Courage to Affirm the Nature of the Universe -- no matter what the bullying buttboys and harrassing hedonists and fatuous femmies and clueless closet-cases may say.
Indeed, George Orwell, author of the dystopian novels 1984 and Animal Farm, though he uses different language than Campbell, also recognizes the Strength needed to Affirm the Nature of the Universe,
"To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle."
~ George Orwell
and I've written an entire article about his views.
Orwell's protagonist in 1984, Winston Smith, is basically attempting to affirm the nature of the universe in the face of a totalitarian state which demands that he, and all its citizens, "re-form" it -- which means, in practice, distort beyond belief.
First and foremost through the debasement of language.
That's what analism does.
Which is why I called my article Protective Stupidity and the Debasement of Language Under Analism.
But it's not just language -- all of logical thought is debased under analism, which demands, as do the rulers of 1984, that its denizens believe that 2 + 2 = 5, that ignorance is strength and freedom is slavery.
And:
Someone has to say No to those analist lies.
Someone has to have the Courage to Affirm the Nature of the Universe in the face of those deceits.
By looking at the analist lies and stating the FACTS.
Analist lie: an anus is a vagina.
FACT:
The dissimilarities are huge.
There's no genital tissue in the anus.
No naturally occuring immunological defences.
The mucosal lining of the anus is pathetically thin.
The walls of the anus weak.
The anus is not self-lubricating.
Nor is it, compared to the vagina, elastic.
All in all, the anus is singularly ill-suited to being penetrated.
It's weak, frail, fragile, easily damaged and completely defenseless, a major vector for disease, and totally lacking in genital tissue.
Those are the facts.
Analist lie: an anus can be penetrated "safely."
FACT:
Here's just a partial list, taken from our Man2Man Alliance Policy Paper
an anus is not a vagina, of sexually transmitted diseases vectored or transmitted through anal penetration and anal-oral contact:
We can see the exceptional vulnerability of the anus to disease when we compare rates of HPV infection between women -- who've been infected vaginally -- and gay-identified males -- who've been infected anally:
About 26% of American women are infected with cervical HPV.
About 67% of gay-identified males are infected with anal HPV.
That includes 95% of HIV+ gay-identified males who are infected with anal HPV; and 57% of HIV negative gay-identified males who are infected.
But there's another figure.
About 3.4% of American women are infected with one or more of the "high-risk" strains of HPV -- high-risk for cervical cancer.
More than 31% of gay-identified males are infected with a "high-risk" strain -- high-risk for anal cancer.
So you can see that anal penetration increases the risk of HPV-related cancer by a factor of about ten -- over vaginal penetration.
Which means that the anus is at least ten times more vulnerable to HPV infection than the vagina.
And then there's HIV.
As infectious disease expert Dr Myron Cohen told that President's Advisory Council on HIV / AIDS,
Anal intercourse is a really bad sexual practice for HIV transmission. It changes the equation. The efficiency is probably one in ten or one in eight.
Dr Cohen says the efficiency of anal is "one in ten."
I think it's higher.
Because the prevalence of HIV infection -- the percentage of guys infected -- among gay-identified males who do anal -- is the highest in the world.
The rate is higher than the rates found in sub-Saharan Africa, where most transmission is vaginal.
That's striking, and striking evidence of the anus and rectum's extreme vulnerability to infection and disease.
But it's not just disease.
It's DAMAGE.
Notice that Dr Cohen says "trauma."
Trauma is damage.
The disease is present because each and every time the anus is penetrated, it's damaged.
Over time, or just as the result of a single act of penetration, there can be significant *mechanical* damage to the anus and rectum.
Including bleeding and pain caused by fissures and tears, which are very difficult to repair, and of course perforation -- which can be fatal.
And -- fecal incontinence, commonly known as leakage -- the leakage of liquids, solids, and gasses through the damaged anal sphincter.
I strongly encourage readers to click here to learn more about the severe problems created by anal penetration.
Analist lie: the presence of fecal material in the anus and rectum can be ignored.
FACT:
And of course it smells, and it soils clothing and sheets.
It can NOT be ignored.
Neither hygienically nor aesthetically.
The presence of shit in the anus and rectum is a brute and inescapable fact.
Analist lie: penetrating a male anally is not effeminizing or emasculating.
Or degrading or unnatural.
And that promiscuity, raunch, kink, sleaze, and effeminacy -- are good -- good for people -- and good particularly for men.
FACT:
Masculinity and the lack thereof is a huge issue among gay-identified males, who repeatedly indicate in conversation and in particular on their cherished internet hook-up sites, that they want "masculine" and "straight-acting" partners --
who will also "bottom" for them.
What idiocy and nonsense.
As to effeminacy -- it's not a respected trait among gay-identified males.
It's denigrated.
Promiscuity, raunch, kink, and sleaze?
Study after study has shown that Men do best in stable and faithful relationships.
Which is no doubt why such relationships were, historically, the NORM among Men who loved Men.
And I'm repeating here the material from Boswell which I cited in the Warrior Eros section of this post -- repeating it because it's something you need to hear over and over and over again, simply because it's so far removed from the sorts of cultural messages you commonly hear -- over and over and over again -- about guys who are into guys:
Plutarch adduces with evident disapproval cases of husbands who allowed their wives to be unfaithful to gain some advantage, and then notes, "By contrast, of all the many [same-sex] lovers there were and have been, do you know of a single one who surrendered his beloved, even to gain favor from Zeus? I do not." (Erotikos 760B).
The proponent of same-sex passion in the Hellenistic Affairs of the Heart says that wisdom and experience teach that love between males is the most stable of loves. This prejudice [sic] was doubtless influenced by the Symposium of Plato, in which heterosexual relationships and feelings are characterized as "vulgar," and their same-sex equivalents as "heavenly."
This contrast exercised wide influence on subsequent discussions of love.
~ Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in PreModern Europe, 74.
Here's more Boswell:
Boswell goes on to note that in Plato's Symposium, the character named
~ Symposium 179
So -- in the ancient world, male-male relationships were not about anal and promiscuity.
They were about Phallus and Fidelity.
Which were expressions of Strength and Honor.
And Virtue and Virility.
So:
An anus is not a vagina;
Anal is by far the highest-risk "sex" act any two people can perform;
Fecal material carries disease -- which is why human beings are universally taught to avoid contact with it and to view it with disdain and distaste;
Promiscuity is not healthy, either physically or psychologically; and
Even among politically-correct gay-identified males, Masculinity is widely considered a desirable attribute, and effeminacy is de facto denigrated -- as it should be.
Nor is it written anywhere on earth -- other than in analist propaganda -- that a Man should be forced to have sex with a Man -- the way a Man has sex with a Woman.
Thus turning the two Men into a male and a pseudo-female.
Yet that's what the analists are about: Forcing two Men to make love -- like a male and a pseudo-female.
That makes no sense.
It didn't make sense to me in 1972 when I "came out."
It didn't make sense to me in 1975 when, for the first time, I heard those hated words -- "You're not really gay if you don't get fucked."
It didn't make sense to me over the seven agonizing years I watched my beloved Brett Averill sicken and die from an anally-transmitted disease -- even though he was into Frot and had rarely done anal in his young life.
It didn't make sense to me after Brett died, and antiretrovirals came in, and the so-called gay community went on an orgy of barebacking and bug-chasing and "gift-giving."
It seemed to me then and it seems to me now to be a profoundly self-loathing practice.
As you might think it would to any sensible human being.
So -- all the analist nonsense about anal, promiscuity, and effeminacy is just that -- nonsense.
And yet -- analism and in particular the practice of promiscuity and anal penetration is enforced by its adherents within the dominant gay male culture and increasingly outside of it with all the ruthless zeal of Nazis and Maoists, fanatics who insist over and over again that if it isn't anal, it isn't truly gay.
And I encourage you, in that regard to read and/or re-read Protective Stupidity and the Debasement of Language Under Analism, and in particular the sections which examine the questions of whether anal is inherently disease-spreading, unnatural, and degrading.
In addition, I encourage you to read Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not A Condition.
Because that's the other huge analist and heterosexist lie:
That the all the world's people can be divided into two discrete groups, "gay" and "straight," and that these identities are "immutable."
And yet we know from observations of other animals, and particularly mammals, from cross-cultural studies, and from history, that most critters and people have been and are what our culture calls "bisexual":
Professor Eric Anderson of the University of Bath in England:
"Animals don't do sexual identity. They just do sex."
If that's so -- which it is -- why do humans do sexual identity?
Because their culture tells them to.
Prof Anderson:
"The categories of gay and straight are socially constructed."
Translation: Those categories are human ideas, human concepts, human fabrications.
They have no true correspondance to the real world.
Is the good professor alone in his opinion?
NO!
"We should be calling humans bisexual because this idea of exclusive homosexuality is not accurate of people," [Stanford University biologist Joan E.] Roughgarden says. "Homosexuality is mixed in with heterosexuality across cultures and history."
That's the academy speaking.
That's Stanford and the University of Bath.
And Profs Roughgarden and Anderson are correct.
BUT WE ALONE ARE WILLING NOT MERELY TO SAY SO BUT TO ACTIVELY AGITATE TO FREE MEN FROM THESE FALSE AND CONSTRAINING CATEGORIES.
And in so doing to AFFIRM THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE.
So --
Someone has to say No to the distortions and lies of the analists.
Someone has to say No to the distortions and lies of the heterosexists.
Someone has to have the Courage to Affirm the Nature of the Universe.
We MEN of the Alliance have that Courage.
We have the COURAGE to AFFIRM the physical Nature of the Universe.
We have the COURAGE to AFFIRM the essentially MORAL Nature of the Universe.
We have the COURAGE to AFFIRM the ORDERLY Nature of the Universe.
HEROISM is the COURAGE to AFFIRM the NATURE of the UNIVERSE.
And let's make it country simple:
Butt-fucking is not part of that Nature.
And it never will be.
Nor is "exclusive homosexuality."
Nor "exclusive heterosexuality."
Our analist opponents know that.
They know what they're trying to defend is UNnatural, UNmanly, profoundly disordered, and above all, false.
A LIE.
IMmoral.
Phoney and fucked-up.
Which is why their actions are so often unmanly, low, and base.
And their lives so often disordered and dissolute.
They're acting in bad faith, and they know it.
They won't admit it -- but they know it.
So:
I salute Warrior Brian Hulme for his understanding of The Warrior Altruism of the Warrior God -- and thank him for sharing that understanding with his fellow Warriors -- which is exactly and precisely what he should have done.
Brian is a true Warrior who has worked hard to integrate the Man2Man Alliance and Warriorhood into his own life.
Doing so has benefitted him -- immensely.
You need to learn from his example.
You don't have to become a Christian.
But you do have to become a WARRIOR.
Warrior JM speaks of "ultimate, hardcore, no BS Masculinity."
That's Warrior.
It was easy for Men in the ancient world to identify as Warriors.
Because everything in their world supported their doing so.
Their Gods were Warrior Gods.
The mythic role models in their lives were also Warriors.
Men like Achilles.
The Greatest Warrior.
And their real life role models were Warriors -- Men like Themistocles of Athens and Leonidas of Sparta and Alexander of Macedon.
And of course images of Warriors were everywhere.
In their homes,
in their temples,
in their marketplaces and council halls,
in their gymnasia and wrestling schools.
Now:
We are an organization -- an Alliance -- for Men who openly
express their Love for other Men.
In the ancient world there were no such organizations because they weren't necessary.
Most Men had or had had male lovers -- and the True and Faithful Love of Man for Man was taken for granted.
But there were role models.
Godly -- as in Zeus and Ganymedes, Poseidon and Pelops, Apollo and Hyakinthos.
Mythic -- as in Achilles and Patroclus.
And real world -- as in Harmodius and Aristogeiton
and Alexander and Hephaestion
-- and these guys:
Their names, which you can see carved into the top of their tombstone, were Chairedemos and Lykeas, and they were real guys, Warriors and Lovers, who were killed in battle together and buried together.
They lived by a Warrior Code, a set of Virtues which had been in place for thousands of years:
When they went off into battle together, were they thinking of Achilles and Patroclus?
Yes.
And Harmodius and Aristogeiton?
Yes.
And Alexander and Hephaestion?
Yes.
And as they stood their ground and fought, even unto death, was a sentiment such as this one -- "There is no sort of Valour more respected by the Gods than this which comes of Love" -- present in their minds?
Yes.
Now:
What sort of role models do you have?
Well, here's a pair of dress designers named Viktor and Rolf the New York Times was gushing over a while back:
They had done a collection of dolls in a doll house.
Here's one of them:
And isn't that just too -- too?
Did I mention how the Times gushed -- the title of the article by the way was "Victor & Rolf build a doll house" -- over the designers and their dolls and the allegedly loving detail which had gone into their "creations?"
Viktor & Rolf, with their itsy-bitsy teensy-weensy little costumes and their make-up and their porcelain dolls -- are your contemporary role models.
That's what you've got.
And what sort of sentiments do you have?
Well, we just heard a couple in that other NY Times article -- the one about Iraq -- the one that said that honor is "old-fashioned" and glory "victorian."
That's the problem.
You've got Viktor and Rolf and their dolls.
And the dis-honoring of honor.
What was it that Leonidas said to Xerxes about Honor?
Xerxes offered him not just his life, but the chance to rule all of Greece.
And his response was -- You don't understand what's honorable.
Honorable.
The concept -- and practice -- of Honor -- matters.
And Leonidas' remark about "lusting after what belongs to others" is pure Spartan -- that is, pure Lycurgus.
Lycurgus, the Spartan law-giver, who'd put equality and austerity at the core of the Spartan state.
Because the goal was to have enough -- but not more than enough.
And in a well-ordered state, any individual worthy of the title citizen -- which in Sparta meant Warrior -- would have enough.
So:
The Warrior doesn't lust after what belongs to others.
He is instead guided by the Virtues of Courage, Justice, Self-Control, and Wisdom.
His personal universe is a moral universe -- and it corresponds to the physical universe.
By behaving virtuously, he lives in harmony with the Kosmos.
You can do that too.
But in order to do it, you need a Warrior model.
A model of ultimate, hardcore, no BS masculinity.
And that model needs to be a spiritual model as well.
So -- I come back to my little red box and my big picture:
xxxxThis aspect of our work is the one that's most disturbing and indeed frightening to our opponents:
Once again, since not every browser handles that box well, here are the words from the box: This aspect of our work is the one that's most disturbing and indeed frightening to our opponents:
That we combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit.
Which is Warrior Spirit.
The Warrior God is the Guardian of that Spirit.
You may call him Jesus Christ as Robert Loring does.
You may call him Ares as did the Greeks.
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge
the vital role He plays in Your Life.
"What's important is that you understand and acknowledge the vital role the Warrior God plays in Your Life."
Warrior Brian Hulme understands and acknowledges.
You need to do that too.
You need to think about Fighting Spirit.
And you need to think of the Warrior God as the Mysterious -- Mystical -- and Divine Guardian -- of that Warrior Spirit.
*Your* Warrior Spirit.
You saw the picture of Rolf and Viktor -- and their dolls.
Almost everything in the culture is against you, and against your Manhood.
But the Alliance is for you -- for your Manhood, for your Masculinity, for your one sweet and precious Manly Life.
Think about the Warrior God.
If you're a Man, he lives within you.
He's your Archetype -- most vital and most dear.
Let his Strength be yours.
His Fighting Spirit your own.
His Courage your hallmark.
That's what Brian has done.
He's done it within the context of his own life, which in his case includes his religious tradition.
You too need to do it within the context of your own life.
Maybe, like many people, your own religious tradition has failed you.
If that's the case, you have to find another source of spirituality.
And of the Warrior God.
Perhaps Ares works for you.
Perhaps Thor.
Perhaps there's a Chinese God, or Lao God, or African God -- who speaks to you.
The WARRIOR GOD can be found in every tradition -- AND IN EVERY MAN.
Which means that ultimately, you need only look within.
And in so doing, open yourself up -- to the Warrior Altruism -- of the Warrior God.
And remember, that while in Brian's tradition the Warrior God sacrifices himself, Warrior Altruism can also take the form of simply being there for your fellow Warrior.
In the ancient Greek tradition as revealed by the Homeric Hymns -- and this is the reason that I so often speak of Ares -- Ares holds the Sceptre of Manhood and Manliness, he conveys to those who ask the Strength of the Warrior and the Dauntless Courage of Youth.
And as we've talked about, Ares is the ultimate source of Areté, of all Excellence and Valour and Virtue; of Aristeia, Heroism; of Aristos, All that is Best.
And as I said, Ares conveys "the Strength of the Warrior."
In Greek that's simply "ho kratos areion."
Ho = the; kratos = strength -- think pan-kration or all-strength; areion = of the Warrior -- the Strength of the Warrior.
And of course "areion" is just the adjectival form of Ares; so that "ho kratos areion," the Strength of the Warrior, can just as easily be translated as -- the Strength of Ares.
And that's what Ares gives you and that's the whole point -- he gives you *his* Strength, *his* Courage, and, in a sense, *his* Manhood.
Which is your Manhood.
Because Ares, the Warrior God, is the Sceptered King of Manhood.
He rules the Realm of Manhood.
The Realm of Manhood.
The Warrior Realm -- Warriordom -- and Warriorhood.
Ares is the ultimate source of Manhood.
Ares *is* Manhood.
Ares is WARRIOR MANHOOD.
And -- here's the good news -- Ares is there for you.
The Warrior God is there for you.
How and why?
Because, again, he's within You -- he's the *source* of your Strength, your Courage, your Manhood.
(And to read a Warrior Fiction about how the Warrior God comes to the aid of a young Warrior by filling him with Virility, Virtue, and Strength, ck out The Avenger on this MAN2MAN Alliance site.)
So:
The Warrior God is the Guardian of Warrior Spirit.
Doesn't matter what you call him.
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge the vital role He plays in Your Life.
Which means you have a choice.
You can be this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
Or you can be this:
But, Bill, you'll say, all those other examples you showed us have been dust for thousands of years.
Viktor and Rolf are the contemporary reality.
To which I respond, that's true.
But here's another contemporary reality:
And another:
And another:
And another:
And another:
And another:
And another:
And another:
And another:
And another:
So there are still Men who think of themselves as Warriors.
Who take off most of their clothes, and enter the Ring of Naked Valour, and Fight.
Wearing, sometimes, the word Warrior at their waists.
And bearing Warrior Strength -- in their hearts.
Are they the same as ancient Warriors?
No.
They don't fight nude, they don't acknowledge Eros, and compared to the Greek, their spirituality is almost certainly very constricted.
But -- and on the other hand -- there are a lot of these guys.
Most of them of course don't fight professionally.
But they train.
There are a lot of Fight Schools -- all over the country.
And you can train too.
With them.
You're a Man -- you can do that.
In that respect you can create a bit of your own reality.
We still need -- and YOU still need -- a Warrior community.
The outside culture is too strong, and will defeat most of you.
You need your own community.
But you can train.
And that's one way -- one very important way -- for you to begin to awaken the Warrior God within.
Remember --
Which means
By learning to Fight, you'll affirm your own nature as a Man --
and re-awaken the Warrior God within you.
And here's the thing:
I show you that little box and that big picture -- of Ares -- a lot.
Maybe some of you are bored with that picture.
But of all the statues of Ares which have survived, that seems to me the best -- particularly because the God is bodily and genitally intact.
He's not a disembodied head, and though there are Renaissance additions to the statue -- the sword hilt isn't original, and the nose may not be either --
most of the statue is still there.
Including, as I said, his genitals -- his penis and a big fat set of balls nestled against his thigh:
And that's how the ancients would have conceived of him -- as a Warrior, complete and whole, including his Manhood in the genital sense.
There are other more-or-less intact surviving statues -- including this one:
But it's a Roman copy of a Greek original -- and I'm not convinced the quality of the copy is real great.
Here's a head from another copy of what appears to be the same statue -- the head is in a German museum:
And I really like it.
It has that Fighter's look.
But it's not the complete statue.
See, here's another head taken from a copy of that statue -- this one's in Argentina:
that act of ultimate Warrior Altruism in which the Warrior God allowed himself to be killed
Jesus is a man worthy of admiration and because He is the ultimate example of masculinity. The reason He is the ultimate example is that He was the only living man ever to be able to sacrifice His life for the lives of the entire world.
That A Man Lay Down His Life For His Friends.
Herakles
Kastor and Polydeukes
L E O N I D A S
Spartan Hero
that act of ultimate Warrior Altruism in which the Warrior God allowed himself to be killed
xxxx
That we combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit.
xxxx
Which is Warrior Spirit.
xxxx
The Warrior God is the Guardian of that Spirit.
xxxx
You may call him Jesus Christ as Robert Loring does.
xxxx
You may call him Ares as did the Greeks.
xxxx
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge
xxxx
the vital role He plays in Your Life.
[Jesus] is the ultimate example of masculinity.
XXXXA Spartan Warrior or King
XXXXHe's barefoot and wears a simple red cloak
XXXXhis only article of clothing
The books, many written as rites of passage by members of a highly educated young officer corps, are filled with gore, inept commanders and anguish over men lost in combat, but not questions about the conflicts themselves. "They look at war as an aspect of glory, of finding honor," said Mr. O'Brien[,author of a book about Vietnam], who was drafted for Vietnam in 1968 out of Macalester College in St. Paul. "It's almost an old-fashioned, Victorian way of looking at war."
[T]hey are lovers of horses here and men that have souls superior to possessions.
When a man has no freedom to fight for at home
Let him combat for that of his neighbors.
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome
And get knocked on the head for his labors.
Athenian Ephebes Train at the Palaistra
The view is from the Apodyterion or undressing room
Achilles bandages Patroclus' arm
Symposium Scene with Two Pairs of Warrior Lovers
Each Man has his own Kylix
Most ancient writers -- in striking opposition to their modern counterparts -- generally entertained higher expectations of the fidelity and permanence of homosexual passions than of heterosexual feelings.
Doubtless the most surprising and counter-intuitive aspect of same-sex eroticism was not its frequency or duration, but its long and hallowed relationship to democracy and military valor, which modern military officials tend to find improbable or even unbelievable.
Phaedrus argued that no one's behavior is better than that of those [same-sex] couples who are in love, because they would rather behave badly in sight of father or comrade than in view of those they love. He even advanced the idea that:
if we could somehow contrive to have a city or an army composed of lovers and those they loved, they could not be better citizens of their country than by thus refraining from all that is base in a mutual rivalry for honor; and such men as these, when fighting side by side, one might almost consider able to make a little band victorious over all the world. For a man in love would surely choose to have all the rest of the host rather than the one he loves see him forsaking his station, or flinging away his arms; sooner than this, he would prefer to die many deaths: while, as for leaving the one he loves in the lurch, or not succoring him in peril, no man is such a craven that the influence of Love [Eros] cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born; and without doubt what Homer calls a "fury inspired" by a god in certain heroes is the effect produced on lovers by Love's peculiar power. Moreover, only such as are in love will consent to die for others.
as for leaving the one he loves in the lurch, or not succoring him in peril, no man is such a craven that the influence of Love [Eros] cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born; and without doubt what Homer calls a "fury inspired" by a God [Ares] in certain heroes is the effect produced on lovers by Love's peculiar power. Moreover, only such as are in love will consent to die for others.
There is no sort of Valour more respected by the Gods than this which comes of Eros.
The virtue of heroism must lie ... not in the will to reform, but in the courage to affirm, the nature of the universe.
Heaven and Earth and Gods and Men are held together by Communion and Friendship, by Orderliness, Temperance, and Justice; and that is the reason why they call the whole of this world by the name of Kosmos [order]; not of disorder or dissoluteness.
Contempt for this sacred emblem as well as degradation and debasement of it, pushes man from the divine reality. It provokes the anger of the gods and leads to the decline of the species. The man who scorns the very symbol of the life principle abandons his kind to the powers of death.
The virtue of heroism lies not in the will to reform, but in the courage to affirm, the nature of the universe.
the efficiency of rectal intercourse changes everything because of the number of dendrite cells, receptors and trauma. So you can never overwhelm, you can't win against anal intercourse. ...
Most ancient writers -- in striking opposition to their modern counterparts -- generally entertained higher expectations of the fidelity and permanence of homosexual passions than of heterosexual feelings.
Doubtless the most surprising and counter-intuitive aspect of same-sex eroticism was not its frequency or duration, but its long and hallowed relationship to democracy and military valor, which modern military officials tend to find improbable or even unbelievable.
Phaedrus argued that no one's behavior is better than that of those [same-sex] couples who are in love, because they would rather behave badly in sight of father or comrade than in view of those they love. He even advanced the idea that:
if we could somehow contrive to have a city or an army composed of lovers and those they loved, they could not be better citizens of their country than by thus refraining from all that is base in a mutual rivalry for honor; and such men as these, when fighting side by side, one might almost consider able to make a little band victorious over all the world. For a man in love would surely choose to have all the rest of the host rather than the one he loves see him forsaking his station, or flinging away his arms; sooner than this, he would prefer to die many deaths: while, as for leaving the one he loves in the lurch, or not succoring him in peril, no man is such a craven that the influence of Love [Eros] cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born; and without doubt what Homer calls a "fury inspired" by a god in certain heroes is the effect produced on lovers by Love's peculiar power. Moreover, only such as are in love will consent to die for others.
The Lion Hunt
In an act of Warrior Altruism, Hephaestion saves Alexander's life.
Alexander
Hephaestion
Horsting explained how each porcelain face was modeled, like a Victorian doll, but then colored with the collection's make-up - including the alabaster skin and russet hair of their muse, the actress Tilda Swinton.
Tilda
If you understood what is honorable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs to others. For me, it is better to die for Greece, than to be monarch of the people of my race.
L E O N I D A S
Spartan Hero
xxxx
That we combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit.
xxxx
Which is Warrior Spirit.
xxxx
The Warrior God is the Guardian of that Spirit.
xxxx
You may call him Jesus Christ as Robert Loring does.
xxxx
You may call him Ares as did the Greeks.
xxxx
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge
xxxx
the vital role He plays in Your Life.
You can see that this one has a big crest on the helmet -- which is lacking in the other copies.
So the copies we have tend to be deficient.
Which is why I go with this particular image.
And remember too, that because I've been a student of Greek culture for many years, the image carries with it for me many literary and other references to Ares.
So it's more than just an image.
Still -- if you're tired of that picture -- just scroll back up the page and look at these pictures, starting with this one:
The word "avatar" has been, perhaps, a bit overused lately, but all it means is the human embodiment of a deity.
And when this Man, and Men like him, Fight, they become to some degree the embodiment of Ares -- of the Warrior God.
They're Avatars of Ares.
They share in his Warrior Courage, his Warrior Strength, his Warrior Manhood.
Wouldn't you like to be an Avatar of Ares too?
Wouldn't that be better than what you've got now?
And remember, it was Men like these -- these Fighters -- who the Greek sculptors used as models.
As Jaeger says,
The athletes who appear in early Greek sculpture are the embodiments of the noblest gymnastic areté of a young man in the full power of health and training.
So: Avatars are embodiments of a deity.
The athletes in Greek sculpture are also embodiments -- of an ideal:
the "noblest gymnastic areté" -- that is, the Noblest Nude Fighting Virtue -- "of a young man in the full power of health and training."
K O U R O S
The Embodiment of the Nobility of Nude Fighting
So your image of Ares -- or, more to the point, the Warrior God -- doesn't have to be the ancient Greek image I put on the screen.
It can be -- and indeed should be -- an image of *your* choosing.
This image works for me:
But another may work better for you.
What's important is that you begin to think of yourself as living in the Warrior Kosmos -- and governed by the Warrior God.
Some of you might want to remember, in that regard, this couplet, taken from Plutarch's Life of King Agesilaus of Sparta, which I quoted in Austerity and Equality at Sparta:
Agesilaus was one of Xenophon's heroes.
They were friends -- buddies -- and both lived exemplary and heroic Warrior lives.
Neither was motivated by gold.
Neither feared gold.
In 395 BC Agesilaus went to Asia Minor and began a campaign of liberation -- seeking to free the Greek city-states there from their Persian satraps.
The satraps were men who enforced their authority by living in great luxury.
Yet Agesilaus conquered them.
And Plutarch tells us that the Greeks were overjoyed to see these proud and luxury-loving men, who were forever flaunting their riches, being forced to take orders from a Spartan commander who walked barefoot, lived not in the luxury of a palace but in the field with his men, and wore only an old and threadbare red cloak:
Among all the thousands of soldiers in his army, it would have been hard to find one who slept on a harder bed than the king, and in his resistance to the variations of heat and cold he seemed to be constituted as though nature had given him alone the power to endure whatever seasons or weather the Gods might send.In particular it delighted the Greek inhabitants of Asia to see their former tyrants, the Persian governors and generals, who had long been intolerably harsh and who had reveled in wealth and luxury, now bowing and trembling before a man who walked about in a coarse cloak, and to watch them obsequiously change their whole bearing and appearance in reponse to a single curt and 'laconic' speech from him. For many of them this sight called to mind the words of the poet Timotheus
Ares is Lord; Greece has no fear of gold.
Ares -- in the person of Agesilaus -- was Lord ; and the Greeks of Asia Minor had no more cause to fear gold.
Agesilaus couldn't have done what he did -- if he feared or desired gold -- because he would have been cowed or bought.
It was his Spartan contempt for gold which gave him the power to destroy the satraps.
Yet, in my experience, what most of you most fear in this world -- is money, mammon, gold.
That might work for males, but it will never be right for a Man.
Never right for a Warrior.
Where Ares is Lord, Men have no fear of gold.
Where Manhood is Lord, Men have no fear of gold.
Nor of death.
Gold -- money -- is death's partner in the world of the living.
If you will embrace your Manhood and your Warriorhood, you'll lose your fear of both money and death.
Let's repeat that:
If you'll embrace your Manhood and your Warriorhood, you'll lose your fear of both money and death.
Warrior Brian Hulme has done that, and it's striking to me that he doesn't live in fear of money the way the vast majority of you do.
Brian has managed to enter into the Warrior Realm -- the Warrior Kosmos.
No doubt in large part because his God is the Warrior God.
So here's the question for you.
Which would you rather be?
Some dork in a rubber mask?
Or a Warrior?
You're gonna die anyway.
And your money will die with you.
Our Warrior NW says that in a Fight, there's always a winner and a loser.
And that strictly speaking is true.
But when I look at a pic like this one, what I see are TWO WINNERS.
Because they've both Fought.
When you refuse to Fight -- when you reject your Warrior identity and betray your Warrior strength -- is when you lose.
Irrevocably.
Whatever happens to Brian henceforward, he won't lose.
But -- unless you do as he's done -- you will.
Why not join Brian -- in the Warrior Kosmos -- with the Warrior God -- and WIN instead.
Agesilaus was one of the dual kings of Sparta for almost forty years.
I said he was an exemplary Warrior -- and he was.
He also made some mistakes -- no question of that.
But he never stopped Fighting, and Fighting for Sparta.
He remained in many ways, and I mean this in the best possible sense, the scrappy kid he'd been in the Agogé:
[As a boy in the Agogé,] Agesilaus was more aggressive and hot-tempered than his companions. He longed to be first in all things, and he had in him a vehemence and impetuosity which were inexhaustible, and carried him over all obstacles ...~Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus
Agesilaus died while on campaign in Egypt at the age of 84.
He lived in the Warrior Kosmos, his life inspired by the Warrior God -- all his life.
And you can too.
So -- this has been a long reply to Brian's post.
Because, as usual, he's brought up important issues.
By making the Warrior God -- and the Warrior Altruism of the Warrior God -- a living reality in his own life --
he's shown that you can do that too.
Oh yeah.
That's what he's demonstrated.
If his Warrior God isn't the same -- in name -- as yours -- it may be more of a stretch for you -- or it may not.
But if he can bring the Warrior God to life -- so can you.
You have only to try.
If you don't try you have only yourself to blame.
And if you do try, on the other hand -- you yourself will reap the rewards.
In a letter, Frances said:
I think the vision you help provide men of men who once lived and can live again is essential. They might finally see something better, and something that seems so right to them, and wonder why they never knew about it, and wonder how it is they came to live their castrated existence in the first place.
Right.
Men cannot live without the Warrior God.
When He's taken from them they become males -- castrated and useless.
Because when the Warrior God is taken from them, their Manhood is taken from them.
As I told you, the Homeric Hymns say that Ares is the "Sceptered King of Manhood."
So -- Ares is the King of Manhood, the Lord of Manhood.
He's the epitome of Manhood.
And he's "sceptered."
Our word "scepter" comes, via Latin, from the Greek -- skeptron.
According to the standard Greek-English Lexicon, the "Little Liddell," which we discussed in Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men, a skeptron is
a staff or baton, as the badge of command, a scepter, borne by kings, chiefs, and heralds; speakers on rising received a skeptron from the herald.
Spartan Skeptron
The beards on the snakes indicate that both are male.
The Skeptron then is kingly -- but it also functions as what was called by American Indians a "talking stick" -- the person holding it gets to speak.
So -- a Skeptron is basically a rod -- and Ares holds it erect.
As the Warrior God he has the authority to speak to Manhood -- and to define Manhood.
Because as the Warrior God, He is Manhood.
Thus the meaning -- and the wisdom -- of the hymn -- is plain.
The Warrior God holds the Skeptron of Manhood;
The Warrior God is Manhood.
And, I suppose I should mention, for those of you who are true "philo-lakon," that is, true Sparta-lovers, that in Sparta a Skeptron was called a Skapton.
Which is because the Spartans spoke a slightly different and believed to be older -- that is, closer to the Warrior Invasions -- form of Greek, called Doric.
So, in Doric Greek, a Skeptron is a Skapton.
And Areté is Areta.
And, Ares, who is the source of Areta, holds the Skapton of Manhood.
Spartan Skapton
The beards on the snakes indicate that both are male.
It's not that Gods like Zeus or Apollo -- who was very important to the Spartans -- or Poseidon or Hermes -- lack Manhood.
It is just and simply what the Little Liddell says:
From the same root [ARES] comes areté [excellence] ...the first notion of goodness being that of manhood, bravery in war; cf. Lat. virtus.
Ares is the source of bravery in war, and bravery in war is the first "notion," as Liddell puts it, of Manhood.
But even later in Greek thought, when Aristotle defines Areté as moral heroism, the ideas of bravery in war and self-sacrifice in war are present, because what Aristotle means, says Jaeger, is that
A man who loves himself will (he thought) always be ready to sacrifice himself for his friends or his country, to abandon possessions and honours in order to 'take possession of the beautiful'.
To 'take possession of the beautiful' -- that is, to behave Nobly, with Brave Beauty.
'For,' Aristotle says, 'such a man would prefer short intense pleasures to long quiet ones; would choose to live nobly for a year rather than to pass many years of ordinary life; would rather do one great and noble deed than many small ones.'...
Aristotle himself wrote a hymn to the immortal areté of his friend Hermias, the prince of Atarneus, who died to keep faith with his philosophical and moral ideals; and in that hymn he expressly connects his own philosophical conception of areté with that found in Homer, and with its Homeric ideals Achilles and Ajax. And it is clear that many features in his description of self-love are drawn from the character of Achilles. The Homeric poems and the great Athenian philosphers are bound together by the continuing life of the Hellenic ideal of areté.
So -- we're back to Achilles, self-sacrifice, and what is, de facto, Warrior Altruism.
Achilles, the greatest Warrior, dies to avenge his Warrior-Lover, Patroclus.
That is the ultimate expression of Manhood, of Warrior Manhood -- and as such its source must be Ares, the Warrior God.
Frances: "The vision you help provide men of men who once lived and can live again is essential."
Right -- it's essential to have and provide vision.
Frances: "Men might finally see something better, and something that seems so right to them, and wonder why they never knew about it, and wonder how it is they came to live their castrated existence in the first place."
Do you see something better?
And something that seems right?
Do you wonder why you never knew about it?
Do you wonder how it is you came to live your castrated existence?
We've shown you that there's something better, something that's right.
We've explained why you never knew about it, and how it is you came to live as you now do.
And we've also shown you the way forward -- the way out.
Robert Loring:
Some of us have had enough of modern Western culture and we try to find ways NOT to be a part of it. We spend as much time as possible AWAY from the psychotic culture out in the wilderness somewhere where we can still find a sense of natural manhood, peace, and joy, and YES, even LOVE. We await the fall of Western society (and it is falling) and the return to the natural, historical, and traditional NORMS! We await the return of a culture in which males are free to love other males and in which homophobia is no longer known, praised, or worshipped. We see clearly how natural human culture has been destroyed in the West and we await the resurrection of natural human culture as it was intended by the Divine to be. In short, we await a return to the old ways and ancient culture and the rebirth of the brotherhood of man.
"the rebirth of the brotherhood of man"
The Brotherhood of Man cannot be reborn without the rebirth of the Warrior.
And the Warrior cannot be reborn without the rebirth of the Warrior God.
Pausanias, the Greek physician who, around 170 AD, wrote a Description of Greece, describes the many sanctuaries and shrines at Sparta.
Sanctuaries were temple complexes, and of course at Sparta there were Sanctuaries for the major Gods: a Sanctuary of Zeus, of Hera, of Apollo, of Poseidon, of Hermes, of Dionysos, of Artemis, Demeter, Athene, Gaia, the Great Mother, etc.
There was a Sanctuary of Asklepios, the God of Health, and his sanctuary would have functioned as a hospital.
And there was a Sanctuary of Lycurgus, the Spartan law-giver. His son, Eukosmos, or Good Order, was buried there.
On Mt Taygetos there was the Taleton -- a Sanctuary of the Sun.
There was also a Sanctuary of Aphrodite of Sex -- yes, that's what it was called.
Aphrodite was a Goddess, Sex was Sacred.
There was also a Sanctuary of Aphrodite of War.
Why?
Because it was the loving and erotic bonds between Men which made the hoplite formation, and thus Spartan supremacy on the battlefield, possible.
Aphrodite of Sex, Aphrodite of War.
And then there were other sanctuaries.
There was a Sanctuary of Achilles, the greatest Warrior, the Warrior who had died to avenge his lover Patroclus.
In this Sanctuary the youths -- adolescents -- who were to Fight in Plane-Tree Grove offered sacrifice.
They also sacrificed in the Phoibaion.
Then there was the Herakleion, a Sanctuary of Herakles.
The Spartans believed that they were descended from Herakles -- as their national poet, Tyrtaios, put it, that they were "the unconquered blood of Herakles."
And Herakles was also the God of Pankratiasts.
There was also the Polydeukia, a Temple of Polydeukes, the Spartan Hero and son of Zeus who'd invented boxing, and was of course the God of Boxers.
What about Wrestlers?
There was a Shrine of Hipposthenes, a Spartan Wrestler who'd won six times at Olympia, the first as a boy. And there was a statue of his son Hetoimokles, who'd won at Olympia five times.
The Shrine of Hipposthenes was associated with a cult of Poseidon.
So -- the Spartans worshipped a God of Pankration and of Boxing, and had at least one Shrine to a Spartan Olympic victor in Wrestling.
And wouldn't it have been cool to worship at the Shrine of a Wrestler?
And of course Herakles, Polydeukes, and Hipposthenes and his son were Warriors as well.
Then there's Ares.
As I said, there was a Sanctuary of Ares Theritas -- Ares Brutal, Ares Bestial.
The cult-statue within was said to be very old -- the Spartans believed that Polydeukes and his brother Kastor had brought it back from Kolchis when they'd gone there with Jason to fetch the Golden Fleece.
The adolescent boys who were to Fight in Plane-Tree Grove -- where the Fighting was furious and brutal -- it included kicking, biting, and eye-gouging --
those adolescent fighters would have sacrificed at the Sanctuary of Ares Theritas -- just as they did at the Sanctuary of Achilles.
Also, Pausanias tells us, along with the five elected Ephors, who were very powerful, there were also five "Bidiaioi" (pronounced bee-dee-eye-oi) -- officials whose only job it was to regulate and oversee these sorts of Fights between Youths in the Agogé.
That's how important the Spartans considered Fighting to be.
And, by the way, since we've been talking about the Warrior Kosmos -- in Crete, which had close political and *cultural* ties to Sparta, the Ephors were called -- Kosmoi.
Which means that the Ephors, the Guardians and Overseers, were also the Keepers of Order -- in the Kosmic sense.
It was their job to make sure that "Heaven and Earth and Gods and Men are held together by Communion and Friendship, by Orderliness, Temperance, and Justice."
Now -- throughout Greece -- not just at Sparta -- boys were often given names in which the word "Machos" -- Fighter -- was prominent.
For example, Aristotle had a son named Nikomachos -- Victory Fighter.
There was Andromachos -- Man Fighter; Thrasymachos -- Bold Fighter; Ischomachos -- Staunch Fighter; Lampromachos -- Brilliant Fighter; Kleomachos -- Glory Fighter; Aristomachos -- Best Fighter; Pasimachos -- All Fighter; Protomachos -- First Fighter; Hippomachos -- Horse Fighter; Hagesimachos -- Leading Fighter; Eurymachos -- Wide-ranging Fighter; Kleitomachos -- Renowned Fighter; Promachos -- Forward Fighter; Antimachos -- Against Fighter; etc.
There was even a Spartan king named, appropriately, Timomachos -- Honor Fighter.
I say appropriately because, remember, Plato said that Sparta was a "timocracy" -- a Rule of Honor and Valour.
And Xenophon tells us that in his day there was a Spartiates -- a full-blooded Spartan Warrior -- named Therimachos -- Brutal Fighter.
So you had the Spartan God -- Ares Theritas;
and the Spartan Man -- Therimachos.
That's how incorporated -- literally -- the Warrior God was into Spartan lives.
And while we're talking about Spartan names, there was also a Spartan Hero named Eumedes -- who had his own shrine.
Eu = good;
Medes = genitals.
Eu-medes -- good genitals.
Are these any genitals?
No, they're the male genitals, the penis and testicles.
We know that because, according to the Little Liddell, the Greek word medes is defined "like Lat. virilia, the genitals."
So we're back to Vir, Virilis, Virtus -- Man, Manliness, Virtue.
And just as with Ares and Areté,
From the same root [ARES] comes areté [excellence] ...the first notion of goodness being that of manhood, bravery in war; cf. Lat. virtus.
So:
Just as Areté means goodness which is manhood and bravery in war -- in Latin, Virtus; so Medes means male genitals -- in Latin, Virilia.
Virilia / Virtus = Genitals / Virtue --
Eu-medes = Good Male Genitals.
Zeus' beloved, remember, the youth he'd made immortal, was named Gany-medes -- which the great classicist and poet Robert Graves translates as "rejoicing in virility."
Which is fine, but the Little Liddell defines "Gany" as "delighting in."
Which would make Ganymedes translate as "delighting in male genitals."
So it's fine to say to say "rejoicing in virility," so long as you know -- which Graves did but most of his readers didn't -- that what Ganymedes really means is "delighting in the male genitals" -- which are the *source*, as we've often discussed, of Virility.
And I like the phrase "delighting in," because clearly the Greeks did both delight and rejoice in the male genitals, which are constantly on display in Greek art.
Eu-medes -- good genitals, good virility.
Was there a Greek name which combined the word for "good" with the word for "asshole?"
NO.
The asshole is the shithole, and shit -- Kake -- is the source of Kakos -- evil.
And you can't have Good evil.
Can you?
The analists think you can, but, as with so many other things, they're lying and they're debased and they're debasing, they're playing the debasement of language game, in which slavery is freedom and an anus is a vagina and evil is good.
That's their game, but they're WRONG -- on all points.
Slavery is not freedom, an anus is not a vagina, and evil is NOT good.
Good and evil don't go together.
But Good and Genitals do.
Eumedes and Therimachos.
What I want you to see is how Male Sex and Male Aggression -- Eros and Ares -- were SANCTIFIED in Spartan life -- and in Greek life in general.
A Victorious Wrestler with his Genitals prominently displayed
So -- when we look at these Spartan sanctuaries and temples and shrines, as well as their educational institutions, and these Spartan names, what we can see is that the Spartans affirmed the nature of the universe.
Nike, Goddess of Victory, crowns a Nude Victorious Fighter
Another Nude Male Victor stands at his side
They weren't in denial, as our culture is, about what Men are, what War is, and what happens to Men, Masculine Men, who spend their lives in Contest and in Training for War -- together.
Instead, they affirmed the nature of the universe by making Eros, Ares, and Agon -- Gods -- and Holy.
For example:
I told you about the Spartan king Agesilaus, who relieved the Greeks of their fear of gold by putting the fear of God -- the Warrior God, that is, Ares -- into the Persian despots of Asia Minor.
This is the same Agesilaus, by the way, who, as Xenophon told us, though happily married and a father,
loved [the youth] Megabates, the handsome son of Sphithridates, with all the intensity of an ardent nature.
Which means that Eros too was a God to Agesilaus.
And we know from Plutarch's description of Agesilaus' childhood that he delighted in combative contest -- Agon.
[As a boy in the Agogé,] Agesilaus was more aggressive and hot-tempered than his companions. He longed to be first in all things, and he had in him a vehemence and impetuosity which were inexhaustible, and carried him over all obstacles ...
This was a tough, scrappy, kid who grew into a Man of great Warrior Spirit.
A Spirit informed by Ares, Eros, and Agon.
Some years back, someone said to me -- I'm not sure who -- that:
Along with the de-masculinizing effect of anal, I think this is another reason men resist expressing that part of their sexuality that is homosexual [sic]. They don't want to be forsaken.
Right.
In our society, straight-identified guys in particular who express their natural and normal same-sex feelings risk being forsaken.
As do gay-identified guys who express their dislike of anal.
My correspondent then said:
I've learned from you that in the world of the Greeks, and other ancient warrior societies, they pretty much felt the same way about what made them men -- sexuality, spirituality, masculinity -- as you do. The way to be forsaken in their world was to deny that.
Exactly.
What made a Man a Man in the ancient world -- was sexuality, spirituality, masculinity.
Sexuality -- Eumedes -- good genitals, good virility.
Masculinity -- Lampromachos, Kleomachos, Thrasymachos, Ischomachos, Aristomachos, Andromachos -- Brilliant Fighter, Glory Fighter, Bold Fighter, Staunch Fighter, Best Fighter, Man Fighter.
Spirituality -- Timomachos, Therimachos -- Honor Fighter, Brutal Fighter.
Timomachos -- Honor Fighter -- had incorporated Honor in his name, and Honor was part of Virtue, part of Godliness.
Therimachos -- Brutal Fighter -- had, in his name, taken within himself one of the attributes of Ares -- of the Warrior God.
Again, I know the brutal part sounds harsh, but it was a part of Ares which was needed in battle.
And even the name Aristomachos has a relationship to Ares, since the word "aristos," best, is, like Areté, derived from Ares himself.
So -- for ancient Men, the Warrior God, either as Ares or as the Warrior aspects of other Gods such as Herakles and Polydeukes -- were living realities.
And that's what they have to be for you.
Because:
In The Warrior God, Robert Loring says,
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 world Robert describes is a world in which the Warrior God is a living presence.
Robert: "we await a return to the old ways and ancient culture and the rebirth of the brotherhood of man."
"the rebirth of the brotherhood of man"
Once again, the Brotherhood of Man cannot be reborn without the rebirth of the Warrior.
And the Warrior cannot be reborn without the rebirth of the Warrior God.
A Divinity like Mithras, a God "of fidelity, manliness, and bravery."
Or like Ares, who holds the double snake-headed skeptron of Manhood and Manliness, and imparts his Strength and Courage, and, yes, Fury, to his Warriors.
I again thank Warrior Brian for starting this discussion by speaking simply and plainly from his heart.
Easter -- Springtime -- is the season of rebirth and renewal.
May it be for all of us the season -- of the Rebirth of the Warrior God.
Bill Weintraub
May 17, 2010
© All material Copyright 2010 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.
who reject anal penetration, promiscuity, and effeminacy and
who put forth the truth that one Man should love Another
among men who have sex with men
through the exaltation of their Mutual Manhood;
and the celebration of their Mutual Masculinity.
This aspect of our work is the one that's most disturbing and indeed frightening to our opponents:
That we combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit.
Which is Warrior Spirit.
The Warrior God is the Guardian of that Spirit.
You may call him Jesus Christ as Robert Loring does.
You may call him Ares as did the Greeks.
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge
the vital role He plays in Your Life.
AND
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This aspect of our work is the one that's most disturbing and indeed frightening to our opponents:
That we combine the Love of Man with the Love of Fighting Spirit.
Which is Warrior Spirit.
The Warrior God is the Guardian of that Spirit.
You may call him Jesus Christ as Robert Loring does.
You may call him Ares as did the Greeks.
What's important is that you understand and acknowledge
the vital role He plays in Your Life.
The masculinity of men flows from their group. Their natural masculinity combines and gets manifold when masculine men unite. The camaraderie, mutual understanding, support, learning the ways of the world as a male, fighting together, dealing with roughs and toughs of life together -- they all help to develop the natural masculinity that exists within them.
They had many words for struggle and combat and fighting and strife -- maches, eris, hamilla, agon, polemos, ares -- and athlos, the word from which we derive our word "athlete."
In Greece, athletai could be rivals on the playing field or the battlefield.
Warrior Kosmos:
Manly Aggression, Manly Virtue:
Which would you rather be?
Some dork in a rubber mask?
Or a Warrior?
You're gonna die anyway.
And your money will die with you.
Or like Jesus, who in the Gospels dies that all Men may live, and in Revelations returns wearing armor to do final battle against evil.