I was always fascinated by all things combative and things related to war even as a child. I would use sticks as a sword and my father was military and I would put on his oversized gear and engage in mock battles with a bb gun in the forests and fields of our farm. As I grew older I would study weapons and devour films and documentaries about conflict throughout history. In 6^th grade I did a book report on the Punic Wars much to the confusion of everyone involved. My family had been intimately familiar with it for generations. My family had military going back centuries and my father had served  two tours in the Vietnam war. He didn’t talk about it often but when I was older my grandmother also regaled me with one of the first truths that terrified me. When the Red Army invaded Berlin there was a Russian girl that was with them in their home. During the duration of World War II my grandmother told me that there were refugees from all over Europe floating around Germany: Poles, Russians, Romanians etc.  While technically they weren’t slaves her description makes that moniker fairly apt as it seems they were always engaged in various forms of scut work for German citizens.

During the battle of Berlin a Red Army platoon came tromping down their street, a street I would stay for the summer and ride a bike blissfully unaware of the horror saturated in the mists of time. The Russian girl thought that liberators were finally here and was going to go meet them. My grandmother and her family tried to tell her this was a bad idea but to no avail and she ran out into the street.

She was raped by the entire platoon. She was raped to the point that she died shortly after. An officer or NCO came by when my grandmother and her family got her from the street. He seemed guilty over not being able to stop what happened.

After this my fascination with conflict changed. This was the real face of war and it was one of abject horror and evil. This incident was repeated innumerable times in Berlin as the Soviets imposed their will on the city and rape, torture, and murder became commonplace. At that point the fundamental assumptions of life shifted in ways I didn’t realize. Something subterranean deep below the tender recesses of my mind had shifted in ways that wouldn’t be apparent for many years and perhaps still aren’t completely apparent. That’s the thing about the abyss, there isn’t an apparent bottom to it. But with that furtive glimpse into the blackest nature of man and reality I knew that there was something terrible lurking just behind the gales of time.

Even after that I’m still drawn to the raw energy of conflict. Nothing is more moving to me than hearing tales of overcoming the odds and the bonds of brotherhood that bloom amidst the dirt and blood. The crack of rifles and the giant zipper sound of an A 10’s gun is like music to my ears. I still drag myself to the mat to get clobbered and folded into inconvenient positions after all this time. The irony is not lost on me and I believe the tension can lead to some type of catharsis.

The business of the templar is war and war is a terrible business. The Templars reputation for their ferocity in combat proceeded them.

“The Templars are most excellent soldiers. They wear white mantles with a red cross, and when they go to the wars a standard of two colours called balzaus is borne before them. They go in silence. Their first attack is the most terrible. In going they are the first, in returning the last. They await the orders of their Master. When they think fit to make war and the trumpet has sounded, they sing in chorus the Psalm of David, ‘ Not unto us, O Lord’ (Non nobis, Domine, Ps. 115), kneeling on the blood and necks of the enemy, unless they have forced the troops of the enemy to retire altogether, or utterly broken them in pieces. Should any one of them for any reason turn his back to the enemy, or come forth alive (from a defeat), or bear arms against the Christians, he is severely punished”

~ Anonymous Pilgrim’s account of the Knight’s Templar

The heavily armored mounted armored knight was the pinnacle of military achievement during the middle ages. War has changed since then. The form of the knight in the modern era is one that will be markedly different. Whether that’s in a theater with drones, cyborgs, sticks and stones, or most likely a combination of all the above is to be seen. The unfortunate reality is that if you wish to march open and gleaming with a song on your lips you’re probably going to be disappointed. If you’re one of those men among the ruins that holds to ancient ways and belongs to the Emperor you’re considered the most contemptible enemy. Rather you must be like the leopard sticking to shadows and various unseemly places. On the plus size it is the leopard that happens to be the most successful predatory big cat in natural history.

War can be understood in a far more personal as well as transcendent sense. Conflict is the law of life even within ourselves. With any self awareness we find that our will is divided and our motives muddied and any attempt at accomplishment comes with obstacles that are within ourselves of equal or greater measure than the ones we face in the external world. I don’t wish to equate the struggle to get out of bed in the morning with charging a Saracen horde on horseback with a lance but it’s a matter of gradation. At it’s core the external and internal struggles share an analogous quality and battles won on one plane can simultaneously occur in the other.

The field of war is the birthplace of heroism of achieving something transcendent beyond the most basic human strictures of hunger, sex, and fear. While I began with showing the darkness it remains that battle is where light can shine brightest in being the forge of heroes. What is the meaning of heroism? A term that has been tarnished by sentimentalism and Marvel films. Heroism is to defy the strictures placed upon material existence and to ascend to another level of being in throwing aside all concerns up to and including your own life for the achievement of a higher goal defying fate itself along the way. Any would be heroes must become acquainted with the habits and peccadilloes of the grim reaper as heroism involves looking him face to face. There is the most apparent notion of risking one’s life in combat but beyond and before that there are analogous elements of death that are faced along the more mundane milestones along the heroic path. To change means to embrace a kind of death and every aspect of the older self will fight tooth and claw against this kind of death that is in actuality a rebirth. Just like the base elements of self preservation must be overcome for the accomplishment of something greater than mere life for the sake of life our interior obstacles must be vanquished. While inner struggle is not always so dramatic and the stakes not as viscerally high, the battle exists nonetheless and it is one that is not often won.

And it was the exterior battle which reflected the battle to be fought in oneself, which was considered as the truly just war: the battle against those forces and peoples of the outer world which possessed the same character as the powers in our inner being which must be placed under subjection and domination until the accomplishment of a pax triumphalis.

            ~Julius Evola, The Metaphysics of War

I will be going over the six elements in a similar format to the other disciplines I’ve already written of. As I think of some of the inner darkness that must be faced I think of being in the shoes of the officer or NCO in charge of that platoon and pray that I can learn that ancient magical incantation that becomes more necessary each passing day:

“Stop.”