by Kym ní Dhoireann
(copyright ©
1997, 2004 Kym ní Dhoireann, all rights reserved, do not republish
anywhere)
Originally published in an earlier form in
SageWoman, issue #39, Autumn 1997
"A man fights for glory, a woman from necessity!"
Diana Paxson, The Serpent' Tooth
Recently, I opened up a magical journal that I had not used for sometime.
In it I found the notes for a self-dedication ritual that I did at Yule 1985.
Although at the time I was focused, as I had been for some time, on becoming
a Witch, that was not the "w" word that I noticed looking this over. On that
night I named myself a
warrior.
At that time I saw this term as a political label. I was stepping into a realm of activism that was a bit more active than what I had been doing. I had started to look into the activities of groups like Earth First! and seriously question the effectiveness of methods I was involved in. I was naively filled with visions of great nonviolent political standoffs that would change everything within the next five years ---I also believed that if we failed in that time, we would not be here by then. We would change the world by our very will. In the past almost twelve years, I've come to realize that the transitions will be slower and that we are still here to make them. I have also realized that being a warrior means more for me than just being an activist although I am still politically active.
I was surprised to find that I named myself to this path so long ago. It feels like I've been conscious of it for only a few years, not for more than a decade. It makes me feel that I should be further along on this path, but it's a path that has been a struggle to travel without veering off track every so often. And in considering the past twelve years, I realize how chronological time doesn't always work; I've ended up having to catch up other paths to continue along this one. But I'm approaching a half-decade birthday and I'm feeling I should have accomplished something more along this path all the same ---it is after all a path of the young and it seems I'll run out of time.
I suppose I did have some childhood aspirations to be a warrior: fantasies of "Indians," Robin Hood, and superheroes. This, of course, included Amazons for Wonder Woman was about the only interesting female comic book star at the time. This may have aided my interest in Goddesses at a rather early age too, for I started to read Greek myth. But there was no reality base for the warrior part in my life. I was raised a pacifist, not that my parents would have used this term, but they had a conviction to make me docile, for I was a raging child and the most common answer for such is to suppress.
Having been taught to never show anger, not because I was female but because it was wrong, came very near to setting me up to be as perfect a victim as any girl taught that it was "unladylike." I was still allowed to be a "tomboy" and be adventurous, but I was quiet socially and tormented by classmates my parents told me to just ignore. There were a couple of times that I did lash out ---short spurts that just got me hassled more later. I still had a voice, when my foster brother tried to molest me I went to my mother, knowing full well that he would be out of the house within the day. But I had not fought him off at all, I was hardly a warrior, just a potential victim that knew she would be protected.
My conditioning to be passive did lead me to identify as a pacifist as I
became interested in politics during my teens. I still had fantasies of being
able to take action against those who hurt me, but I never considered actually
fighting back, even verbally. My outlets were exercise and the woods. My
battles were with a rogue horse that my foster brother had left me, a battle
of love as I tried to rehabilitate an animal that had been sweet when young
and turned vicious by stupidity
and
abuse. I dreamed, I worshiped the God/desses, and I wrote letters and sign
petitions ---what I dreamed was to be strong, but I never admitted it.
I was assaulted in my early twenties and I did not really fight back. This was a turning point for me as I became aware I wasn't always protected. Shortly after this I became involved with a man who ideologically was my antithesis: a non-Pagan, rightwing ex-Marine. I think I realized from the beginning that I was with him because I felt safe; he could protect me. I must say I was fortunate to not have learned first-hand that the protector can become the victimizer in so many cases. It took longer for me to see that beyond him making me feel safer when I was with him, he had made me feel safer after I left. This man was my first teacher on the path of the warrior. He taught me basic self-defense and to weight train effectively and he did manage to convince me that I had a right to defend myself if I were ever attacked again, as well.
I still could not identify with the name "warrior." A few years later I started working politically with a loose alliance of women, several of whom identified themselves as "Amazons" and "warriors." While I had seen the word "warrior" as another term for "soldier," I was now finding people who looked to the idea of an honor system focused on fighting for what was right. A warrior was one who chose her battles, protected others, didn't back down from battling for her cause. I started reading about Earth First! and others who put their lives on the line in political action, not just their signatures or even freedom (and bail money). It was shortly after this that I did the dedication ritual.
A few months later, I became aware of a coven, connected with a political activist group which used the term this way. A friend frantically warned me against contacting them because they were "violent" and as I did not feel ready to make a commitment at the time, as I was preparing for a trip across the country, I didn't bother. Returning from that trip, however, I had found myself in a magical dilemma that left me feeling attacked and in need of serious training. As I had been focused on Wicca for over a decade by then, I looked towards a coven. I ended up joining both the coven and the associated political group soon after my return, thanks to another friend (to the horror of the other one) who had already joined the coven. I now had found others who identified with the word "warrior" in the same way I did. I thought I had found a home. I was wrong.
The High Priestess died. The group was unable to stay together. Some of us tried to continue, and a year after our High Priestess' death, I was initiated with the aid of her former High Priestess. The other initiated women had left by then, and as it was a female-run tradition, I was now expected run things while I continued my training. There was a lot of pressure on me from the group at the very time that there was a lot more pressure being exerted by Someone bigger to go another way.
I had dreams of confrontations with beings I considered my allies ---battles
I won only to find that what I killed had become part of me. In the tradition
I was initiated into, the first degree Witch is to find a Matron or Patron
before going on to second degree. I found myself frantic to attract the attention
of any Deity other than the One I felt. The Battle Goddess Who laid claim
on me, however, had no problem making Her wishes known. Within months of
my initiation, I was questioning whether the path of priestess was open to
me and whether Wicca was the way I should approach Her. I was told in no
uncertain terms that if I called myself a warrior, I'd be expected to prove
it.
No longer would I be allowed to see myself as a warrior just because I had fierce opinions and occasionally did political action (I was, in fact, less active by this time). If I laid claim to the name, it would lay claim to me. Naming is an important magical practice in Celtic traditions. To name something is to call it; to name oneself is to become. To become means you had better live up to it. While to this day I do not know if I believe that the word kept coming to me because it was my destiny or if I created my destiny by always returning to this name, having it now meant I had to take on the tasks it required. As I struggled with this, friends would tell me stories of their friends who called themselves warriors and kept getting into trouble of one time or another because they failed to live up to the tests. I was not going to be a "spiritual warrior" who then runs when my aggressive nature provokes someone. I was going to be mincemeat if I did anyway, She'd see to that.
I took a leave from our group to try to work out what I needed to do, and I switched my course of studies from ecofeminism to Celtic, still focusing on women's issues. I started karate lessons and became more focused on fitness. I questioned my Wiccan studies, wishing desperately that I could talk to my late High Priestess, as my working partner only countered everything I questioned with the fact that she would be horrified by my new opinions. I felt guilty for realizing that I was probably going to fail to live up to her dreams. I had realized that something else was calling me, and I knew I didn't have the time and energy to do both.
While on a trip to Scotland, I had a vision in some woods on the Isle of Skye that started to make things clearer -- or so it did later on, at first they seemed murkier. I felt I was expected to walk the warrior's path and to make connections within the Community to further this path. Perhaps there were promises made lifetimes ago that bore precedence over the foolishly spoken postmortem promise to my HPS to do what I could. But I didn't know how to do this.
I returned from Scotland very ill with Environmental Illness causing chronic fatigue and impairing my immune system. But I was still more driven on this path than I had been. The illness left me with no way to continue my Wiccan training and I officially ended my leave of absence for complete withdrawal, ending also my relationship with my working partner who was in no way interested in helping me through my newfound weakness. I found myself bedridden most the following winter with a slight recuperation in the summer, followed by another lapse the following winter. When I was on my up swings, I found that I not only could workout, unlike most with similar health problems, but I had in order to keep up my ability to function. I'd start slowly, doing Yoga and walking, until I was capable of short, slow runs and weight lifting again and then move on from there.
I found myself delving deeper into my studies. I started to try to format a Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism that seemed to please my Matron more than my practice of Wicca did. I could no longer study karate, because when I tried to return, my instructor informed me that I had no right to ask the one of the other women in the class to not wear a perfume that made me ill, and I couldn't enter the dojo. But I still worked on my development as a warrior as much as I could. I now see this time -- when I really felt so old and decrepit, believing at times that I may never become a warrior -- as a temporary lull in my youth. I needed this deepening into my scholarly self, a self that I now see as a future one if I survive my warrior years. After all, I was working to reclaim something that did not necessarily fit my level of knowledge. If I had been born into a Gaelic Pagan warrior culture, I might have progressed chronologically; but I had to figure out what that culture would be like.
My senior study was on the evidence for women's power, magical and physical, in Iron Age Celtic mythology -- questionable as it may be from a strictly academic standpoint. A large part of the focus of my study was how we can bring this path back to this time for both women and men -- not in "reenactment," but rather in facing all the realities of the coming twenty-first century. This has turned into my life's work, it seems -- everything I have done since leads to this idea. I have found a growing number of women and men who are reclaiming the honor and purpose of the warrior in the Pagan Community. Not just as a "spiritual path" of self-development, but as an actual service of protection and strength for the Earth, ourselves, and all of life.
Once I graduated, I started to make some slow progress against my illness -- enough to put aside my "career" plans to go to graduate school and live my life in "the stacks." I took courses to become a personal fitness trainer -- after all, what does one do with a BA in Celtic and Women's studies if you reject graduate school? From this rather diverse education, I started to develop a foundation for a warrior training system.
Over the past few years, I began to see the Pagan Community's reaction to women on the warrior path. It seemed that many men who did not walk the path were offended to find me there ---after all, they wanted to keep some illusion that it was still their term, the "male mystery," even if they had no desire to practice it. Some, not all, on the path who had military backgrounds were hostile, primarily, they said, because I have no military background although they did not seem to display similar hostility towards other men who don't, but _most_ men on the path were positive and have accepted that women are fully capable of being warriors. Perhaps the most surprising to me were the reactions of some women who have been outraged by women warriors, women who appear to feel that it was an affront to "womanhood." A couple of years ago, when I founded the warriors' guild of a national group, I heard that a couple of people were trying to get me removed; both of these people were women. In fact, it has been to my dismay that the loudest voices speaking against women warriors have been women.
Some of the women on the path were upset that I tended to work in mixed groups. There was and still is a gender gap on this path --perhaps well summed up by Paxson's quote at the beginning of this article. There are different issues on all levels that must be dealt with; women's reasons for walking the path are often more personal. While I do feel that women do need our own space as well, I also want to see this gap closed and I feel that the men have a lot to learn from women on this path. For women, the reality of the warrior path is in our faces every-day, we live in a world that we are always taught is dangerous and hostile to us. Much of this is merely socialization, not reality, but it affects our lives constantly none the less. My reasoning was vindicated early on when a male colleague came back from giving a workshop were he was asked about women warriors; he noted that while men can afford to be theoretical and play at it, women faced real danger everyday and when we walked the path we walked it for real. It got him some very strong positive reactions from women at the lecture, but when he told me this story I recognized his answer as almost word-for-word quote of what was one of my favorite rants, showing he was learning.
So here the rant in short: As women we live "behind enemy lines." Seen as easy victims we are always marked. Men who pray on women and children do so primarily because we are safe and "natural" victims, not out of uncontrolled sexual desires as the media and society paints it. If our attackers, physical or emotional, wanted a fight they'd go after those they see as capable -- other straight males. Our culture feeds this message to us all -- women are weaker, women are passive, women won't fight back; the same is true for children and gay men, whom our culture classes as weaker and "less than manly." This is fundamental to our victimization, the idea that we are weak and passive by nature.
Taking the name "warrior" means taking a responsibility of service, whether one is female or male. However, for women in our culture, this naming can be even more powerful. Taking the name is itself a form of magic, for it can change our lives, and one day, the world. Not every woman will walk the warrior's path, but every woman is aided by the fact that some do. Every woman who claims even a few steps on that path makes a change towards greater freedom and safety for us all. Every time a rapist has to stop and wonder if he might get his butt kicked by the woman he is following, it may mean that he will turn away, whether she could have fought him or not. Every time an employer realizes that one of his employees might bring him up on charges, he will think twice before harassing anyone.
Most of the messages we get from all angles are that we as women must accept our victimization. Sadly, the first piece of advice from almost every self-defense seminar I've ever been to (and I frequent them) is, "avoid dark, isolated, `dangerous' places." The message is "stay sheltered, restrict your life." Later someone, often myself or a victims' advocate, will bring up the fact that one of the most dangerous places for a woman is her own home. There is no shelter. There is no safe-haven. And isn't saying that we should be "safely at home" another way of saying a "woman's place is in the kitchen/bedroom"? How can we succeed anywhere if we must avoid parking lots, dark paths, seemingly vacant buildings, when avoiding them means not getting our work done in business or school - -and it often does.
While it may be dangerous to venture out into the world, and self-defense training doesn't make you invulnerable, it is hardly more dangerous than our "shelter," and we can take the risks with knowledge. Yes, we may get hurt, but we don't need to huddle in a corner never getting anywhere. I know I may meet someone on one of my journeys that might kill or seriously hurt me; but a long time ago I made the decision that I would hate to enter the Underworld having died of old age and saying, "what if I'd taken more chances?" I'd rather go earlier, saying, "well, at least I put up a good fight." Each woman must make her own choice whether to "Take Back the Night" for real, to say we have the right to go where we wish. Then again, the person who might take us out may walk right into any of our homes -- possibly with an invitation.
Many women seek the safety of a man, a situation we are trained for when adults take care of their daughters' fights while sending their sons off to fight for themselves -- as was my early training. But women are abused, beaten, and raped by these "protectors" everyday. While many men take to the role of protector and never abuse, there is still an inequality in the relationship; the woman ends up dependent on the man, more than if he supports her financially, because her very well-being is dependent upon him being there to keep her safe. We can depend on no champions other than ourselves, and if we do have men in our lives, then they should be our partners in the fight, not our defenders.
Because the world is dangerous, I strongly advocate that all women get some
sort of self-defense training, even if they do not wish to pursue this path.
There is much to be said for taking the power of one's "inner woman-warrior"
to become more forceful in our careers, relationships, etc.; but if we don't
face the
reality of physical dangers, those things will be meaningless.
Self-defense courses are widely available and, unfortunately, of diverse
quality -- my advice is to find out as much as you can about the course and
take several. The expensive well-known ones like IMPACT™ or Model
Mugging™ are of high quality and anyone challenged by the price should
still look into it, as some branches have scholarships for low-income women.
Most police departments give free courses, and these courses tend to be some
of the best since, male or female, the presenters tend to have a realistic
view of the dangers. Courses give by female instructors also tend to be better,
because you're dealing with someone who is in the same situation daily that
you are.
Most of our battles will not be fought physically, however. We need to sharpen our voices, our wits and our wills, on many fronts. Once we take on the mantle of the warrior and harden it by learning how to protect ourselves physically, that power can translate itself to any battlefield if we truly integrate it. A warrior may find that the path leads her to become a victims advocate, chain herself to a Redwood, or lobby at her statehouse. One can even find a warrior way by being a caregiver, feeding the homeless, or comforting the wounded. If we take the name "warrior" we will always find battlefields, and a warrior should have the skills to adapt to wherever she needs to be. Warriors make changes in the world, no matter how the changes must be made.
I'm still trying to find my way on this path. As I'm trying to reconstruct an ancient cultural tradition, finding lots of gaps and trying to fill them in as I go along, I will get very old being a still being "young" as a warrior. I have developed, the rages have lessened now that I know that I can safely direct my anger and I'm much less out of control when they do happen. I am stronger, my health has improved greatly (just recently when I gave up some more "scholarly" pursuits and started a new treatment). I am putting the finishing touches on the first edition of a training program for my Tribe and am pleased by the material I've accumulated to do this. Although I'm still somewhat into the birthday crisis thing, I'm seeing my way through as I tally where I really am.
During the last meeting of our group, I watched a Tribe member's ten-year-old daughter bounce around my apartment, interjecting her opinions and hanging by her knees from my chinning bar. This child is also my newest and youngest fitness client, preparing for track and field and football. At one point someone noted something about her potential future in another career and she said "I'm going to be the first woman in the NFL and no one's going to stop me, either!"
Neither parent is a warrior, but she has never been told that she cannot walk this path. She has never been told that she can't do anything because she's female or because she must act a certain way. She had never been given the message others must fight her battles for her, but she does know that she will have allies along the way. It makes me very hopeful for the future. Perhaps someday, hopefully decades from now, I will return to being the scholar, my body properly ready to be old and decrepit after having kept my new found health and "youth." If possible I will return to school to further study the Gaelic cultures and project them into our future; having left the teaching of the latest generation of warriors in the hands of this child, her siblings, and/or others like her.
Meanwhile, I'll envy her a bit. And when I start to lose that "warrior's edge" and feel like I'm not capable, I'll remember her pointing her chin at an adult male member of our group and making that statement. I'll marvel at a generation where a more girls are being raised to believe in their warrior selves, even as I'm occasionally dismayed when I see others being trained by both victims and perpetrators both to be victims themselves. There is much hope that the name "warrior" will be a natural and positive label for women in the future and that taking this name will not be fraught with any questions at all.
copyright © 1997, 2004 Kym ní Dhoireann, except where noted, all rights reserved, do not republish either electronically or on paper and that means YOU!
Pictish Horse, crow and wolf drawing copyright © 2002 Aaron Miller.
Quote from The Serpent's Tooth, Avonova, 1993 copyright © 1991 Diana L. Paxson.
Background modified by Kym from Pictish spiral (as featured in George Bain's Celtic Art)