Angel Millar - The Path of the Warrior-Mystic: Being a Man in an Age of Chaos

For Kyler; for all our conversations on the Will, art, and the higher individual.

My thanks go to Chris, my longtime friend and closest companion in the Mysteries, who kindly read the manuscript of this book and gave me his thoughts, encouragement, and suggestions.

THE PATH
OF THE
WARRIOR-MYSTIC

Busting all categories and conventions, Angel Millar creates a new code of masculine development by uniting contemporary needs with esoteric wisdom to reintroduce honor, purpose, accountability, ethics, and effort into a culture that has astoundingly degraded or forgotten these ideals. As steeped in magic, rite, and hidden history as he is in good sense, Angel delivers the book on positive manhood for which our culture has been yearning. Cynics will never forgive him.

MITCH HOROWITZ, PEN AWARDWINNING AUTHOR OF OCCULT AMERICA AND THE MIRACLE CLUB

In his impressively researched book, Angel Millar takes us step by step on a journey to authenticity. Citing images and examples from myth, art, and religion, he shows us men how to grow into our highest expression as males of both strength and uncompromising insight.

WILL JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF RUMIS FOUR ESSENTIAL PRACTICES, BREATHING THROUGH THE WHOLE BODY, AND EYES WIDE OPEN

Throughout the ages, and in most traditional civilizations, there exists a masculine ideal: that of the warrior-poet, or warriormystic, who has been initiated into both the worlds of action and contemplationthe harmony of pen and sword. However, during our age of chaos, masculinity as an ideal is no longer recognized but actively demonized by the forces of deconstruction and distraction, and hence, many modern men are lost in a wasteland devoid of meaning, balance, and higher ideals. Angel Millar has taken upon himself the noble task of helping to restore this lost balance, and his book offers both traditional wisdom and sage practical advice specific to our time on how to re-embrace the heroic, perennial masculine ideal.

AKI CEDERBERG, AUTHOR OF JOURNEYS IN THE KALI YUGA

A comprehensive and intelligently written book on a topic of vital importance: the development of psychologically and spiritually healthy men living in the complex age of the early twenty-first century.

P. T. MISTLBERGER, AUTHOR OF THE WAY OF THE CONSCIOUS WARRIOR

INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK IS A JOURNEY. And though the pathway lies before us all, only a few will see it, and only the braver souls will take it. Only those for whom this world is not enough. Only those who have begun to sense that there is something illusory about the way we live and have begun to feel uneasy about the propaganda that, though ever-changing, cannot be questioned. The pathway will be different for each of us. Perhaps for some it will lead to the mountains or into the forests, while for others it may lead into the busiest of cities. But for all of us, it leads withinaway from comforting, disquieting, or addictive distractions and toward beliefs, ideas, practices, and the mental fortitude that sustained probably every culture and civilization prior to the modern world.

On this journey, you will begin to understand the ancient and classical conception of what we each can be: the warrior who cultivates mind, body, and spirit; the mystic with a vision for his life; or what the Confucians call Chun Tzu (the superior man or superior person). You will begin to discover who you are and what you can be. You will begin to glimpse your Higher Self.

Such a journey is an ancient one. It is that of Jason capturing the Golden Fleece. It is the journey of the shaman who, in dreams, finds his soul being led to distant mountains and given the secret of healing. It is the journey of the Zen Buddhist monk who goes to the city to see if it will conquer him or he will conquer it. And it is the journey of the artist, martial artist, author, inventor, and innovator who struggles against childhood illness, accident, or poverty to change the world.

Although we will look at different myths along the way, we will periodically return to the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Written in England, probably during the late fourteenth century, it has some similarities to many other myths of cultures both East and West. To describe it very briefly, one Christmas, when King Arthurs court is feasting, the celebration is disturbed by the appearance of a mysterious green knight. The stranger enters the banquet hall and challenges a knight of the court to cut off his head, on the extraordinary condition that the knight will allow him to do the same to him a year later. The knights arent keen to take up the strange bargain, but upon seeing their hesitation, Sir Gawain volunteers. The Green Knight hands over his ax and bends his head so that Gawain easily decapitates him. To his amazement, however, the Green Knight picks up his severed head and tells Gawain to seek him out at the Green Chapel in one years time.

Though he must surely believe he will die at the hands of the Green Knight, Gawain soon leaves the comfort of the court and goes into the forests, where there is no shelter and where wild animals roam and bandits lurk. After almost a year in the wilds, Gawain comes across a castle, where he is given shelter but also finds his character tested. And finally, he arrives at the Green Chapel and faces the Green Knightand his own mortality as well.

Increasingly, today, the newly born human being is regarded as a mere blank slate, and the role of education, it is believed, is to instill the correct information in the child so that he or she will grow to be a productive and nonthreatening member of society. But society itself constantly changes, believing one thing, then another that is contrary to the first. Yet the modern human being must keep up. Consequently, for all his confidence and for all his technology and sophistication, the modern human being is essentially passive, constantly absorbing the latest beliefs and shedding the old ones, so that each person is able to continue to live in relative comfort, though never really knowing who he is or what he could be.

The classical understanding was different. The individual was fundamentally not a blank slate. He already had a soul. And that meant that he already had a nature or an inclination toward some things and away from others, even if, as a child, he was hardly aware of his own nature. Indeed, how many of us have stumbled across something in later lifea movie, a painting, a photograph, a novel, a martial art, a religious faiththat seemed to embody exactly who we were but had, yet, not become? Such an experience is emotional. Our heart jumps. We imagine ourselvessee ourselvesas a superior form of who we are now: more confident, more skilled, calmer, stronger, dressed differently, and living a different life.

We have mentioned the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.