- One who is engaged in or experienced in battle.
- One who is engaged aggressively or energetically in an activity, cause, or conflict.
- A man engaged or experienced in war, or in the military life; a soldier; a champion.
[Middle English werreour, from Old North French werreieur, from werreier, "to make war", from werre, "war".]
What is it, to be a warrior? The most common ideas of the nature of the warrior have to do with the fighting of bloody conflicts upon the field of battle. This is, of course, perfectly accurate. You are very likely to find a warrior in just such a place, for it is in conflict that the warrior is truly at home. But conflict can take other forms and battlefields may not be physically bloody. There are many warriors who will never draw a sword or shoulder a rifle, but who are no less deserving of that name, for they face enemies against which traditional weapons are impotent. They may never tread the blood-soaked earth, but the arenas of their labours are equally sacred and hallowed by the pouring out of their desire.
The surgeon who works long hours in the OR and the nurse who spends sleepless nights in the ICU are warriors whose enemy is injury and disease and death. The teacher and the librarian who battle against ignorance and apathy are the arms-masters who seek to equip us for life and for toil. The civil-rights worker is a warrior who stands firm against the fearsome forces of intolerance, hatred and fear. Any time that any person stands up for their beliefs against unjust opposition is in some way of this fraternity.
"The free man is a warrior.—How is freedom measured among individuals, among peoples? According to the resistance that must be overcome, according to the trouble it takes to stay on top. The highest type of free man must be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps away from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Warriors, you may not always be loved and respected. At times you must be the master, commanding the actions of people who will not know or see the reasons for your decisions or the results. At other times you must be the servant, calmly and quietly accepting the harsh rebukes of those that care not for your dignity and understand not the depth and breadth of your labours. Those who do not feel the stinging lash will never know that they are shielded by your weary back. And those that resent your swift and deadly action will never see the snake whose head your sword cleaved off.
If you are lucky you will be acclaimed a hero and will not know the ignominious humiliations that an angry citizenry can heap upon proud heads. I pray that no warrior shall ever again know the humiliation felt by our soldiers as they returned home from Vietnam, and I pray too that no such slime as commanded their actions shall ever again lead troops from thousands of miles away.*
"Warriors old with ordered spear and shield." -- John Milton, Paradise Lost
It is greatly lamented by some that the telling of history revolves so much around wars and killing. They would prefer to hear history taught that focuses on the more pacifistic endeavours of humanity. What these people do not realize or do not wish to acknowledge is that human beings are a species born to conflict. For all the beautiful works of art and all the noble achievements of mind that our race has spawned we are still heirs to our own animal nature, and an integral part of that nature is to strive against one another in competition for the necessities of life. To think otherwise is to be delusional.
And so it must be seen that an honest history of humanity entails a study of conflict in all its forms, including war. It is no accident that many of the inventions and discoveries that have most benefitted us have been created as the purpose or a by-product of conflict.
"There exist only three respectable beings: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, and to create." -- Charles Baudelaire, My Heart Laid Bare
The ancient Celts knew the truth that Baudelaire speaks of, and the most celebrated warriors in Ireland's history were the Fiana: warrior-poets whose achievements in battle and verse were equally honoured. It is to the discredit of our world that this truth has been so far misplaced (I will not say lost), and that so few who are accounted great warriors were so little in other pursuits. The warrior must not be the killer and the destroyer alone. He or she must also be the one who creates and the one who brings life. Where chariot wheels and tank treads have torn the ground asunder the warrior must sew seeds, for theirs is the responsibility—the total responsibility—for all of their actions and all of the consequences of those actions.
"Groundless superstition ill befits an army; valor is the only deity that rules in the warrior's breast." -- Silius Italicus
Though it is true that superstition should never sway the heart nor mind of the warrior, there are deities of whom our hearts do sing. One such of these is the Morrighan (An Mhór Ríoghain), Celtic goddess of battle, sorcery and shape-shifting. (Read my writings about the Morrighan.)
Unfortunately the current state of American politics and the current administration is evidence that this prayer has been in vain.
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