“I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine full nights, wounded with a spear,
a sacrifice to Odin, myself to myself…”
— Hávamál, stanzas 139–140
The way of the warrior is not something one seeks. It calls out to you, and you hear this call emerging as an echo from the void, from someplace long forgotten, somewhere far away. It beckons, and this beckoning awakens something within the heart of the warrior.
It is more than a calling. It is a path to completion. And he has no choice anyways in the matter. For this path is written in invisible runes in the very substance of his being.
The way does not lead to fulfillment. It does not lead to a happy life. This path walks in the twilight, the space between life and death. One lives to fight, and fights to live. One falls and rises, dies and walks again.
Within the heart of the warrior there lives a passion, a reason to his calling, which is a manifestation of the wisdom he seeks. But this wisdom will not reveal itself until the moment before he falls. Such is its nature.
Thus it can be said that the way of the warrior is a path of sacrificing the self unto the self. He is born to die. He is dead before he is born.
Even in the unconsciousness of daily life this intrinsic knowing accompanies him like a shadow, and he will never be one of the herd. Even if he temporarily aligns himself with a worldly paradigm, fighting under some banner or notion of righteousness, this can never be sustained.
But such is the nature of the warrior’s delusions. Most will fall to them. Few follow the path to its completion, and the longer one walks the more the delusions dissolve, and he finds he has nowhere left to hide. And still he must continue, because the way does not forgive. And it does not forget.
The heart of the warrior is his greatest ally and his greatest foe. It is the singer of his delusions and the passion behind his sword.
“To be able to stand in the fire and not flinch — this is the way of the warrior. It still burns. You are still dying. But you meet it with open eyes.”