What Does It Mean To Be A Man

I've only ordered this book last week so haven't read it yet but liked the reviews of it and found it for a euro on ebay + p&p. Anyway its called Iron John and here's a passage....


"Michael Meade reminds us of the old Celtic motto: 'Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.'...The initiator offers the sword only after the young man's heart has been touched by the lover's privacy and the lover's dance.

...The warriors inside American men have become weak in recent years, and their weakness contributes to a lack of boundaries, a condition which earlier in this book we spoke of as naivete. A grown man six feet tall will allow another person to cross his boundaries, enter his psychic house, verbally abuse him, carry away his treasures, and slam the door behind; the invaded man will stand there with an ingratiating, confused smile on his face.

When a boy grows up in a "dysfunctional" family (perhaps there is no other kind of family), his interior warriors will be killed off early. Warriors, mythologically, lift their swords to defend the king. The King in a child stands for and stands up for the child's mood. But when we are children, our mood gets easily overrun and swept over in the messed-up family by the more powerful, more dominant, more terrifying mood of the parent. We can say that when the warriors inside cannot protect our mood from being disintegrated, or defend our body from invasion, the warriors collapse, go into a trance, or die.

The Inner warriors I speak of do not cross the boundary aggressively; they exist to defend the boundary.

...Robert Moore, the psychologist and theologian, has thought goently and intensely about the warrior, and we'll sum up a few of his ideas. He emphasizes that for men the warrior is "hard-wired." It is not software. He may say to men: "You have plenty of warrior in you-don't worry about it-more than you'll need. The question is whether you will honor it: whether you will have it consciously or unconsciouly."

Moore emphasizes that the quality of a true warrior is that he is in service to a purpose greater than himself; that is, to a transcendent cause. Mythologically, he is in service to a True King. If the King he serves is corrupt...or if there is no King at all, and he is serving greed, or power, then he is not longer a warrior, but a soldier.

...Contemporary war, with its mechanical and heartless destruction, has made the heat of aggression seem disgraceful....'Women hate war,' it has often been said, 'but love the warrior.' That is no longer true. Most women in the West see no reason to distinguish the warrior from the soldier or the soldier from the murderer.

..The fading of the warrior contributes to the collapse of civilized society. A man who cannot defend his own space cannot defend women and children."

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