FOREST FIGHTS: A Modern “Trial By Seven”
Written for OPWW by Paul W.
A gunshot rings out, signaling the beginning of the first battle.
7 men in white shirts, emblazoned with the wolf-hook and the word KORYOS on the back stride slowly, confidently toward the opposing team, black clad and ski masked fighters representing their Pennsylvania active club.
The tension is quickly shattered as violence erupts when the two forces meet like a thunderbolt.
No bystander sounds, music, or coaches voices break the stillness. Only the sounds of bone on meat, punches and kicks landing on heads, ribs, and bodies, the occasional grunt of exertion or groan of pain, or the desperate calls of “tap, tap!” as a fighter surrenders to a relentless beating.
In less than a minute, it’s all over.
The Koryos team is victorious, white shirts covered in blood, some their own, but mostly their opponents’.
Teams line up and shake hands, embracing like brothers. Laughter and congratulations as both groups talk excitedly about what just happened.
In only a few minutes, it will be time for another war.
This is Forest Fights – held a few weeks ago on the Wolves of Vinland’s tribal property in Virginia, and put on by Wolves member Mars and his brothers-in-arms of the Koryos team.
It is certainly a rarity to see in America, something usually associated with soccer culture and hooliganism in Europe, and while this certainly pays homage to those roots and origins, this is something else.
The fighters are not going to war for a specific locality or football team. Some of the men on various teams have never met each other, but will fight on the same side.
Almost without exception, when asked “why,” they answer some variant of “for honour,” or “for glory,” or “to better myself.”
Organizer Mars, patch member of the Wolves, alongside Haram (WoV), Skinny (CHS) and Panzzer (LSAC) keep it simple:
Teams are put together by those willing to come fight. Those who cannot make a full team are assisted by others involved in the event, and some fighters may join a team to round out the numbers simply for “love of the game.”
His own team, who have won the last two events, is composed of members from the Wolves, as well as friends and associates from Vermont, Texas, and northern VA.
This is perhaps what struck me the most, filling in as one of five referees called on to ensure the action is fair, the rules are adhered to, and that fighters are kept as safe as possible – there is a bond of friendship here between the individuals fighting that extends beyond one team or another.
All who are baptized in the blood and fury of combat become closer.
This is something well understood by any who have been involved in combat sports or other violent lifestyle, but a fundamental aspect of manhood and brotherhood that has been largely lost in our day and age:
Combat is initiation.
In a time when many males (I won’t say men) have nothing to belong to, have no rites of adulthood or passage into a brotherhood of peers that has real meaning, real risk, real danger and consequences, this kind of thing can fill that role.
Many cynical or ironic souls will make fun of this idea from an intellectual standpoint, saying “this is just people fighting in the woods.” Yes and no.
These types of people will never understand the fundamental value of strength, of familiarity and capability with violence, or other “outmoded” or “outdated” trappings of masculinity.
Still others will misunderstand and think this is about gang violence or men doing damage to each other out of anger, or territorial pissing contest. Many may even *want* it to be that, but all of these are wrong.
This is another kind of facet of being what Nietzsche called “preparatory men.”
These warriors who populate the Wolves, the active clubs, they are all training themselves, not merely physically, but mentally and spiritually for a greater war, a greater time, for which they intend to be ready. To be prepared.
These types of men, as Nietzsche says, cannot simply leap into being out of nothing.
They require great rituals and trials of initiation into the great truths and hardships of this world. To face challenges and best them, and to become knowledgeable about themselves and their own capabilities and skills, or their own weaknesses and what must be improved upon.
Not content to merely wait for this new age, it is this type of man who will be its very catalyst.
We hail the fighters, and invite you to take your place among them.
“I welcome all signs that a more manly, warlike age is about to begin, an age which, above all, will give honor to valor once again. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength which this higher age will need one day – this age which is to carry heroism into the pursuit of knowledge and wage wars for the sake of thoughts and their consequences.
To this end we now need many preparatory valorous men who cannot leap into being out of nothing – any more than out of the sand and slime of our present civilisation and metropolitanism: men who are bent on seeking for that aspect in all things which must be overcome; men characterised by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities, as well as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; men possessed of keen and free judgement concerning all victors and the share of chance in every victory and every fame; men who have their own festivals, their own weekdays, their own periods of mourning, who are accustomed to command with assurance and are no less ready to obey when necessary, in both cases equally proud and serving their own cause; men who are in greater danger, more fruitful, and happier!
For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be satisfied to live like shy deer, hidden in the woods! At long last the pursuit of knowledge will reach out for its due: it will want to rule and own, and you with it!”
XCII
PW
PS: Make sure to subscribe to the Call Sign: Werewolf broadcast (it’s free) as I’ll be sitting down to discuss the inception and future of Forest Fights with Mars on the next episode.