"Three whose frenzy is a benefit to their people: The Warrior on the field of battle, the Dancer in the place of dance, and the seeker of justice where ever they may be."*

Honourable companions,

If one of my bretheren Druids from the ancient time were to declare, Let there be no war, then the battle-ready warriors would cool their blood, lower their weapons, and proceed home. This has always been the priveledge and the duty of the Druids: to analyse war, and to declare it just or not just.

In this time and in this age, there are still battle-ready warriors and hot-blooded agitators ready for battle. One wonders, is every warrior who is ready for battle also ready for death? An interesting question. Voices from far behind the battlefield cry for peace. Peace is the more desireable, they say, for "to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men"*, as the Old Master wrote. Let there be no doubt about this: to praise war is to praise all that is entailed by war.

To praise war, then, is to praise terror, destruction, danger, displacement of people from their homes, imprisonment, slavery, impoverishment, rape, and murder. We the pagans are no stranger to any of these, who have endured the animosity of vikings, romans, saxons, and more. Not one of these things can be construed as good, wholesome, nourishing of human life and nature, constructive to any utilitarian purpose, or beneficial to any person, save the person who builds the weapons and sells them to the warriors. To praise war is to praise all that war entails, including the economic institution whereby certain wealthy persons manufacture the tools and implements of war, and profit for themselves in vast amounts when they are used to destroy human and environmental life.

To praise war is to praise all that war entails, the warmongers and battle-criers among us agree, and war entails struggle, bravery, power, endurance, perseverance, strategy, skill, effort, and especially heroism. Nor are we pagans strange to these virtues; and I do not doubt that they are virtues. I am in agreement with this sentiment, for it seems true that the hero engages in a kind of struggle which transforms her into a being of greater nobility, greater maturity, and indeed greater life. For these reasons the hero is as powerful a figure in the consciousness of the celtic pagan as is the mystic Druid, and the wise and just King, and the hero deserves his place beside both of them.

Nonetheless I remain opposed to war. I find that there is no contradiction in remaining opposed to war while at the same time encouraging aspirations of heroism. War is not the same now as it was for the Ancients. Today a warrior can attack an enemy from the sky, with missiles and flying machines and an entire arsenal of deadly weapons never dreamed by the Druids or Heroes of ancient times. With biological weapons an army can attack an enemy from within the enemy's own body. With nuclear weapons the threat of an armageddon of the sort described by Christian prophets of the apocalypse is a very real threat, and one need not suppose that the deliverer of tribulation is an angry and vindictive God. Indeed the deliverer of tribulation today may be any misguided and undisciplined fellow who has not the stuff of heroes in him at all, nor even one drop of divinity, but sits before buttons that can launch the fire of the sun on any city of his choosing. There is no magic and mystery in this, and yet it seems that by speaking a few special words he can conjure an enemy into being, and fling the youth of his nation at that enemy with all the exuberance of adventurous children.

We have gods of war in our religious custom. An Mhorrigan, the Phantom Queen, patronised heroes and urged them to greater and greater achievements. But there is no hint in the mythology of the Goddess or in the visions of Her dedicants that advocates the complete and total destruction of entire poplulations, nor the use of weapons launched by controllers who never see the faces of their enemy, and may not even be on the same continent as the enemy.

Morrigan supports heroes of courage, skill, bravery, and endurance. Morrigan picks up the young boy who dreams of adventure and throws him into danger, to knock the childishness out of him, to cure him of fear and inhibition. It is a battle that can fill one's entire life. At the end of the battle, it is the ignorance of youth that lies slain on the field. When the young hero has battered herself into a shape better suited to thrive in the world, she is welcomed into life, and is ready to lead the way for the next generation of would-be heroes. This is usually not the reward for the soldier in twentieth century armies.

I realise that there are still heroes on the modern battlefied. When a soldier in a modern army does become a hero, it is not for killing soldiers on the other side of some frontier. It is for daring and bravery, for compassion to those he protects, it is for selflessly giving one's strong arms and legs in the defence of those who can not defend themselves. The heroic soldier of any age stands forth, between the vulnerable and the foe, to say "Arise, son of the land, with your wounds made whole. A fair man faces your foes in the long night, while you rest in his human care."*

The conditions for making this kind of hero still exist on the battlefield, but not in the control tower where missiles and sattelites are monitored, not in the offices where grey-haired commanders make lists of who will fight, and not in the global market where profiteers transform death into money by selling weapons of mass destruction. There is no heroism when the price of life is one hundred camels.* When I look to Kosovo, to Panama, to Granada, to Afghanistan, to Kashmir, to Burma, to Palestine, to Somalia, to Iraq, and all the needless suffering everywhere, and the vast profit reaped from the needless suffering, I am forced to consider better ways to train good heroes. The struggle against inhibition, and the victory over ignorance should be enough to fill a hero's heart. These too are exercises of human power requiring feats of courage and endurance. So too is childbirth heroic, and parenthood, and we who experience God as the Mother must not forget that!

Were I posessed of the social power of the ancient Druids, I would enlist the heroes of today in a never-ending war against threats to life. The scale and magnitude of threats to environmental harmony and social justice are global now, and the resistance must be global too if life is to throw off its opressors. Let heroes praise life by defending it. To famine sites with boatloads of food and medicine would I send them, and to logging camps where entire mountians are clear-cut of their biodiversity for ever, and to the ten kilometer long drag nets that scrape the ocean of all life. To nuclear fuel processing plants, to sweat shops, to waste dumps, to food banks, to shaft mines, to native reserves, to women's shelters, to refugee camps, let our heroes go to make a stand. Let our heroes discharge their energy under the banner of labour unions, environmental activist groups, civil rights groups, and charities, all in the service of life and all that life entails. Let them penetrate the labyrinth of power not to slay the monster that lurks there, but to laugh at him. Let the war never end until no one reserves for themselves alone the means of everyone's continued life, and no one profits from the sale of life. For the sake of enriching the spiritual unity of all beings who share the Earth, and herself as one of them, let the champion make the Salmon Leap over the bridge to the magical island, the dance on the Shield Rim of the world, and the spear thrust into the sea.

Cathbad
Writing from the Grove,
and in the season of Beltaine, of the year 1999

*"Three whose frenzy..." from the Triads of Ireland

*"To praise victory...": The Tao Te Ching, chapter 31. The "Old Master" is Lao Tze, the author of the Tao Te Ching.

*"Arise, son of the land": paraphrased from the words of the Irish-Celtic God Lugh Lamh-Fada; Tain Bo Cuailnge, ch. 9

*"One hundred camels": the price paid by the Canadian Armed Forces to the father of a Somali boy tortured and killed by Canadian soldiers.