the god of war
the god of war? yes, the god of war. We know him primarily as Ares or Mars, because we the people like to pretend ourselves the inheritors from the Greeks and Romans, but Yahweh-God-Allah, the common One God of the three Peoples of The Book (Jews, Christians, Muslims) will do nicely as a god of war. So too will Agurzil, Maher, Ogoun, Oya, Huitzilopochtli, Kara Māte (goddess), Kauriraris, Kovas, Gurzil, Ifri, Annan, Bandua, Badb, Belatucadros, Camulus, and maybe 600 other names. yes, the god of war is important to us, no matter where, no matter when. war is one of our best endeavors, we are good at it, and we probably need to be. (to be fair, I have a dear friend who asserts that we - humans - are not a warlike species and do not war most of the time. she claims to have scientific studies to back her up, and she may have. she is a scholar and she does not speak lightly. I only speak of humans I have known and have read about, and those I presume we succeeded.) Joseph Campbell regarded an active military as a function of civilization. when I read that a human, no matter how individualistic when an adult, must be part of a group, I remember that the group has violent members who keep members in, and violent members who attack other groups to protect and defend their own group. those are the only groups I know of except for the few groups who depend on the rest of us to protect them, and their own iron customs and conventions to keep members in. mostly, as far as I know, groups survive by killing or absorbing groups around them, and groups are both possessive and jealous of resources like land, water, women, and children. we war. we do it well. we must. no wonder we worship the god or goddess of war under so many names.
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