I wrote this right after Rocky’s last Crown Tournament, Oct 2017
I attended the SCA’s Midrealm Crown tourney yesterday.
I really enjoyed myself. Partly because I got to re-connect with a number of lifelong friends. Also, I had the privilege to attend My Beloved Rocky and Jane as they participated in the last Crown Tournament he intends to compete in.
To our knowledge. Rocky is the oldest individual to compete in a Crown Tourney in the history of the “known world” At 75 years old, he forwarded his banner and the name of his Lady as a legitimate fighter in, basically, the one stick fighting tournament that actually has some modicum of consequence..
In general, every tournament has some consequence… After all, the practitioner gambles renown…. In Rocky’s case, he was engaged in one of the greatest gambles a Man of Coat Armor CAN make… Is he, at that age, capable of bearing harness on the field as a legitimate threat, or is he too feeble. Will his efforts be denigrated by patronization from his peers. He won that gamble, and succeeded in gaining much worshipful honor. I love him for that, and will honor him all the days of my life, as is my responsibility as a Member of the Chivalric community.
Crown tourney has “real world” consequence. The winner of that tournament more or less becomes the “president” of the world’s largest costume party/Medieval theme park/Chivalric sandbox. They become the focal point… the archetype.. for other’s journeys. (Regardless of if they ultimately succeed or fail)
In any case, The tournament is the highlight of the six months/ stick fighting tournament play cycle in the SCA.
Later that night, Rocky was recognized by My King and the assembled Knights for His life long constancy in the pursuit of knightly endeavors and pursuit. This was a right and proper thing to have happened.
I told Rocky that one of my goals was to some day beat his record… to compete in Crown Tourney at the age of 76. He is my Chivalric father, my elder. It is my responsibility to honor the love and investment he has given me by trying my hardest to surpass him, as, ultimately, I hope my own students surpass me.
If you boil it down, Knightly enterprise and living the Way of the Knight has nothing to do with costume parties, or Larping, or tournaments.. It is an inward path to Mastery.
The SCA and other organizations, including the global steel fighting community, are ultimately constructs and crucibles to learn, test, and examine one’s self through Deeds. That is a defining function of the Hero’s journey.
One of the highlights of my day was that I got to connect with a kindred spirit in the form of a Man who, in the context of our game, calls himself Rin Ravenfoe. He is a Master of Arms in our Society.
We had actually started a conversation about the Hero’s journey literally three years ago in a stylized living history encampment at Pennsic.
We almost immediately fell back into the same conversation, only this time, we had a little more time to develop our thoughts and understand the type of men we were. I think that our meeting was exactly at the right time in the right place to spur us both further upon our paths; especially for me. Some of the things that we talked about have shed some light on certain struggles I have been trying to come to grip with for several years…. Since one afternoon in Spain when the 29 lost the banners of our ancestors… but that story is for another day..
Later that evening, I got to participate in a ceremony that marked a signpost in another Man’s journey. He was placed on Vigil for Knighthood himself.
This man’s path has been winding, long, unique, and also full of trials. But that is a singular function of this type of pursuit. Perhaps someday I will write more on this…
Then, I had a brief conversation with my dear friend Doug, who’s pursuit of mastery has also been twisting and turning… We started in the sca roughly at the same time.
I have a great feeling of kinship with this man and his beloved family is a jewel of beauty that I have enjoyed and, in many ways, envied over the years. But the trials on his journey have been different than mine.
He is rejoining the path of Chivalric pursuits, and we are, as is so often the case on these journeys, picking up where we left off when our paths diverged some 6 or so years ago.
Our conversation was cut short due to the nature of the day, and we continued it via texts this morning. In those texts, there were a number of themes that are interesting and need further developed.
We were discussing the fact that the Knighthood of our Ancestors are, of course, different than the path that modern practitioners must walk. This concept touches on the evolution of relevance that happens to all warrior paths through history. Again, some day I may try to write more on this topic as well..
There is a continuity of themes, however. The need and the archetypes themselves are universal. For instance, I think for practitioners such as myself, there are two Knightly realities. If a practitioner does not foster excellence in both of these realities, then he or she is, at the least, not reaping the benefits of this path, and at most, utterly failing.
They are both Part of the whole… the yin and yang, the inside and outside path…
I have been blessed with being acknowledged a member of two modern Knightly Orders. But really, is there value in this? My fellows and I have sacrificed much… suffered and exulted in much.. but when it comes down to it, is it REALLY a game that we play? An elaborate lifelong exercise in self delusion and mental masturbation?
For instance, my co-workers don’t know what I have done, what I have faced… They don’t know of the times I almost shit myself in fear, got my dick knocked in the dirt by stronger men, or exhibited exquisite hubris… They don’t know that, for some reason, people around the world know my name. That The name my father gave me is in the congressional record. They don’t know that I have been stopped in crowds to give autographs, or been held in high regard by people of greater worth than myself, or villainized by others..
And is that high regard or distain just part of a game? Does the blood and the money and the life shed by me and those like me merely to serve as a prop for other people’s fantasies? For my own fantasies?
One of the major responsibilities of being a Knight of the SCA, for instance, is to judge the efforts of fellow practitioners; to serve as a guardian of the Fount of Honor, and to ascertain when a fellow practitioner is ready for the public rituals, accolades, and responsibilities of formal Knighthood.
But how is that judged? What is the purpose of the entire thing?
As I said, there are two Knightly paths… An internal and an external… Both have different ramifications and worth.
I have said before that the Chivalric life is not for everyone. In fact, it is a narrow filter.. only those who are broken in certain ways really actually need it…
For those broken men and women who do, the personal payoff is almost entirely internal in nature. As such, it doesn’t really matter if the external construct it plays out upon is a dojo, or a tiltyard, or a stick fighting tournament in the SCA… To tread the Hero’s journey means that rites of passages…. tests… risks with true internal and external consequence, are NECESSARY…
The external “chivalric sandbox” may look utterly ridiculous from the outside… completely and wholly contrived…
But think about something…… ALL rites of passage are, by necessity, artificial constructs.. Ordeals to pass from one stage of life to another… They must be painful, they must be exultant, and they must, in some ways be artificial.
The tribal leader that puts a test before a warrior constructs challenges in an artificial way. The risks are generally controlled, the goal amorphous… but they are constructed in such a way by this elder, by this Knight, to test the mettle of the internal person in an external way.
This, amount other reasons, is why a Knight must always make a Knight… Why an elder must be the one to externally and publicly acknowledge success…. or failure.
For make no mistake, it is not a true rite of passage, not a true test, if there is not the distinct possibility of failure.
Failure is always a part of the Hero’s journey…
I think that is the purpose of these external “games”. They serve as the physical mountain that must be climbed.. the physical stone that must be stacked… the fearful path that must be tread, the enemy that must be conquered.
A Knight always makes a Knight because he or she is the only one who knows the path of the soul that must be tread. If an external accolade is given with no ordeal, then it has little transformative internal consequence, and it truly IS just a game.
These rites of passages, these ordeals of the body and soul, produce different results ultimately, because, well, no two people are entirely alike…
I am a different “flavor” of knight than others… is one of greater worth than another? No…. AS LONG AS we both tread the same archetype,the same hero’s journey of our own souls.
Ultimately, every “type” of knight, as people such as Sir Vitus have pointed out in the past, serve different purposes, different archetypes in and of themselves.
The external purpose of a Knight is to act as archetypes and examples for other practitioners.
This is why, as I believe, the literary Arthurian Knights really boil down to archetypes of different expressions of this reality.
In the SCA, there are Knights that hold entirely different views than I.. Some represent the Knight that is barely constrained, Some represent the romantic idealist, some the Courteous exemplar, some the hardened warrior. Some play the Noble Savage. Some are shaped to play the ideal of the refined Master.
Ultimately though, externally, it is their JOB to be those archetypes for other practitioners… for other seekers.
Some must play the roll of the False Knight as well. Their role in other’s journeys is to be the Brother who betrays, the Knight who taints, The Breaker of oaths… The exhaled Knight who sins against Chivalry..
I have said many times that “we are the instruments of other men’s tests”. And the reverse is true… sometimes others are my test. Sometimes the role of a Knight is to be the exemplar of the hated.
The role of some Knights is to test the practitioner to the point of failure, or the focus of hate, or the stumbling block to the abyss.
I am just now learning the words to understand this truth in my own path… it is the hardest lesson so far. I personally don’t know if I will pass this ordeal in my path or not.. and what is even more sobering is the realization that I myself may play that exact same role in someone else’s path… That thought fills me with dread.
But that is the nature of things: The construct of the test, both in the artificial parameter of the ordeal, and in the internal Chivalric path… The internal reality.