What happens when the Wild Man motif is gone, smothered, and vilified? Well, the snakes take over. That’s how it originally was; that’s how it has always been.
The song remains the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. As long as the strong Wild Man attitude is absent, you can expect the corrupters and compromisers to fill that holy vacuum.
The current, hopefully momentary, societal emasculation of the Wild Man spirit has brought about the devolution of God’s original desire: an earth ruled by man and by woman that is righteous, beautiful and secure. And guess what, America?
We can expect hell on earth as long as the original Wild Man spirit is absent from our culture, from our churches and from our families.
So what is the Wild Man spirit?
The Wild Man is a person, according to one writer, “Who has a solid connection to God defined by his standards plus a deep understanding and appreciation of creation in all of its wildness, beauty, complexity and austerity.” He’s the person who is god-smacked watching a wicked thunderstorm, who trips watching an eclipse, who sweats and is weirdly exited when riding out an earthquake and who is both terrified and overjoyed beholding a tornado. The Wild Man feels one with God and with the wild. This sends him in search of “Eden” — the way it must have been. The Wild Man understands both the fundamentals of God and the funk of nature.
The Wild Man experience produces an attitude, and this attitude is a threat to all that is evil. The person who is wild has the attitude that he is not an easy prey. He ceases to be lugubrious and begins to become a lion. He becomes a hazard to cultural constructs that would keep him, those he loves and all mankind dumb and down.
With wisdom from above and senses honed on earth, the Wild Man is not a dutiful and domesticated “cow” of the politically, ecclesiastically and culturally correct constructs. He is a lion … a strong, wise, fun-loving, lioness-loving leader, with a mission: to care for his family, his community and his culture as faithfully as he can.
Get Giles’ book: Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate
