Carl McColman writes at BeliefNet about the efforts of some to recapture and emphasize the "warrior spirit" of paganism:
These Pagans often identify as warriors, blending ancient or earth-centered spirituality with the ethics and ideals of the martial arts. ... Warrior spirituality recognizes that it is a limitation to see the Goddess as some sort of romantic peacenik. Try convincing mythical Goddesses like the Hindu Kali Ma, the Irish Morrigu, or the Greek Athena that Pagan spirituality is all about peace and love. Each of these figures are ferocious, take-no-prisoner warrior queens, far more concerned with security and self-defense than with playing nice in the multi-cultural sandbox.
Mind you, the elders of the community have not always cozied up to military Pagans. Barbara Ardinger, author of Finding New Goddesses, sees a fundamental link between Paganism and pacifism: "The destruction caused by war is unspeakably devastating--to ordinary people, to our so-called civilization, to our mother planet." Even more outspoken is the prominent Druid leader Isaac Bonewits, who wrote in his 1988 essay, "Warriors and Soldiers and Cops-Oh My!": "I believe that Neopagans, whether Wiccans, Druids or members of any other variety of Neopaganism, have no place in a modern superpower's military."
I wonder where this supposed "link" between paganism and pacifism is supposed to come from. True, there is a strong correlation between the two, but that is purely cultural in nature. It's an accident of historical forces that the paganism of today has been closely associated with pacifist, counter-culture forces in the West of the latter decades of the twentieth century.
If we look at pagan beliefs through the ancient past, however, we find that the "warrior" pagans are in good company - or, at the very least, that their actions and beliefs are entirely consistent with the deep historical roots of paganism. Pacifist pagans may believe that those aspects of paganism are the wrong aspects to emphasize, and that's fine, but they are very mistaken if they argue that those aspects don't exist in paganism.
It's interesting to see this debate occurring, however, because we see the same thing occurring in other religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. One group tries to emphasize a more militant, even violent, part of the religion's traditions and others try to argue that this group doesn't really belong in that religion and that they aren't "true believers" anymore.
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