Fire in the Dark

Book excerpt: Men today have the ability to read and be inspired by masculine myths and stories from all of the world's religions. We can see how they evolved from one to another. Still, so many men find themselves searching for some sense of what is sacred and want to connect to something eternal, something greater than themselves. The question is: with so many choices, so many traditions, so many gods and heroes - which ones? In Fire in the Dark, author Jack Donovan - best known for his underground classic, The Way of Men - explores the common themes in these myths that are still relevant to the lives of men today. Beginning with the simple, primal metaphor of the campfire, Donovan identifies a tripartite system of masculine roles and shows how those roles have been repeated again and again throughout the history of myth and religion. It is the nature of men to create order from chaos, and when order has been created, it is the work of men to protect and perpetuate that order. These jobs have been idealized in world-ordering sky fathers and thundering warriors and fertility gods. Donovan has integrated these ideals into a natural religion for men that is not new, but actually draws from the very oldest ideas about what it means to be a man.