Steven Pressfield

Episode Forty-Six: A Digression: The Western Movie

By Steven Pressfield |

The hero in American Westerns (and Samurai tales and post-apocalyptic movies like “Mad Max”) is the Warrior Archetype personified, at least in its latter-day configuration of the solitary man of violence, who lives by his own code and operates as a law unto himself.

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Episode Forty-Four: The Soldier and the Sage

By Steven Pressfield |

The yogis of Alexander’s India sat in silence, naked in the sun.

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Episode Forty-Three: The Naked Wise Men

By Steven Pressfield |

“I have conquered the need to conquer the world” means “I have defeated the dark side of the Warrior Archetype within me.”

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Episode Forty-One: The Universal Soldier

By Steven Pressfield |

Are warriors the same in all centuries, in all nations?

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Notes from the Inner War

By Steven Pressfield |

My girlfriend Diana and I were shooting a video for the “Warrior Archetype” series when we came upon this charming country cottage.

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Episode Twenty-Five: The Western Way Of War

By Steven Pressfield |

Today’s episode borrows heavily from Victor Davis Hanson’s book, The Western Way of War, whose thesis is that the way Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and all great Western generals down to today chose to wage war was to seek a pitched, decisive infantry battle that, at one blow, would decide everything.

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Episode Seventeen: Rightful Lord of His Own Person

By Steven Pressfield |

The Greeks gave us democracy, courts of law, philosophy, drama, much more.

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Episode Eleven: Be Brave My Heart

By Steven Pressfield |

Combat for the ancient Greeks was an up-close-and-personal affair. Either you killed the man across from you or he killed you.

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Episode Ten: Then We’ll Have Our Battle In The Shade

By Steven Pressfield |

A writer’s story about how “Gates of Fire” came to be.

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Episode Nine: Why Study the Warrior Archetype?

By Steven Pressfield |

Do we study the Warrior Archetype so we can strap on a sword and march off to battle?

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