This essay traces ideals of Western masculinity that have caused men to forsake and forget their vitalic, ecological function. How has this inheritance damaged men themselves, other beings and the body of the world? And what might men serve when they no longer pull the ox cart of capitalizing contest? How might the world be transformed if man preserved a wild intelligence and rekindled his more ancient way of relating — one that protects through fierce devotion a flourishing at the heart of his world?

Against the old broken model, I turn toward increasingly rare forms of masculine power: the wolf’s intelligence, before it was eradicated. The lion’s courage, before it was made extinct across Europe. And the forest’s bestowal of vitality, before the eons’ groves were felled for the wars and thrones of aristocrats and cosmic kings.

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