The Magus’s Retreats

There is a story of an ancient Greek general, recounted by Machiavelli:

Philopoemen, the leader of the Achaeans, even in peacetime thought of nothing but the art of war. Walking outside the city with friends, he would now and then stop and ponder: “What if the enemy has taken that hill, and we with the army are here — on whose side is the advantage? How should we withdraw if we are forced to retreat?”

For the Magus — the warrior in this story — an important question arises: “How should one retreat?”

It turns out that, in principle, there are two kinds of retreats: retreat from occupied positions and withdrawal from commitments.

The first means loss of Power, the second — Authority. Accordingly, it becomes clear that when speaking of the Magus’s retreat, one can discuss only the surrender of positions, since Power can be regained, whereas lost Authority cannot be restored.

We have already said that the spirit of the warrior, the spirit of the Magus, is determined by the strength of his will — the ability to organize, to give direction to his desires. The function of volitional regulation is to improve efficiency of activity, and a volitional action is usually understood as a conscious, goal-directed act to overcome external and internal obstacles by acts of will.

A typical case of the will’s involvement in directing activity is a situation involving a struggle between incompatible motives, each of which demands at the same moment that different actions be taken. The will in choosing action manifests itself in the fact that the warrior sometimes chooses a more difficult but in his judgment more promising course of action and strives not to abandon it.

Nevertheless, as we have already said, the very logic of the Way sometimes requires retreat.

How, then, to understand when a retreat is timely and necessary, and when it is merely a defeat? In other words — when is it proper to retreat, and when to continue holding the chosen line?

This question is, in fact, very close to the question of assessing the odds: it is obvious that so long as there is a chance to achieve the desired (that is, what is necessary on the Way), however slight, retreat signifies defeat. At the same time, fighting for that which has no chance of realization means halting movement, and in such a situation it is necessary to retreat and continue moving from another point.

In this sense one must remember that the goal of the Way is movement, namely, the Way itself, and in some cases moving backward — this is the only available form of movement. However, let us stress again that this backward movement, this retreat, is justified exclusively when forward movement in the current position is completely excluded, and to resume it the position must be changed.

Being an embodiment of movement, of realization, the Western Magus is averse to stopping and rest; for him movement is always better than stopping (indeed, this carries the danger of becoming carried away and failing to look around, which is absolutely inadmissible). Therefore, he prefers moving backward — to stagnation, to a dead end — when that dead end is truly insurmountable at his current stage of development. No wonder the Greek word for Power is “dynamis” — movement. It is through it that the Magus acquires his integrity.