Unseen Warfare

A field manual for impending conflict?

I’m still somewhere in the penumbra of the digital marketing/hustle bro space, despite my intentional efforts to extricate from it. I had assumed, back when my clumsy efforts to promote my little side-hustle-turned-million-dollar-company yielded great fruit, that I might have some kind of skill or aptitude in that area, despite the frequent projectile vomiting and self-loathing digital marketing gave me.

I tried to make it my career. I sucked at it. I was glad to finally call a tactical retreat.

However, what I’m doing now still requires that I “get out there” and continue to share and engage “content.” The difference now, and the thing that enables me to do it consistently, is that I’m doing it for “fun.” Or rather, I’m pursuing the things I enjoy.

In other words: exactly what the gurus said I should be doing all along. Sigh.

This is sort of my humble justification for spending so much time on my naughty pleasure: Twitter/X.

To wit, I unexpectedly went viral the other day. Very small ‘v’ in that “viral,” though.

This always happens: I’m feeeeeling creatively dry, but I know I have to keep the algorithms happy, so I’ll throw them some chum. In this case, I posted on X about a book I recently acquired: “Unseen Warfare: As edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and revised by Theophan the Recluse.” I might have seen it before, but it’s been coming up a lot lately, so I went searching for it and lo and behold, my home church bookstore had a copy.

Here’s a snippet. It’s from Chapter 15: “War should be waged ceaselessly and courageously.” It’s an imperfect recording—the second or third attempt to create a sample to pitch to the publisher for an audiobook project—but I need to move on to other things here, so…yeah.

All I did was mention it on X. “Finally picked up this gem this weekend. So far, so great.” I added a dimly lit picture that I didn’t even bother to edit.

Evidently, I stumbled into something important to the great Orthodox underground, although a few Catholics gave it a like as well. (I believe it was originally written by a Catholic, so it gets ecumenical points).

As of right now, this simple post has earned 195 likes, 13 reposts, generated 11 comments, and was bookmarked by 24 people. It also coincided with a shout-out by a huge Orthodox/masculinity account, and together that landed more than a 100 new followers.

These are not big league numbers. So why does it matter?

Well, it matters to my ego, for one. These are big numbers for me. It’s nice to get some validation while I toil away in this solitary exile.

It’s also important, I believe, because people are waking up to the battle. Sure, it’s easy to be deluded by the echo chambers of social media, assuming that “everyone” is all on the same page, even though “everyone” inhabits a very small island in a very small world. This can lead to tragic consequences—for example, teenagers hacking off bits of themselves to become something “everyone” says is their true identity.

I’m not deluded. I know that the actual number of people who would look at a book with such a horrible cover and esoteric title and say, “YES! That’s for me!” is roughly .00000000037 percent of the planetary population. (And that’s probably generous.)

Nonetheless, the topic of “spiritual warfare” seems to cross political and denominational lines. More generally, you hear “everyone” saying that they can “feel” something coming. It’s a sense of foreboding. Wars and rumors of wars. After the recent U.S. election, both sides are more than expressing a sense of something, they’re arming up and ratcheting up the bellicose rhetoric.

For many of us, the conflict isn’t about a national or international conflict. It appears that the veil is slipping, or the winds of of chaos flutter it about, giving us glimpses of who or what is really running the show.

The other reason I think this book is so beloved by a shocking number of people is that people are looking for ways to close the gap between high-falutin’ theology and everyday life. Something is shifting. The armies of Heaven and the armies of Hell seem to be doing a lot more training maneuvers…and yet. And yet we still have to go to work.

As one version of a common trope puts it, “For the last 4 years the world has felt like it’s on the verge of utter chaos but we still keep having to go to work. This sucks. Worst apocalypse ever.”

I’ve felt the strain for years—God calls me to deeper communion with Him, but I still have bills to pay. You might say that resolving that conflict is the whole point of this publication.

“Unseen Warfare” is, I’m told, a sort of field manual to resolving that conflict. It is allegedly a field manual for spiritual warriors who live in the world. We’ll see. Seems kind of strange to be giving a book report for a book I haven’t yet read, but I hope this bears out. (I’ll let you know). Most of what I read at the monastery was written by monks for monks. “Translating” that to practical wisdom for the Everyman is turning into a bit of a vocation for me.

One thing seems certain: war is coming. The thesis of this book is that it’s already here, and has been here since a snake sold a woman an apple with a hidden subscription to a horrible destiny. For a certain subset of a subset of people, this book is the field manual for the current and impending conflict.

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Thanks for reading! And special thanks to Traycee, my 300th subscriber! I’ll write something about that soon, but I did want to acknowledge the milestone achieved this morning around 5:45 AM before one of you wises up and unsubscribes.

That reminds me: please do share, like or subscribe. I’m going for it, and every bit of encouragement helps. If I could do this for a living, I might even be able to afford an editor!