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The Steel Orb
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His Grace Fire asked me, "If you were to crystallize your dark journey in one act you did, what would it be?"
I slid my mind through my sins. I watched with a strange mixture of loathing, shame, and haunting desire as I--
"Stop," he said. "I shouldn't have asked that. I tempted you."
I looked at him and blinked. "None of the actions I did encapsulates the journey."
He cocked one eyebrow.
"Or rather, all of them did, but the entire dark path is captured by one action he didn't do. I neither gave nor received reverence."
"That doesn't seem surprising," he nodded. "Pride is--"
"That's also true," I said.
He looked at me.
"In our reverence, we greet one another with a holy kiss. That is hard to appreciate until you have tried to step outside of it. We try to be spiritual people, but however hard we try, matter is always included. Every one of the Mysteries includes matter. We worship with our bodies. Fasting does us good because we are creatures of body--all of the Destroyers fast, all of the time, and never does any of them profit by it. Our great hope is that we will be raised in transformed, glorified and indestructible bodies to gaze on the Light bodily for ever.
"More to the point, the holy kiss is the one act in the entire Sacred Scriptures that is ever called holy."
He blinked. "I hadn't thought about it that way, but you are right."
"And... there was licentiousness; we could do wrong with our bodies, but this is only for the reason that the holy kiss was not possible. The spiritual embrace draws and works through body, because body is part of spirit. Their asceticism and libertinism alike exist because of a wedge between spirit and body."
"How can they do that? That is like driving a wedge between fire and heat."
"Of course you can't," I said, "but they think they can."
"My son," he said, "you are placing things upside down. We fast to subdue our bodies, which have become unruly; spirit and matter are not equal partners, nor is matter the center of things. In this world or the next."
"You're wrong," I said. "You only say that because your approach to spirit has always assumed matter. If you had genuinely lived the life and practice of believing that matter was evil, was not our true selves, not illusion, you would understand and not say that."
I winced when I realized what he'd just said. I waited for his rebuke. Or a slap.
"Go on," he said. "I'm listening."
"Or maybe that was too bold. Spirit is supreme; the Glory is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. But... struggling to subdue matter, and impregnate it with spirit, does not let you realize what place matter has. Returning from despairing in matter as evil is very different."
"Despair?"
"Despair..." I thought. "Matter is evil, probably the evil creation of an evil god. If that is true, you cannot relate to the cosmos with joy, not even abstemenious joy. You must despair in it. And--I think this is connected, it's all connected--if the entire cosmos is an illusion which we must escape, then no less is its creator the same sort of thing. There's a perverse acknowledgment, I think, that the cosmos must reflect its Creator and radiate its glory. Because if they believe this horrible thing about the cosmos, they believe the same about its Creator, and as they transgress the cosmos as an obstacle they get past, so they transgress its Creator as an obstacle to get past. From what I've heard, their pictures of subordinate gods vary, but one of the few common features is that since this cosmos is evil or illusory, and this cosmos must reflect its Creator, the Creator himself must be something we need to get past if we are to find real good."
"You are describing an error that is really more than one error."
"Yes. Things are... private. They consider themselves more spiritual, more of the spiritual power we use to touch spiritual realities, yet somehow they have a hydra's different pictures of what those spiritual realities themselves. In some of them it almost sounds as if that spiritual apprehension is private."
"I won't ask you to inventory everything that was private. Did you see any of the Scriptures?"
"Not many. And those I read were... odd."
"Odd?"
"The Gospels are wondrous documents indeed."
"Indeed."
"But they never pander. Never does a writer say, 'I tell these things that you may be titillated.' However amazing or miraculous the events are, the miracles are always secondary, signs that bear witness to a greater good.
"And I appreciated this after the few occasions I was able to read their Gospels. Those books do not tell the story of when Heaven and Earth met; the ones I read don't tell a story at all; they are collections of vignettes or stories, that suck you in with the appearance of hidden wisdom. They appeal to someone despairing of this cosmos and seeking what is hidden behind it. Your Grace, only when I had tried to dive into those crystallized vortices had I realized how pedestrian the Gospels are: the Glorious Man shines with the uncreated Light and we blandly read that his clothes are white as no fuller on earth could reach them."
"Hmm," he said. "That's like--a bit like the difference between marriage and prostitution. In many ways."
"And... if you understand this basic despair, a despair that forges the entire shape of their relationship to Creation and Creator, you will understand not only their excessive asceticism and their license, their belief that the Light is not good, but also their magic. The incantations and scrolls are in one sense the outermost layer of a belief: if this Creation is evil and illusion, if one must transgress it to find truth, then of course one does not interact with it by eating and drinking, ploughing and sewing. One must interact in hidden, occult ways, and gain powers."
"I see. But don't get into that; I'd rather not have you remember that poison. And I assume you could say much more, but I'm beginning to get the picture, and I want to pray and contemplate the Glory before meeting any more of it.
"How would you summarize it, in a word?
"There are many ways our Scriptures can be summarized in a word: 'Love the Glory with all of your inmost being and your soul and your might, and love your neighbor as yourself.' 'He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Glory require of you, but to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly in the Light.' 'The Glory became a Man and the Glorious Man that men might become Glorious Men and Glories.' And this error could be summarized in many ways...
"'Your spirit too pure for this unworthy cosmos.'"
"Take a rest," he said. "I think you've said enough for now. Let's pray."
"Oh, and one other thing. When your heart is set on pushing past the One Glory, there seem to many gods offering their protection and guidance."
"Pray, child. You've said enough."
Jonathan's Corner
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The Steel Orb
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