***
And you shall tell thine hatchlings in that day, saying, ‘Thus it was told to me, as it has been told since the first.’
***
The silence as the drums faded far above was complete. In the far recesses of the sacred cave, no shadow or gleam of the world above could penetrate, and the two creatures rapt in devout stillness scarcely seemed to breathe. On this, the last night of the calendar, it was a time for secrets long untold, and even the dry bones of the rock seemed taut with anticipation. With a sound like the rasping of a lid on an ancient sarcophagus, the old one spoke the ritual invocation.
“Hear, O Nephew, of the font and origin of the world, and of the wellspring of consciousness. Learn the truth of existence and identity and be thou not longer confused. Even so did I sit at the feet of my Master, and he before his, since the first of our kind came to the land.
“Who can say what came before Time, what lies outside Space? Sameness and Change were not; Light and Darkness were not; Male and Female, Rise and Fall, Cold and Heat, Dryness and Moisture, Love and Strife – NOT. Yet there was no lack. Complete unto itself the Eternal Serpent did at once give birth to and devour itself, swallowing itself whole ceaselessly. This Dance was the wellspring of all that Is, has Been, and could ever Be.
“As if frozen, the lifetime of all possible worlds was immediately clear; both the perfect Cosmic Egg which contains the Seed of Creation and the Gaping Maw of Ultimate Demise, that crushes all things both existent and potential. They stood in desperate counterpoise, reflected infinitely in the jeweled webs of the undifferentiated Absolute.
“The Moment envisioned: a self-limitation, whereby the Net was broken, each reflection cut off, conscious only of itself as a nested fractal hierarchy of seething opposites, feeling vaguely as though this ought not to be the case.
“One jewel-overmind saw the Egg as itself coming to be and the Serpent as fulfillment and renewal, and behold, this was a wonder indeed. No longer remembering or regretting the Infinity of which it was once a part, now apart from the Beyond-Within that some call Abyss, the Jewel became at once Egg and Serpent, Creation and Dissolution, pulsing like a love-beat, breathing in-out like a rice paper soul in the breeze of Perfection.
“This was the beginning of Cyclic Change, which we know dimly as
Time.”
As if to emphasize the extension of time from source to infinitude, the old one fell silent. As the pause drew on, his young audience grew restive.
“Senex, wise uncle, tell me more of this great truth, hidden by the wise from those who would despoil its beauty.”
“Sit then, Raucous, sit and hear of the Great Principles by which the Seeming arises from the limitless sky of Being.”
“All things must change form, yet something there is that remains unchanged. This is the Path of the Serpent: to unroll from mouth to tail, every phase and form in sequence, only to consume the tail again in a new cycle; so do the myriad forms arise, change, and return to formlessness. Even so does the Egg crack asunder to the Hatchling’s tooth, the young drake strives upward to clasp his mate, and the fulsome Weyr-Mother in time lay anew.
“So too the worlds arise from
Air and
Light,
Flame condensing into molten rock and then cooling; rain washes down to grind away the very bones of the land, and the silted sea gives forth boiling mists to form worlds anew.
“Is that where Dragon Fire comes from?”
Unruffled by the interruption, Senex intoned smoothly, “Surely eaters of rock must belch forth the last flame that remains unquenched within.
“In the self-created world, all forms strive to honor the circle of the Serpent and the rounded Egg. Our females live with this as vessels of the Life Magic. Yet there is a
Will to Become, some say born of the consciousness of dearth, some say arising from the self-perfecting drive. This
Will is straight: linear, masculine, unyielding. It loves the corners and edges of artifice. Some believe the line is the smallest of a circle, hardly a scale on the Serpent’s back. But may not a plentitude of lines form a circle as easily as any other form? So which is prior? Likewise a spherical Egg is the cross-rotation of the Serpent’s circular path; drawn at last fully unto itself does not the Serpent vanish into a point infinitesimal? And what is a line if not a sequence of points: extended, yet comprising elements without extension? For these are the intension and remission of degrees regarding which we can only hypothesize.
It was becoming clear that these conundrums were better experienced in meditation than spoken in such terms. ”O, Uncle, I cry! I do not see the point to any degree of such extended musing.”
Senex replied, “Listen well to the archetypes of growth and form, and understand.”
“Each thing holds within a Book, a Candle, and a Bell. The Book tells the story of how the organism unfolds from itself unto itself, congruent at every stage and scale. The Candle is the driving force: nisus, entelechy, call it what you will. It is what impels, the élan vital, quintessence,
Heart of the Flame. Without this fire no change or eventuation occurs. The Bell is the harmonic soul, tuning in and resonating – the why of existence. From golden motes cascading up the rays of the Autumn Sun to the greatest bronze dragon in flight to the living stone of Caer and Weyr—all ring with the echo of each!”
***
For so the Sages have written: ‘Nature naturing as natural things; G-d divining divinity. This is the
Way.’
***
“The order of the world proceeds by spirals, triangles, and circles. The growth spiral emerges rightward, outward, and upward; this is exhalation, unrolling, manifesting. The renewal spiral recovers leftward, inward, and downward; it is to inhale, consume, potentiate. Fire – Male – Upward, the triangle leaps from base to apex skyfathering the New. Air – Female – Downward, it funnels grace and mercy into the changeless earthmothering source of Magic.
“As the drop disturbs the stillness of the mere, and wavelets propagate from nothing out to nothingness, so the circle is the alpha and the omega of perception. Fount and foundation, limit and limn, circles go rippling outward and overlapping to yield the blueprints and intersections of all else. Thus truly it has been said that the circle is the only letter in the alphabet of growth.
***
***
”But, Wise One, is it not also said that the world is made of four principles, earth, air, fire and water?”
“Aye, by many.
“And of the four qualities that complement them: hot, dry, cold, and wet. All things are said to proceed from these and to participate in them to one extent or another; there is condensation and rarefaction, sublimation and deposition. Then, too, some hold the finest dust of each to be irreducible, all things built up of combinations of these parts together with motion in the void. Growth and decay thus illustrate attractive structuring impulses (Love) or repulsive scattering ones (Strife). Sometimes Love and Strife intersperse, weaving a delicate balance we perceive as order; then again the outcomes may be more subtle and the dynamic resolution of opposites appears as entropy. But this is not the whole story.”
”How not?”
“The distance a dragon can fly without rest is not even visible compared to an image of the known lands. Just so all we experience or hear tell of is less than a scale of the great Serpent or a shard of the first Egg. How then can we talk of universals with the same language we use for those particulars with which we are most familiar?”
The old one lapsed once more into his reverie. This time his nephew joined him, for when silence is spontaneous, speech becomes extraneous. After what seemed like no time at all, or an eternity, but was in actuality a little less than an hour, the lesson resumed.
“When the primordial world first arose, only the subtle light was, called AION, the Invisible Sun by some, casting no shadow among names and forms. As a point to a circle, this shone forth into the casual world. This world has neither center nor edge in a strict sense, although manifesting in a way metaphoric, like a circle extended radially outward from a point by an infinity of beams. Some call it apeiron, the Boundless or the Open Gate. Here the monad became dyadic, giving rise to Light and Shadow, Being and Void, Creation and Destruction, Good and Evil. The first-order becoming is known as the first hypostasis. This is Atzilut, the world of names that control.
“Then, as a circle to a sphere, the casual world shone forth again, giving shape to the celestial or astral world, the B’reishis, the Heavens, or the Firmament. Herein are the most refined essences it is possible to perceive directly and yet recall to words. It is the natural place of spirits, and the exalted among us may travel within, or return here upon death of the body, without dissolution. Here the sky of the sky and the deep of the deep do found our perceptions of the above and the within. Here are born sigils and myths, symbols and archetypes. The shining forth of this realm is the second hypostasis.
“And it is said that some few are able to re-ascend the ladder of being, as they remain pure and uncorrupt, not tied to the gross material world. They may enter the astral world bodily, emerging at another place in the scheme of things, in a process known as kweisatz ha-derekh, the Shortening of the Way. The secret of this technique has not been given to the un-initiated.
“But it remains to tell of the House of the Fallen, the cast-off, cast-out, cast-down, imperfect world. The ordinary, mundane, profane realm. Dregs of cosmic glory in which we kill and die, hoping only for the peace of a moment, the touch of a loved one, a fleeting glimpse of something neither absurd nor tragic. This is malkhut, the Ground or Foundation; some call it a sewer of existence. Here we play our roles in theaters of sublime ridicule, demanding others honor our petty slights and quibbles as though we might gain status from displaying the extent of our pale scars and scabrous imperfections. Yet even here is there something sacred, some light that remains unsullied, fractured and splintered by numberless reflections in the chaotic foam of individuality. This is the realm of separation, fear, and hate; this is also the realm of union, love, and joy. For no longer need we all remain utterly distinct. This is the third hypostasis, but it is the base of the ladder that returns to the all-that-is-one.
“In the House of the Fallen are many chambers, as those who have returned from the entrance-hall attest. We live on the best of all possible worlds, for it is here that we may find the paving stones on the true path. Once, it is said, the world was orderly and harmonic. Our ancestors lived thousands of years as the ground itself strove to bring forth nectar and ambrosia. Sickness and suffering were nearly unknown, and death itself little more than a sigh into the next world. What did Time and Space, with their limits and brutal regularities, mean to us in the Gold Age, we who were blest to know wind and rock, snow and sea, loam and light in friendship? Our song was as thunder in distant mountains, and our dance as fallen leaves in a cyclone. A dragon could fly six weeks in any direction without passing the same place twice. Now all roads are bent, and the mists boil at the edges of the world, and our maps say, in the blank spaces, ‘Here be bipeds.’ The world we have known passes before its time, even as I speak!
“Yet there is reason to hope, even as we feel our despair. For we old ones remember the prophecy. As the power in the world wanes and our kind diminish, we know that one day a creature shall be born of the
Light and
Air, hatched in the form of a biped, but with
Flame in her heart. We await the g-ddess who will restore our kind and our world to the path of righteousness.
“Nor will there be long to wait, for even now forces gather to do battle for our souls and honor. We will know the Shorter Way; we will speak without sound; we will fulfill the prophecy.”
This was all too much to retain, and the young listener burst forth in eagerness and confusion, “But, Senex, how can the world be so damaged that no great circles remain?”
Senex replied, “Our best minds say that the world has an energy to it, not perceptible to our undisciplined senses, that makes some directions easier to travel than others. You know the stone that draws iron?”
“You mean tickle-stone, that the males eat for a game when they are too young to claim a mate?”
“The same.
“When the world was young it is said rocks flowed like snow in the sun, and the tickle-stone, as you call it, did spread itself like a net over the surface of the world, converging in two points of focus. By encircling these points one could move in seemingly straight lines and yet return to the same place, having traveled the whole world. Now the plan crumbles into ruin, and hundreds of nodes take the place of the former poles. Even flocks cannot find wintering grounds some years. No-one has attempted a Short Way since before my Father’s time. But the g-ddess will change that, you’ll see.”
“Uncle, you spoke of ascension – climbing the ladder of existence. How may this be accomplished?”
“I can neither tell nor show you except to point the way to the lowest rung, my nephew.
“Three principles there are to grasp it: duty to ones fellows, denial of the lower impulses, discipline of perception. These fight three veils: pride of personality, pride of the flesh, and pride of the intellect. Mastery yields three virtues: mercy, generosity, and insight. Indulgence spawns three vices: arrogance, greed, and ignorance. Rare indeed is he who can maintain hold on the first rung; find such a teacher to help you ascend.”
“But what of the land and its peoples, the creatures of air and sea, field and wood? What of our customs and history? What of the greater and lesser bloodlines? And our society? What of Weyrmaking and Impression? There is so much unsaid!”
“Your youth betrays you, nephew. Have you no one at your den to tell you such things? Fill your mind with details and the buzz of your thoughts will drown out the quiet speech of the stones! That is enough for one night!”
) when My Love was totally relaxed and we were floating aimlessly on the world currents, I decided to delve deeper, and asked what He had meant. "Come," He said, taking My hand, "and I will show you the only TRUE native of Eiran. 
) Each contact created physical substance!! And touching the same thing twice brought forth two different physical things. Wonderous things that contain different ratios of Love and the other.
) of Love can be found. They protect those who have chosen Love from those who will not.
