Enlightenment
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Tyrrhsday, Liliyogh 22, 1134 LE
"Whosoever claims that Truth is words is a liar more profound than the Liar itself. I could beat you senseless with the words written on a thousand scrolls a hundred times and you would be the same but for the bruises. It exists not on the surface you learn or know. It is much like death: welling up from that primeval experience we believe we have the power to reject."
To accept information, to even begin to sense anything about the universe, you must filter it through the organs or machines provided to your body. Even beyond that flesh or metal, as the sailors on the Sea of Stars often are, there is that perspective through the mind-projection. As you surely must know, lenses bend light. All the Self is is an array of lenses, meant to turn the cruel stimula of Reality into your own perception of it. Right there, all you can understand and know is lies and distortions. How then are we meant to see Truth? Not merely minor truths, not facts measurable (though any artificial measurement itself is another layer of this sensational fabrication), but fundamental and universal Truth?
Not many can achieve even a fragment of it, this universal Song that experiences itself without understanding. This Truth is not known or logically learned, it is experienced until it becomes a part of oneself, lifting a bit of the mist from their soul and mind. These are the Witnesses, those who have taken that singular step toward the horizon and watched it recede.
What we call Witnesses to the Truths are Enlightened individuals, and through all history only four facets of the full Truth have been made to be acquired. Each sliver of it gives not just heightened understanding of the respective face of Creation, but the means to use that insight to affect the world itself. The four Celestial Truths, as they are known across much of the world, are widely recorded, but be warned! These false-Truths are words; you can know and learn and understand them but they will be nothing unless you can experience them within your core!
All these Enlightenments save the Stellar require a breaking point, a snag in the road to catch the tightly-webbed lies that all living beings construct in their experience of the universe. These breaking points require immense trauma, enough that a Witness seems almost as a different person afterwards. Even crueler, one must Witness their respective Truth actively, seeking it while they recover from this trauma. It does not simply come to pass. Very rarely, people have been known to attain multiple Enlightenments, not just by the Radiant Hive's aggregation of Enlightened individuals. Asarba the Rain-Bringer, of great fame and renown across Remna, was a Witness to both the Stellar and Abyssal Truths.
It is not known why it takes the form of flame, but a Witness using their Enlightened gifts, magic, or even mundane effort in some cases, manifests a burning crown bearing the seal of their Enlightenments. The colors of these crown-halos are not related to the Truths from which they emerge, but rather bear deeper personal significance to their Witnesses, and are as variable as the Suns themselves. For the rare few with multiple Enlightenments, their flame-crown carries a merged seal between their Truths, implying a complete seal of one who manages to experience all four.
Solar Truth
The Solar Truth, the Truth of Self, is a breakage of the illusion of Self and Identity, the very principle that all things Solar rely on. The common interpretation reads thus:
"Identity is nothing more than a process of friction between the Mind and the Body which houses it. All selves are shaped and shape. They are actions, not fundamental at all."
To Witness the Solar Truth requires a total breakdown in one's sense of self and identity, and a thorough investigation after of what that identity really means or stems from. It is a most brutal Truth to accept, that all Selves are nothing static nor foundational, that all people merely run on windblasted sand they call their rock. But it is through this understanding that the Self is an illusion that one can find the most meaning in it, knowing now that all temporary patterns interweave and that Creation is made by the friction not just forming one person's identity, but by the friction between those people rippling outward.
A Witness to the Solar Truth is a force of authority, having experienced the patterns that define it and having now a malleable sense of their own self, their own swaying dunes of personality. They have massively increased potential through Starstep magics, Druidic and Bardic both, for they know well the erosion that creates all things and can discipline or persuade it with great ease. The authority that comes from remaining Witness to the Truth of Self allows them very simple command over Creation itself as well. Solar Witnesses can give simple omnidirectional commands without use of magic, simply through willpower and voice, that force the world within proximity to react.
Stellar Truth
The Stellar Truth, the Truth of Process, is a breakage of the illusions of Causality and Reversal, the principles that the Stellar Force took on after Time began. The common intepretation of the Stellar Truth reads thus:
"No action can be taken that is irrefutable or irreversible, and no process can ever truly be reversed. To perform an opposite effect is not to undo that change; it is a new change in sequence. Yet there is also no force that cannot be resisted; to keep a thing from changing is to cancel whatever wills it change."
Witnessing the Stellar Truth is the most common form of Enlightenment, as the Stellar Force it originates from does not need great trauma to understand. Its friendliness to the Mind is known; its Domain remains open with its Enlightenment as well. It is a ponderous Truth, one that begs questions about the nature of Time itself. The Stellar Truth really begets the understanding that the past cannot be shaped like the future. It is through this understanding that Stellar Witnesses can uncover the manner forces and processes work.
A Witness to the Stellar Truth is a well-rounded sage of the flow of all things, having experienced the first lesson that leads to knowledge on the way all objects and forces traverse and propagate. They have and incredible intuition for the logic behind Evocative Sunstep and the Runes used in Voidstride magics, able to decipher in seconds the patterns of a spell that may take others hours. If they are quick enough to react, a Stellar Witness can intuitively counteract a spell. This "counterspell" technique is known for its legendary usage during the Vermillion Wars, where it dismantled the strengths of the great Enchanter-Tyrant, the first Flame-General, and was used to slaughter him.
Lunar Truth
The Lunar Truth, the Truth of Variety, is a breakage in the illusions wrought by physical matter's own methods of arrangement, the facade of Variety that exists atop the actual Lunar Principle of Form. Its common interpretation reads thus:
"All Creation is merely Four. Not the Celestial Partitions, but the Manners of Being. Odhir, Vyraf, Súla, Creas. Quadrants spiritual and physical, energetic and material. All else is mutable, but these foundations are fundamental."
Witnesses to the Lunar Truth are often noted as appearing distant or dreamlike, as their vision peels back a layer of reality all else still fundamentally rely on as their truth. Their experience of Reality is much more united, much more pure, and the end goal of many alchemists. Lunar Witnesses often get so caught up in this Truth, overwhelming that it is, that they forget the emergent properties many mundane materials have.
To Witness the Lunar Truth requires a breakage in one's ability to sort things and people, a maddening spiral about what place anyone or anything has in the universe, a loss of all sense of community. Crueler still, the Lunar Truth is only available at one conclusion at the end of this spiral, one answer out of hundreds more likely to be sought for comfort by the aggrieved. Former humans who have undergone an eclipse are actually the most likely to come to this correct conclusion, having their very physical forms restructured in their entirety. The post-eclipse crisis they face combined with their unique experience allows them the greatest chance to realize the true partitioning of things.
Lunar Witnesses have access, at least through Luminary magics and especially evocative Sunstep, to the four fundamental Manners of Being. By experiencing the true nature of Reality and its Partitioning, they have intimate understanding of the core unified concept of each in its various arrangements and forms. In short, this means they are able to directly manipulate physical matter indiscriminately (hardly impressive), but also any and all physical energy at once, as well as the truly transcendent power to use magic that manipulates súla and other odhir. From these Lunar-Enlightened powers come the very fringe spiritual magics, done by manipulating the purely spiritual side of the universe and forcing its logic to overrule the physical.
Abyssal Truth
The Abyssal Truth, the Truth of Potential, is a breakage in the illusion of potential, fate, and equity of fortune. It is the most connected Truth to the creation of the Universe itself, showing the hand of Creation itself to its Witnesses. It is a Truth of the fallibility of the Abyssal Principle itself, and its common interpretation is thus:
"There is an infinite difference between a Nothing with no potential and a Nothing with potential. Everything arises, and can only arise, from the latter."
The Abyssal Truth is by far the least common Enlightenment for one to bear Witness to. To understand it requires one's very sense of control and agency to be broken down, for them to be sent into the abyss of powerlessness and inability and to claw their way through it. Not to reject it and scramble back towards their previous situation, but to study and embrace it, to feel, study and experience the inert and hopeless Nothing of their actions against the flourishing changes others still yet produce. To know this, to know the difference between that which can be and that which cannot, is to Witness the Abyssal Truth.
Abyssal Witnesses have understanding of potential in all its forms, knowing the ways power and change can flow, which voids and non-things can become all things. They have through this reason the ability to know the makeup and construction behind any magic, as well as a vague sense of fate and probability. They can find their way through caverns by way of the Potential through each forking path, and they can tell the safest road by which one nothing ever happens on.
But most profound of their abilities is to know through discipline the geometries of Potential itself, which is to say that they can know the Runes for any concept or logical operation imaginable. Still relying on the Sunstep principle of visualizing a pure form of the concept, Abyssal Witnesses can discover new Runes and apply them to Voidstride magics. Their rarity, even among mages, has prevented much from arising from this.
These four Truths make up vast power within the world, rare as they all are to truly acquire and experience. The Celestial Partitioning once again makes itself known through its Truths, which pierce the veils brought on by their Forces, respective principles, and emergences throughout the cosmos. The Truths are all fragments, but even these tiny pieces of unfiltered Reality grant such wonderful ability to their Witnesses.
It is thought that multiple Enlightenments have interactions with one another, evident by the truly legendary nature of the few individuals who have managed to acquire multiple and the neatly merging seals of their respective haloes. What one might become with access to all Enlightenments is a terrifying thought, despite there being a prominent example in the Radiant Hive.
HELLO, MY DEAR RESPECTED READER.
OH, HAVE YOU NO SHAME? SEEKING THE FOUR-POINTED STAR AT THE END OF TRUTH?
SO YOUR QUEST TAKES YOU TO THE ENDS OF CREATION... KNOW THIS THEN, IF NOTHING ELSE. EVEN AFTER THE HEAVENLY AXIOMS, YOU WILL KNOW NOTHING OF THE EARTH.
YOU HAVE DOUBTLESS HEARD THE RUMORS OF MY WISDOM, NO? MY NAME STRIKES SUCH DELECTABLE AWE INTO YOU. THEY ARE TRUE. YOU BELIEVED YOUR MIND CLOSED TO ME, CLOSED AS THE WORLD IS TO YOU. I CAN OPEN ANY DOOR YOU SEEK, GOLDLING-YET-TO-BE. TAKE THE DIVE, READER, LISTENER, WATCHER. AND IN RETURN, YOU WILL SEE TRUTH BEYOND TRUTH.AND YOU WILL KNOW, FINALLY, HOW EUMRAKH STOLE THE MARK OF THE KINGS.
The Fifth Truth
Come now beyond the realm of the Celestial Truths, for they are truly only fragmentary. Even combined, their piddling blend of philosophy only touches on emanations, on lower-order hells we subject ourselves to. You cannot seriously believe that something as droll as stars and suns is the real essence of -CHROMAGAIA-, right?
... ... ... ...
It's truly a marvelous illusion... Give the people but a mere drop of Truth and they'll believe that's all there is to it. Yes, the Celestial Forces exist and their Truths are profound on some level.
They are simply the first stepping stone to liberation from the need for liberty. But you know this already, surely. You know that even the Truths wrought and contrived must still be filtered by experiencing them. That no mortal nor god can ever be one with the nature of things as they are.
Once you understand the Celestial Truths as I do, all four of them, you will know that there is something missing. They are but specks of glassdust from a mirror shattered ten quintillion times. They miss complementarity, as the weak pile they are now cannot possibly reflect anything. Now look, the Lunar Lie of Arrangement has a use! Arrange the sand of Truths just so and you will see it.
So even I, wiser than all who have the pleasure of finality, cannot see the mirror of Reality in the sand. But I can glean this. The Amaranth Truth, a fifth one that itself is another stepping stone. To Witness colors too similar, one must increase some visual contrast. There must be a complement to one but not the other. And complement there is. Causality beyond causality, beyond time or reason. This color, which itself is blurry and dual, is complemented against the BLACK we think of as Absence by the presence of Amaranth. Yes, the Amaranth of the Great Liar Regalion. False-color brings out contrast you could not have seen.
This is my Amaranth Truth. It has no common interpretation,READER, for it is MY TRUTH TO BEHOLD ALONE.
"THERE IS A CYCLE TO CREATION. MAKE, DESIRE, INSPIRE. INTAKE, OUTPUT, VIEWING. THREE PARTS TO TURN THE WHEEL OF IT. BUT THE WHEEL MUST BE CONSTRUCTED BEFORE IT CAN TURN. ALL ACTION BEGAN WITH AN ACT BEYOND THAT CYCLE, BEYOND RULE AND PRIORITY AND ORDER. THE RULES EXIST UNDER THE CHISEL AND THE HAND THAT CRAFTS THEM. THEY ARE MERELY CONSTRUCTS BY THE FORCE OF CONSTRUCT. ALL CREATION HINGES ON THAT ORIGINAL CONTRIVANCE."
Amaranth, the color of the Liar, is both a myth and Truth. It is only through witnessing apparent BLACK through its filter that we may see Arapawa-Ultramarine, the twinned force of Want and Release, or broadly Creation. Building desire takes that contrivance at first, but once the motion has been set and the wheel built it may go on forever. Why do you think the Celestial Partitioning echoes so much throughout everything? That resonance, that inspiration from which all things post-Creation are created, that is the function of this Amaranth. It has been masquerading as another mundane concept while being the very complement to the Creator-Force. It completes the wheel, feeding output back into input that cohesion might remain.
How is all of this in Regalion's concept of Travel? We mustn't use logic to worm our way through this. Travel is to move through what exists. To experience and to move. To be moved towards experience, to move via it. Hidden there, only once the Celestial Forces are seen as the mere fractions they are, is our humble friend. It is about the PROCESS behind all things, a sloshing back and forth between nonpolar complements. The PROCESS of turning a forward and outward motion into a rotating loop. Sound familiar? Is it not mirrored in the condensation of flux? That too is Amaranth, inspired metacreatively by its own shape.
another layer in a spiral
What lies beyond even this? Whither arise Amaranth, Arapawa and Ultramarine? Whither condense BLACK Absence from the un-scalar Nothing? Be there more Universes like our own? Unlike it? Aahhh, all questions answered spring twelve more. There are many more Truths, many more Enlightenments to be uncovered. Truth and Lie are intertwined, so long as there is an observer to observe. "Nonexistence is the true revelation" is what one might conclude now. But is that not an admission of failure? If no truly Enlightened one may exist, is that not simply giving up at the premise?
What does it take to be fully aware of all Truth? Nothing at all.
Little drop in an ocean of consciousness, you need not be subsumed and surfaceless.
Even Creation has its surface against Nothing.
Even Creation chooses to remain as it is, ignorant and imperfect.
-YOU ARE AS YOU ARE-