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January 13 - January 25, 2025
“Ajencis,” he continued, “once wrote that all men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves—they are the rulers of Men … But what about men like me, Kellhus? What about men who fool no one?”
Most, by and large, were born narrow, and cared to see only that which flattered them. Almost without exception, they assumed their hatreds and yearnings to be correct, no matter what the contradictions, simply because they felt correct. Almost all men prized the familiar path over the true.
“He has, as you likely know, many names. The Men of ancient Kûniüri called him Mog-Pharau, from which we derive ‘No-God.’ In ancient Kyraneas, he was simply called Tsurumah, the ‘Hated One.’ The Nonmen of Ishoriol called him—with the peculiar poetry that belongs to all their names—Cara-Sincurimoi, the ‘Angel of Endless Hunger’ … He is well named. Never has the world known a greater evil … A greater peril.”
Whenever I think back, I’m filled with wonder that I still live, and with horror that I still travel by night.
If men must spare women the world, then women must spare men the truth—as though each forever remained alternate halves of the same defenceless child.
“And ‘barbarity,’ I fear, is simply a word for unfamiliarity that threatens.”
By definition, the future couldn’t anticipate the present. What came after could-n’t come before …
“Stones are nothing more than far-flung fists. Better to be beaten than to be burned …”
Why must I conquer, you ask? War makes clear. Life or Death. Freedom or Bondage. War strikes the sediment from the water of life.
“War is intellect,” the Scylvendi chieftain said. “So long as you and your people insist on waging it with your hearts, you are doomed.”
“Topoi are like heights, places where one can see far … But where heights are built with mounds of stone and earth, topoi are built with mounds of trauma and suffering. They are heights that let us see farther than this world … some say into the Outside.
it referred to the paradox of power, that the more security one exacted from the world, the more insecure one became.
That was why they thought the future a Whore, something who favoured no man over another. Something heartbreakingly indifferent.
What came before determined what came after … This was the basis of the Probability Trance. This was the principle that made mastering circumstance, be it with word or sword, possible. This was what made him Dûnyain.
Could what came after actually determine what came before? What if the line running between past and future was neither singular nor straight, but multiple and bent, capable of looping in ways that contradicted the Law of Before and After?
“The craven see folly everywhere,” a powerful voice boomed from the lower tiers. “All daring is rash in their eyes, because they would call their cowardice ‘prudence.’”
Mysteries could be killed, if one possessed the power.
Strange, the way cruelty and jubilation could strike such sweet chords.
She tried questioning it away by asking the priests she bedded, but they always said the same thing, that the God dwelt only in temples, and that she’d made a brothel of her body.
How does one learn innocence? How does one teach ignorance? For to be them is to know them not. And yet they are the immovable point from which the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly. They are the Absolute.
“It means,” the man said from behind him, “that we must uproot the world. That we must destroy all that offends.”
“So often when I speak,” he said, “I don’t recognize my voice.”
“Witness is the seeing that testifies, that judges so that it may be judged. You saw, and you judged. A trespass had been committed, an innocent had been murdered. You saw this.”
“Everywhere … Everywhere we’re surrounded by the blessed and the cursed, the sacred and the profane. But our hearts are like hands, they grow callous to the world. And yet, like our hands even the most callous heart will blister if overworked or chafed by something new. For some time we may feel the pinch, but we ignore it because we have so much work to do.”
“And then one strike, with a hammer or a sword, and the blister breaks, our heart is torn. And then we suffer, for we feel the ache for the blessed, the sting of the cursed. We no longer see, we witness …”
“Yes, rejoice! The callused hand cannot feel the lover’s cheek. When we witness, we testify, and when we testify we make ourselves responsible for what we see. And that—that—is what it means to belong.”
Celebrate the meaning of suffering. Rejoice that you belong, not that you suffer.
Lust and shame were ever the shortest paths to the hearts of world-born men.
The old Conriyan proverb was true: no friend was more generous than the one who has seduced your wife …
The most powerful flatteries dwelt not in what was said but in the assumptions behind what was said.
world-born men, Kellhus had found, despised complexity as much as they cherished flattery. Most men would rather die in deception than live in uncertainty.
For events to have purpose, their ends had to determine their beginnings, and this was impossible. Things were governed by their origins, not their destinations. What came before determined what came after;
the anguish of this fire lies the God. And in the God lies redemption. Each of you holds the key to your own redemption. You already kneel before it! But still you do not throw your face to the earth. You are frail. You are alone. Those who love you know you not. You lust for obscene things. You fear even your closest brother. And you understand far less than you pretend!”
“But you do deny this!” Prince Kellhus cried, like a lover confronted by an impossible infidelity. “All of you! You kneel, but you also cheat—cheat the fire of your own heart! You give breath to lie after lie, clamour that this fire is not the Truth. That you are strong. That you are not alone. That those who love you do know you. That you lust not for obscene things. That you fear not your brother in any way. That you understand everything!”
“But in the secret moments—yes, the secret moments—these denials ring hollow, do they not? In the secret moments you glimpse the anguish of Truth. In the secret moments you see that your life has been a mummer’s farce. And you weep! And you ask what is wrong! And you cry out, ‘Why cannot I be strong?’”
“You are frail because you feign strength.” The voice was disembodied now, and it whispered secretly into a thousand flushed ears. “You are alone because you lie ceaselessly. Those who love you do not know you because you are a mummer. You lust for obscene things because you deny that you lust. You fear your brother, because you fear what he sees. You understand little because to learn you must admit you know nothing.”
“Do you see the tragedy?” the Prince implored. “The scriptures bid us to be godlike, to be more than what we are. And what are we? Frail men, with peevish hearts, envious hearts, choked by the shroud of our own lies. Men who remain frail because they cannot confess their frailty.”
“Kneel with me,” a voice from nowhere said. “Take my hand and do not fear. Throw your face into the furnace!”
“What does it mean, to be a warrior? Is not war the fire? The furnace? Is not war the very truth of our frailty?”
Men of ambition never understand the pious. For them, goals must be worldly in order to be sensible. Solutions to base hungers.”
Intelligent people, Achamian had found, were typically less happy. The reason for this was simple: they were better able to rationalize their delusions. The ability to stomach Truth had little to do with intelligence—nothing, in fact. The intellect was far better at arguing away truths than at finding them.
To say that a book was read was to make the same mistake as the gambler who crowed about winning as though he’d taken it by force of hand or resolve. To toss the number-sticks was to seize a moment of helplessness, nothing more. But to open a book was by far the more profound gamble. To open a book was not only to seize a moment of helplessness, not only to relinquish a jealous handful of heartbeats to the unpredictable mark of another man’s quill, it was to allow oneself to be written. For what was a book if not a long consecutive surrender to the movements of another’s soul?
Knowledge ever found itself on the scales of greed,
“If blasphemers kill blasphemers, then we’re saved oil and wood.”
“It’s you who surrender everything.”
No matter, it would be salt for the honey, as the Ainoni were fond of saying. The bitterness that made vengeance sweet.
One cannot fear for a God, but one can be baffled over whether one should.
“The memorialists call battle otgai wutmaga, a great quarrel. Both hosts take the field believing they are the victors. One host must be disabused of that belief. Attacking his flank or his rear, overawing him, bewildering him, shocking him, killing him: these are all arguments, meant to convince your foe he is defeated. He who believes he is defeated is defeated.”
