I will read again the scroll you sent me, I might merely be too old to understand these new notions, growing up as I did believing that knowledge is only what is contained in men’s minds, and that the truth is a slippery thing. But perhaps there is something to this notion of “Deep Truth” you talk about, truths that pierce through the story, and force the story to change. We can talk more about this when we next meet, after you have returned from gathering what we need at Al Arabakbar. Make sure you acquire the treatise on “Analytics of Symbols”. I don’t read the North German tongue and have to do with the translation into Arabic. Perhaps you can work on a translation into koine, or have Penelope do it, because her ability with translation, I think, far exceeds anyone else in our small college.
But I again must repeat: when I depart, my instructions must be filled to the letter, the Well must be sealed up, it is a source of unimaginable energy, and hostile to life. I have left money for the construction of a new observatory and residence. The calculations must be performed to your most exacting standards. All rides on this, we must know whether the theogenisis or physiogenisis theory of Ishtar is correct. Admittedly the theogenisis theory seems to have much of the evidence – the lack of transitional forms seems to be dooming evolution to a quaint notion. But these calculations will show that the answer is that the problem is not that nature cannot produce the changes we see, but that we have failed to understand catastrophes in the history of the anki properly. But to know we must make the transit to Marduk, and as we both know, the current calculations of this transit are off to a fatal degree…
Letter of Magum Teloikpolis 998.11.2 to his successor.
Long Count Date: 998.11.93
The door shut behind them. And Marchangela and the Magus walked up the stairs back into the light. Once back in the breakfast room, now warm with the light of day they sat down.
He seemed to be unable to stop talking. “That is what I am the keeper of, and the clock, and the notes on them.”
She, this time, held up her hand for silence.
“I know that seeing that is willing to make anyone believe anything. But so far all of the stories about sight and souls do not come together for me, I see no axioms as in Geometry, no clear unity. I don’t see how this fits in with the Kinematics that the Germans have been spreading, and it clearly does not fit with the geometrical system that I was taught. There is no energy that would create what I saw there.”
The Magus pointed at the sun.
“The disproof of pure kinematics is above us every day. If it was warmed through gravity, it should be shrinking all the time, and gravity cannot generate the kind of light that we see, with the mass we know it must have. No, I am not going to preach either kinematics or logometry to you. Both, as you can see, are small compared to the reality.”
Marchangela shook her head.
“So you believe that the Gods do directly interact with the world, that we live in an unknowable world at their behest.”
He spread pages before him.
“I believe something else, and that is why I am going to go with you. Because I have a ‘prophecy’ to deliver, at Arcanum.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question, what holds all of this together? Theories of psyche, orbits, moon stories. What is this all about?”
Magus shook his head.
“If these were normal times, I could give you a pat story, the way I could explain the other worlds, because we know they exist and we understand that there are transits between them. But I am going to say the hardest three words in the world.”
Marchangela smirked, she half expected a proposition.
“They are: ‘I don’t know’. More importantly, I think I can show that nobody knows. “
“So everything that happened, the bush, the dreams, it is all coincidence?”
“I might have thought so, but you knew the figures. And that is not coincidence.”
“Some one could have told me.”
“No one could have told you, that entrance has not been trod on by human feet in many, many, trisdekads. That, “ pointing at a rather regular door in the circular room. “Is the door everyone else has used. I had to oil the hinges for a day to get them to open on either side.”
Marchangela relaxed, she had something to hang on to.
“So that is a true dream, and the other?”
“Dreams of conflagration are common enough, of the serpent taking all. But it certainly will not hurt to go the Latin Republic, where I know they are preparing war again, and warn them of why open flame is forbidden.”
“So we have scraps and shards and no story to fit them in.”
“Exactly, and that is the story.”
Marchangela shook her head.
“I don’t understand.”
“It is the story, because it means that this is the beginning of a new age, where a millennium of stories is about to come to an end. Where the fumbling we have done is about to come to an end. We’ve been lost, performing our little rituals, making our little games, holding to stories.”
“Even the Kinematics?”
“The Kinematics is a brilliant mistake: it is the explanation that everyone thinks is the theory. But it isn’t.”
“And you can prove that?”
“What is below us shows that, proving however means drilling it through some very thick skulls.”
“Don’t the other wise know of this?”
“They know of the clock, they know of the well, but they have no idea what this means, only a few people know of what is below, and most who made that room died. I am dying, I think the well saps the life out of those who tend it.”
Marchangela thought. “The bush must be related to the well.”
“It is, that was the least of my worries, every so often the electrical energy that builds up emerges above. Usually through one of the great metal spikes we made for the purpose. But every so often from someplace else.”
“So I am here because I am a taken soul, because I am willing to go, and because…”
“Because you are one of the points of contact with deep truth. And that is always what is important. Most of what we think we know, we only have because it is related to some great theory. We don’t have facts, we have bits and pieces we have attached to a theory. But there are a few things that burn through that, and it is around them that one must make theory itself. That someone knows what is in a room closed for 30 long counts or more, means something. That that someone also attracts to her person electrical discharges – and the bush is not the first, just the first that you knew about – means something.”
Marchangela “You said there were others.”
“There are, many others, who attract this to them, But none of them are in my breakfast room. Which is intentional. Keepers of the well are chosen for the exact opposite trait, or have you thought what would happen if a person such as yourself were to long remain this close to such a wellspring of power?”
Marchangela nodded.
“So this is a college, though an invisible one.”
“Yes, it is an invisible college, one that is invisible because I, the holy keeper of the well, am pursuing a completely heretical notion.”
Marchangela looked at him.
“But, “ He continued, “first we must prepare for our voyage.”
“I was wondering when that would begin.”
“It already has, I’ve called for the other members who are near by, when they get here, I will finish clearing out what is left of my belongings. This place is to be sealed up.”
“But how could the psyches…”
“If we fail, there will be the opposite problem, soon there is another passage coming, and with it, we have reason to believe, the largest ocean of psyches ever to reach Isthar. And after that more, and then more again. Our little world has been a garden, or a remote island which few reached. It is about to become a destination swamped by a storm. When the next grand opposition comes with Lucifer, there will, probably, be more arrivals than in all of the previous ones combined.”
“And…”
“There is a flaw in our preparations. A great gaping chasm which could lead to disaster.”
She looked at him.
“Normally we take in a tide of psyches, many escape into the world, but the rest are let out slowly, so as not to destroy the balance. If I am right, they will overflow all preparations, and, withing a few annae, the entire world will be inhabited by one wave of psyches, and that could have incalculable consequences,”
The thought of waves of psyches, like the twirling tumult of the well, gave Marchangela pause.
“I will do what I can.”