I have lived most of my life in the City of Endless Dreams, and like most Alreans, I have often behaved as if the City were the whole of the Cosmos, a complete world bounded by rivers and mountains, teeming with builders and traders, sailors and bakers, heroes and villains. The best, the most worthy achievements of every human culture—and of the Elves and the Dwarves as well—is preserved in our Library and Theaters and on our streets. Under the patronage of Our Divine Lady the Bringer of Civilization, we have flourished for generations. Beyond the rivers: barbarism, wasteland, scraps of civilization not worth incorporating into the City; ignorant peoples who, if they were once on the path of civilization and Order, abandoned it some time ago, content to live in huts and never erect towers. The City is the World; outside it: Chaos.
Or so I once thought. My travels with you—my companions, my friends—have taught me otherwise. We have journeyed to cities so old they have forgotten their own founding, met men who for all the simplicity of their lives have wisdom far deeper than that taught me in seminary, witnessed customs and forms of law that were strange and offensive to us only because we were unprepared to appreciate their virtues. We have learned, in short, what perhaps I should have known all along: that there are many forms of Order; that the most civilized of societies may differ in how they defend themselves against Chaos; that those who shun our sort of Order may still be fast allies in the face of Chaos. Even those who take very different views of Divinity may serve together the will of the gods. (You taught me that, Wen. Though you spurn customary forms of worship, you hold to the tenets of the gods and they recognize that faithfulness in you.)
What, then, can we say about our present circumstances? It is clear enough that when we stepped through my Lady’s portal, we left the dominion of the Divine Principle as we know it. The Universal Spirit which the gods call Gilead, which they and we know as the one true force of Order, has no power of creation here, for the spirit of this new land, and the souls of its people, are not of this Principle, but of another sort. The Divine Power, so comforting to us, is purely destructive to the souls of this place. Now since (in our old understanding) the Divine Principle is Order itself, it follows that anything opposed to it must be Chaos. I have remarked often that we can feel this destructive force whenever we channel the Arcane Power. It would follow, therefore, that we are now in a realm of Chaos. But this doesn’t ring true: if anything, these new lands seem to have had a more stable history than our own record of massive wars fought for millennia. It seems more likely that this world, rather than being a place outside the Cosmos governed by Chaos, is in fact simply another part of the Cosmos, governed by a different Aspect of the Divine Principle. Now, everyone accepts that the Arcane Power manifests itself in many guises or Aspects—Time, Mind, Acid, and so forth—but to my knowledge, no serious religion has ever held that the Divine Principle, like the Arcane, has many Aspects; and yet we cannot rule it out: nothing in our own experience of the Divine, no matter how perfect and holy, should lead us to believe that it is the only kind of Divine experience, any more than our happy lives under one form of Civilization should lead us to believe that it is the only proper form.
Let us leave these lofty matters for a moment and consider some of the curious phenomena we have encountered in this new world: assassins who wield the Divine Power as a weapon; a Cube of Power that radiates a sinister aura; men who are repelled by our own aura of the Divine. It is again tempting to conclude that this world is, as it were, inverted: the Arcane is holy and the Divine disruptive. But no, we have met sorcerers in this land and they channel the same Arcane Power that we do. Or rather, the same with two telling exceptions: among Wen’s students are represented Fire, Ice, Light, Darkness… all the familiar Arcane Aspects, save one: Time. Not only have we met no one versed in the Temporal Arcana, but we have met no one who has heard of it. Isn’t that odd? The same Arcane Aspects as we know, except this one. Instead, the sorcerers of this land have told me of an Aspect, Air, which is unknown to Toram Par.
Why are the Temporal Arcana unknown in this world? Wen, my Lady gave you a magical device that, among its many wonderful uses, has the power to distinguish between types of Divine and Arcane powers by means of a colored gem: it glows red when Fire is channeled, for instance, and brown for Earth. For Time, it glows Gold—the color of the Cube of Power we discovered, the one that we felt sinister but which the people of this world considered holy. People, I should add, whose very souls appear gold when perceived by our own Divinely-heightened senses, and around whom we feel uneasy even when using only our natural senses. Poe, always sensitive to Arcane influence, has been driven near to madness by its prevalence here. All evidence suggests that the Temporal Aspect of the Divine Power is “missing” from this world because it is in fact everywhere: this world is built not of the Divine Principle but of the Arcane Principle in its Temporal Aspect. An astonishing and perhaps nonsensical-sounding possibility, but not as astonishing as the other observation I have made recently.
This past week I have had the good fortune to meet a sorcerer, one of the Rae-tann escapees, who channels the Arcane Power of Air, the Aspect which is unknown in our world. I encourage you all (especially you, Wen) to watch him as he uses his ability, for the fact is as bewildering as it is unmistakable: what he is channelling, which he calls the Arcane Power, is in fact the Divine Power. How can this be? Is he simply (which would be understandable for one in his position) confused as to the nature of his own powers? If so, his delusion is widespread, for Wen’s other students confirm that this “Arcane” power is indeed one of the Arcane Aspects they know. And I must reiterate that we are not facing a simple substitution of the Arcane and the Divine for each other: rather, it seems that this world experiences the entirety of our Divine Principle as but a single Aspect of the Arcane Principle, while simultaneously experiencing the Aspect of Time as somehow equivalent to the entire Divine Principle.
So now let us reconsider our hypothesis that the Divine Principle, like the Arcane, presents itself to us in multiple Aspects. Suddenly, it is no longer mysterious or surprising that this new world is built of “a Principle” which is different than our own world’s; in actuality they are just different Aspects of the same Divine Principle. But wait—we have already established that the foundational Principle of this world is Arcane, not Divine. And for that matter, the sorcerers of this world experience absolutely no difference between their Air Arcana (which is in fact the Power that we know as Divine) and the undisputedly Arcane Aspects that we share. Let me propose that on this matter, at least, the sorcerers of this world are quite correct, and that this is in fact the key to the riddle: there is fundamentally no difference between the Arcane and the Divine Principles. All the Arcane and Divine Aspects are in fact Aspects of a single, unified Principle of Order, and we simply give the name “Divine” to the Aspect of which our own world and our own souls are built.
We should step back and consider just how radical this proposition really is. We are taught that the Divine and the Arcane are essentially different, the former a Principle of Order and the latter of Chaos. But if I am right then all the Aspects are Aspects of Order, of Creation, and they only appear destructive when they are of a different sort than that of which we ourselves consist. Properly understood, all Aspects are deserving of the name Divine, because they are equally sacred constituents of the Cosmos; and all are truly Arcane because of their mysterious and dangerous nature when wielded by those with whose souls they are naturally incompatible. We are not wrong to be repulsed by the Aspects not our own (and Poe, you are not wrong to see them as dangerous and suspicious) because they are dangerous to us, like two compounds, harmless and even beneficial alone, that destroy each other when combined. But even as we exercise caution we must do so with humility, bearing in mind that those of this world are equally justified in seeing us as dangerous, alien elements. And we must ultimately work toward understanding, for we are all children of Order.
What, then, of Chaos? If what we have known as the Arcane Power is not the manifestation of primal Chaos, then what is? It would have to be a force which does not participate in any Aspect of Order, neither Divine or Arcane to us, a force entirely separate from any form of magic we know. By definition no human mage has wielded such a force, but it is worth remarking that we do know at least one being—or should I say, one linege—that does. Wherever the Toracines came from, whatever their power, this much is clear: their power is not in any sense Divine, as perceived by our world or any other. Their power has no Aspect, but is truly a Void, as hostile to this new Cosmos, presumably, as to our own.
Allow me one final remark, please. I have outlined this evening a theory which, if accepted, fundamentally alters our conception of magic and of the Cosmos itself. Some of the details of this new understanding certainly might be mistaken, and we must proceed with caution, but certain points seem incontrovertible. At the very least, the Arcane and the Divine Powers are more akin than we ever suspected, and this is a cause for hope: Wen, your wish may be within grasp. Moreover, although this new vision of the Cosmos is a divided Cosmos in tension with itself, the only threat to the Cosmos itself is a threat from outside, and it is this outside threat that ultimately benefits from our division. We cannot deny our differences, but we must learn to transcend them. We ourselves, shining with the light of our world but now infused as well with the glittering gold of this new world, are perhaps beginning to understand how.