Iterum Conjugens, Returning.

Written by Ventus Fortis

The recent discussion among some of our colleagues concerning the work Seven Cities and an Island has remind us of a work of which they are probably not aware, as it has doubtless seen little circulation outside the covenants of the scarp of Pandrell.

In the Blue Book, late in the catalogue of the Islands of Drowned Chalycidice, there is a short passage:

The man in white stands at the end of the World
The Red Sun sets in the Cerulean Sea.
All the world, past and future, lies before his feet.
Nine Steps to a Home he will never see.
Step over water.
Three Angels of Creation bury a Fallen Star.
Step over heather.
Five Maidens bathe an Infant Son.
Step over stone.
Seven Brigands in Blue murder a lamb.
Step over the sea.
Golden Banners of three cities flutter above a battlefield.
Step over the rain.
Two brothers, Red and Blue, face the Rising and Setting sun.
Step over the wind.
The Queen of the Sea stands, a Purple Serpent kneels.
Step over light.
The Yellow Knight, bound in chains.
Step over the threshold.
Josephine and Constancy look up from cups of Melos.
Step into Darkness.
The Shining Waterfall, unseen but remembered.

Traditionally, this is read as follows:

In the Month of Despair, the Priest King of Vestra, having seen all the world past and future on what will become the Island of Trethvys and despairing of his fate, turns homeward and sets out for Vestra. Not knowing the past from the future from the present, he steps carefully on what will become the islands of Drowned Chalycidice, stepping across what will someday become the channels. Seven steps take him across Chalycidice, the eighth step places him in what will become the city of Lyridice (founded after the fall of Chalycidice), and on the Ninth step he vanishes before reaching Vestra. The nine steps take him backwards through the Calendrical Cycle, landing on the cusps of Union-Wisdom, Mercy-Communion, the Day of Passion, Tension-Strife, Fidelity-Constancy, the Day of Knowledge, Adversity-Sacrifice, Isolation-Justice, and The Day of Dissipation. The images mostly have fairly obvious surface interpretations, with the exception of The Queen of the Sea and Josephine.

The religious interpretation of this passage and of the deeper significance of the various images is well developed, starting from the work of Quae Montes Cieret in First Year. The magical interpretation, however, has been largely neglected.

In this work, the Imbrian magus, Ventus Foris, develops this passage as a description of the process of performing a certain type of destructive magic, applicable either to the destruction of mind or to the destruction of magic itself, the magic of rejection and self-abnegation. Applicable only to magic affecting the self, and therefore perhaps of limited obvious utility, it is nonetheless powerful magic, and worthy of study. Subtle and canny, and drawing on the best of Circulan reading practices, this text shows the work of a careful mystical experimentalist working at the edge of profoundly dangerous magic. In nine chapters, Ventus Foris describes and interprets a series of mystical visions building off of the nine steps backwards from Trethvys to Vestra. As the Priest King abandons the year's teachings of wisdom and knowledge, so the mind of the mage strips away layers of accreted experience, touching down penultimately in a rooftop garden, where a young woman of fantastic wisdom and a pious soldier dressed for battle teach the mage a series of gestures which, when used, reveal the final vision of bright water falling endlessly into darkness like a rain of stars, washing away all thought, all expectation, all desire.

Has Syzygia Grandis ever read either the Blue Book or this little text by Ventus? I can not say. Nor can I vouch for the "crypto Lemmish allegory" her work is reputed by some to contain. However, if we are to read Seven Cites and an Island as a response to the seven islands and a city in the nine steps of the Priest King's return, then we must wonder, why are we to take up Power as Power, rather than walking away from it? We must also wonder, among the cities and the island, where is the ninth step?