Order is life; chaos is death. This is fact, not belief. Each living creature consists of ordered parts that must function together. When chaos intrudes
Order extends down to the smallest fragments of the world. By influencing the smallest ordered segments to create a new and ordered form, an order-master may change where land exists and where it does not, where the rain will fall and where it will not
In contrast, control of chaos is simply the ability to sever one ordered element of the world from another
without the use of order, focused destruction is the highest level of control to which a chaos-master can aspire
Simple as these words are, learning about what order and chaos truly are is far from simple. One might say that order is like water, that it can change forms, and that is vital to life, and that without it nothing lives
That is less than the beginning
| [Wellspring of Chaos Mentions this as being page 1] |
| (The Magic of Recluce, 222, Wellspring of Chaos, 77) |
Learning without understanding can but increase the frustration of the impatient, for knowledge is like the hammer of a smith, useless in the hands of the unskilled and able to do nothing but injure the user who has not both knowledge and understanding
All things are not possible, even to the greatest, and even to those with understanding
| [In Wellspring of Chaos Kharl flips page, ergo, this is
on page 2] |
| (The Magic of Recluce, 302 Wellspring of Chaos, 77-78) |
Order cannot be concentrated in and of itself, not even within the staff of order, and no man can truly master the staff of order until he casts it aside.
For order cannot be divided in two without its power being diminished by four, and if it be divided into four parts, then its power is less by another fourth, so that the total of all portions is but one sixteenth of what it would have been undivided. Likewise, so it is with a staff imbued with order for whoever wields it
| (The Magic of Recluce, 378 456, Wellspring of Chaos, 331) |
| |
Love no one until you can love yourself, for love of another is merely empty flattery and self-deception for one who cannot accept himself without pretense.
| (The Magic of Recluce, 378) |
| |
Order and chaos must balance, but as on a see-saw. The power of chaos is for great destruction in a confined area, for order by nature must be diffused over vaster realms. If you would battle chaos, or establish order, you must limit the area and the time in which it must be balanced.
| (The Magic of Recluce, 378) |
All physical items-unlike fire or
pure chaos-must have some structure, or they would not exist
Because all wrought iron has a grain created from the forging of its crystals, the strength of the iron lies in the alignment and length of the grain. Using order to reinforce that grain is the basis for creating black iron
Its strength lies in the ordering of unbruised or unstrained grains along the length of the metal
| (The Magic Engineer, 318 {pb 392}) |
| |
If order or chaos be without limits, then common sense would indicate that each should have triumphed when the great ones of each discipline have arisen. Yet neither has so triumphed, despite men and women of power, intelligence, and ambition. Therefore, the scope of either or chaos is in fact limited, and the belief in the balance of forces demonstrated
| (The Magic Engineer, 318 {pb 393}) |
| |
Pure order cannot nourish life, for living requires growth, and the process of growth is the constant struggle to bring order out of chaos.
When a fire destroys the great forests of the Westhorns, immediately order replenishes itself with scores of seedlings and bushes striving to recover the hillsides.
When a stone wall is built, the forces of frost and heat continually tumble the stones. So too is it with a house, once the constant order of the hearthholder is removed.
The function of order is to support that life which can order chaos; and without chaos to be ordered, there can be no purpose to life.
The function of chaos is to destroy order. Without order, no structure can exist-no man nor woman, no plant, not even an earth upon which to walk. Thus, the total triumph of chaos is its defeat.
What can be said of order and chaos, then? Since the world was, is, and will be, neither order nor chaos may triumph. Therefore, in the world as a whole there must be equal measures of each, and that Balance will be maintained; for, if it is not, there shall be either no world or no life.
And upon this world are the lands and the seas.
People call the sea chaos, but the sea contains a deeper order within the ever-changing waves and depths, and the seas wash upon the beaches and retreat, and that changes not.
Likewise people call the land orderly, for it changes seldom, yet beneath that surface order is great disorder, filled with the fires and chaos of the demons.
A people of the sea must be of order, for order must contain the surface chaos of the oceans and harmonize with the deeper order under the waves.
Likewise, a people of chaos can only exist upon the land, for the sea will rend them unto nothing.
| [Fragment attributed to Section II] |
| (The Magic Engineer, 521-522 {pb 642-643}) |
Those who do not understand order or chaos say that the two belong only to those with the gift for one or the other, and that those who have such gifts are few. This is truth, and it is also a falsehood. Many men and women have gifts. Some are more intelligent than others; some are stronger; some are more patient; some have great courage; some have great understanding. So to say that one has a gift for order or chaos can be truth. Yet, to suggest that there is something improper about understanding order or chaos because it requires a gift is a falsehood. Each and every great talent, whatever it may be, requires a gift of greater ability. A man may have a gift for letters, and for distilling truth. A woman may have a gift for numbers, and for trading of goods. A youth may have the gift of song, and another the gift of hands that can shape iron or wood. So it is with order and chaos.
Yet many would claim that the gift to understand order and chaos is different from the gift of understanding other aspects of the world, that anyone can be a crafter or an engineer, but that only a special few can become order-mages or chaos-masters. This is a falsehood, for the great ones in any area of endeavour are few, whether that area be engineering, cabinetry, fishing, or order-magery
In the beginning, as a child, a boy or girl can have the gift, not for one or the other, but for either, or, if the gift is great enough, for both
So can a man or woman, once grown, if he or she approaches order as might a child. For order is a wonder, and those who can yet wonder as children can have their eyes opened at any age
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 101-102) |
| |
a staff, or any other object, may be infused with order. If the Balance is maintained, concentrating such order must result in a greater amount of chaos somewhere else. Therefore, the greater the effort to concentrate order within material objects, the greater the amount of free chaos within the world
| [The Order War mentions this as being on page 50, 3rd section of 1st part] |
| (The Order War, pb 5, Wellspring of Chaos, 153) |
all that is, everything that exists, is little more than the twisting of chaos in a shell of order, and the greater the complexity of those twistings, the more solid the object appears. A thumb of lead or gold may appear more solid than a feather or a flower, and may indeed overbalance the scales, yet there is no difference in the fashion in which they are constructed
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 153) |
| |
the form of everything under the sun is determined by the amount of order and chaos and the way in which they are combined and intertwined
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 153) |
| |
Water is of both chaos and order, yet it is order, and represents order, for its structure overweighs its parts
Because water is both order and of order, yet comprised of parts that are totally chaotic, it challenges chaos with the depth of its order. Truly a river people or a sea people must hold to order or they will be lost. Chaos fares best upon the dry land, and least in a steady rain or snowfall
Even a fog will affect a chaos-wielder, but only those who are of the weaker sort. A steady rain is a patterned fall of ordered chaos. A raindrop is ordered, and the fall of each is unpatterned, chaotic, yet all raindrops falling together results in a pattern ordered by chaos, and that order can weaken or destroy many of the links of power created by those who wield chaos, as the fires of sun itself can weaken those who wield order, if they do not understand that the sun is a furnace of chaos
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 153-154) |
| |
there is more that lies beneath the surface of anything, whether it be the ocean or the mountains
Do not assume that what lies beneath is the same as what lies above, nor that it is different
In substance, there is no difference between chaos and order, for neither has substance in and of itself
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 155) |
| |
Is there a sourcea wellspringof order or of chaos? Can something exist without a source? And if there be such, what is indeed the wellspring of chaos? Or that of order? There is but one, for chaos can be said to be the wellspring of order, and order the wellspring of chaos. These are so because, for so long as there is life, neither chaos nor order can exist by itself for long without the other.
Yet for so long as there have been peoples upon the face of the world, there have been those who championed order over chaos, or chaos over order. There have been those who denied the power of one, or of both. All creatures that live are born, and birth is the triumph of life. All creatures, from the largest to the smallest, are brought low by death, and death is the triumph of chaos.
How can one say, then, that chaos is greater, or that order is?
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 193-194) |
| |
each thing under the sun, be it man or a machine, a creature or an object created, is unique, no matter how closely it resembles another, and yet all these unique things are created from the sameness of order and chaos, and all that is unique is the manner in which order and chaos are twisted into the unique forms that we are and that surrounds us
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 207) |
| |
The greatest danger in practicing deception is not in the reaction of others, whether it be anger or cupidity. A greater danger is the cultivation of contempt for that which is. Deception is a practice of contempt, contempt for those whom one would deceive, and contempt for the world as it is. Just as understanding what is must be the first step toward using order, contempt for a true vision is the first step toward being a tool of power rather than its enlightened user
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 255) |
| |
often those inexperienced in using order will force raw order upon an object, thinking that such an effort will strengthen the object. Such an effort will indeed strengthen the object, even as it weakens the one who attempts this, but only for so long as the would-be mage lavishes his strength. When his strength is spent, the object will become once more as it was. Far better is to study the object, and to learn how it is tied together with order and chaos, and to gently change those bonds in keeping with what the object is, for if weak bonds are replaced by strong bonds within the object itself, those bonds will remain strengthened, just as black iron remains stronger than iron forged without ordering
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 255) |
| |
Black iron should only be created while being forged
attempting to change less-ordered cold iron into black iron is possible only with great effort, enough to exhaust even the strongest of mages
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 257) |
| |
Order is like glue, in that it links all together, while chaos is but the opposite. Its power lies in separating
and when even the smallest bits of that which surround us are separated, basic fire and the heat of the flame are released. A chaos-wizard channels that fire and flame, and yet he must use order to do so, lest he be separated from himself by the powers of separation
| (Wellspring of Chaos, 355) |
| |