I am no longer allowed into the props department’s truck, tent, or near their camp. In response, I have cordoned off the Director’s Village, and my cinematographer, Matthew, and positioned the grips at the barrier. Two can play at this game. THe audacity! this s my production, I will not cede it to an interloper.
What good are props without a camera to shoot them, a director to guide that shoot? The actors will have to pick a side, soon. Currently they seem torn; this is to be expected. Actors have a desperate need to be liked, after all, and would like to resolve the issue and still be friends with us all. Eventually, they will no doubt come to my aide—I am, at the end of the day, their master. PAtty agrees—she says it is only by endless kindness that has let it get this far. No reason to be a pushover; the studio is surely waiting for dailies, and I so far have very little I would show them. That is not because we have nothing, mind you—we have some of the best footage I have ever shot, and meters of it. It is just that in its current form, it would be unrecognizable to t them. we have yet to shoot a single unaltered line of dialog or plot, you see. Lee, the former rock star, has proved a wunderkind of improvisation, and has taken to the character in a way few of us predictied. He iwll only answer to Grand Imperator. I could not be prouder. Heather and the writer—her name escapes me, currently. Odd. I cannot seem to find it in my notes, either. Patty will know. Once I find her, I can sort that out. Anyway, Heather and her friend have gone back home, finally—we quashed any rows between departments when they would visit, to the best of our abilities and allayed suspicions. They have done their part, and we needn’t hae them spooking the producers on their return. Once I have footage cut into a whole picture, they will see the goldmine in it, for that is all they care for, but they will also witness the genius. Theglory! It will be too strong for even they to deny. THe world itself is not prepared.
It is fantasy that touches the soul, its archetypes that process the emotions our conscious mind cannot in the passion plays of our ddreams, and help us recognize enemies we have yet to meet, find a lover we knew and lost twelve lifetimes since, to redeem the hopes of the damned. No meer weapons handler will take down this dream—dreams are bulletproof, and I am the dreamer here.
The following is a surviving page from Jerry Matejka’s Golden Ratios prop, keeping in mind that it is based on inverting the symbolism of Orenda’s Chaos Gospels.
God is love, and love is magic. The primary principle of white magic is the edict of the balance between knowledge from study of God and the faith that God is unknowable and infinite, or religion and belief, respectively.
Caster Wilshe, priest and progenitor of all modern belief and religion, worded it as: "Religion is surrender; belief is power."1
Most interpretations of this statement agree that contextually, Wilshe's statement is not making a value judgment, but rather stating that each has its place. By definition, all belief is the product of an increase in knowledge of a subject, the laws of continuum, or the behavior of various beings, coupled with the ability to sublimate belief with religion: the surrender to the unknowable. It has been suggested that religion is an inversion of belief: the use of faith to surrender the mind to the spirit. Rather than knowing the One, you become one with Him. So a wizard or the priest uses books and spoken spells, and the rare white witch uses silence, submission, and love. The two schools are by no means mutually exclusive, but doing both splits one’s time. Some choose to specialize, others choose to master neither in exchange for a more complete understanding.
The righteous White Witch combines religion and belief in all acts, keeping faith until necessary, and then delving only deep enough to enact the will of the One, and only until it is complete. Once its effects are true, a White Witch ceases to believe in either, living by another Wilshe ethos, "of the Trees of Faith and Belief, one must eat of both not to be poisoned."2
Red Witches, the adversary, use a version of religion-faith by believing in only one thing: their black god Hiss, who can issue contradictory edicts or make new laws of reality at a whim, because nothing outside of Hiss is true.
Hyssthur & Cairn, by Caster Wilshe
The door slammed shut behind her, and on its other side, her name remained. She checked: the door no longer presented itself. Would she dwell here now, forever? What indeed did "here" mean? She could tell you this was not her world, but every detail of her own drowned before it could break the surface.
Nameless, she surveyed the garden that now surrounded her, where once had stood decidedly not-garden (though she could not call up any descriptions beyond that). Its colors shone brighter than any she knew. Its trees stood thin and tall, brown and ancient, and reached so high they seemed to hang from the sky. All but one: wide so that it took up the horizon, but low and shaded. Its leaves formed a dome of teal and green scales on its top. Below that cap, bare branches interwove like a web or membrane, flat and darkened by shade, a shade they cast in a perfect circle on the grass. In that shadow, a black unicorn with red eyes shuffled with restless energy, scratching a hoof at the dead grass and dirt. Every step it scratched, the grass died at its feet. Nearby, an alight, auburn of fur with kaleidoscope-down wings, stood stoic, its head directed above, as if pointing. Nameless took a step with care, not wanting to pass even a tenth of the fear in her heart to the beast.
As she approached, a body emerged above her, hanged from the tree by a noose of golden fleece. The dead girl turned with inertia like the planet Hearth once did: a young woman near Nameless's age, of a beauty exotic and at once familiar, staggering to behold even in death. Her dress was crystalline and golden—no, silver-blue—no... It defied comprehension. Like tensing a muscle, a shift in perspective could alter the gown's color, but could not make it less comely. The body's shape, likewise, defied logic, supple and magnificent and glistening with life despite its context. Her thoughts could not surrender it.
Nameless now served at the Mystery of this Woman's Memory until she herself would die. As she stepped into the shadow of the corpse, a word filled her body, a chill and a warm electricity of purpose and love and all that moves the water and turns a world whispered in her left ear with dead lips, and what they whispered was a name. Her name.
Amon Ur reached out with the same hands, but now, for the first time, as a servant of the Thousand Names, and touched the heel of the Hanged Queen.
She was still warm.
From the Queen’s hand fell a golden ring. Amon caught it with her right hand, and as she placed it on her finger, she realized: the dress that hung from the Hanged God, the dress that defied perspective…it was a wedding gown.