Category: literature promotion

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 1, Chapter 1

[The following is the seventeenth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, and here is the sixteenth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

When these laws, for the ethical and responsible use of magic and invocations of the Crims, were first being formulated, the Luminosians had been under the yoke of slavery at the hands of the people of Zoya for about five years already. Therefore, the Luminosians had had ample time to reflect on the consequences of their sinful treatment of the Zagans. As miserable as the Luminosians were, they also knew they had deserved their misery.

Finally, they had heard the chiding of the elders. They understood their former slavery under the Tenebrosians had not given them the right to invade and colonize Zaga, either enslaving the Zagans or exiling them, leaving them to starve in the wilderness, as the elders had told the Luminosians so many times.

With bitterness, the once-again-enslaved Luminosians saw the error of their ways from having used their magic selfishly, to amass wealth and indulge in the physical pleasures of fornication and drug-induced euphoria, neglecting their duty to their fellow man, to the poor, and to the outcast. Their return to drudgery was only their just punishment.

Still, the use of magic and invocation of the four mighty Crims–Weleb of the air, Nevil of the fire, Priff of the water, and Drofurb of the earth–was not entirely devoid of virtue. If such use is for the greater good of all, to help the needy, to gain in wisdom, and to defend from danger, then magic can perform a great good.

Similarly, the elders showed humility and generosity in acknowledging the limits of the old teachings. Now, a consensus was reached among all Luminosians: balance the use of magic with the old teachings–have the two complement each other. Such is the purpose of the chapters to follow.

Commentary

As the above is a commentary in itself, no additional commentary was deemed necessary.

The Tanah–Migrations, Chapter Four

[The following is the sixteenth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, and here is the fifteenth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Years went by, and the Luminosians enjoyed themselves in their new, stolen homes. They kept using their magic for their own selfish purposes, much to the dismay of the elders, who never kept quiet in their complaints.

Not only did they use their magic to deter the hungry Zagans from fishing in the nearby lake or eating the fruit of the trees surrounding the city, but the Luminosians also used it to create more wealth and abundance for themselves, as well as other physical pleasures.

Some Luminosians used magic to create alcoholic drinks and narcotics for themselves, which of course were used to excess. Others used it to seduce women, or to force themselves on women. Love as a mutually shared experience was growing rarer and rarer.

And still, the Zagans starved and starved.

There is one story of a young Luminosian man who ached over the charms of a beautiful girl who lived in the house next to his. He’d look out his side window into hers, and steal glimpses of her undressing, to see her beautiful figure, creamy skin, and long, wavy black hair. He had to have her.

So one day, standing by the rear window of his house (where the starving Zagans could be seen at a distance–not that he bothered to notice them), he lit a small fire and invoked Nevil. He closed his eyes, took several long, deep, slow breaths, and allowed himself to be relaxed enough to be in a trance and be receptive to the Crim of fire and passion.

In that special, mystical language, he chanted, “Nevil, make her want me,” over and over again.

The heat and the smoke wafted from his small flame, through the side window, out and through the side window of her house, and finally to her bed, where she was napping. She breathed the heat and the fumes through her nostrils.

She woke up and coughed. Then she looked through her window and saw him through his. Her eyes welcomed him to come over, which he immediately did.

He had her aggressively on her bed. When he was finished with her, he looked down at her nakedness, and found he hated her for having been so cheap.

She’d woken out of her torpor and trance, then screamed to see this beast on top of her. Now, he hated her all the more.

He started to beat her like an animal. When he was finished hitting her, she was dead, all bruised and bloody. He put on his clothes and walked out of her house with a haughty pout on his face.

Another story is about an older man sitting by his rear window, where he could see, far off, the starving Zagans. It grieved his heart to know that the home he’d acquired came from the loss of those who’d lived in it before him. Did he repent of his wrongful gain, though, and strive to give it back to the original Zagan owners? No.

He tried to ignore his sin by magically conjuring up narcotic and alcoholic pleasures. He turned his head away from his window.

He took a small plant in a pot of soil and watered it. He breathed in and out, slowly and deeply, with his eyes closed, until he was in a deep trance. By the window, he waited for a gust of wind. When it came, he chanted in the mystical language, over and over, “Drofurb, Priff, and Weleb, give me euphoria!”

After chanting this enough times, the plant grew into something leafy and exotic. He used a knife to cut off some of the leaves, then diced these into tiny pieces, and put them in a pipe that he then lit. He now invoked Nevil with the chant, “Nevil, give me euphoria!”

After chanting this enough times, he smoked the pipe. A foggy blur passed before his eyes. Now, the plant that he was using already had narcotic properties; but the invocation of the four Crims was meant to build a much more powerful euphoria…and it did just that for him.

After the foggy blur, he saw a wavelike movement all around him, as if he were in the sea. A tingling, massage-like sensation went all through his body. He closed his eyes, grinned, and leaned by his rear window. Then he opened them and looked outside.

He could see the starving Zagans way out there, a man, a woman, and their three little children. The drug was not making them look human, though. Instead, they all looked ugly, deformed, monstrous, and threatening.

He scowled at them and raised his fist in a fury. “Crims,” he said in a raspy voice. “Destroy them! They are a danger, a threat to us Luminosians!”

He looked up in the sky and saw a large ball of fire dropping over the Zagan family. It hit them with a blinding blast of white light that shone everywhere he could see, making him squeeze his eyes shut. When he opened them, the family was no more. He saw only a large, black spot shaped like a star on the ground where the fireball had burned it. He smiled.

The next day, after his euphoria was over and he could see and perceive everything normally, he looked out that window again. The black spot was not there.

The emaciated bodies of the Zagan family were there, though, lying dead–not killed from a fireball, as he had hallucinated, but from hunger.

He hated the family even more for having made him feel so bad. “I’m glad they’re dead,” he hissed.

After a month of this kind of Luminosian debauchery and wickedness, a heavy rain fell on Zaga, lasting for days and flooding the city with water that went up to a man’s waist. The elders emerged and told all the Luminosians that the flooding was a sign.

“Did we not warn you?” one of the elders said. “We are to be punished for our sins–all of us!”

“Oh, be quiet, old man!” a young Luminosian man said. “If Priff had wanted to punish us, the flood would have gone up much higher, drowning us all. We need only reroute this water over to the lake and sea.”

“We never said this flooding was in itself the punishment,” another elder said. “Only that it is a sign of future punishment.”

The young man laughed at him.

A week later, as the rerouting of the water was underway, and many Luminosians not participating in the work were in their houses enjoying magically-enhanced sex and narcotics–similar to the stories of the two men related above–the footfalls of many horses could be heard in the distance. As the sound came closer, the heads of the Luminosian workers turned to listen and look.

On those approaching horses was an army. Each mounted man had either a spear or a bow and arrow ready to shoot. The leader of the army noted how defenceless the Luminosians, now knee-deep in the water, were. “Hold your fire,” he told his men. “As long as they don’t resist us, we’ll take them without need of violence.”

The army descended from the very cliff that the Luminosians had descended when they took the city from the Zagans. The army entered Zaga, their horses wading in the water, and their men pointed their arrows and spears at the helpless Luminosians. “Continue your work,” the second-in-command of the army told them. “Finish rerouting the water for our city, for it is ours now. Then we will find new work for you.”

The Luminosians were in such shock and disbelief that they seemed no more sober than those in their houses using narcotics. The elders looked sadly at their fellow, sinning Luminosians with a look telling them that they had been duly warned. Any surviving, starving Zagans watching from afar felt some comfort in knowing their tormentors were now about to feel a similar torment.

The leader of the army had his men search the houses of the decadents indulging in fornication and narcotics. When he learned of their sin, he ordered his men to have the sinners rounded up, dressed, sobered, and taken away to be slaves in the country from which the army had come, Zoya.

Commentary

The manuscript breaks off here, and no subsequent chapters relating the fate of the Luminosians, in their new state of slavery and drudgery, have been found. It is clear, though, from the next set of writings, ‘The Laws,’ that the missing writings must have commented on how the Luminosians had learned, the hard way, that their magic should have been used for selfless, not selfish, ends.

As was mentioned in the commentaries of the previous chapters of ‘Migrations,’ one can see how the ancient world had its share of people who decried the evils of settler-colonialism and decadent indulgence in sex, drugs, and alcohol to the point of disregarding the political evils of the world. So many today, among the wealthy and famous, could learn lessons from ancient writings like these.

Big Business Affairs

Outing
a CEO and
a CPO who
are making
the beast with two
backs is a cold play
indeed. Nonetheless,
these top people
have been far too
close for far too
long. It is high
time that they were
broken up……..They have
kept us,…………..down below,
apart for………………far too long.
It’s time……………………..that they
knew what………………we’ve always
known: the…………………….loneliness,
isolation, and………………estrangement.

The Tanah–Migrations, Chapter Three

[The following is the fifteenth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, and here is the fourteenth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

The Luminosian practitioners of magic began their ritual by collecting twigs and piling them on a small hill of dirt. They did this by the edge of the cliff over which they could see the city, named Zaga, which they wanted to invade, settle in, and colonize.

When the wind was blowing unswervingly in the direction of Zaga, they lit the twigs and began their incantation to the beat of a drum: “Fly to Zaga! Fly to Zaga!”

Drofurb, Weleb, and Nevil were the Crims appealed to in this endeavour to take the city. Priff was left out since it was felt that water would weaken the power of Nevil’s fire. Apart from the evil that the elders decried in this taking of a city that didn’t belong to the Luminosian invaders-to-be, the elders also noted how the neglect of Priff in the ritual would throw the four elements of air, fire, earth, and water out of balance.

“Throwing fire over there will send a flood of water back to us, I prophesy!” one of the elders warned. “A lack of Priff will bring Priff to us in an unwelcome manner!”

“Hear, hear!” the other elders shouted in agreement.

“Silence!” one of the supporters of the ritual shouted back. “You’re diluting the effectiveness of the ritual!”

“Good!” that first elder said. “You are all doing evil!”

“Silence!” more supporters of the ritual shouted.

“Fly to Zaga!” continued the chanters of the ritual. “Fly to Zaga!”

From the burning pile of twigs on the hill of Drofurb’s dirt flew a few sparks at first. Then, after the chant had been repeated enough times, louder and louder, those sparks were getting bigger, growing into small balls of flying fire. These were now being blown by the wind, Weleb’s air, over the cliff and towards Zaga.

“It’s working!” one of the supporters of the ritual shouted, then he pointed over the cliff at Zaga. “Look! Nevil’s fire is flying over to the city! Zaga will soon be ours!”

“No, no,” the elders moaned. “Not like this. No!”

The rest of the Luminosians cheered as the balls of fire flew in a swarm closer and closer to Zaga.

Some of the people of the city looked up at the sky and noticed the flock of lights coming to them.

“Look,” a Zagan man said to his wife, pointing at the distant lights. “What is that up there?”

His wife looked at the coming balls of light with fear. She pulled their son and daughter close to her waist.

More Zagans noticed the nearing lights. Eyes and mouths widened.

“Fireflies?” a Zagan woman asked.

The Luminosians cheered and chanted “Victory!” as the elders held their heads in their hands.

The Zagans could hear the Luminosians cheering in the distance. A few Zagans saw them on the cliff and pointed up at them.

“Who are they?” a man pointing up at the Luminosians asked. “Did they send those lights?”

Soon, it became clear to the Zagans that the approaching glowing balls were not mere lights. They were not fireflies. They were a danger.

“Balls of fire!” a Zagan woman screamed. “A weapon!”

“They’re coming to kill us all!” a Zagan man yelled.

All the Zagans started to run and scream.

The balls of fire were about the size of rocks put in slings and shot thus. They penetrated the backs of most of the running and screaming Zagans, exiting through their chests and leaving holes in their torsos. The victims, men, women, and children, fell down with their faces hitting the dirt.

Those few Zagans who weren’t hit managed to get outside of the city or hide in their houses or shops. They all wept, wondering what they had done to deserve such a cruel fate. How had they angered the gods?

The triumphant Luminosians descended from the cliff down a grassy incline to the side of the cliff, all cheering, singing, and dancing in praise of the Crims. The mass of them entered the city of Zaga, looked around all of the buildings, and took control of everything.

They went into the houses and claimed them for themselves. Any Zagan families hiding in them were given a choice: leave the city, or become slaves. The few who stayed, out of a wish never to leave the homes they loved, were heartbroken to see these others taking their homes and forcing them to do slave labour in them.

Again, the elders denounced their fellow Luminosians for doing such evil.

“You may enjoy this crest of good luck now,” one of the elders warned. “But we will all suffer a terrible trough for your sin. Perhaps not soon, but it will come. You will see!”

“Oh, do be quiet!” the new Luminosian owner of a Zagan house said. “Our trough was slavery under the Tenebrosians! This, now, is our crest, to be enjoyed forever!”

The other Luminosians cheered at these words.

“Oh, you fools,” another elder said. “Crests never last forever. You have no understanding of the old teachings.”

“We have no use for the old teachings!” said the wife of the Luminosian who took possession of the Zagan house.

The Zagan family who chose to stay in their house, and become the slaves of its new Luminosian owner, could only weep.

The other surviving Zagans–who were outside the city and left in the surrounding wilderness, not even allowed to fish in the lake or eat the fruit of the trees around Zaga–were forced to migrate as the Luminosians had had to do. They were starving.

Commentary

This narrative demonstrates how religious or philosophical ideas can be misused to justify acts of cruelty and injustice. Others have hurt us, so we ‘have the right’ to hurt others, even when those others we’re hurting aren’t the same as those who hurt us, or who hurt our ancestors.

It’s haunting how this ancient narrative is still relevant to events contemporary with the publication of these translations…and especially relevant to them.

The Tanah–Migrations, Chapter Two

[The following is the fourteenth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, and here is the thirteenth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

The Luminosians would wander in the neighbouring land for weeks without ever finding a city to settle in. The elders had advised them to stop using magic for at least the time being, fearing that an excessive use of it would lead to evil.

The elders were the only ones among them who still thought the old teachings had any worth. They insisted that the people be patient and wait for a new crest of good luck to come for them. Surely it wouldn’t be long before the weary Luminosians found a city where they’d find food and rest.

It would still be a long time, though.

While they had managed to feed themselves with a combination of food they’d taken with them from the land of Tenebros as they were carried up in the air to this new land, and food hunted for and gathered here, it would soon prove to be insufficient. As the food ran out, they traveled farther, and when the food ran out in these new areas, they continued moving.

Instead of finding a city, though, they found a desert. A few shrubs were here and there, with no animals or rain. They were beginning to starve.

“What of your teachings now, old men?” a young man shouted at the elders.

“Yes, where is that crest of good luck you keep promising us?” a young woman shouted at them.

“Patience!” one of the elders said.

“I’m fed to the teeth with your ‘patience’!” another woman, a mother of several, shouted. “I want my children fed to the teeth with food, and now!“

Shouts of agreement were heard all around.

“Enough with the teachings!” the young man said. “Let us get aid from the Crims. They helped us before, when the teachings failed us; they can help us again. We can prepare another ritual.”

More shouts of agreement were heard.

“No, no!” another of the elders said. “The crest of good luck from the magic just used can, if overused, lead to a trough of bad luck. Remember the failed rituals from before the successful one, the only successful one. There is a danger–“

“There is a danger of starvation!” the mother shouted back. “My babies need food now!“

“We need only to learn from our mistakes when using magic,” another young man said. “See that small, withering shrub over there?” He pointed at it, several yards in front of him. “Let us go over to it and do a ritual there.”

Those among them who had practiced magic went over to the shrub with him. One of the magic practitioners piled up pebbles and dirt around the shrub. Another licked her finger and raised it to the air to feel for a breeze. A third lit the withered shrub on fire. A fourth got some water from his goblet and got ready to pour it on the fire.

“Drofurb, Weleb, Nevil, and Priff have assembled,” a fifth worker of magic said. “We may begin the chant.”

All five chanted together, in the sacred language. “Crims, Crims, feed us, Crims!” They repeated it in a rhythm, to the beating of a drum.

The elders watched and shook their heads in disbelief and dismay.

When the chanting, which had reached its loudest, was finally done, the water was poured on the waving flames. The shrub, burned black, began to shake.

Moans and sighs of anticipation and excitement were everywhere.

The shrub began to grow into a large, brown tree. At the highest of its growth, it began to grow leaves. Then, ripe fruit began to grow on all of the branches. Yellow, orange, and red fruit, fresh and delicious-looking.

The famished Luminosians rushed over to the tree and ripped the fruit from the branches, then filled their faces with it. Once everyone had sated himself with the fruit, the workers of magic began a new ritual to provide other forms of food.

It involved another burning shrub with gusts of wind, nearby piles of pebbles, and water poured on the fire after chanting, “Crims, Crims, give us food!” over and over again, louder and louder, to the beat of the drum.

Instead of the shrub turning into another fruit tree, though, there was a moment of silence…then soon of shaking.

“Well?” said one of the elders. “What of your magic now, you young fools?”

“Even if we had another fruit tree, we cannot live on fruit alone,” a middle-aged man said.

Then the source of the shaking presented itself to them.

Coming from the incline of a hill the Luminosians had come up was a huge herd of deer running in their direction. Some of the people had bows and arrows they’d made in the previous weeks for hunting whatever animals could have been found. Now they were firing every last arrow in a frenzy to kill as many deer as they could.

So much deer flesh was cooked over campfires that everyone was sated by nightfall. The Luminosians slept in peace and contentment that night. Even the elders, though annoyed at having been proven wrong, were pleased to have their bellies full.

The next morning, they all continued on their way to find a city to settle in. Further encouraged by their ability to use magic to provide what they needed, they continued on their trek with little complaint.

By noontime that day, they reached the top of a cliff that looked down on a settlement. It was a beautiful city, with a nearby lake, grass, and trees all around it.

“Civilization, at last!” an old woman yelled.

“We’re saved!” a young man shouted.

“As you can see,” one of the elders said, “our patience has rewarded us. The promised crest of good luck has come, as we said it would.”

“But will the people living there take us all in?” that mother of many children asked. “There are so many of us. Hospitality has its limits.”

“We will do what we can to appeal to their mercy and generosity,” another elder said. “We can do no more than that.”

“Oh, we can do much more than that,” one of the magic workers said. “Relying on their kindness will be far less effective.”

“Please,” a third elder said. “No more magic.”

“Why not?” the young man said. “It has worked before.”

“And it has failed before,” the third elder said. “Recall the Luminosians killed when we tried to free ourselves from Tenebros.”

“But we’ve learned so much since then,” a young woman said. “And we’ll continue to learn.”

“Yes!” the young man said.

“What do you plan to do with this city, if they refuse to take so many of us in?” another elder asked.

“Quite simple,” one of the practitioners of magic said. “We’ll use our magic to take the city for ourselves.”

“No!” all of the elders shouted at once.

“Why not?” that magic worker asked, with a smug grin on his face.

“How can you ask, ‘Why not?'” one of the elders asked. “It is their city, not ours for the taking.”

“It will be ours soon enough,” the young man said.

“But we have no right to take it from those people,” the same elder said. “Do not be so wicked.”

“The world was wicked to us in making us slaves to the invading Tenebrosians,” the magic worker said. “The world owes us for how we have suffered.”

“This is Mad Thinking!” an elder shouted. “The first of the Ten Errors! You are denying the unity of all things by denying the rights of those people to live in their city in peace. How do you plan to remove them?”

“By having them killed, if necessary,” the magic worker said, with a malevolent smirk on his face.

“Murder!” that same elder shouted. “The sixth of the Ten Errors! You deny the unity of all life by trying to remove some of it! Your contempt for all of life will come back to you! The Echo Effect…”

“Oh, enough of your ridiculous teachings!” the young man said. “They’ve done us no good! I say, we use magic for what we need, from now on!”

The other people cheered in agreement. The elders stood back and watched in helplessness and horror as the magic workers prepared for yet another ritual.

Commentary

While many in the ancient world condemned witchcraft as evil (the Bible being a noteworthy example), it is impressive to see in a text so old a condemnation of the evils of settler-colonialism. As we know, there are many even in our modern world who still won’t condemn these evils, and yet there were writers back then who knew better.

The Tanah–Migrations, Chapter One

[The following is the thirteenth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, and here is the twelfth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Not a week had gone by, since the funeral and grieving over Rawmios, that an invading army came into Lumios and conquered the city. A third of the citizens of the city, including men, women, and children, were savagely slaughtered.

The survivors were taken captive and forced to leave their city while the invaders were now to settle and reside in it. The Lumiosians were taken by foot on a long, arduous journey to the land of their invaders, Tenebros. Here, the Lumiosians would be sold into slavery.

Years of drudgery and back-breaking work went by, the women often being subjected to sexual slavery, and the disobedient men beaten, often to death. They tried to comfort themselves with Rawmios’ teachings, as well as those of his predecessors.

They thought of the Unity of Action, and how their current suffering was just a large trough they were going through. Surely, sometime fairly soon, they would rise out of that trough to a new crest, and they would be liberated from the cruel and oppressive Tenebrosians.

But that crest never came.

Their continued disappointment and frustration with the failure of the old teachings to materialize in a change of fortune for them caused many Lumiosians not only to give up on those teachings but also to give up on life itself. Many committed suicide, and the remaining, dwindling Lumiosians were desperate to think of an alternative to the teachings to restore a sense of hope to them.

Some Lumiosians remembered the Crims, the four energies behind the air, Weleb, the fire, Nevil, the earth, Drofurb, and the water, Priff. These four were the material foundations of everything, and maybe they could be juxtaposed, merged, or balanced in certain ways to influence material outcomes and thus change the fortunes of the Lumiosians.

In other words, one could practice magic.

Many experiments were attempted to bring about the desired changes…at first, usually with catastrophic results, killing off many more Lumiosians than Tenebrosians. Still, the few successes were encouragements enough to continue the trial and error.

After all, the Lumiosian slaves had nothing to lose.

They continued tampering with merging various proportions of he four Crims to find just the right mix, combined with a refining of their verse incantations and rituals to find just the right way to have the Crims hear their prayers and deliver them from bondage.

Their methods gradually improved, with fewer and fewer injuries to themselves, and more and more injuries to their slave-masters. It became clear to the Lumiosians that they had to create, rather than await, their crests of better luck.

Here are some early attempts of the Lumiosians at spells, rituals, and incantations.

On a windy day, a fire would be lit, next to which would be placed a large bowl filled with water, and beside that, another large bowl filled with soil. These four elements represented Weleb, Nevil, Priff, and Drofurb, respectively, of course.

A chant would be repeated, over and over again, while standing among these four elements. One chant was repeated thus, in a special, mystical language: Blow out the fire of our sorrow!

What happened as a result of this ritual was that a hurricane, sent by Weleb, came upon the land of Tenebros; but the hurricane hit mainly where the slaves were tilling the farmers’ fields or building great edifices in the cities. It appeared too quickly to be warned against, and while some of the Tenebrosians were carried away to their deaths, far more of those who were carried away to their deaths by the hurricane were Lumiosian slaves.

Another chant would be said again and again, with the four elements representing the Crims present as before in the ritual. This time, the mystical words were thus: Burn our oppressors to death!

What resulted this time was a huge fire sent by Nevil, scorching the farmers’ fields, which again came up too suddenly for anyone to react to it. Alas, again, while some slave-masters were killed in the fire, most of those burned to death were slaves.

A third ritual was attempted, with a new incantation, again, with the four elements present. One chanted, Bury the wicked deep in the earth!

These words prompted Drofurb to cause a great earthquake to tear a huge hole in the middle of the capital city, leveling it. Many Tenebrosians lived there, and therefore they fell into the gaping hole and died. Yet again, far too many more Lumiosians were there, too, and so they fell into that hole and died as well, making the loss of so many Tenebrosians hardly worth the effort.

Yet another ritual was attempted in the same fashion, with the same elements, but with a new chant: Flood the evil in a watery grave!

Priff made it rain hard for five months without stopping, making a deluge to cover the land of Tenebros with water rising above the tallest buildings of the cities. Some of the slaves, and many more of their masters, were clever and resourceful enough to find boats or chests to get into so the flood would carry them up to the surface of the water and not drown them, while everyone else perished.

The Lumiosians managed never to be suspected by the Tenebrosians of causing any of these natural disasters; but the slaves realized that they had to be more precise in aiming the destructive aspects of their magic at their slave-masters, and only their slave-masters. So, they worked on refining the set-up of their rituals and the careful choice of words for their incantations.

They also thought of mixing the elements more thoroughly, rather than just placing them side by side, to see if they could achieve better results. First, they tried combining the water with the soil into one huge bowl of mud. Then they chanted, May the Tenebrosians sink in holes of quicksand, their slaves safe on firm ground!

This combined power of Priff and Drofurb gave far more welcome results. Lumiosian slaves stood in astonishment as they saw their masters, right beside them, sinking down in pits of mud thin enough for only them to drown in. Those slaves then ran off, out of their masters’ houses and fields, to freedom.

The surviving Tenebrosians sent out their army to catch and bring back the runaway slaves. Those Lumiosians still held as slaves were encouraged by their success, but they knew they’d have to do more to make the success a lasting one. More rituals would have to be performed to ensure complete escapes out of the country.

A ritual involving the lighting of torches and waving them in strong gusts of wind was now attempted. The chant devised was thus: May the winds of fortune gently blow us Lumiosians to freedom and safety! May their pursuers be consumed in flames!

This combined power of Nevil and Weleb carried all the Lumiosians, those already escaped and those still among their masters, even those who had done the ritual and incantation, high in the air, out of the cities and out of Tenebros to safety in a neighboring country, as if peacefully gliding in a breeze…men, women, and children. The bodies of their pursuers all burst into flame. Screaming, they fell off their horses and chariots, and died. Charred corpses littered the roads.

The Lumiosians could see, from across the border, their Tenebrosian pursuers all burning to death. The slaves, free at last, cheered and screamed deafening cries of triumph and jubilation.

“Who can match the mighty Crims, among the gods?” was a common shout, as were these: “Praise the four mighty Crims! Weleb, Priff, Nevil, and Drofurb, our powerful saviours!”

From then on, the celebrating Lumiosians would embrace magic fully, and they would regard the old teachings as a quaint memory at best, and as utterly useless at worst.

This would be so…for good or ill.

Commentary

Now we come to a crucial point in the narrative of these ancient manuscripts. The old ethical teachings are no longer to be revered, instead to be dismissed with contempt. From now on, the careful manipulation of the elements–magic–in order to influence outcomes will be the preferred way of solving problems. There will be no more following principles or perceived laws of nature; instead, one will try to bend nature to one’s will. In time, this new solution to one’s problems will lead to new problems of their own, as well as new sources of strength.