Dr. Wu's Lecture
“Good
morning. As this will be our last
session prior to the final, we’ll cover something we glossed briefly over in
an earlier lesson in slightly more detail today.
If you’ll turn in the Treatises
to the third chapter, I’d like to talk for a bit about Lander Thrace’s model
and the Seven Pillars.
“As
you’ll recall, the Covenantus Lander Thrace developed this model during the
First Building, wherein he envisioned a great temple with Art as the roof, the
Eldritch as the foundation, and the structure supported by seven Pillars which
he considered to be the core principles of the adept’s practice.
It was a symbology that was followed closely during the latter part of
the First Building and the time subsequent, and indeed has had more than a
little influence on our approach to the Art ever since, although as we’ve seen
there have been certain challenges to it down the eras.
“As
you can see diagrammed in the text, reading in sequence from left to right, the
seven Pillars are Will, Order, Rite, Discipline, Sympathy, Entropy, and
Submission. And you’ll note that
in that sequence they describe an adept’s journey, as well as illustrating in
their arrangement the relation of the components of practice to each other –
e.g., Order and Entropy balance each other, but neither comes first or last, and
Discipline is at the center of all the others. And this model does, as I’m certain you can see, present a
picture of certain fundamental principles on which our Art is based.
“But
the Landerian model is subject to criticism as well. For one thing, though it’s an excellent symbology to
summarize what a practitioner should learn, it opens itself to flaws when used
as the basis for a student’s curriculum of craft – which is why we’ve
saved it until the end of the term instead of beginning with it. And, of course, there are disagreements, and well-founded
ones, to the philosophy that the practice of Art begins with Will, centers on
Discipline, and culminates in Submission, filling out with the other components
along the way. And it was
criticized even in its day for leaving out a Pillar that is arguably even more
fundamental than the others – Anyone want to take a guess? . . . No? –
Passion. Thrace spent some time
half-heartedly arguing that Passion was an Eldritch quality and belonged in the
model’s foundations, but it eventually came to be accepted among those who
used the Pillars as a tool that Passion must infuse every other component of
practice or else the entire structure is false, and so it came to be known as
the “invisible eighth Pillar” and left at that.
“Furthermore,
a debate inevitably arose concerning the interpretation of the problematic
seventh Pillar. It was generally
assumed that “Submission” was to be read as the adept’s submission to
forces and patterns greater than himself – but some saw that idea to be
included in Sympathy, which is not only the sympathy of symbols but also the
practitioner’s existing in sympathy with the rhythms of the energies of the
worlds. So, again inevitably, there
were those who read that the seventh Pillar denoted the submission of lesser
forces to the true adept, a reading with particular appeal, especially with its
connection to the number 7, to a certain sect or group of sects – Anyone? . .
. Yes, exactly, thank you, Joshua – the Enclave.
Falling on the significance of seven as a Chimaerical number, the Enclave
adopted a particularly skewed interpretation of the Landerian Pillars as their
own, with Submission standing for the eventual submission of the world, and
worlds, to the Chimaerae and their followers. And Thrace himself, long since
having disappeared from the circles of the Art, was unavailable to give the
“true” interpretation of his teaching.
“All
of which goes to show, once again, that any path, any learning, can be inverted
in the service of destruction instead of creation. That is the real difference between the choices made by the
Enclave and those of other practitioners – not a focus on Entropy over Order,
or the reverse, but the use of both Order and Entropy and all the other tools of
craft to tear down instead of build up. But,
of course, all of you will be able to draw your own conclusions on this subject
by now.
“That’s
all for today. Thank you all for
your attention, and for your attendance to this course over the summer months.
Hopefully I’ll see some of you back in a couple of weeks in the fall.
Good luck to all of you on the final.”