Introduction to the Sorcery Syllabus

From: Nick Brooke <Nick_at_...>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 09:06:52 +0100

Sorcerers are wise and powerful men who first came from the West. Many of our great noble houses employ them, and in the western Satrapies they are commonly found as viziers to the mighty. They study the workings of Natural Law, and apply their knowledge with wondrous effect to the very substance of the Universe. But in this great comprehension is their weakness. For the sorcerers are locked in the past, constrained always to work with the world as it once was. They have no vision of the future, no ideals to strive toward.

Our Lunar Way is unique because it was reborn within Time, and thus embodies Progress. While all the other religions of Glorantha are frozen into their current forms, the Lunar Way can change and develop, growing to encompass and convert them into harmony with the truths of the Red Moon. Change is our friend, just as it is the enemy of the old order. And nobody represents the sterile and rigid nature of Law better than the traditional, conservative sorcerer.

The magi of Carmania worship a God they call the Wise Lord, Invisible God and Creator. The Red Goddess knew of this primal being, and made it part of her mission to heal him (and, thereby, heal the world). Yet by worshipping the Creator as he *was* and *is*, the magi prevented him from attaining the final transformation into what he must *become*. Their faith was fossilised and rigid, limited by its past and unable to perceive the necessity of future change. This is why the Carmanians were overthrown in the Zero Wane by the New Light of the Goddess.

At the College of Magic, we teach students the rigid Old Laws of Sorcery, but we also show how they can be made more flexible, more powerful, by embracing the fertile creativity of the Lunar Way. And our priestesses know of the Creator God of the Carmanians, and follow the path of the Red Goddess as she seeks to heal and transform the Creator and the Universe together.

(source: Sorcerous Views, Tales of the Reaching Moon #13, 1995).

Note: I should probably mention my opinion that traditional Carmanians would be unlikely to call their supreme deity the Invisible God (a title promulgated IMO by their arch-enemies the Jrusteli God Learners), but there was no reason for the Professor to waste any time explaining that in this introductory speech.