The thing I like best about the tradition I’m practicing is the discussion of virtue it engenders. There are no things to worship. It’s not forbidden, it’s simply not a part of the magic at all. Atheists have practiced this magic, not expecting much, but loving the pageantry, and it has worked for them quite nicely.
The virtues are, generally, descriptive, rather than prescriptive. They describe, at least initially, what you value. Not what you’re good at, or how you act in the world. Just what’s important. Of eight, most people have between one and three. Deepening your connection to what you value is the name of the game.
My sweetie is a very Truth-oriented person, as is the person who I might describe as my oldest friend, both of whom practice this tradition.
I am a Creativity-oriented person, as should come as zero surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with me. However, I do value Truth, it being instrumental to the pursuit of philosophy and science, which are both very dear to me.
It is also the season of Truth, presently, as each virtue has its time.
Thus, we were discussing Truth. What follows is an exploration of the concepts we covered. Usual caveats blah blah blah, you don't have to do or believe something just because a post on the internet said. I would be the last person to suggest that this tradition is for everyone (it is most decidedly not), and even within this tradition, not everyone is obligated to value Truth.
Onward, then.
Many things called truth are the exact opposite of Truth.
No part of Truth, as a virtue, is about having your own personal version of it that comforts you. That sort of attitude leads to very bad places very quickly. That’s “Daughters of the Confederacy” kind of "truth," where other people’s narratives that you hurt them make you uncomfortable, so you make banning critical race theory a number one priority because of your imagined right to never feel cognitive dissonance.
No part of truth is feeling compelled to say something cruel to another person just because “everyone knows it.” Half the stuff “everyone knows” is naked, unexamined falsehood, or an oversimplification that is far enough from any fact as to be functionally damaging instead of useful. Like that there’s xx and xy, and those are the genders, and no other combinations exist.
Nor is it blathering on about everything you notice, and trying to, and I quote, “connect the dots” without any scientific or historical context.
Each virtue has facets. Truth straddles the transition between Summer and Autumn, and so its Summer facet is colored by Honor, which is the virtue which precedes it, and its Autumn facet is colored by Prudence, which comes after it.
Summer’s Truth is about honesty, a much hated and misunderstood characteristic these days. Not lying would be the bare minimum. Not making promises if you don't know that you can keep them. Owning up to your own faults, and speaking truth to actual power. Like, to be clear, telling off Debbie at the HOA about being a King Sized Bastard is not what honesty demands. But if there are Nazis taking over the schools and burning books, it does mean saying, "this is not right." It does mean not backing down when Todd the Alpha Male starts barking about his right to not vaccinate his kids, if what he wants from you is to tell him that what he's doing is OK in the middle of a plague. Moreover, to perceive the truth about oneself with grace and without shame is important to master of Truth as Summer understands it.
Autumn's Truth has much to do with curiosity, I think. The transition from Truth into prudence is about not only knowing something, but putting that information to good use. To me, it feels like the transition from science to technology, from knowing about lithium ions to building a battery with it. A genuine desire to search out the truth, to untangle mysteries, to solve puzzles in that sense, is what distinguishes Autumn's Truth from Summer's.
"How can we know if this is true?" is an important question. It is the mark of an adept of the virtue that hearing a statement that feels off, or which creates cognitive dissonance, does not provoke anger, but rather, provokes an honest investigation. The capacity to entertain an idea, evaluate it, and then to make a flexible judgment about whether it is true of false based on the available facts, and also to re-evaluate old ideas when new facts come to light is key to its essence.
I suppose this is a companion piece to the Rotpocalypse. Mainly written down for my own records.
"Surely there is more to me than simply decay," I said to myself. "I'm an artist. Surely there's a growth and healing side, too."
I turned to Ogma and asked. He didn't really say much.
I think I'd mentioned (or maybe not) that there had been a lighter side of my rot powers, that fermented things, turning them into beer or wine, depending on the target.
Have you ever seen a lemon's peel liquify around the intact fruit? No? Neither me, but it'd happened. I used a spoon to put it into the trash. Then it happened again, but this time, I massaged off the zest and pith, looking at the completely intact fruit which smelled like alcohol. I pondered what this interesting new flavor friend might taste like, but my partner talked sense into me, and it, too, went into the trash.
One the third day, I opened a spaghetti squash, and every single last seed inside of it had sprouted. It had come from the supermarket. We planted them. I tried to eat what remained of the squash's flesh but it was terribly bitter.
And then... every apple, every lemon, every fruit that wasn't seedless, the fruit inside of everything had sprouted.
I determined to try and channel this power into healing a cold. The results were underwhelming, but still atypical of that particular person's pattern with respiratory colds, in a good way. I'll keep trying.
A super power of growing food from seeds inside of supermarket produce isn't nothing.
