Black

Nine Meditations in the Temple of Chromatic Enlightenment

Before water or wind,
Before mind or matter,
Before sound or silence,
Was one Light.
The Light was the seed of all Life.
As the Amnyine did before me,
So will I study the lessons of Light,
So will I praise the colours of Light,
So will I honour the rites of the Temple.
For the Groves of all peoples,
For the Seedlings of all suns,
With the breath of all my days,
And against all shadows.
And so I make my vow.

The traditional oath of the Thinderin Light Guards of Silusia-Alpha

And the light shineth in darkness;
And the darkness comprehended it not.

John 1.5

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The first meditation is black.

“Keep your eyes open,” the thinderin guide tells us, although I can’t see anything. That’s the point.

The Chamber of Darkness is at the root of the temple. It is buried deep into the hill in a cavernous void below the level of the entrance hall.

“Many things are recognised most clearly in their absence,” the thinderin guide has explained. “The darkness is a necessary purification before you can understand the light.”

At first, I am conscious of the presence of the other pilgrims, the vaulting solidity of rock and the hollow touch of damp air. My bare feet transmit a mild chill from the smoothly worn contours of polished stone beneath them, but it is not really cold. We walk deeper into the Chamber of Darkness and find our own spaces. Silence falls from the great unseen arches above us. I start to remember another darkness on another planet; a place below the still surface of Lake Vostok, deep under the Antarctic ice pack; a place of long, low frequency moans and a deeper cold, which penetrates the imagination more than the body. And I remember the great embassies of the viwodian ambassadors, cut from blue and white ice and illuminated by the faint phosphorescence of their living lanterns. And their black curvaceous bodies, sleek and vast as whales and tended by mechanical fish. And I remember their words and their warnings about the Temple.

And remembering, I try to forget, for I am here to learn discipline and to meditate. And above all I must not indulge in idle memory.

So, I put aside the knowings of the mind and begin to forget. Soon, I am only aware of shallow sensory remnants; the quiet current of breathing and the limping ache of my heartbeat. With an effort of will I can suppress even these, so that there is just the dark. I concentrate hard.

This is Silusia Alpha. I am so far from home. My imagination makes much of gravity and motion and the binding attraction of body to body. The invisible weight of the world seems to orbit around me. Its spinning mass is like some reassuring universal heartbeat, that counterpoints my own. The temple air soothes me. I relax.

After a long while, my optic nerves dance anxiously, disturbed by the absence of stimulation. I grope for meaning; feel on the point of a revelation. The thinderin guide touches my shoulder. “The meditation is over,” she says.