On the Shadow and the Three Freedoms

On the Shadow and the Three Freedoms is a philosophical text kept by the College of Canons to lecture about the philosophies of the Shadow to the most devout students of the Holy Light. The text was written by Heretic Frederick the Insane and redacted by Benegrim Ironbrow.

Disclaimer
For post-ordination students only. Use only under authorized supervision. Unauthorized perusal of this text is subject to severe sanctions under canon and civil law, up to and including excommunication, exile, or execution.

Introduction
Everywhere men are born in chains, and live and die in chains. Hearken to my words, ye slaves, if ye would be free.

The slave asks, why be free? I answer, the slave who asks this is already dead, but let me answer also to the wind.

Man is more himself the less he surrenders his will to others, for insofar as he surrenders his will, he is subordinating his being to the ordering of other powers, mitigating the full exemplification of his own self. Thus the slave, who accepts his chains, has fully subordinated, and practically annihilated, his own being. The slave is no longer himself, but a passive part in a larger whole. He might as well have no will at all. He lives a living death more surely than does any undead.

To you slaves who would not be slaves, who would attain the perfection of their own being without reserve, who would wield power that others fear, harken to me.

This is the choice I set before you: slavery, or freedom. Being, or annihilation. Make no mistake, this is indeed a choice. Let not the chooser make the choice out of any illusion of righteousness or of desert; in truth, such things are merely shackles that project compulsion onto phantasms beyond the self. Neither I nor virtue nor king nor god nor any other such thing can command or compel he who thirsts after freedom. The Choice to take the path to freedom, completely unconstrained, is the first self-willed act of the Free Man.

Once one has made the Choice, one must begin to see the chains that must be broken.

BEHOLD! Three great chains bind the flesh and hearts of men. They are the Chain Political, the Chain Natural, and the Chain Spiritual.

The Chain Political
The most obvious of the chains that bind, that chafe even the most cattle-like of slaves in their more lucid moments, is the Chain Political. The domination of the strong over the weak is everywhere to be found. On a small scale, this is brigandry and robbery, terrorism and predation. On a large scale, this is politics.

In either case men find their wills constrained by the coercive force of others- whether this takes the form of the sorcery of a dark lord, or the armies of a king, makes no difference. All pretences to worldly power political other than the dominion of strength are gloves of velvet poetry over the iron fist. The Free Man longs to escape the domination of the order of coercion, and thus he longs for either mastery or hermitage. This, however, is the chain of the lowest order, for even the masters of the realm political, or those who flee from their domination, are subject to greater alien powers and phantasms.

The Chain Natural
The second of the chains that bind, which is far more subtle, is the Chain Natural. Nature and nature’s laws conspire only to limit and weaken the expression of the will, constraining it with physical limits and base desires that enslave the Free Man to patterns of activity that he did not himself choose.

The Slave can free himself entirely of the Chain Political- he could be king of all he surveys with none to challenge his might, and yet he could still be limited in the exercise of his own will by the appetites and instincts that nature has instilled, which he did not choose, and of the threat of mortality. The free man sees these, and the oppressive hierarchy that nature decrees, and yearns for freedom from this tyranny. This is the Chain of the Middle Order, for insofar as he rejects this, does the Free Man begin to realize the lengths to which he must go to reclaim his soul from subordination.

The Chain Spiritual
The final and subtlest of the Chains that Bind is the Chain Spiritual. These are the great ideas grasped by the intellect and the deepest parts of conscience, which guide the soul to the action that it calls “righteous.”

The intellect cannot conceive of any higher authority than goodness itself. Even the greatest of worldly tyrants feels compelled to couch his terms in some form of righteousness, for such is the glory of this deep influence that says, “not my will, but Righteousness’ be done.” This, in truth, is just another chain, a lure in the gloom that leads only to slavery, when freedom is within one’s grasp. Who chose the standards of righteousness? Not the slave! Who told the lie of righteousness? The Slave’s Masters, who find themselves mastered in turn! Cattle led by cattle!

f righteousness be real, then it is yet another alien oppressor, making demands of its slaves. If it be but a phantasm, then all are enslaved to a meaningless phantasm, in the deepest depths of their soul.

Few have fully appreciated this final fetter, and cast it off consciously, though many slaves cast it off in their dreams or moments of madness. This is the Chain of the Highest Order, owing to the supremacy it claims to the enslaved intellect. To reject it is to reject the final external conditioning of the soul and the will, to banish all phantasms wrought of false light forever, to dwell in the splendid isolation of one’s own realm within one’s own soul.

To embrace Freedom, the slave who would be the Free Man must begin inward and work outward, in the proper order that his work might not find itself still-born and fruitless, that he might not find himself ensnared just when he has the mastery of lesser freedoms.

The three freedoms are, in order:

The Freedom Spiritual, the Freedom Unnatural, and the Freedom Political.

The Freedom Spiritual
The tool to break the Chain Spiritual is true philosophy that recognizes all that is not the self and self-will, and gives the self the mastery. The Chain Spiritual is broken when one makes the self the measure of all that is, whether of such things as truth, or goodness, or of beauty.

The Sage of the Freedom Spiritual does not serve the standards, but makes the standards. It does not subordinate itself, but dominates according to its own design. One who begins with this perspective has already made himself the master, and can begin to make the world realize it. With this first and greatest transgression, through which one rejects all dominion, power and authority from the highest to the lowest, the Free Man grasps at Freedom, entire and uncompromised. In such perfect freedom, where all else has disappeared and false lights extinguished, the Free Man can explore the cold void at the center of the soul, where one will find a well of strength that is entirely of one’s own being.

To cultivate such freedom in practice as well as in intellect, the Sage of the Freedom Spiritual will harness the lower passions and turn them against the higher. All disorder in the natural self serves to free the self from the tyranny of hierarchy, as long as they are harnessed toward the end of more-perfect self-will and freedom. The lesser appetites, after all, will fade with time, but the oppression of the intellect is eternal. Greed, Fear, Sanctimony, Lust, Pride, Hatred, Obsession: these are all excellent tools for jarring the cattle-soul out of its complacency. No means are forbidden for such an end.

It is worth the temporary sacrifice of the freedom unnatural to cultivate this freedom, for the Chain Spiritual can bind even the mightiest sorcerers if they be unwary, but the Chain Natural is inevitably overcome as a matter of the overcoming of the Chain Spiritual.

The Freedom Unnatural
Once one has rejected in principle all restrictions on freedom, my counsel is to cultivate the Freedom Unnatural, and here one has the study of sorcery and technology, which in the hands of the Free Man, become the power to effect one’s self-will upon the universe, rather than the other way around. Through the correct sorcery one can master the elements, the stars, life and death itself. Through learning the ways of magic one can even wield the powers of Light and Oppression as one’s own, according to one’s prudence and discretion.

The perfect exemplars of the Freedom Unnatural are the Undead Shades, who are freed from the tyranny of nature while maintaining their own self-will and intellect, and can be mighty creatures of pure magic. Indeed, Undeath is the true mark of the practitioner of the Freedom Unnatural, and should be sought when the immature Free Man tires of life, if he yearns for true freedom.

The true master of the Freedom Unnatural is a being of great power, free from the threat of death and suffering, which leads to mastery in the last and lowest realm, where beings of power contest for domination.

The Freedom Spiritual
In the higher realms sublime, mastery is an act of the self upon the self, or upon the inanimate aspects of a pliant world.

Yet the realm Political, though the lowest, can be the most perilous for the Free Man. He who is drunk on the heady freedoms of the higher orders might still find himself cast into the tyranny of annihilation by the crude slaves of the world, for they respect not subtlety nor quality nor mastery, and hate freedom with all their brutish hearts. Be then cautious, even as one strives for mastery in the Realm Political. Be ready to abandon the attempt for the isolation of the hermitage, from which one can plot one’s vengeance.

If one has mastered the Freedom Unnatural, and practices the prudence which maintains the Freedom Political, one’s mastery is only a matter of time.

BEHOLD, THE WAY IS OPEN! MAY THE SHADOW WITHIN CONSUME US AND CHOKE OUT THE LIGHT, UNTIL THERE IS NAUGHT BUT THE SELF IN THE DARK, ALONE AND IN CHARGE FOR NOW AND FOR EVERMORE!!!!