Colors of Chaos

Chaos by itself guarantees neither prosperity nor the failure of prosperity; chaos guarantees but life, while order in excess must lead to death.

The nature of man is that of chaos, and not of order, for man is alive, as is chaos, and the goal of order is perfect stillness and all parts of a whole in an unchanging array.

Yet chaos unchecked is as ruinous to a prosperous land as order unchecked, and the excesses of man can be checked successfully only by the application of chaos bounded by order.

Order applied directly to that which is man will retard, if not destroy, that spirit of life nurtured by the flame of chaos; likewise, all life upon the world is nurtured by that flame of chaos that is the sun itself.

A land bound to chaos may fail to prosper, but it will not destroy itself, for chaos is as life; a land bound to order must, in the end, destroy itself, and all around it, for order is like the ice of the north in the times of the Great Chills, seeking always more order, until nothing lives within its scope.

A great mage must strive always to use chaos for prosperity, that is, growth and change bounded by the chill of order, yet never must he pay obeisance to order, for order will take his spirit and leave him a shell of what he might have been, as a mighty city empty of all souls, as a seed without kernel, as a hearth without flame…

Colors of White, (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven), Part Two