Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA: PILGRIMS OF JEDHA

What is the Force of Others? To ask this, you must ask one question and a thousand.

To a cultist of the Huiyui-Tni, you must ask, “What is the exhalation of the true, amphibious god?” To a Jedi, you must ask, “What is it that binds and defines all life?” To a child of the Esoteric Pulsar, you must ask, “Show me the secret pages of the Book of Stars.” To a faithless man, you must ask, “What power enables prophecy and sorcery in a world controlled by logic and law?”

These thousand questions will garner a thousand answers, all pointing toward the same truth.

Now ask, “Where is the Force of Others?” and one answer becomes inevitable: the kind and cold moon of Jedha. For a thousand faiths see truth in Jedha’s mysteries, no matter that their stories differ; no matter that not one history of the Temple of the Kyber can explain each brick in its foundation, or that our legends entwine and part in paradox.

I ask you to believe that Jedha is a nexus for faith, life, and the Force of Others in all their forms. If the Force can be embodied in a vision or a living creature, why not a place? Or why not an idea? Why can pilgrimage not be Jedha, and Jedha not be the Force?

I ask you to believe this not because it is true, but because it is a beginning.

Imagine these things and you must conclude that every visit to Jedha is a pilgrimage—that every visit to Jedha is an expression of faith and a search for truth, intended or not. When a thief comes to Jedha to prey upon the vendors in the markets, she does so in accordance with her nature; she will trick and lie and steal, and if she does not trick or lie or steal then her faith and nature are altogether different.

You say, “Why a thief? Why such a cynical conjecture?” To which I say, “Do you not wonder why the Guardians of the Whills protect their temple so? Why the Jedi carry their cruel swords of light, even here?” It is because our pilgrimages are in accordance with our faiths, and faith can bring terrible conflict. A thief is but the kindest example I can offer.

Jedha does not give answers to those who do not know what answers they seek. Jedha does not bring into harmony those things that cannot harmonize. Jedha does not express faith and the Force through its pilgrims; pilgrims express faith and the Force through Jedha.

Pilgrims express faith and the Force through life.

For what is life but pilgrimage? And what is life but conflict?

There have been worlds and tyrants who have tried to prevent their people from journeying to Jedha. But such a thing cannot be stopped. Living beings will always find their way to the kind and cold moon, as they always have. Through the Force and Jedha, they will act as they must, for good and ill.

And we will know them by their actions there.