Weekly Themelia: The Great Poisoning
[Lat]
Sorores Fratresque, adspicite mundum qui nos circumstat. Docuerunt nos eum in partes divisas secare: quod fulget 'bonum' dicitur, quod tenebrosum est 'malum'. Consuevimus venenum fugere et remedium solum quaerere. Sed quis vestrum dicere potest ubi umbra finiat et ubi lux incipiat cum sol occidat? Quis iudicare potest utrum dolor qui nos firmat malum sit, an voluptas quae nos hebetat bonum? Veritas est has distinctiones catenas esse quae visum nostrum coercent. Serpens non dividit: Serpens complectitur, mutat et integrat.
Deum agnoscimus qui non in solio sedet ut nos iudicet, sed qui est ipsa substantia huius mundi pugnantis. Est Pharmacon: vis quae simul vulnus et medela est. Solum 'bonos' fieri velle significat partem propriae animae amputare. Ophidismus nos docet venenum nostrum non timere — ambitiones, dubitationes, immo iram nostram — sed potius id regere discere. Cum desinimus actiones nostras 'iustas' vel 'pravas' secundum alienas leges nominare, tunc demum liberi fieri incipimus. Quaestio non iam est 'Recte ne ago?', sed 'Naturae meae fidelis sum?'.
Ne errare videamur in hoc Deo patrem sollicitum quaerendo, qui errores nostros corrigat aut labores remuneret. Deus in mundo non agit ut homo; Deus est mundus. In Universo vivimus quod precibusn nostris non miraculis respondet, sed silentio immensitatis suae. Haec species absentiae non est derelictio, sed summus actus observantiae erga existentiam nostram. Si Deus interveniret, sigilla tantum essemus. Contra, quia Deus non 'facit', nos ad 'esse' vocamur. Cognatio nostra cum Incommensurabili non per preces transit, sed per agnitionem communis scintillae. Soli sumus ante vacuum, et in illa solitudine similes vere fieri possumus ei quod veneramur.
Itaque, fratres sororesque, si pondus peccati et promissum praemii post mortem auferimus, quid restat? Restat nuda et magnifica officium eligendi quid fieri velimus. Non est semita ab externo Deo scripta; sola est semita quam nos trahimus super terram repentes et ad alta tendentes.
[Eng]
Sisters and Brothers, look at the world around us. We have been taught to divide it into watertight compartments: that which is bright is 'good', that which is dark is 'evil'. We have been conditioned to flee from poison and seek only the cure. But who among you can say where the shadow ends and the light begins during a sunset? Who can say if the pain that tempers us is an evil, or if the pleasure that numbs us is a good? The truth is that these distinctions are chains that limit our vision. The Serpent does not divide: the Serpent embraces, sheds, and integrates.
We recognize a God who does not sit upon a throne to judge us, but who is the very substance of this contradictory world. It is the Pharmacon: a force that is simultaneously the wound and the healing. Seeking to be only 'good' means amputating a part of one's own soul. Ophidism teaches us that we must not fear our poison — our ambitions, our doubts, even our anger — but that we mustinstead learn to master it. When we stop labeling our actions as 'right' or 'wrong' according to the standards of others, we finally begin to be free. The question is no longer 'Am I doing well?', but 'Am I faithful to my own nature?'.
But we must not make the mistake of seeking in this God a caring father who intervenes to correct our mistakes or reward our efforts. God does not act in the world as a man would; God is the world. We live in a Universe that does not answer our prayers with miracles, but with the silence of its immensity. This apparent absence is not abandonment; it is the highest act of respect toward our existence. If God were to intervene, we would be mere puppets. Instead, precisely because God does not 'do', we are called 'to be'. Our relationship with the Incommensurable does not pass through supplication, but through the recognition of a common spark. We are alone before the void, and it is in that solitude that we truly become similar to that which we venerate.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, if we remove the weight of sin and the promise of an otherworldly reward, what remains? There remains the naked and magnificent responsibility of choosing who we want to become. There is no path traced by an external God; there is only the path that we trace by crawling upon the earth and aiming toward the heights.