Order is life; chaos is death. This is fact, not belief. Each living creature
consists of ordered parts that must function together. When chaos intrudes...
Order extends down to the smallest fragments of the world. By influencing the
smallest ordered segments to create a new and ordered form, an order-master may change where
land exists and where it does not, where the rain will fall and where it will not....
In contrast, control of chaos is simply the ability to sever one
ordered element of the world from another ... focused destruction ...
(The Magic of Recluce, 222)
Learning without understanding can but increase the frustration of
the impatient ...
(The Magic of Recluce, 302)
... All things are not possible, even to the greatest ...
(The Magic of Recluce, 302)
Order cannot be concentrated in and of itself, not even within the staff of
order, and no man can truly master the staff of order until he casts it aside.
(The Magic of Recluce, 378)[excerpt]
(The Magic of Recluce, 456)
Love no one until you can love yourself, for love of another is merely empty
flattery and self-deception for one who cannot accept himself without pretense.
(The Magic of Recluce, 378)
Order and chaos must balance, but as on a see-saw. The power of chaos is for
great destruction in a confined area, for order by nature must be diffused over vaster realms.
If you would battle chaos, or establish order, you must limit the area and the time in which it
must be balanced.
(The Magic of Recluce, 378)
All physical items--unlike fire or pure chaos--must have some structure, or they would
not exist ...
Because all wrought iron has a grain created from the forging of its crystals, the strength of
the iron lies in the alignment and length of the grain. Using order to reinforce that grain is
the basis for creating black iron ... Its strength lies in the ordering of unbruised or
unstrained grains along the length of the metal ...
(The Magic Engineer, 318)
If order or chaos be without limits, then common sense would indicate that each should have
truimphed when the great ones of each discipline have arisen. Yet neither has so triumphed,
despite men and women of power, intelligence, and ambition. Therefore, the scope of either or
chaos is in fact limited, and the belief in the balance of forces demonstrated ...
(The Magic Engineer, 318)
Pure order cannot nourish life, for living requires growth, and the process of growth is the
constant struggle to bring order out of chaos.
When a fire destroys the great forests of the Westhorns, immediately order replenishes itself
with scores of seedlings and bushes striving to recover the hillsides.
When a stone wall is built, the forces of frost and heat continually tumble the stones. So too
is it with a house, once the constant order of the hearthholder is removed.
The function of order is to support that life which can order chaos; and without chaos to be
ordered, there can be no purpose to life.
The function of chaos is to destroy order. Without order, no structure can exist--no man nor
woman, no plant, not even an earth upon which to walk. Thus, the total triumph of chaos is its
defeat.
What can be said of order and chaos, then? Since the world was, is, and will be, neither order
nor chaos may triumph. Therefore, in the world as a whole there must be equal measures of each,
and that Balance will be maintained; for, if it is not, there shall be either no world or
no life.
And upon this world are the lands and the seas.
People call the sea chaos, but the sea contains a deeper order within the ever-changing waves
and depths, and the seas wash upon the beaches and retreat, and that changes not.
Likewise people call the land orderly, for it changees seldom, yet beneath that surface order is
great disorder, filled with the fires and chaos of the demons.
A people of the sea must be of order, for order must contain the surface chaos of the oceans and
harmonize with the deeper order under the waves.
Likewise, a people of chaos can only exist upon the land, for the sea will rend them unto
nothing.
The Basis of Order
Fragment attributed to Section II
(The Magic Engineer, 521-522)
