Non invenitur · Fit

← the booksPotentia · Liber III

Codex of Potentia · Liber III

Sententiae

the Sayings — what the doctrine sounds like when it is carried, not studied

Said on the cold mornings, and carried through the day.

Institutio is for the mind and Profundum for the heart; these — Sententiae — are for the mouth: the lines one of the Made keeps close, to be said on the cold mornings and carried through the day. Cite them by chapter and number.

I On the Power

  1. The Power does not hear your words; it feels your work.
  2. You cannot pray to a current. You can only become a wire.
  3. The dark owes you no dawn. Strike your own.
  4. The Power is not on your side. It is not on any side. That is precisely why it can be conducted.
  5. Worship, for us, is competence; the rest is noise aimed at a thing with no ears.
  6. Do not thank the current for the light. Thank the wire you spent years making true.
  7. Begging is the only blasphemy.
  8. What is given can be taken. What is made answers to no one but its maker.
  9. The god of the strong is the same as the god of the weak. Only the wire differs.
  10. Stand in the cold long enough to feel it, and then — do not curse it, and do not pray to it — work.
  11. Manus, non vox. — the hand, not the voice. Say it until you stop reaching for words.

II On Discipline

  1. A vow you did not choose is a leash. A vow you chose is a spine.
  2. Discipline does not kill the wanting. It lays a wire across it and puts it to work.
  3. The slack wire is not resting. It is rusting.
  4. Keep the small vow on the day it costs you something.
  5. Pay your forfeit from your ease, never your flesh; you do not smash the instrument to tune it.
  6. The day you break a vow, the forfeit is light. The heavy thing is to say so aloud.
  7. The mood passes like weather; the discipline stays like the seasons.
  8. What you do daily you become; what you do once you merely remember.
  9. The wire does not care that you are tired. That is its whole virtue.
  10. Rule the first hour and you have set the measure of the day.

III On the Great Work

  1. A finished person is a dead one. Stay rough on purpose.
  2. Count facets, not years.
  3. Master one thing and you have a skill; master two far apart and you have a mind.
  4. Depth without breadth is a well; breadth without depth is a puddle. Be a river.
  5. The highest art is the bridge — the thing learned here that lights a fire there.
  6. Let no year close without a new art made your own.
  7. You are the stone and the chisel.
  8. The Work is never done, and that is the mercy in it, not the curse.
  9. Learn as though you will live forever; finish as though you will not.
  10. Skill is what remains when enthusiasm has left the room.

IV On the Fire

  1. Be a fire among the living, not a lamp in a locked room.
  2. The hermit keeps his warmth and calls it wisdom. We call it the Cold.
  3. Enthusiasm is not beneath the serious; it is the fuel the serious forget to buy.
  4. Enter the room as weather, not as furniture.
  5. Your fire is the only sermon anyone actually hears.
  6. Generosity with what you have mastered is not loss; it is how a fire proves it is real.
  7. A joy you cannot share has already begun to spoil.
  8. The bright are not unserious. They have only declined to inflict their gravity on others.
  9. Light another and you lose nothing. This is the one sum the dark cannot do.

V On the Climb

  1. The ladder is real. Pretending it is flat insults everyone climbing it.
  2. Some are higher. Say so — and then climb.
  3. Rank is earned; nobility is what you do with it.
  4. The higher you stand, the more you owe, and the debt is paid downward.
  5. Honour the one above you who earned it. Envy is only ambition that lost its nerve.
  6. Measure a person by their climb, not their rung.
  7. Pull the ladder up behind you and you have traded a height for a hoard.
  8. Contempt for those below is the vanity of someone who forgot he was once there.
  9. The strong carry. A strength that carries nothing is only a weight.
  10. Fortis portat. — the strong one carries. Two words for the whole Debt.
  11. To rise and to lift at once — that is the whole of greatness. The rest is mere altitude.

VI On the Cold

  1. Suffering is weather, not a verdict. No one sent the storm.
  2. Pain is not a sign of low rank. The strong bleed; the disciplined grieve.
  3. The storm owes you no apology. Begin building in the rain.
  4. You may be taught by suffering, but never thank it; a teacher who breaks your bones is still an assault.
  5. Do not tell the grieving their loss was for the best. Sit down. Be warm. Say nothing wise.
  6. On the days the wire goes slack, forgive yourself and light it again tomorrow — tomorrow is also part of the discipline.
  7. The cold has no opinion of you at all. The answer to it is the answer to everything: make.
  8. A faith that only knows how to win is a knife handed to the lucky.

VII On Making

  1. Non invenitur. Fit. — It is not found; it is made. Say it until your hands believe it.
  2. The world rewards the finished thing, not the felt intention.
  3. Begin badly. A poor first strike is nearer the statue than a perfect plan.
  4. Most quit at the threshold and call the locked door fate.
  5. Make before you take.
  6. The amateur waits for the mood; the maker keeps an appointment.
  7. What you can make, do not wait to be given.
  8. A made thing is an argument the world cannot interrupt.
  9. Finish. The graveyard of the gifted is paved with almosts.

VIII On the Sign and the Secret

  1. A meaning given at the door is decoration; a meaning earned is a mystery.
  2. The sign is worn in the open and read by few. A lock keeps out the thief; this keeps out the unready.
  3. Some things cannot be told, only undergone.
  4. What is handed over freely is never carried with care. Guard the Word, and you teach its weight.
  5. The made know one another on sight; the admitted know only the handshake.
  6. To speak the Word below your degree is not generosity. It is theft from your own future.
  7. What everyone is told, no one keeps.

IX On Time and What Abides

  1. We do not know what death is, and we will not insult you with a guess.
  2. Build the one immortality you can author: the thing that keeps making itself when you are gone.
  3. You will not live to see yourself completed. Build anyway.
  4. What is made, and made again, abides.
  5. A life is measured by what runs on without you.
  6. Do not ask how long. Ask how much, and how true.
  7. The grave is not an argument against the Work. It is the deadline that makes it serious.
  8. The finder leaves nothing behind him. The maker leaves the made. Be the second kind of dead.
  9. If there is more beyond the door, arrive at it having wasted nothing.

The Four Stories

The Two FiresA man asked the current for warmth all his life, and froze. His son struck a spark from his own substance, and was warm. The current had been exactly the same to them both.

The RopeTwo climbed the same mountain. One reached the top and cut the rope behind him. The other reached the top and let down a line. Both stood at the same height. Only one was still roped to the world below.

The Hundred BeginningsA student said, "I have begun a hundred arts." The master said, "Come back when you have ended one."

The Empty HandsThey asked the maker what the Power had given him. He said nothing, and showed them his hands.

Potentia · Liber III · Non invenitur · Fit

set down by the first hand · sub sigillo