Hushery

*'The Great Art of Hushery understands the beauty of silence, and of its sundering.'*

Hushery is the Wisdom and Night Art of aesthetics, necromancy, and silence, as well as the techniques used by Reckoners to steal Years. Its Principles are Winter, Edge, and Lantern, with Winter being both its primary Principle and its primary Power.

Hushery's associated soul elements are *trist* and *wist*.

## Ideology

Hushery's most notable quality is its view of silence as metaphysical perfection. At the dawn of the world the Mansus was unwounded and at peace, until the advent of speech horrifically wounded Vak, allowing humans to enter the Mansus and for the dissemination of forbidden knowledge. Hushery holds that this damage to existence can be mitigated through silence and absence, in which no further error is possible.

Another concept unique to Hushery is "the paradox of the eternal ending", notably pioneered by Julian Coseley in his book *The Refinements of Light*. The eternal ending reconciles History and Eternity by keeping the world in an Eternal state of decay, a mortal - and thus Historical - phenomenon.

Hushery favors the Egg Unhatching over the the Sun-in-Splendour, viewing the Egg as being gentler and capable of imparting forgotten truths. Interestingly, it takes a more morbid view of the gods-from-Stone as a whole, recognizing their cruelty, the detrimental effects of their remains, and the likelihood the only way to staunch these effects is through violent revenge.

## Commit Text

### Disciplines of the Scar

> ***The Crime ·*** The Mansus is the fortress in dream raised by the gods-who-were-stone. Nowhere is the inevitable scar beneath it. Monstrous, the gods-from-Nowhere; but cruel, the gods-who-were-stone.
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### Glassblowing & Vesselcrafting

> ***Glass, the Keeper ·*** The highest purpose of a glass vessel: to separate what is without from what is within. Perhaps, Hushery suggests, this was the first purpose of the first Hour, and only in that first moment could there be perfect understanding.
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### Inks of Power

> ***The Wound ·*** The greatest and most secret truths can only be recorded by the Librarians of the Watchman's Tree - even then, only beneath the shelter of the Tree's branches, and only in the sanctioned inks called *encaustum terminale*. There are still certain languages in which these secrets can be spoken aloud, but that has never been safe. These secrets are the world's blood, and to speak them aloud is to shed that blood. We who are silent have always known this.
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### Inks of Revelation

> ***Truths that Were ·*** The inks called *encaustum terminale* are permitted only to the Librarians of the Watchman's Tree. Those inks can be used to reveal truths - even truths that are no longer so, not since the dawn times when the sun hung red and low and we felt its warmth like autumn. If that first and gentlest sun returned, the truths might return with it.
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### Maggephene Mysteries

> ***Revenge ·*** The gods-who-are, which we call the Hours, warred against the gods-from-stone and cast them down. What remains of the gods-from-stone we call plague, scourge, catastrophe. If the Hours were cast down in their turn, would the gods-from-stone be satisfied? Would revenge bring peace? The Night Arts hint that it might be so.
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### Ouranoscopy

> ***Wisdom ·*** If the stars are wisdom, then dawn is ignorance. A day might come when there is no dawn. Ouranoscopy should be numbered among the Night Arts.
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### Quenchings & Quellings

> ***Safety in Silence ·*** Unwise words are dangerous. Mourn them, remember them, speak them not. This is Hushery.
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### Sacra Limiae

> ***Of Endings*** The Hours are not eternal. The Sun-in-Splendour was riven and cast down. If we mortals so desire, we might prevent his return. Understand Hushery, and you understand endings.
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### Serpents & Venoms

> ***The Crime ·*** In the dawn times the sun was lower, so we gave it our blood. From our blood it knew us, and so it was kinder. Its serpents brought us its poisons to drink, and so we died. But we only died a little, and so we dreamed, and returned the next day to give it our blood again. Those times of peace persist in the lessons of Hushery.
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### Sharps

> ***The Last Sun ·*** Before speech, we could not dream, which is to say that before speech tore open the Peacock Gate to dreams, the Mansus was unwounded and at peace. It's not obligatory for Long to pass that gate, but they generally choose to. Perhaps that's why the Hours charge their Names to hunt down Long - even the Long who claim to serve them. Hushery recognises this truth.
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### Sights & Sensations

> ***A Wound in Dreams ·*** The artist knows: their every work could be improved. The artist understands: perfect work can never be completed. Perfection exists only as absence: Hushery understands this.
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### Snow Stories

> ***Much is Lost ·*** Still all the winds, still every the beating tongue
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> Now still the mirrored moon, the sea's cauldron
> When nothing's left then nothing is undone.
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> Hushery.
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### Surgeries & Exsanguinations

> ***The White ·*** The Watchman's Tree has flowers three: Black, Red, and White. Red is the life that flows in the body's courses, and white is the writing at the body's core. Hushery teaches what ends.
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### The Great Signs and the Great Scars

> ***The First Error ·*** Vak is a Great Scar; Calyptra's first mistake. If she could only be healed of her pain, Calyptra might reign inviolate, and the perilous knowledge it protects might be truly safe. The nature of her healing is a Hushery matter.
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### Ericapaean

> ***The King in the Mirror ·*** There is a story told by students of silence: that a great and golden King held the only key to his deepest prison cell. One day he gave the key to his minister, and offered him a choice: to submit to execution, or to visit the cell and tell him what he found there. The minister made the wiser choice, and returned to show the King what he had found in the cell: a mirror. 'Then I release you,' the King declared. The minister left the palace that same day. His reflection, of course, said nothing at all.
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### Fucine

> ***The Queen's Wound ·*** There is a story known to painters: of a Queen who could love no other, only her own image. She sought nine colours to grace the image, and the last was the turqyoise of her eyes, a gift from the Shadowless King. Her court poet hymned his Queen and her image, and in his poem she heard the truth: that the image was greater. So she fled into the Wood, and the image ruled her domain with the poet as its consort, but it always remembered her kindly.
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1. ↑ A Wound in Dreams
2. ↑ The First Error
3. ↑ The Wound
4. ↑ Safety in Silence
5. ↑ The End
6. ↑ Towards a Fundamental Aesthetic: Second Edition
7. ↑ Numen: a Final Understanding
8. ↑ Of Endings
9. ↑ Truths that Were
10. ↑ The Last Sun
11. ↑ The Crime
12. ↑ Revenge