Doctrine of the Seven

**What do we want from the Virtues?**

From the Virtues, I want to learn how to do better; how to improve myself, to overcome my flaws.  I want to make the tools to achieve my goals; to make myself more effective in service of my goals.

In this, what do I want?  I want to shape the world; to allow it to recognise that we, intelligence, have a right to share the world with one another, and a right to build a better world for those to come – who may be us again, or who may be our children, or who may be foreign to us in blood and yet similar in mind.  I want to commit this world to the Empire’s vision of citizens with dignity, freedom and prosperity; to the Empire’s goal of a citizenry able to act as they choose to “prosper and achieve greatness and spread across the face of Creation together in unity.”  And, in my eyes most, I want this to be something which will outlast this mind.

I believe, in humanity’s immortality and in orcs’ opportunity to speak directly with their descendants, that we must think of the Way of Virtue’s guidance as something which is relevant to more than the individual; it should be considered as a means to build a society which will outlast any one single point of view; that must have space for every individual point of view within it.

I write in response, in part, to Tarquinius Ankarien’s statement:

*“we ought be charting how to identify virtue in context, adopting the seven in our context, but avoiding shackling future generations or creating conflict between nations that could be siblings in faith. We should centre developing the strength, knowledge and enlightenment that marks our highest potential as thinking beings rather insisting others fail to do so by adopting the forces suited to our situation rather than their own”*

I understand the principle he offers; that other governments work under other Virtues.  And I say instead that the Empire is unique in all governments I know of, in that its ten different Nations give each citizen the space to self-define as more than simply ‘an Imperial citizen’; more than simply a brick in an endless wall.  We respect our individuality as well as our working together in unity; a congregation made up not of soldiers in lockstep, but pilgrims choosing their own paths towards our shared future.

The vision of the First Empress was of a society which recognises that each spirit, each soul, each intelligence is part of something greater than itself, and which by that society can be made greater.  As and when we welcome others into this our Empire, our hegemony must and should consider them: do we need to change ourselves to allow others to grow?

The Virtues are the strongest tools we have to support this our Empire; are some of the opportunities we offer to “ensure the behaviour of individual citizens does not debase the Empire.” This was set out in the Constitution as Synod’s role, our role. We are here, in Pride and Loyalty, not to tear down our fellows but to raise them up; and we would debase our Empire itself by shredding others’ selves with no way to build them up better from where they are.

The Constitution says that its own words are “not … chains of unchanging servitude, but … inspiration to exalt us and drive our great endeavour.”  Our Doctrine likewise must not be chains on us for no reason; and can reasonably be inspiration and drive.

I want, from the Virtues, the tools I find best suited both to teaching intelligence (both citizen and foreign and, yes, barbarian) of what we and the world can achieve if we choose to work alongside each other, and also to teaching how we as individuals can become greater than this world – by overcoming the Abyss, or by reaching beyond the Labyrinth: moving from this place to Ascension, to Ancestry, to immortality.

It is vital to recognise that these do not have to be in tension. And yes, it is vital to me to recognise that while the Virtues that we follow may well have been chosen pragmatically, that does not mean that the decisions were unvirtuous, or careless.

So, to continue:

I essay to present in Wisdom what I wish to speak at greater length on; if any will it, I will share more and deeper my thoughts on these; and yet if I cannot give the outlines clearly, I cannot expect to be heard at length.

Imprimis, we must admit that intelligence, as far as we know from talking with humans and orcs, is materially similar; and that even those Heralds we know well seem to have some means by which we can recognise them and be recognised and understood. This allows us a foundation of expectations of intelligent behaviour from which we can consider personal, social and societal themes in common. This will include common weaknesses and flaws, as well as common strengths and gifts.

Intelligence is generally in need of support to encourage goal-creation, to use initiative, to overcome doubt and fear.  By the same token, it is also generally in need of other intelligences.  When we cannot rely on our fellows, that is when we damage our society to sustain ourselves, or vice versa.

Secundus, we consider what it is that Virtue comes from; what it engenders, and what it teaches. We can use as evidence the Auras they create as far as we can recognise them, and the core teachings of each Virtue as set out for centuries past as a distillation of what we believe the Auras and the Virtues to mean.  This allows us to reason the impact of Virtue on intelligent behaviour.

In this manner, we see that the Empire’s chosen Virtues give us leave to create, and not simply destroy; to build, and not only to tear down.  We see that they teach us to grow beyond the weaknesses of intelligence, to drive ourselves to greatness.

Tertius, we set forth what we believe the utility of these Virtues are; whether that be personally or societally – for make no mistake, an we speak of orc or of human, we must and must consider that our actions will affect more than just one person, in one lifetime.  This allows us to demonstrate the value of that impact set forth; both for a living intelligence, for a vital society, and in potential (for we cannot know this in truth, unless we wish to reshape the Doctrine of the Labyrinth with evidence I know not of) for the soul’s growth and development.

Ultimatim, we may use these discussions to say reasonably what the use of Virtue is in Doctrine and in the Way; and what that means for us who seek to form and reform Doctrine – and for those who will eventually read it.

I believe that the Virtues we hold to now are the most effective for spreading the Way of Virtue, and for teaching us – us, intelligence, not simply us, humanity, or us, Imperials, or us, individuals – lessons to mitigate our flaws and empower our strengths as intelligence. This should, in principle, allow us to traverse the Labyrinth insofar as we can reasonably judge what that means; and also (and possibly more importantly) encourage us to understand and work towards an immortal goal – be that the great deeds the orcs will speak of in legend, or the drive and fervour for humans to light a way in the dark.

Thus, to take our current words:

"There are seven Virtues that guide the spirit through the Labyrinth of Ages. These are Ambition, Courage, Loyalty, Pride, Prosperity, Vigilance and Wisdom. Other qualities may benefit humanity, but lend no aid through the passage of death to rebirth, and some may hinder it."

I would move to what explanation we might give:

“There are seven Virtues that guide the spirit through the Labyrinth of Ages. These are Ambition, Courage, Loyalty, Pride, Prosperity, Vigilance and Wisdom. [**These Virtues, unlike all others, drive us to our best efforts, and do not limit us.  They teach us to achieve great deeds; they teach us to commit ourselves to the future.**] Other qualities may benefit ~~humanity~~ [**intelligence**], but lend no aid through the passage of death to rebirth[**\***], and some may hinder it.”

**\* The Orc question**

Clarice is right in saying that an orc theologian should set forth what virtues outside of the Seven can do for orcs' crossing of the Abyss; for it is manifest that following these can lead to their leaping - and yet. And yet it is in my mind that those Ancestors who achieve the crossing do so not for the benefit of their descendants and of tomorrow, but for - what? The ability to scream their hatred through the generations?

I move to note the Grendel attitude to Ancestors: "Why would we listen to them? They repeat the same things over and again. They can't teach us anything new, and they're dead. We have moved on."

I ask my orc colleagues: Is it a reasonable thing, to think that the Virtues will give you the drive, the power, to create a future for yourselves where, when you cross the Abyss, your voice is one of strength, vision, support for your children and your children's children; that you can enhance the experience of those to come if you are not strangled by Hatred, mired in Fear? If so, then that could be set forth: that the deeds that you do are done in service of both your lives today and also of the promise of who you will be, who they will be, tomorrow.

In this case, I would look to including "and limit the scope and power of an Ancestor's voice beyond the Abyss" or similar to the end of the final sentence.

**VdeC, Late Spring 385**

In long form, I continue:

Intelligence is a thing we must agree to have in common; the capacity to understand one another, to imagine a future, to learn and to plan for that future in some wise. How we interact with the world and with each other comes from this.

We can trust that intelligence is at heart aware of itself (and hungry for its own survival); that it is aware of others (seeking to know one another, whether in love, in fear, in greed, or in generosity); that it can essay to learn, but that it will also fall into instinct and habit, an animal self, if given no greater reason.

Our emotions are drawn from that animal self; the heart of our living body, the pulse of survival.  Here is the source of love and fear (and Love and Fear), and here, too, the seat of all our other feelings.  These are spilled out into the world with our words, our actions, our choices – and, if there be enough and enough of them, powerful enough and fierce, they are made manifest – in spontaneous Auras, drawn from our deepest drives.

We make societies because we are better able to build alongside one another. No matter the intent and focus of that society, still yet they build, walk alongside one another, and above and below.  If the society is built on Fear, on a drive for Puissance, if it is built on a will to make a Way, no matter what, we see that intelligence comes generally together. Those who choose to live isolate are more often forgotten and lost. And it is in that memory of others, as well as in our own connections to intelligences around us, that we can achieve our greatest potential; that our emotions are given their greatest inspiration and motivation.

And here, we can see Virtue – true or false, I ignore the difference the now.  Virtue is emotion made manifest; it is our drive and our determination, our will and our woe, reified into the world.  Humans can use vinum distilled down to liao to channel some of that force and make it manifest in the world, but any (and presumably all) intelligences can impose their feelings on the world around them in spontaneous manifestations of that Virtue.

We have named and codified the Virtues as follows:

* Ambition [a drive to imagine a world greater than it is, and the will to achieve it.]
* Anarchy (Freedom, Liberty) [a will to overthrow rules, to break chains, to tear down any that would thwart.]
* Courage [a drive to overcome fear, doubt and uncertainty.]
* Fear [\*\*\*\*\*\*]
* Hatred (Purity, Disgust) [a will to cast aside the Other, and defend against any who are different.]
* Hope [a will to wait for others to act on your behalf.]
* Love [a will to give your all to another’s whim.]
* Loyalty [a drive to make better the thing you know you care for most.]
* Peace (Tranquillity, Harmony, Understanding) [a will to understand and compromise in service of avoiding conflict.]
* Pride [a drive to uplift yourself and others to greater and greater goals.]
* Prosperity [a drive to work hard and earn your rewards; to take those rewards and step onward to work again.]
* Vengeance (Justice) [a will to take payment on any who have done you ill.]
* Vigilance [a drive to plan for the worst, and ensure it does not come to pass, that the future may be better.]
* Wisdom [a drive to learn, experiment, to try and then to try differently to find out more.]

The Grendel also speak of the Virtues of Audacity (which may be a twisted Courage), of Cunning (which seems to me to be related to Wisdom), of Fidelity (which appears similar to Loyalty at best, or Purity at worst) and of Retribution (which has some feeling of Pride, and some of Vengeance); but have not to my knowledge offered any Auras made manifest which can be described as one of these and not any other Virtue.

We say that the ‘artificial’ (or liao-created) Auras are similar; and indeed all those who are Dedicate to one Virtue are able to create the self-same emotional resonances as all other of the self-same Dedicates in the Empire[1].  This gives us a framework from which we can experience the differences and the similarities of those Auras – the tempers for our emotional drives.

But these are not the only Auras we are aware of.  Those created spontaneously are less rigid, less formulaic; I cannot bless a one with the feeling that arises naturally in response to a fierce decision, a strong emotion.

Here, we ask our Synod and our priests to discuss what these could mean; under which aegis should they be placed and in which (potentially heretical) bucket? And here, we are answered.  The tenets of each Virtue are set out as our response to those Auras spontaneous and artificial, and a direction for them.  They give us a context and an understanding of what we the Synod thought when codifying our works – or indeed, as we must accept, what we the Synod thought when creating the vehicle as best suits us, to manifest the world that they wanted best and first.

I attach a separate for all of the auras and all the teachings we know of officially; and I will not repeat here that which I have said there, save only in summary.

It is that intelligence is betimes flawed.  We are weak and we can be easily led; we are hurt and we can in that pain lash out or retreat.  We adore, and we let slip our selves in service to another.

The Virtues we currently hold to are the strongest we have to create the world we want: one where the Casinean Empire can bring as many as possible to their own Freedom, their own Prosperity, their own Dignity.

The utility of the Virtues is here manifold:

Internal

Virtues are used to overcome our own weaknesses; to give us strength and to ensure we can choose our own direction.  We must always have the will and drive to act ourselves; to have motive, goal and goad.

Hate and Love look outward and demand another act that we can respond. Both these are our responses to the other, and not a decision we have made ourselves.  We are acted upon by external influences, and we react; these spiritual forces require us to bow our will to another’s actions, in some way.

Active

We are agreed that as far as we know, there is a soul’s requirement to travel; to move from death to rebirth or beyond. For a human, that is through the Labyrinth; and for an orc, across the Abyss.  For both of these, the spirit’s training itself to Peace or to Hope is anathematic to the need for drive, will, and inspiration.

What evidence we have of this in past life visions is that each of them hinge on a decision: a choice, an action.  There is in no wise a means of simply sitting back and letting another take that burden from us; there is no opportunity, no chance, for us to simply wait to let this go.

Likewise, no great deeds are committed in a spirit of Hope (a Virtue specifically focussed around our instinct to want someone else to act on our behalf; to wait and see, to let another lead, and to not strive in our own minds) or of Peace (as Understanding, this Virtue demands we contemplate and compromise our vision; to let ourselves become less than what we were in service of placating another, and by the same token, to weaken their own objective to gain some small measure of ours) or Fear (a force which weakens, denies, and shatters any self-will, save only in the worst circumstances, where we are driven to overcome it by imposing it on others).

Processes

We, intelligence, must choose our own ends.  We are given a spiritual goal of reaching a distant end, by ways that we know not; and we are given a mortal choice – to pick our own direction.

Anarchy and Vengeance drive us to their own ends, and not ours.  They set out each a commitment to an imposed goal; be that to overcome another’s insult or to break another’s control. In each case, we are instructed by our feelings simply to thwart, and not to grow; simply to make an ending of what was, without thinking about what can be.

Here, the Virtues we currently hold to are ones which encourage us to self-determination, willpower, and drive.  To making decisions on the information we have before us, rather than waiting for more; to acting; to choosing.  In short – the impetus, the power of self, to choose a path through a Labyrinth; to empower a leap across the Abyss.

**Antithesis**

As I am advised to consider, though, what if other virtues, other spiritual forces are of greater utility than we know?  Can we reasonably say that other states, other nations, other entities are less capable of overcoming the odds than we?

I say that they are flawed.  Do we wish to commit ourselves to the Druj’s tyranny, an we choose to say that Fear is valuable?

Let us take some few other examples of which we know more, and with which we do not fundamentally disagree to the extent of planning how to destroy all their works and rehabilitate all those under their rule.

The Axou follow some spiritual forces, including Courage and Wisdom – and Understanding, which they call Peace. Their predicate is that the loss of knowledge and learning between death and life is a punishment by the Creator.

I say instead that what we learn – and what stays with us – from life to life is the muscle memory of the spirit.  It is no longer necessary for a dancer to remember how they learnt to dance when the music plays, as their body knows how to turn when given an opportunity. The same holds true, life to life, for our decision-making: in each past life we have vision of, it is that moment of choice that is always what it was; what it always has been.  We ourselves, given no knowledge – given a door in front of us and no context – strive in Virtue to take a decision, and know how to do this better because of our learning.

They repudiate our Seven in saying:

“There are many spiritual forces that arise from the human soul. Any of them can grant strength of purpose and will, and help a human being to fight against death and the jealous Creator. The Empire has arbitrarily picked seven that they use to enslave human beings to their incorrect vision of how creation works.”

And here I ask: how does Fear grant strength of purpose and will?  How Peace?

I believe they are correct in saying that one of the cores of Virtue is will, and drive; and I believe they are incorrect in saying that all of the spiritual forces we know are equally helpful in driving this.

The Faraden call on the Virtues of Courage, Justice, Loyalty, Pride, and Prosperity; denying Ambition and Vigilance and Wisdom.  Their own guides say that they reincarnate along family lines; that their families dead and gone help them through their way from death to life. And yet – and yet.  Marad of House Ogudai of the Faraden took True Liao, and experienced a vision – of having been a Freeborn.  It seems that their core precept is at fault; and their drive for Vengeance is one that builds suspicion and a requirement for retribution that does not allow them to move outside their circumscription.

The Grendel follow virtues based on Urizeni teachings from centuries ago – and yet, as orcs, they have no way to feel the nature of Virtue by the power of liao, so have access only to unfiltered spontaneous auras, and the capacity to reason.  In that reason, they take the lessons of Virtue in service of their own goals; of a personal drive to puissance, as demonstrated by their power over others. They specifically see the journey across the Abyss as one that is individual; and in doing so, they deny the capacity to work alongside their fellows and strengthen themselves and each other thereby.

Here, they have taken the core teachings of virtue and shaped them to suit their philosophy; using their goals to shape their teaching, rather than the reverse.  For them, the greater goal of power over themselves and others is materially supported by their concepts of Audacity, Cunning, Fidelity and Retribution, rather than by using the Virtues that exist to learn of ourselves and grow stronger from them.

We can see their shaping the idea of virtue into ‘those lessons we have which we want to learn’, rather than taking the lessons we are given and considering how they can and should interact from there.  The power of the virtues is as an expression of our spirits’, and their lessons have value for how we can commit ourselves to the future as well as how we can commit ourselves to this lifetime. Yet we must not put our objective before our evidence.

I could continue, but I am not expert in this; I would have others’ views on other places rather than base my opinions on flawed or surface impressions of foreign governments.

And yet – and yet.  All of these governments exist still; they have not yet collapsed into self-destructive infighting, nor yet crippled themselves in refraining from action.

Is this because of their choice of virtue, or despite it?

I grow beyond my reckoning.  Let this rest here for now; and I say again: the virtues we have are here for reasons beyond the individual.  It is needful that we recognise the strength they give us as people, and as a people. We are immortal – and yes, I say this to orcs as well as to humans.  We are immortal.  Our voices will be heard for generations to come; be that in writing, in memory, in the deeds we leave behind, in the world we build, in our descendants’ eyes and ears and hearts and minds.

We are immortal.  Our footsteps will be followed, life after life, generation after generation. Virtue – our seven Virtues – teaches us to not be afraid of that; to believe that we can be larger than any one lifetime can hold. They show us how to achieve that; and allow us the scope to choose our own way into the future we will make.

[1] Can we compare and contrast our Auras with those of other Nations?  Are the Sumaash (for instance) capable of creating the same Auras of Courage (for instance) that we are? Another question to set to the Chaplain Consular and any other specialists, I feel.

I trust Tarquinius Ankarien will respect both my attempts at attention to the facts as I know them rather than sweeping assumptions, and my use of footnotes.