Metaphysic Trinity

The Council of Nine speaks of the Metaphysic Trinity: Dynamism, the creation of possibility; Stasis, the form such possibility takes; and Entropy, the breaking down of that form. According to Council doctrine, these three forces are all necessary things. With the close of this century, some claim, the three extremes have drawn apart, pulling the Tellurian between them. Something has to give.

The threefold Path is hardly universal; many mages reject it, if they hear of it at all. Some mages seem drawn to the Trinity, however, and actually personify some part of it. From these extremes comes the Ascension War, a conflict of opposing perfections. It may be that four Paths spring from this Trinity – total chaos, total form, total destruction and the balance of all of the above – and lead both Avatars and mages to some ultimate conclusion.

The truth is for you to decide.

Metaphysic Trinity: A Council view of the three forces of change – Stasis, Dynamism and Entropy. Also known by some as the Triat – Weaver, Wyld and Wyrm.

Mages are dynamic entities in a world designed to maintain stasis. As active agents in a passive world, the task of the Awakened is seldom easy. Yet it is critical, for without this dynamic intervention, reality might fall into continued stasis from which it is all too easy to slide into entropy. This is one of the main reasons Tradition mages worry about the unprecedented success the Technocracy has had in selling their world view to the Sleeper Masses. No other single magickal paradigm has ever advanced so far into humanity’s collective unconscious as the Static Mages technomagickal revolution.

The Metaphysic Trinity

Humans can only understand bite-sized snippets of reality. If we try to down the entire universe-cake in one sitting, it becomes too overwhelming to comprehend. Unlike most Sleepers, mages can understand whole slices of reality at a time. However, even their more flexible, Awakened minds must still categorize and delineate the world into understandable slices. The most basic ingredients of these slices – the flour, egg and water of the universe if you will – are dynamism, stasis and entropy. These three forces form a metaphysical framework – the Metaphysic Trinity of magick. As the Celestial Chorus proudly proclaims, “All Awakened humanity communes at the church of the Metaphysic Trinity.”

Dynamism

Dynamism is the most active, changing member of the Trinity. It is movement and expansion – the ever-present need to adapt or die. The werewolves term this force the Wyld, and many view it as utter random chaos. Dynamism, however, is not necessarily random; it’s merely active. This common misconception is one reason the Technomancers are sometimes known as Static Mages. The misnomer comes from the idea that the Black Hats hate randomness and change, that they wish to keep the world moving along carefully controlled channels of reality. Yet, Technos do desire change and work hard to accomplish it. After all, why else do we call the advance of technology the “Industrial Revolution” and now the “Information Revolution?” Technomancers are dynamic – they just aren’t random.

Without dynamism, the universe would stagnate and die. Change is a necessary, frightening part of reality, and True Mages are the Avatars of naked change. Through will and belief, the Awakened force reality to shift away from the comfortable static base-line. With each push, whether that gentlest nudge or the most violent shove, reality changes a bit, and everything in it follows, especially the agent of that change.

Stasis

Without stasis there could be no stability in the universe. Stasis is the “egg” that binds the water and flour of dynamism and entropy. Without stasis, different realities would constantly collide, and no one piece of reality could hold together for long enough for humans (or anyone else) to comprehend. In such a world of constant, shifting chaos, even defining the concept of self becomes impossible. Conversely, too much stasis makes it more and more difficult to enact change. Mages recognize this truth even more than Sleepers do. In the Mythic Ages, stasis and static reality were not as strong as they are in the modern world, and the Awakened had far more latitude to work their Arts.

As stasis takes a greater hold upon the world, reality becomes more rigid and more strictly delineated. Ironically, many people mistakenly believe this effect actually opens up new possibilities and expands their reality. This is certainly not true. As members of the Cult of Ecstasy are fond of pointing out, when people read books, all they have in front of them are a few pieces of paper and words. They must use the most extraordinary tools at their command – their minds – to imagine the sights, sounds and smells of the stories within those pages. When black and white television came along, a grateful public cried, “Ah! Sweet liberation! Now we can actually see what we were forced only to imagine before.” The exclamations of delight become even greater at the advent of color TV as now the drama spills into their drab living rooms in “living Techno-color!” Yet each so-called improvement limits possibility; no longer can each person imagine her own Huckleberry Finn. For many, his image is set. With each such change, greater stasis settles over the minds and imaginations of humanity.

The Garou speak of the Weaver, a force of connection and order in the world. Stasis is this Weaver, providing a framework for the universal constants which shield us from chaos. Yet without that chaos to shape and define it, stasis soon becomes entropy.

Entropy

This element is the end of all and the beginning of all; “From dust we are born, and to dust we return.” Entropy is the constant pull towards dissolution, a merging of dynamism and stasis so complete that there is no difference between them. Without that contrast, all differentiation crumbles into entropy, and space and matter merge into one. One question posed to all Akashic initiates is a variation on this idea: “How can there be a Self if there is no Other?” This question is far more complex than it first appears and addresses many philosophic problems, but it also identifies the point at which entropy begins – the point at which there is no difference between self and other.

Western philosophers are often quite leery, even frightened, of entropy. Many Easterners, shamans, physicists and mystics believe this fear taints Sleepers’ connection to their common reality. Westerners view reality as disparate, packaged in neat, discreet units. The student seated at her desk is utterly distinct from that desk and from the air around her. Throughout time, however, most cultures have recognized that nothing and no one is completely separate from anything else. Shamans and advanced physicists alike lecture that matter is made up of energy, and that only the manifestation of that energy distinguishes student from desk. Both are part of the same, magnificent, swirling energy field.

Both conceptions of reality hold their own dangers if taken to extremes. In the Western view, there is the danger of dynamism disappearing into a static mold, causing entropy. In the second, less rigid view, entropy evolves when boundaries blur into chaos. Either way, the end result is entropy – chaos and destruction.

Entropy is a powerful force; it keeps “old baggage” from lasting past its time. Instead, the “baggage” breaks down and goes into the cycle fresh. Many mages, however, worry that entropy has the upper hand these days. The so-called Reckoning some speak of may have risen from this belief. The Garou battle the construct they term the Wyrm, and entity of entropic decay. In recent times, the werewolves report that the Wyrm grows ever stronger. Although most members of the Traditions at first dismissed such worries, they now begin to fear that the Garou are right.

Limits

The Metaphysic Trinity is like a three-sided kaleidoscope through which mages view reality. Every twist and turn, every vigorous shake, causes the beautiful world inside to change. Sometimes the slivers of colored glass and stone expand to fantastic proportions, while other times they collapse until all you see is a single, knife-edged line. Many Awakened Ones believe the prism of mystick history is slowly shrinking, collapsing in upon itself in magickal decay.

Since the time of the Pure Ones, the strictures of material reality have grown to wrap tightly around the willworker. The earliest mages, it is said, feared no Paradox because no single consensual reality existed. Since those days, the population explosion and the spread of modern technology have united the world as never before. Now we have a truly global society and thus a global reality as well. Where once the Tapestry’s loosely-bound threads allowed sorcerers to accomplish great feats of magick, a tightly interwoven set of beliefs (and disbeliefs) now binds their Art.

Even now, all mages know that the only limits upon them lie within themselves. Reality is not a set of immutable laws. Mages reside in a multitude of universes, and universes of possibilities reside within them. Yet modern mages are often forced to work carefully through the Tapestry’s threads in order to wield magick without attracting Paradox. The Awakened often manage this difficult task by making their magick appear coincidental.