In the beginning, there was only Night and Day; a pair of lovers. Their coupling, both cosmic and intimate, produced three others. The patchwork Land of yellow grass, muddy snow and black forest. The raging Water beyond the gentle shores, island-dotted gray with a pallid froth. The painted Sky; red, blue, gold, obscured by clouds and held up by mountaintops.
All manner of beasts fill every part of this world, but man is an animal unlike any other. This hairy ape is as creative as he is cruel. He invents ever elaborate tools to harass and kill, and fashions the corpses of his victims into grim mementos.
Man creates fetishes. These keepsakes are small and pathetic but, empowered by his belief, they are still potent. Man preys on the vulnerability of these objects to gain protection from unexpected peril and even the wrath of his masters. These fetishes take many forms:
- A blackened wooden figure that coats the hands in pitch. It was cast into a flame many times to chase away a storm.
- An unwieldy piece of salt held to prevent curses and disease when licked. Its features are now soft and round.
- Wax, black like congealed blood, soft from body heat, covered in fingerprints. Squeezing it into an unsightly shape helps ease the pains of childbirth.
- Earthenware figurine, broken, reassembled and mended with clay. It is shattered to keep away disagreements and war.
- Carved bone of a great beast, now yellow, gnawed on. Men of the tribe chew on it together to guarantee a successful hunt.
- An unearthed tuber, jabbed with countless needle bones, each to atone for the crime of another.
Man toils under cruel masters. Stone lifted him out of the ranks of mere animals, yet stone is what oppresses him. Man reveres stone, but his idols drink blood and preach worse. These are the masters of man:
- A monstrous boulder balancing on a narrow spire. It wavers but never falls, making visible the hand of fate that is elbow-deep in the affairs of the world. Man is given the responsibility of serving this balance, maintaining it.
- A monolith split in two by a gaping fissure, exposing its crystalline innards. Like the halves of the stone, the mind is cleft from the body and is forced to reflect upon the latter with perverse fascination.
- More the hole than the stone itself; a frame to nothing encircling a piece of heaven. Looking through the hole, man can glimpse his insignificance in the whirling ocean of space and time.
- The intact skeleton of an antediluvian creature eternalized in stone. A meditation on death, an appeal for burial, a promise of life after life. It suggests a parallel world in the shadow of man’s own.
- A tall heap of fist-sized rocks, blood-stained without exception. Both a teacher of law and a tool for ritual aggression. This idol embodies hierarchy and conformity.
- A rudimentary man etched into a towering boulder. A deicidal monument. A deceitful shapeshifter. It compels to own and cultivate. Territory, resources and living beings.
His idols, unmoving, will eventually seduce man to a settled life. The shimmering bones and black blood of the stones will prove intoxicating gifts for man, egging him on to develop new materials, new knowledge, to get lost ever deeper in the maze of civilization.