Craftmason Manifesto (The Fall)
The Decline & Fall of the Order of Reason, or How the Humble Craftmasons Were Betrayed by Fanaticism and Mammon United
The Decline & Fall of the Order of Reason
Written by Maria-Augusta von Wolfenbach, A Sister in the Craft.
As is customary when writing such tracts I must first apologise for the state of this manifesto. Being next to a first draft it is not as well organised as it should be, I have left out some important details, and I have failed to fully show my chain of reasoning. However I hope that I may be forgiven on the grounds that my time is short and my circumstances very difficult.
I would like to dedicate this to the Sons of Ether for trying to be true to the ideals of the Order of Reason.
Introduction
Before we can understand where we are or where we are going, we must know where we came from. Since the world today is heavily dominated by the west and the intellectual heritage of the Order of Reason, we must look at what inspired the Order through most of its history. Therefore we must look at Christian scripture, therefore as in Galatians 3:28.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And we see Acts 4:34-37
There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means "son of encouragement"),sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet.
Finally there is Colossians 1:16, which reads:
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
From this we derived a worldview which focused on equality, social justice, and the idea that a universe that sprang from one mind had to be a rational and unified universe. Though all agreed on the great lines various factions of the Order might shift the emphasis around, or disagree on means, both what means were best and if certain means, even if effective, should be avoided on moral grounds.
However it is worth repeating the words of an ancient monk:
How many horses' backs would have been broken, how many men's arms wearied, by the labour from which a river, with no labour, graciously frees us?
Technology and the rational world view were tools to be used in pursuit of our humanistic goals; to spare the backs of the poor and uplift the minds of the ignorant. To paraphrase Lucian of Samosata the lot of the common man was often thus:
You will be bowed over your work, with eyes and thoughts bent earthwards, abject as abject can be, with never a free and manly upward look or aspiration; all your care will be to proportion and fairly drape your works; to proportioning and adorning yourself you will give little heed enough, making yourself of less account than your work.
We did not simply want to uplift the common man, but to uplift his labour. That is to free the working man from the worst of his drudgery, but also to give dignity to what remained. To destroy the elitist and oppressive attitude that the hard work that form the base of society is somehow degrading, and that the parasites on top of the order contribute more than the labourer.
At least that was our idea, that of the Craftmasons, though such ideas were not always shared by the rest of the Order of Reason.
A Brief Digression as to My Sources
Most of the things that I have to say would be well known to any Master of the Craft. Indeed even lower members would know much of what I'm about to say. Certainly there would be nothing hidden as to our beliefs on the nature of the world, or our long term goals. It is true that the secrets of the Inner Circle and our plans for the immediate were hidden; much like the deliberations of a council of state and their plans for the next campaign against the enemy might be hidden even from a Colonel of the Army.
Yet the Inner Circle was accessible, the members of the Order of Reason knew who they were. There were known ways to contact them or their staff. Indeed on occasion I would correspond with the Maximi of my Convention. Today how many Technomancers know the members of Control enough to do that? Simply put the politics of the Inner Circle were known, despite the minutes of the Inner Circle meetings being secret, Masters of each Convention had a fairly good bead on what was going on.
I had the additional benefit of being able to read a summary of the 1640 Inner Circle meeting, as well as some pages of the minutes of the 1655 Inner Circle meeting. The latter included the notes of the votes on a certain measure I will discuss later. I was also involved in work on the Revised Time Table to be presented at the 1670 meeting, however a series of unfortunate events prevent me from knowing precisely what happened at that meeting.
For events after 1670 I have had access to a rather extensive library, as well a life-times worth of knowledge on the Order of Hermes & the Sons of Ether. The first is like rolling in the mud, the second is like being able to take a bath to clean it off. Moreover I can examine these sources in light of what I already know of the various philosophical debates that were common to the Order of Reason. I will tell you right out that there is not a single, not a one, new theory or genuinely new principle currently in use among the Technocrats.
Consensual Reality
Let me first begin by saying that between at least the early 15th Century and until the early to mid 17th Century the entirety of the Order of Reason was aware that changing the beliefs of the people would also change the reality around them. The very name Consensual Reality reflects that fact. The obvious question is how you reconcile this with a belief that the world was created by a rational being.
The answer to this was two-fold, first that there are aspects of the world which are obviously not subject to consensus. There have been many societies which did not believe in vampires, shape-shifters, or even ghosts, and yet these beings still existed there. Likewise the sun and the moon rises and sets, water flows downhill, the four seasons are the same across the world, and so forth. Therefore Creation is like a mansion, while the things that Consensus rule are like the furnishings and decorations of that house.
Secondly we viewed God as a father figure who wanted his children to help adorn and complete the world. Our Great Work is a collaboration between Man and God, an effort to improve the inwards condition of our souls and the outwards condition of the world. If then we were like the heirs to a great and beautiful mansion, then its furniture had been ruined by great calamities. It was our duty then to create new furnishings to make it a comfortable home for our all the people who lived there; to make new sturdy doors and great shutters for the windows, so that the dwellers would be safe from storms and robbers.
I will not go into great and tedious argument about the benefits of One Truth which unites the whole of mankind. Except to say that if everyone believes in a thousand different things, how can there be a meaningful exchange of knowledge? Everyone would be like men shipwrecked on their own small island, with a raging sea in between them.
The Great Argument
If anyone today is aware of the early argument between the Order of Reason and the Traditions they usually and anachronistically see it as a grand struggle between two Worldviews, or Oikoumene as it was called then. In this vision Order of Reason strode forth determined to make all the world part of their Oikoumene, burning witches, killing heretics, and hunting down magi in order that the Laws of Nature themselves could be moulded into something cold and mechanical! It is as I said anachronistic.
Simply put the Traditions do not and did not make up a separate Oikoumene from the Order of Reason. Look for instance at the Verbena, the Dreamspeakers, the Seers of Chronos, and many other diverse crafts. I don't see much of a coherent Worldview in running around half-naked, screaming wild phrases and cutting yourself while under the influence of some bizarre herbal concoction. Though they are less spectacular in their Praxis the Akashics and Chakravanti share many of the same problems.
Furthermore the Worldview of the Verbena and the Dreamspeaker are inherently fractious, divided among dozens of often entirely incompatible tribal traditions. Likewise the Seers of Chronos, the Akashics and Chakravanti are bound to the sense and mind experience of the individual practitioner, instead of accepting an external physical reality which remains the same for everyone. Therefore in practical terms these Traditions are both far more elitist than that of the Order of Hermes and Solificati, and far harder to access than that of the Chaeur Celeste.
When the Order of Reason expanded into territories held by the more factitious Traditions we usually didn't go on wild witch-hunts. We usually didn't engage in elaborate trials or debates. We simply provided the people living in these areas with trade goods, books, machines, and some help. Like rare orchids in a specularia they soon died when exposed to the world around them.
It was with the Christian or Rationalist Traditions that we had our greatest argument. Nor do I mean Great Argument in the sense of a witch-hunt, or ceaselessly fighting against their Worldview. Indeed to listen to people today you would think that the argument then was "Reason against Mysticism" and that it now has become "Order against Freedom." May God deliver us from such foolishness!
Simply put it would be ludicrous to argue that the Order of Hermes lacked for Reason, or that the Celestial Masters lacked for Mysticism. Likewise today I would like to ask a simple question: Freedom from what? Freedom to what? Order for what purpose? Order in what way? Only when these questions are answered can you even start to get at the heart of the matter.
As to the Order of Hermes, the Solificati, the Chaeur Celeste, they were not part of some great foreign Empire that stood against us. We grew from the same soil and from the same seeds. Our argument was not about the Laws of Nature, the Ordering of the Heavenly Spheres, Natural Magic, or the Occurrence of Miracles. We were all part of the same Oikoumene, but disagreed on how it should be governed. For us it seemed that we should work towards the greater good of the common man; for them that everyone should work towards personal enlightenment, with the common man left in his place. Or as they might say:
Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
But we knew that this was not what the Lord had meant:
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
If a tax collector and a collaborator with the Pagan Romans could be called to be a Disciple of Christ, then how could we fail to call out to the Common Man whose flaws were comparatively slight?
And again:
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
But how can the Common Man know the Truth that sets him free if that Truth is hidden from him? If he is opposed by tyrants who not only refuse to share the truth, but actively prevent him from finding it on his own? Every time we tried to help the Common Man the Council Mages stood in our way, claiming that the Common Man was not worthy, not ready, or that we were too proud. When the choice was "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" the Council Magi got into the way, and we brushed them aside.
It is true that even prior to the Great Betrayal of 1670 the Order of Reason did on occasion directly and seriously affect change in the Consensual Reality in a way prejudicial to certain theories of the Classical Age. Most noticeably we dethroned Aristotle from his position as The Philosopher and The Natural Scientist.
Our reasons were part moral, part theological, and part practical. For the moral part Aristotle claimed that certain men were born to be natural slaves; that women were naturally inferior; and overall his ethics were mostly suited to benefit the educated and well off. All of which clashed with the teachings of mercy. Theologically it offended us that a man would be seen as the equal to God, that if Aristotle said it then it was true, and damn your lying eyes. In practical terms his physics caused considerable difficulties for theoretical engineering. How do you properly calculate the trajectory of a cannonball when you're under Aristotelian physics? Or build a clockwork utilizing counter-weights? I have had the unenviable task of actually making such calculations; it was a cumbersome and unpleasant task even with Enlightened Science. Is it any wonder that as we tore down Aristotle we also saw a revolution in the creation of clockwork and cannon?
Yet in tearing down Aristotle we were not without our supporters among even the Order of Hermes! For his circular logic and cumbersome classifications had ceased being tools by which you might seek greater enlightenment, and instead become obstacles to progress.
The whole thing reminds me of a Christian writer that came after my time, namely C.S. Lewis and the words he placed in the devil Screwtape's mouth. In fact I find it sufficiently applicable that I'll quote it here.
He is one being, they are distinct from Him. Their good cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else – He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to find out that real motive. What does He stand to make out of them?
Since our professed motivations made no sense to them each read into our actions either their own motivations, or their own worst fears. The Order of Hermes saw us as seeking power; the Choristers as seeking to impose a single Faith on the world; the Ahl-i Batin that we are looking for a unity outside of their own; and so forth.
Galileo Galilei
I'll end this section with an amusing anecdote to illustrate my point. Most of my modern readers will either see Galileo Galilei as a traitor to the Traditions or as a Martyr to Progress. However it was not the Traditions that ensured that he would be placed in house arrest. That was done by the Cabal of Pure Thought at the behest of the Celestial Masters who were particularly annoyed at his Heliocentrism. Nor did he gain much sympathy from the rest of the Conventions; the average Craftmason would ask, "What does it matter to the Common Man whether the Sun goes around the Earth or the other way around!" This was particularly upsetting since he was not only spreading a false theory, we knew the Earth was the centre of the universe; it was not only spreading a pet theory that went against the Time Table; but it was also working to disturb the Paradigm of the heavens at a time where more and more epicycles were added to already unstable orbits.
You won't hear about this part of the story because it doesn't really benefit anyone to tell it, yet there it is.
The English Experiment
The 1640 Inner Circle Meeting noted that our projections suggested England was in for a time of great turmoil. Political upheaval is of course bad in many ways, but it creates great opportunities for the able scientist. By tearing down the corrupt Old Order a more just and equitable system can be built up again from the rubble. By allowing a dozen schools of thought to rise up you can test them all, see which works the best in practise, keep that, and let the rest be forgotten among the chaos of the age.
England was a particularly good subject because it already had a parliament and a reasonably educated population used to the rule of law. It was somewhat isolated from the rest of Europe, which would prevent Royalist armies from across the continent from trying to avenge the dead king (As in France a little over a century later). We had here a most excellent Globe Glass in which we could perform our Great Work, but if the medicine in it should be good, we could pull out the stopper and administer it to the world.
It was one of the first experiments on a national scale. The United States came close, but there was nothing quite like this prior to the creation of the Soviet Union. Not only did we confirm our decision to let the Common Man choose his own path, but we did so in a way that also strengthened our dedication to Science and Reason.
The Alchemical Revolution
Our greatest success in the English Civil War and the new Commonwealth was not in the field of politics, though the establishment of the Commonwealth was a victory. No the greatest success we had was that we in co-operation with the Chymical Brothers (a faction of defected Solificati) released large numbers of alchemical texts to the public. The printing presses were busy day and night publishing the deepest secrets of alchemy, not to mention commentaries that explained these deep mysteries in ways that even a common educated man might understand. Far from having them all be in Latin or Greek we ensured that they were published in English prose and verse.
There is one amusing anecdote of how Thomas Winston, the Gresham Professor of Medicine, held a lecture on alchemical medicine. And James Kitchener, one of the Masters of the London Chantry of the Order of Hermes had decided to attend. Upon hearing the most secret and sacred doctrines of the Order of Hermes revealed to the world Kitchener flew into a rage. First he unleashed a torrent of abuse, and then he ran out of the lecture hall, kicking at chairs and tables on the way.
The Levellers
The Levellers were in many ways the very culmination of our theory on popular politics. Here at last the Common Man was standing up for himself, demanding representation in Parliament and to have a voice that could be heard. They supported religious freedom for all, opposed the oppression of the Irish, and stood against all forms of feudalism as well as being against trading the feudalism of soil for the feudalism of gold.
Think now that if the Levellers should have triumphed we would be a century ahead in our social development. Each nation would be divided up among cantons of the Swiss pattern, where the free people would be able to vote on whatever matters concerned their particular community. Instead of being able to lord it over the whole of the nation, passing laws that only benefit the few, the central government would be restricted to providing for the common welfare.
Financially instead of being lorded over by vast corporations and forced to buy our goods from enormous factories, we would deal with the local craftsmen and merchants. Nor should you think that this would mean that goods would be more expensive, for we had plans for how to limit economies of scale so that small operations would be just as competitive. So each and every common man, or group of common men, could realistically start their own business and hope to effectively compete against the moneyed interests.
The Battle of Naseby & The Great Scourge
Yet no discussion of the English Civil War can be complete without mentioning the Battle of Naseby and the Great Scourge of God. The latter is now known as Paradox, which is a very apt term indeed I suppose.
You have all heard the story of how King Charles hired a group of Order of Hermes magi to fight for him, and how they tried to summon a group of dragons during the Battle of Naseby, but instead got consumed by Paradox. What you probably haven't hear is how utterly shocking this was to the Order of Reason, and how it ruined oh so many of our carefully laid plans.
If it had merely been the Order of Hermes or the Council Magi as a whole that were struck down we would have cheered. Yet our inventions began to fail spectacularly as well, from our ubiquitous clockwork automata to our clockwork repeaters (moderns would call them clockwork Gatling guns). If it had only been our most prideful acts that invited such retribution then we might have understood, but it even attacked simple applications of the mechanical arts! Even worse, often it was our most wholesome mechanical arts that suffered a terrible failure, while the blasphemous enchantments of the Verbena worked without flaw.
We wondered if this was the end of the world, and what we had done to invite the wrath of God in such a demonstrable and firm fashion. Others wondered if this was the time when the Devil would rule the Earth and that we had become his playthings. Each group had their own explanation.
What evil fruits that fear would bring!
The Downfall
First fell the Levellers for their emphasis on religious freedom infuriated the Cabal of Pure Thought and their hopes for the financial well-being offended the High Guild who wished to continue exploiting the Common Man. Between the two of them they managed the overthrow of the Levellers and to damn their memory. I believe that the Cabal of Pure Thought was sincerely convinced that it was the apostasy from the One Church that had brought the Great Scourge down upon us. My judgement on the High Guild is less charitable.
The fall of the Protectorate was likewise to be expected. The Cabal of Pure Reason was incensed at the heresies that dominated England. The High Guild was upset at how the English were interfering with their economic plans. This resulted in the First Anglo-Dutch War, followed by the Restoration in 1660. Said restoration was mostly the project of the Cabal of Pure Reason who saw in Charles II the chance to restore Catholicism to England. But the High Guild, no doubt hoping to curry favour with the Cabal of Pure Thought helped forge the Secret Treaty of Dover in 1670. Said treaty would among other things give Charles II £160.000 a year to convert both himself and England to Catholicism.
Of course this would be a tad upsetting to the Craftmasons, since it meant supporting increasingly unfree England and already quite unfree France against a nation that was the very epitome of Craftmasonic thought.
Great Betrayal of 1670
It is now that I am forced to deal with the most painful part of my account, namely how the Craftmasons were betrayed and destroyed. I should add that this was not just a betrayal of a single convention, but treason to the very idea and ideals of the Order of Reason. If I may be so bold, by their treachery they became like Judas betraying God into the hands of the Heathen, or like Lucifer being cast down from the Heavens. For they knew what God and Reason demanded, but chose to go against it and to pretend to believe a lie!
The Growing Schism
There were two parties among us at this time: The one felt that the Great Scourge was a sign that we had gone too far too fast, like Icarus our wings were melting and we risked being thrown down from the Heavens. Though we should not abandon the Great Work we should take heed. Like a craftsman who sees warning signs as he renovates a house, and reinforces the walls and puts up extra scaffolding before there is an accident.
We Craftmasons, being willing to be humble, did accept that perhaps we had pushed too hard for the political gain of people who were perhaps not quite ready. Further we had to consider that perhaps the Cabal of Pure Thought had a point in that there should only be One Church, and that encouraging and permitting heresies, even in a good cause, might be a sin. These two considerations were humbling and humiliating in equal measure. It was bitter medicine, yet, for the sake of unity we might swallow it.
On the other hand there was another faction, one which felt that we had to return to the Wars of Faith. Not only must we break all heresies and all heathenism, but we must bear in mind the word of the lord in 1 Samuel 15:2-3 which states:
This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'
In this they viewed the Council Magi as a collective as Amalek, and we offended god by taking up parts of their magic and worldview. Much like Israel was condemned for not slaying the cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. So therefore Aristotle and Alchemy were both equally condemnable, because both drew the eyes of the people to the pagan past rather than the Christian present.
But rejecting all of Natural Philosophy, or all of Natural Magic, or even all of blessed Theurgy (not to be confused with the damnable practises of the Hermetics) would throw the whole world into chaos! Medicine, engineering, astrology and astronomy, all would be set back for decades or centuries. The Time Table would be in ruins. Who could possibly benefit other than atheist humanists, secular princes, and the moneyed powerbrokers that support both?
Resisting Bad Science
There were four ideas that had some degree of popularity among the Sleepers, but which would also require the overthrow of all of Natural Philosophy. These ideas were Atomism, Heliocentrism, Denial of Action at a Distance, and the Unitary Cause of Disease. Further another idea, less popular among the sleepers, was denying the power of the devil to affect the material world. Many of these ideas were absurd and some of them were outright lies, yet now they were promoted by previously sensible people.
However if there is one thing the Craftmasons excel at it is politics and backroom influence. Together these causes offended just about every single Convention in the Order of Reason. For their own reasons the Artificers, the Celestial Masters, the Hippocratic Circle, and the Void Seekers were all opposed to one or more of these theses. We simply went around to each of them promising our support for their pet cause if they would just be sure to vote against the other offensive items.
We were quite successful at this, to the point that we predicted a ten to four vote among the Maximi come the next meeting of the Inner Circle. Even if the Cabal of Pure Thought and the High Guild could peel a Convention away we'd still win.
The New Predictor
One of the problems we had run into was that though we were willing to accept the loss of the Levellers our Time Table had failed to accurately predict their fall. Likewise though we realised that the Commonwealth might fall our Time Table had failed to predict this accurately. Finally and most importantly we had utterly failed to predict the appearance of the Great Scourge. Therefore the Maximi of our Convention ordered us to secretly assemble a new predictor mechanism, with no input from the other conventions. The project was quite extensive and consisted of several separate parts.
My own part in the enterprise it was a mechanism for predicting magical influences over time. I do know that we ran multiple predictions, extending up to five centuries into the future. I am not sure what the result was when the various parts were run and their results collated. However given what happened I have certain suspicions about the long term projections that were made.
If someone had been interfering with the Predictor of the Order of Reason, and therefore the Time Table itself, then it would be a very serious matter indeed. I suspect that this was indeed the case, but I don't know who could have done such a thing and for what reason. However finding the complete Revised Prediction & Time Table of 1670, if any copy still exists, would go a long way to solving the mystery.
The Great Betrayal Itself
The scene was now set for the Great Betrayal of the Craftmasons. By now we had offended the High Guild, the Cabal of Pure Thought, and for some reason the Ksiferai. In short the financiers, the warriors, and the spies of the Order of Reason. We were aware of the first two, but not of the last, and if we had been we might have taken greater precautions than we did.
Instead of plotting and scheming, putting up a brave argument, doing politics, or even engage in crass bribery, our enemies decided on a painfully simple course of action. Kill us all and we couldn't make any more trouble for them. Given that they were, well, the financiers, warriors, and spies this was in physical terms quite easy for them.
For something so momentous my description must seem very brief. However the guilty parties covered up the evidence very well indeed. In fact they went so far as to try to remove the evidence that the Convention of Craftmasons had ever existed. All of a sudden the great champions of the Common Man were silenced, by the great champions of wealth, ideological purity, and pure power.
Why Didn't We See It Coming?
Contrary to Council histories the Order of Reason was not prone to acts of unrestrained evil. We could envision backstabbing, assassinations, blackmail, sabotage, and sundry other acts of infighting, but we were after all the same group. Yes there were warning signs. In hindsight some of them were really blatantly obvious. However, nothing like this had ever happened before. We helped create the Order of Reason and we just couldn't believe it capable of something like this.
In many ways we were like the members of the Roman Senate taken totally by surprise by Sulla's purges. Suddenly someone changed the rules, Silent enim leges inter arma, and it is scant comfort that the Gabrielites themselves would realise for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Aftermath
In the aftermath all records of the Craftmasons were erased. Not so much for fear of the Sleepers or of the Council Magi, no, for fear of what following generation of the Order of Reason might say. Or perhaps because they wanted to make it look as if their madcap plan had always been part of a carefully worked out Time Table. Who can tell?
The Time Table for human liberty and medicine was set back at least a century, for medicine I dare say even more. How much suffering and pain could have been avoided? Who can tell!
I dare say you know the rest, whether you are a defector from the Technocracy or a Traditions Mage.
Addendum
There are a few issues that I could not touch on in the preceding account, but which are important enough that I feel I should mention them. In no particular order I will try to clear up a few issues and shed some light on certain misconceptions.
Accessible & Attainable Knowledge
The Virtual Adepts have a saying, "Knowledge wants to be free." In the past I would say "Amen" to that. Certainly the Craftmasons and the whole Order of Reason were thoroughly dedicated to everyone having full access to all the truths known to man. However we didn't understand the difference between knowledge being Accessible and Attainable, and that was a very hard lesson, one I fear the Virtual Adepts have forgotten.
The issue didn't really come up before Gutenberg's press became popular. Prior to then there had been a very small literary canon, with a few important and highly influential scientific works. Once you had the Bible, Augustine, St Thomas, the Classics, Euclid, Galen, and so forth you had all the knowledge in the world. Naturally these books were also published in enormous quantities once Gutenberg's press became popular, thus making learning available to all. This was very good.
However we noticed that there was a number of more spurious works that were published; advertisements, novels, pornography, heresies, travelogues, superstitionist rantings, and so forth. So many that it quickly became quite impossible for one man to have read them all. One great worry was that the Infernalists, enemies of all that live, would use mass publication in order to shatter the unity of knowledge and leave people weak to heresies. This was very bad.
Of course the problem was far from insurmountable. There still remained a canon of literature and of scientific works, though once in a while a modern author might be added to this illustrious company. Certainly there would be many scientists and alchemists and what have you who would publish their findings, but, that was also manageable. As long as the Oikoumene was built on the bedrock of a simple and comprehensible truth then we could debunk false writings by pointing to the truth. And as long as the true writings described this simple truth, we could simply make sure that everyone would have access to well written books describing those truths.
Indeed though I say problem it was also one of our strengths. You see, truth be told, we often won our debates with the Order of Hermes, the Solificati, or the Chaeur Celeste by outshouting them. The Hermetics and the Solificati were always a pack of elitist prigs who hated the idea of teaching the Common Man. Therefore it was very easy to mass produce books that promoted our particular take on the issues, while the Hermetics would huff and puff and talk of how crude it all was. Only the Chaeur Celeste could even hope of taking us on, either by adopting our methods, or by finding some wild eyed fanatic to rile up the peasants.
The Deluge of Unattainable Knowledge
After the fall of the Craftmasons the Order of Reason grew utterly corrupt in many ways, though of course good men and women were still found in its ranks. For the most part they worked hard to be able to present unitary Laws of Nature to the masses. However in the rush to tear down the old Oikoumene, to tear down the Fortress of Truth to build a Prison of Lies on the ruins, they made some mistakes. Often these mistakes were hard to explain, requiring ex post facto rationalizations, flim-flam, and a quick shell game of scientific explanations.
In short they were unable to build up a proper Worldview, a suitably counterfeit set of Laws of Nature, before some clever sleeper spotted a terrible flaw in the works. Or worse, before some up and coming Enlightened Scientist pointed out an obvious contradiction, or paradox if you will, in the Paradigm of the Technocracy. The first was merely frustrating, but the second was downright dangerous.
I wonder if the solution just sort of happened, a result of incompetent bungling leading to a workable result. Or if some malignant genius looked over the old Craftmason files to find our great fears written out in detail, and then decided to use it as a blueprint. Whichever way it went Knowledge was made Accessible but not Attainable.
Science became more and more complicated as the 19th Century came to an end. Quantum Physics though first hated; soon became a valuable tool of the Technocracy. Hundreds of theories, thousands of books, tens of thousands of peer reviewed articles poured out into the scientific community. No one stood a chance of keeping on top of it all, there could never again be an Avicenna, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Paracelsus, or Tesla. No man would ever be able to correlate all the facts that were presented as The Truth.
It was perfect, in the past any hole in your theory, any unexplained phenomena was a serious and nearly insurmountable problem. You had to deal with it. If you were proposing something that went against God, Nature, or Reason then you could be sure that someone would spot it and call you out on it. Worse yet, they would be able to show others what you did wrong, and the people they showed the proof to would be able to understand it.
As it is right now if an Angel came down from Heaven to condemn the enormous multitude of contradictions in modern science, he wouldn't be able to explain himself. No one would be able to take in all the proofs; no one would be able to correlate it all.
With this the Technocracy have become what we sought to fight: Tyrants that hide behind misdirection and lies in order to protect their power.
Subverting the Hermetic World View
Some of the more perceptive among you may already have guessed how we intended to deal with the Order of Hermes, but to spell it out in plaintext: we would take everything that made them great and leave them irrelevant.
We would mass produce alchemical manuscripts and allow various teachers to explain the doctrine to the common people. They would be able to study, debate, and practise the Great Work and to derive the material benefits thereof. All of the great accomplishments of the Order of Hermes and the Solificati would be wrenched out of their control and given to the common man. In their eyes it was as if we took pearls and threw them to the pigs.
It also gave them a serious problem: if their students were good and moral they would of course go over to us to help the common man. If however their students were hubristic and greedy, why then they would still go over to us to avoid the years of study and grovelling servitude that their masters would impose on them. Either way we would strangle off their supply of high quality apprentices, steal all of their great new discoveries, and make sure that the lowliest peasant might have an everburning lamp.
Of course we were fully aware that Alchemy is only the first step on the way, with Theurgy being the next, and there much error is possible. However once someone had come to us for their Alchemy education we were confident we could guide them on the right path. Even if we failed we would be able to spot dangerous and impious students and stop them from progressing further. At worst then the Order of Hermes would deal with our cast-offs, students too incompetent or wicked to continue study with us.
This approach had already provided many great benefits: Medicine, textile dyes, coloured glass, improved metallurgy, and much more. We were even planning on having everburning lamps available for common use by 1750. Instead all of this was cast aside by fools.
The Great Embarrassment: Automata as Expressions of Faith
Ah the Automata! How greatly embarrassing these have been to the Technocracy! How hard they've worked at drawing the student's eyes away from the older models.
Each form of Automata is a perfect expression of not only the Worldview of the age in which it was made, but the way that the maker engages with the world and sees the place of humanity. It is the clearest sign of the sub-creation that is afforded to the human race. Yet they are also the greatest failure of both the Order of Reason and, until very recently, the Technocracy.
Simply put, what is the goal of all of our wonderful inventions?
To introduce them into the common Oikoumene and to let the Sleepers benefit from them, but also allow us to use them in public without issue.
How long have we had mechanical automata?
Since 1356.
When was the first time you saw an actual, practical automata offered to the public?
Well that hasn't actually happened yet, even in the year 2000 they were mostly university toys. In short despite nearly 700 years of concerted effort it is only recently that the Sleepers have been willing to believe in effective and universal automata.
Clockwork Automata
The vulgar will claim that the Clockwork Automata are Technological Magic, or Technomagic, or Technomancy, or some ridiculous idea like that. The fact of course is that they work wonderfully well according to the proper Laws of Nature, without any need to appeal to Magick to bend or twist those rules. Certainly the mechanism is amazingly intricate and it would be a while before Sleepers could replicate it (1720 according to our Time Table), but aside from the Primium shell only the early manufacture of these units required Enlightened Science.
A Clockwork Automata partakes in the Form of a Man or a Primate; this naturally imbues it with certain qualities of movement and of sensation. That is not to say that it has an Intellect or that it is Alive, Lord protect us from such blasphemy, but only that its very Form naturally imbues it with certain qualities. However as we can see that statues and paintings do not move around on their own there must be something else there to create the semblance of the élan vital of truly living objects.
The Clockwork Mechanism provides just that force: the gears and levers, the heavy Primium springs, and of course the heavy rewinding mechanism. Yet this force, this power, would be constrained to repeat the same motions time and time again, unless there was some guiding principle. This guiding principle is partially a Clockwork Calculating machine, with dozens of tiny metal cylinders like those in a musicbox, by choosing the right cylinder the proper movement may be carried out at once.
Hearing is easy enough; since we know that hearing is merely a matter of vibrations we can create an apparatus capable of accepting these vibrations. In my day there were two basic methods used, one was a set of thin strings placed in a mechanism like a harp. The other was a collection of thin metal plates. Each string or plate was carefully designed to pick up on a certain vibration, then triggering the appropriate mechanism in the clockwork.
This only partially solves the problem, for so far everything I have said might still be considered Orthodox Science as it were.
But how can you make it see? Less rigorous groups might handwave this, or use blatant Vulgar Magick as it were. We of course would not indulge in such errors; if it were possible to do something without needlessly invoking the Almighty and His Angels then we would try those other means first. Our rescue was in Sacred Geometry. By placing certain rods at precisely measured angles within the body of the Automata, we would create geometrical figures between these rods and the surrounding area. As the rods naturally, though very slightly, moved into a certain geometrical form this Sense Experience would be relayed up to the Clockwork Calculating Machine.
Likewise building it in the Form of a Man made the Automata inclined to Move accordingly. We made the Clockwork Mechanism and Calculating Machine sense the path of least resistance. Here I must say that to the uneducated this path of least resistance might look like the clockwork was allowed to occasionally spin randomly, before by pure chance falling into the most appropriate setting. This is of course false; there is a very slight, but measurable tendency for things to behave according to the Form they are in. This is enough to make the clockwork function.
Of course using what today passes for science; that is reams of random knowledge completely divorced from God and Reason, our Clockwork Automata could not work even in theory. If one were to be built, even according to exacting specifications, it would flail around aimlessly until the springs ran out.
Steam Automata
By 1837 the Technocracy had reached a point where they could either openly admit that one of their major tools violated the Natural Laws that they were proposing, or else get new tools. The fact that it took them this long to reach that conclusion speaks to the wonderful ability of people to delude themselves, as well as an excellent campaign of misdirection to keep the lower ranks from thinking too hard about it.
Although the Steam Automata solved the problem of Vision, by using an elaborate photovoltaic system, they didn't fully solve the issue of Cognition. Yes it is certainly true that a fully developed Difference Engine could do all the calculations necessary if you could crank up the speed enough. It's just that this is literally what you'd have to do, crank up the speed. Of course there's only one material that you can use that is sturdy enough and heat resistant enough to function at such speeds: Primium. It is simply not possible to find a conventional material that can handle the enormous strain.
Additionally the heat build-up caused considerable trouble as the conventional metals that secured the Difference Engine in place would grow soft. This was solved by the simple expedient of moving cool water from a storage tank through the Difference Engine, making it the first water cooled computer. The heated water could then go into the boiler-unit, allowing the whole system to conserve energy. Or that was the theory.
The fact of the matter is that even with all of this the whole cranking array and the Difference Engine could not perform enough computations per second to properly control the Steam Automata. That is to say the theoretical maximum speeds given would simply not suffice. The mathematical proofs of these are included in an addendum. Of course with Enlightened Science, or flat out Sacred Geometry and Theurgy, you can accomplish things that modern Orthodox Science (which is really a Heresy of course) would condemn as impossible.
Someone in the Artificers must have realised this, and thought that if you are going to be guilty of a crime it might as well be a real one. I say Artificers because they often blame this little incident on the Sons of Ether, who, though they find it immensely amusing and ingenious assure me that they were not in fact responsible. But I digress. The Steam Automata Ausführung G, which went into production in 1885, took full advantage of the enormous heat developed by its massive Difference Engine. Once the steam-engine was fired up it would get the Difference Engine cranked up, which would generate heat in the Difference Engine, which would send hot water back to the steam-engine. Since the Difference Engine would indeed grow very hot it would be possible to shut down the burner, instead using hot water from the Difference Engine to power the steam engine, which would crank the Difference Engine, which would generate the heat to run the steam engine.
I've heard of the Ghost in the Machine, but this is the first time I've heard of the Maxwell's Demon in the Machine. I've heard from the Virtual Adepts that in the modern age this sort of thing is sometimes called Insane Troll Logic. I'm not quite sure what that means, but it does sound very apt.
In 1905 this little gambit was discovered during a drive to ensure that the defecting Sons of Ether didn't have any secret backdoors into Technocracy resources. Naturally the whole thing was blamed on the 'Secret Superstitionists' and 'Deviants' and after a short while it was all pushed under the carpet.