Secrets from the storyteller
EshSecret: The Birth of Our World
As told by the Great Storyteller, Stelling Elling
Now, gather ’round children and I will tell you a great Story from the Ancients. This wondrous tale begins at the beginning of all things, when there was only one star in the universe and nothing else. This original star was very huge and it was very powerful, and its name was Esh.
No one knows when and why Esh came into being. But, whether Esh was born or it simply always existed, this great star floated for a very long time all alone, the only object in the deep, dark space that was all there was. Even though Esh was utterly alone, the great star was not lonely. No, Esh was quite happy being alone for Esh knew it was the greatest force in the universe and it was very proud of this fact.
For a long time, Esh was content to marvel at its wondrous brightness and its great power and it was satisfied to have itself for company.
Then, one day after Esh had existed for a very long time, Esh grew restless. The giant star began to wonder if its magnificent beauty and great power were going to waste since there was nothing else to appreciate its fine qualities. Esh thought:
I do believe I should strike out into the darkness to see if anything is there.
While this is what Esh thought, Esh really didn’t know what this meant for, in truth, Esh had never consciously moved in one direction or another over the entire length of its existence. Not once!
This was not to say that Esh didn’t know about movement. In fact, Esh had always rotated on its axis, making great, slow rotations that each took thousands of years to complete while its was floating alone in the vast, dark expanse of the universe. Esh had no idea how or why it rotated but it knew that it did indeed turn slowly. This made Esh think it should be able to move in other ways, too.
The problem for Esh was that it had no idea how to get moving in a different way. Yet, Esh was determined to go exploring the universe and so Esh decided:
I am sure I can pick a direction and get moving that way if I set my mind to it.
And so, Esh put its great mind to the problem of how to get moving and it pondered the question for a very long time. And yet, after much pondering, Esh was unable to see how to get itself moving. So Esh thought some more but, still, it was unable to see a way. The more the solution eluded Esh, the more frustrated the great star became.
As Esh‘s frustration grew, its great fires burned hotter and fiercer. At first, its great fires were white-hot but, as Esh became more and more frustrated and its fires burned hotter and hotter, they changed color, going from white to yellow and then from yellow to red. Still, Esh was unable to see a way to move and so the great star cried out:
There must be an answer!
Yet, no matter how hard Esh pondered the problem, it could not see a solution. Esh grew even more frustrated and its frustration slowly turned into impatience, and then its impatience turned into anger. These were terrible, new emotions that confused the star. Then Esh felt another, altogether new emotion that made it think:
If I cannot solve so simple a problem, am I really so great and powerful a star as I would like to believe?
As this seed of doubt took root in Esh, for the first time in its existence, Esh lost heart and stopped believing in the brilliance of its mind and it doubted its powers. Then, in that unfamiliar moment of deep doubt, Esh suddenly stopped reasoning and, abandoning all hope, the star suddenly felt a strange, crazy need simply to do something, anything! Esh‘s crazed mind told the star it could simply will itself to move. So Esh told itself:
Just move, that’s all. Move!
When nothing happened, Esh doubled its efforts, focusing all the force it could summon on this one, blinding thought:
Move! Great star, move!
As Esh blindly willed itself to move, its fires burned even more fiercely and, as they grew hotter and hotter, they turned from red to black. The great heat caused Esh to spin faster and faster until the star was a great blur of spinning movement and the heat from its fires became so great that Esh actually began to expand, doubling in size and then tripling. Still, Esh was unable to make itself move forward. Deep inside itself, Esh cried:
You must do this, great star! You must make yourself move!
Yet Esh could not get itself moving!
There was now only one force left for Esh to summon. Bending its mind to the task, Esh dug deep to find the great power at its center. This power was the force that kept the star’s fires burning, a power never before summoned and never before unleashed. But Esh was feeling a desperation that made it reckless and, in its recklessness, Esh summoned up the power that was the heart of its being and then Esh unleashed the full force of it.
Suddenly, the star began spinning so wildly that Esh lost all sense of place and time. As Esh spun madly, giant flames erupted everywhere on its vast surface. The star grew so hot its color grew deeper and darker than black – a color the universe had never seen before. Then, in the next instant, Esh exploded. The cataclysmic explosion broke Esh into millions of pieces and the pieces went flying in every direction, hurtling deeply into the vast emptiness of the universe.
And do you know what? Many of these pieces of fiery Esh were so hot they never cooled and today they still burn, in hues of yellow and white, as the stars of the universe.
Among all these pieces of Esh that flew through space, there were three pieces that traveled together. Two of them were large enough that they continued to burn after they finally came to rest, close to each other. The larger of these two pieces of Esh, we call our Sun. The smaller one, we call our Moon. The third piece of Esh did not hold its heat and, as it cooled, it hardened and became the world on which we live.
Burning deep inside this cooled and hardened world is a tiny kernel of the power that Esh summoned from its center.
As the fires of our world gradually cooled to become mountains and hills, valleys and the bowls of our lakes, the kernel of power continued to burn deep underground and it burns still today, hot and powerful but hidden far below the surface. And although this kernel is deep underground, its presence is felt.
Not everywhere, mind you. Remember that it is only a tiny kernel and it lies only under one, small part of our world where its influence is felt. This kernel that Esh summoned from its center has a name. Esh called it Magick. And now you know why Esh‘s Magick is in our world.