The public primer
A Primer to the World
Compiled from the correspondence of certain scholars across many kingdoms, for the apprenticed, the bewildered, and the lately-arrived.
Foreword
Compiled from the correspondence of certain scholars across many kingdoms, for the apprenticed, the bewildered, and the lately-arrived.
The chapters
Chapter 1·1 min read
Foreword
We are not a Society. We hold no charter, claim no seat, observe no common liturgy. What we are is a practice — a habit of letter- writing carried on between cold libraries that smell of vellum and tallow.
Chapter 2·1 min read
The world we have found
The world is wide and old. We have walked between thirty kingdoms in the course of these letters, and most days the world looks like any other place. The plough goes through the soil; the smith works the iron;
Chapter 3·1 min read
Of that which came before us
Before living memory, something ended.
Chapter 4·2 min read
On the breath that animates us
What animates a living body is, in our usage, the breath — though every register has its word, and the registers will not agree even on so plain a matter as the soul. The southern scholars prefer psyche. The coast-cultures write the wake;
Chapter 5·3 min read
On the working of the world-blood
We come now to the substance itself: the great matter all our argument circles.
Chapter 6·3 min read
On returning
When a restless body takes a killing wound, the breath does not at once depart. Body and breath enter together the state the folk call the grace: the body silent, the breath loose around it, neither in nor away.
Chapter 7·2 min read
On the gods
Cultures across every kingdom we have walked agree on this much: there are gods. They differ enormously on what gods, how many, what those gods do, whose worship is correct, and whether one may be trusted to answer when called upon.
Chapter 8·4 min read
On the kindreds
The world holds many kinds of thinking creatures. We treat them under three headings, and beg the reader's patience with the categories; they are working categories, no more.
Chapter 9·1 min read
On the under-place
Below the worked stone, beneath cellars and the deepest mines, the world is wrong.
Chapter 10·1 min read
A closing word
This compilation closes here, as all compilations must. We have written what we believe. We have noted, with some care, what we cannot believe. We have refused, in several places, to commit, and we welcome the argument that will follow.
Chapter 11·1 min read
A note on terms
In writing across cultures we have been obliged to adopt a working vocabulary. The choices are ours, not the world's.