The Forian Codex

The Forian Codex

Once upon a time, long ago, there was a man who no longer wished to follow Toran. In his frustration with the inflexibility of his old faith, he decided that he would pursue the opposite and follow Forian.

But the man knew almost nothing about Forian, and nowhere among his neighbors could he find a teacher or any word of someone from whom to learn. So, he did as any logical person would and went to the great library. Surely, he reasoned, such an august and exhaustive repository must have some book that could teach him the rites of Forian.

He found the Forian Codex.

The tome was heavy and illuminated, with filigree of gold laced into the cover, and the man wept with joy as he opened the first page to find that it contained not only all the collected rites of Forian, but detailed instructions that, if followed with absolute dedication, could make the reader one of Forian's elect. The book cautioned that these steps must be followed exactly, one a day, for two years, without ever looking ahead, in order to give proper time for meditation on each lesson.

And so the man set out. He followed the book's instructions to the letter. One day he spoke the mysteries of Forian in a language he had invented, so that he sounded like a madman but spoke from his own heart; another day he sold all his possessions for the first price anyone would pay for them, so that he would have no chains to bind him to the world; he drank to excess; he fasted; he lay naked on the roof of a building; he told deeply personal and erotic secrets; he carried out all the activities of a day in reverse; and all the while he thought, "yes, yes! I can feel that each of these brings me closer to Forian! I am grown very wise indeed!" Though it was an inconvenience, he saw his own life from a dozen new angles, and with each he appreciated more all that he had taken for granted, and though his neighbors eyed him sidewise, he was ecstatically happy.

One very late page of the book asked him to cut off the smallest finger on his left hand. He trembled at the terrible price, but such was his devotion that, though it took him much drink to find the courage, he did so, and threw the bleeding digit into the gutter. "This is not too great a price to pay," he thought, "for closeness to Forian." Though it hurt him immensely, and he was dizzy from the loss of blood, he found he had never been happier, for he had sacrificed for his goal and his god, and it gave him a feeling of great nobility and ineffable joy.

Finally, tired, sore, burned and parched, but nonetheless reverent and impassioned, the man came to the very last page of the Forian Codex, and this is what it said:

"Congratulations to you. As a true Forianite at heart, you have doubtless skipped over the utter nonsense of the rest of this book and turned directly to the back. You're the clever sort who knows that the true faith in Forian is practiced not by the guidance of anyone or anything, but by the whims and desires of the individual, and you refuse to be lead or dictated to. You are one who knows there is nothing of true spiritual value to be found in books."

The man fell to his knees and wept. He thought of all the days of religious joy and supposed enlightenment he had wasted, and how the improvement of his life through the Codex was nothing but a joke at his expense. He clutched at his mangled hand and cursed the book. How cruel, how senseless, that it should all mean nothing, that all the rapture he had experienced should come with so much avoidable pain.

He closed the Codex, put it back on the shelf, and returned to the worship of Toran.