Orual's Judgement - Jacob (Blog Post 15)

 I am the god of wisdom whose planet is Mercury. I am both quick and slow, old and young, deep and shallow. I sow divine mischief on the earth and give sight to the blind. With my all seeing eye I watch the fate of men, how they toil in darkness. I give sight to those who wish for it and blindness those who wish to remain in it. I only give to men what they wish. I have been watching you since you were a child. I saw your lot and how you squandered it. Do not think the gods are foolish when they decide a person’s fortune. Each lot contains both a curse and a blessing. What it turns into is up to you. This is my judgement. You have lived your life blind. So blind have you been, you have been blind to your own blindness. You never saw anything, not your father, not Fox, not Bardia, not Redival nor even Psyche. You, yourself, have blocked them all from your vision. You never looked at the trees, the birds, the streams, nor even the mountains. In all this, you saw only yourself alone with your selfish misery. The gods in their wisdom have tried to give you eyes to see. Yet, what can one do when one wishes to remain in the night and never awake to the day. You have grown attached to your blindness. You made yourself believe that the night is all there is. When Psyche was condemned, and blessed, to be the bride of the brute, you never saw her. You only saw yourself. She tried to give you sight, yet her attempts were met with anger. In her response to her gifts, you tried to give her poison. Often, the blind are angered by and jealous of those who can see. You desired for Psyche to be blind like yourself, so you two could drink from the cup of misery. 

All are born into this world blind and all must learn to see. Wisdom begins in this, realizing that one cannot see. Both Bardia and the Fox saw their own blindness, though not as much as they should have. Still, they recognized that there was something they could not quite see. When you told them of your confrontation with Psyche, they both were blind to the mysterious nature of Psyche’s lover. Yet, neither of them was so foolish as to act on their blindness. They spent much of their live dwelling within darkness, yet, somewhere, deep down, they understood there is a light. You, child, acted in blindness. You tried to poison Psyche with your blindness. How spiteful and evil you acted. The gods, in their grace, attempted to give you sight when they showed you the secret palace of the divine. Yet, you rejected their sight, preferring to wallow in your own blind misery. You, child, are like your father, who too only wished to know blindness. You lived a life within yourself. Consider Bardia, for you never considered him nor saw him when he was alive. He worked himself to death for you and you never knew. Consider your sister, Redival. You showed her spite all your life when she needed you most. You never saw her suffering. Now, consider Psyche, the terrible weight you put upon her shoulders, how you acted out of your own blindness and were angered by the fact that she could see and you could not. You used her love for you as a weapon. What a dreadful thing to do.  

 When you encountered the truth of your actions, when you heard of your jealously, you could not bear it. You protested. You said the words were not true, that they were distortions of the truth. Neigh, child, the story you heard from the priest was the truth. It was the truth you ran from. The truth you have lived in. You say you did everything out of love for Psyche, yet in all you have acted only in hate and jealousy. If you were wise you would have heard the words of the priest as if they were the words of the gods. You dismissed the words of the priest as that of an uneducated simpleton. Poor fool, the Fox, your teacher, does not know the harm he has inflicted on you. He sees only in the words of the priests lies and deception. Yet, they often speak the deepest truths. The words of the priests are more than fanciful tales. The stories they tell give light to those who have eyes to see. If you had listened, you would have saw that the story you were told was more real than what you had experienced. Do you think a blind man is more right to judge what is right in front of him than one who has sight? What something looks like from the heavens is quite different than how it looks on the earth. The story the priest told you is the story heaven saw.  

Child, I say these words not to condemn you, but to offer you hope. For you have begun to see your own blindness. Too many hate the light and retreat into darkness. There, they have their reward. Yet, you have seen in your complaint against the gods the darkness you have lived in. Learn to see yourself. Though blinded by yourself, you have never truly seen yourself. See that you are nothing so that you might become something. This is the judgement of the gods. Never suppose judgement serves its own sake. For judgement is meant to lead to salvation. It is only when judgement cannot take root does it remain judgement. Know that Psyche has never ceased to intercede on your behalf. Know that gods listen to her words. Now, child, this is my penance I give to you. Learn to see the light. Do not remain in blindness. For those whose eyes awake for the first time to the light can be overwhelming. It will be painful to learn to see. You will, at times, wish to return to your blindness. Yet, if you open your eyes, it will soon be like waking up from a bad dream. What you seek has always been right before your eyes. You will see that the tales of the god in the mountain were more than tales, that psyche really did feed you the bread of heaven and that you really did drink out of the divine chalice, and the story the priest told you was the truth.