Today we’re going to continue our exploration of the gods as processes that loop and feed back onto themselves.
Now we arrive at Fiosachd: fortune. Fortune is an interesting case. You would be forgiven for not seeing how fortune, or chance, can loop back onto itself. But it does. Every gambler that thought: I can’t possibly lose - has fallen victim to the fallacy of the streak. Fiosachd opens possibilities, expands the vista of what is possible. But not every roll of the dice is fortune.
Fortune is really expressed clearly as probability. The chance of something happening. Fortune is when that chance actually occurs. All the possibilities collapse: we meet our love. We win the game. We are accepted to some academy. We survive against impossible odds. No probability involved, but certainty. Fiosachd collapses probability into a specific path. If Luathas and his gnosis is the disruptor, and Gramail is the integrator: Fiosachd is the resolution - the dice throw. Where does the gnosis lead us? How is our new wisdom accepted? Fiosachd’s dice resolves these outcomes.
Crucially though, we cannot predict or determine these outcomes. Aislings begin their path with Deoch, as we all know. We walk the path of the Octave in all things, all our endeavors, begininning with that inspiration. Fiosachd selects the outcome from a sea of infinity. Every aspect of our lives, in some way - involves chance, or fortune. Even giving this class - will it be received well? Luathas and Gramail can help me to write this class, may even result in it being filled with structural wisdom. But I cannot control how the lecture is received. For that, we must cross to Fiosachd.
If I have walked the path correctly - if I have prepared myself in my journey along the Octave - Fiosachd might smile on me. Is that fortune, or my preparation? Perhaps it is best to say: Fiosachd is a randomness - a collapse of probabilities - but within certain predetermined parameters. That is to say: if I did not prepare my lecture in advance or care about it in any way, then I have to rely more on the moment - the exact moments I am speaking to you. If I am very clever, or very lucky - a spontaneous coherence might appear, tracing back to the inspiration I found for these classes. But just as well, if I had too much wine the night before or I had a cold, or whatever - it might fall flat.
Fiosachd delivers us to conclusions - but through our actions we determine what those conclusions might be. There is of course, an element of fortune, always - but we can hinder our chance at fortune, or we can allow it to blossom through careful steps. In the end, though - we must live with Fiosachd’s dice rolls. You can do everything correctly and still fail. You can do everything poorly and still succeed.
Fiosachd’s dice rolls, however, often have unusual impacts on our journeys. His randomness influences other events. Gamblers know well about lucky streaks - sudden clusterings of rare outcomes. But this is really, a source of randomness feeding back onto itself. Imagine this class. A random comment leads to a conversation. That conversation may change a decision. That decision takes you to a place you’ve never been before. Each wrinkle of Fiosachd’s dice throw creates more and more impact. Fiosachd’s randomness, whether fortune or otherwise - creates new paths for us. He doesn’t guarantee we will like the path - and we must lean on Ceannlaidir, in fact, to have the courage and fortitude we need to continue walking it - but we will walk it. His dice escort us down our path to its natural conclusion.
Fiosachd also acts as a continual source of perturbations. What does this mean? It means that by his very existence, he helps keep the static darkness of Chadul at bay. Chadul’s darkness has no randomness, no choice left - everything has collapsed to dark stillness. An infinite quiet. In a way, Fiosachd forces systems to confront themselves, and also forces us to confront ourselves: regardless of our preparation, regardless of our cleverness, regardless of our heroism - we may still fail. As a result, Fiosachd invites us to renew ourselves, by having courage to confront the results. When we fail, we pick ourselves up and keep going. When we win, we have the courage to wonder: now what? We confront and integrate these results into new learning - the domain of Sgrios. This process, however, is crucial. Without Fiosachd we do not know the outcomes of anything we do, any idea we may have, any battle we may fight - whether on a grand scale, or within our own minds.
These perturbations keep our society going. They keep it unpredictable. And life must be unpredictable, after all, to be enjoyable. What would be the point otherwise? If we arrived at the certainty of gnosis, and the power of the law, and we knew exactly what was going to happen next - the law would never evolve. If nature only rewarded the largest, strongest wolves, if it only rewarded expressions of raw power - all we would have is raw power. The reason why society weaves itself into a collection of multitudes is precisely because Fiosachd forces us to live with outcomes we may not like - and we must keep going.
And we must too remember: there is no divine meaning in Fiosachd’s randomness. Though his followers or allies may pray to him, in the end - he is fickle, and operates according to his own rules, his own game. When he blesses us, we might be tempted to take that as a divine mandate. History is littered with those who have done so, and suffered great calamities. When we twist Fiosachd’s randomness into a mandate - our personal mandate - we forget that constant success would be another form of static order. Fiosachd does not tolerate control - whether actual or an illusion, and we will pay an enormous price if we fail to remember this.
So, when you leave today, remember: there are no guarantees. The outcomes of all of our efforts will sometimes surprise us, sometimes leave us breathless. This means, more than anything: we are alive, we can be surprised, and we can keep going. Fiosachd serves his dual function: to reinvigorate our paths, and to keep us moving towards conclusions - and we continue to walk the Octave.