In this series of lectures, I’ve been exploring the nature of our deities themselves. At first I was expressing it as: Deoch exploring himself - that is to say inspiration - through us. Similarly with Glioca - coming to know compassion through compassion. But what this really is is looking at the deities as an infinity. We think and study about deities like Deoch and Glioca to learn more about them and perhaps about ourselves in the process. But devotion is the application of a deity to a life - to live by and through certain natural principles and maxims they represent.
All of this to say: this lecture series is actually talking about continually reapplying those principles over time: inspiration over time, compassion over time, etc. A life lived through these means - and how that might define the deities themselves.
So now we come to Cail, and balance. Cail is more important than a lot of people assume, certainly now as his temple is somewhat disused. What is balance? We think we understand Cail as a measurer, an examiner. We imagine him with scales, perhaps, constantly weighing this or that. In truth, Cail is the engine of this mechanism: he is equilibrium itself, the process that brings systems into balance.
That balance over time yields music. Rhythm. It also yields cycles - oscillations, ebbs and flows between patterns. We might say the Octave itself relies on the balance of Cail. We have talked about how you cannot remain forever in inspiration - the wheel must turn. The act of the wheel turning itself is Cail’s balancing force, producing the journey through inspiration all the way to release. Each progresses according to a natural balance, when the time is right. Cail does not harangue, or order, or command - he represents the natural state that all systems seek on their own, including us, and our world. Gramail may write laws which define our world - Cail sees those laws operate, and knows when they are in concordance.
But this balancing act is not a simple affair. Cail does not do this once - this is a continuous, ongoing process. The act of rebalancing something creates a new imbalance, which must itself be resolved. This process is continuous - it is a constant balancing. We see again the operation of a deity over time: a continuous, looping process.
Out of this process come the tides, political cycles, and nature itself. We observe this relentless balancing process constantly: the population of animals, the progression of seasons. Cail then is not a measurer, or the scale, but the movement towards balance itself.
But what is this balance? What is balance? We can start simply and say: two things being equal. That doesn’t help our understanding, though. Nature in balance is nature in cruelty - a dominance of raw power, until nature upturns that raw power itself. Balanced systems can be cruel; balanced societies can still be unjust. Equilibriums don’t care, or optimize for, happiness - they optimize for continuity.
So balance needs to be itself…balanced, by his trinity: we see Glioca, his mother - a compassionate force as we discussed - and Luathas, that deliverer of gnosis. We can imagine in this a cycle: Luathas delivers an insight, a shock to the system - Cail brings the system back into balance, and Glioca tries to ensure the system remains, if not compassionate, than at the very least - harmonic.
Part of Cail’s enmity for Fiosachd is that Fiosachd represents a randomness that cannot be optimized, a type of entropy that is outside of the system itself. Similarly, Sgrios represents endings - which have no balance. Endings represent a terminal state, an endpoint. Though we may begin again through Deoch, we must transform ourselves to do so. A new system, a new life, a new journey begins. Cail is focused on balancing the in-process journey - the steps we are immediately taking.
So. What about our own in-process journey? What is the impact of the Aisling on history? This is perhaps the most curious aspect of Cail. We might imagine he sees Aislings as an irritant: another Thing - maybe even not natural - interfering with nature. But we cannot escape Cail’s equilibriums. We encode Cail in every system we create, every conversation we have with others - we see patterns and rhythms in our own lives. Cail is part of the fabric of the universe, an inherent process that, observing itself, constantly finds more to balance, more to witness.
Aislings represent a contribution of, more than anything else, novelty - or if you prefer, entropy - into a fixed system. Part of why I rail so much about the current conditions around us is that we find ourselves in a decaying, static system - stagnation. Equilibrium, instead of bringing a commonality of order alongside an infinity of Aisling novelty, becomes a trap. We are fixed, all of us, in a minima, frozen by the ever-expanding grasp of Chadul. The balance becomes the frost on top of the ice encasing us and this world. Cail, though, does not want this for us. In a static, unchanging system - there is nothing to balance. It settles to a terminal state and cannot change, cannot move.
Our process, then, is a reintroduction of fire, a reintroduction of novelty, of energy - to infuse the mundane around us with the randomness of our own lives - our own stories, our loves, losses - the essence of our lives. The more we reflect this genuinely, as a mirror of our own selves, an immersion in our own magic - the more we bring back into a frozen system.
The gears move.
Cail stirs to duty once more.
If you take away a message today: Seek a balance in your own life, but remember: to seek balance is to find it in the cracks between extremes. It is to stumble upon it, and become the balance itself - not to never seek out highs and lows, but to find a peace in the process in and between them. If Cail represents anything else, it is seeking a path forward through an infinite unknown, and finding peace and balance along that path.