“Deep within us is the never-silent sound of our own vibrations.”

–Yehudi Menhuin

 

Long ago it was, yet not so long ago that I can not remember…

               This is how our stories begin. But this beginning is not a beginning; it implies a continuum, a story that began long before the life of the teller or her audience was a pattern made manifest in the world. We see, hear and remember beyond the boundaries of our individual existences, and so there are no beginnings and no endings. Every story starts in the middle.

                “Let those with ears to hear harken to the tale, for every wish once made has a mind of its own and every story once told weaves itself into the pattern of reality,” so we say.

 

 

                  That a series of events coincided to bring about the close of the Fifth Age is no surprise to us; we are familiar with the odd workings of synchronicity and do not balk at paradox. That the tale be told at all, this neither is unusual. That it should be told in this manner—written instead of sung, recorded rather than remembered, revealed to any and all who would take the time to divine its hidden meaning—therein lies the singularity. Oh, such things have occurred. Shall occur. Are occurring. And should the unenlightened at last open their ears to the Gra, they will find in this tale a key to unlock the mysteries of hundreds more Books of Shadows. Yet the storyteller has little faith in her audience. Still, stranger things have happened. Shall happen. Are happening.