Seven Day Meme - Day 6
Dec. 13th, 2009 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingredheadDay one • a song
Day two • a picture
Day three • a book
Day four • a site
Day five • a youtube clip
Day six • a quote
Day seven • whatever tickles your fancy
This is why I love Diane Duane's Young Wizards. Summed up in this succinct but beautiful mission statement are many of the tenets I strove to follow unconsciously before I ever read these books. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life. I've been thinking about tattoos lately because a couple of my friends have them, and while I would never get a tattoo (I'm a wimp), if I did, it would probably be the phrase "In Life's name and for Life's sake" written in a cursive script around my right wrist.
In the books, a prospective wizard begins his or her career by finding and taking the Oath. Perhaps even more than I wanted to get that owl sent from Hogwarts, I wanted one day to open up my copy of So You Want to Be a Wizard and have it transformed into a wizard's manual, so that when I read the Oath, it would mean more than just the words.
Day two • a picture
Day three • a book
Day four • a site
Day five • a youtube clip
Day six • a quote
Day seven • whatever tickles your fancy
"In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert I assert that I will employ the Art which is its gift in Life's service alone, rejecting all other usages. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so, looking always toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which They Proceeded..."
--The Wizard's Oath
--The Wizard's Oath
This is why I love Diane Duane's Young Wizards. Summed up in this succinct but beautiful mission statement are many of the tenets I strove to follow unconsciously before I ever read these books. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life. I've been thinking about tattoos lately because a couple of my friends have them, and while I would never get a tattoo (I'm a wimp), if I did, it would probably be the phrase "In Life's name and for Life's sake" written in a cursive script around my right wrist.
In the books, a prospective wizard begins his or her career by finding and taking the Oath. Perhaps even more than I wanted to get that owl sent from Hogwarts, I wanted one day to open up my copy of So You Want to Be a Wizard and have it transformed into a wizard's manual, so that when I read the Oath, it would mean more than just the words.