The urSkeks

"The urSkeks found me there upon the mountain-top; they healed my burns; but I was now gnarled root and weathered rock; the heat of the Suns had burnt my firsr growth away. When I was heled, the urSkeks taught me knowledge; they built for me the great Observatory that I might see all the paths of the World. My life was made complete."

"On the day I gave one eye to see the splendor of the Three Suns, a new joy came to the World. I lay on the mountain above the Crystal and saw the Three Suns move together. I lay under rocks with one eye open to the light, and for one moment and forever I saw the Eye of the Three Suns shining down on me. Then form that light my eye darkened, and in that moment of light the urSkeks opened the door in the Crystal and entered our World. The pain in my lost eye was joined once to the joy I had in the urSkeks, but bitter, sour, poisoned rock is that joy to me now."

"In the days of their first coming there were eighten urSkeks, and they were full of vigor and the will to change and build. They hollowed out the mountain around the Crystal and built a castle of lesser cystals around the great Crystal. They made the three walls of blocks of crystal, and above the Crystal they made a great portal of three sides. So when the Suns moved over the Cystal. they stood framed in the portal, a triangle surrounding a circle."

"The urSkeks were upright and tall, with an inner light of beauty that streamed from them always. I had from them the understanding of many things; from them the Gelfling learned to sing new songs. Each moment was rich and full, yet the coming of the shining strangers changed our World and our lives forever. I lived all my time in the Observatory, no longer walking and wandering, no longer speaking with Gelfling. I studied the Suns and worlds, and learned from the urSkeks."

"These were the teachings that the urSkeks shared with me, Aughra. There is power in the Universe that is there to be used by those who dare control and shape their destiny. There are many levels of power; onlt the full initiate can wield the fullest power. To gain this strength takes many trine and a great will and much silence."

"To take the fist step on the path is to meditate upon numbers and their patterns. Particularly the urSkeks guided me to think upon the first four natural numbers, the four that together make a triangle and a pyramid of TEN. Then they gave me THREE and NINE to understand, and finally the number SEVEN, but of that teaching it is not proper to write."

"The thought of the urSkeks was formed in triangles and pyramids, with circles and spheres placed within them; the castle was built as a poem to these shapes, and the movements of the Suns that shone through the portal completed the Harmony."

"But in the hearts of the shining urSkeks there strugled two beings living within one body - and for them all things were divided so. Light and dark were for them opposing spirits of the Universe; a mirror held up to light should reflect dark, a mirror in the darkness should give light. And yet they knew so much of triangles, of numbers that combine and do not oppose."

"In the complexity of the spiral lay all the meditation of the urSkeks. I was guided to dream through them and to form them in my mind before I shaped them in sand or stone. The full art, which was beyond me, was to carve time spirals, which hold the meditation forever and guide others into the pathway of their thoughts and hold power over all space around them."

Text from The World of the Dark Crystal by Brian Froud,
Henson Organization Publishing/Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1982
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