The Story of the Dark Crystal
The Coming of the urSkeks
In the days of their first coming there were eighteen 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 crystals 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 Crystal, 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 the 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; only the fully 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 struggled 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 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.
My Master taught me:
"Find your thought and place it in the center of a spiral. Let the spiral grow in coils upon itself so that each thought can lie beside its ancestor. Then take another thought into the center of the spiral and coil the two together, carrying both in your mind. Then, when you have thought your way back again to the center, take another thought and entwine it into the double or triple coil. True thinking grows into spiral knots that can never untwist."
One thousand trine of the Suns later urZah said to me:
"Look deep into the single spiral, see your inmost being, and follow the teaching. Look deep into the double spiral and see the beating heart of all, the beating of the Universe. Look deep into the triple spiral and find your soul."
Brian Froud, The World of the Dark Crystal [ISBN: 1 86205 624 2]
Henson Organization Publishing / Harry N. Abrams, New York 2003
Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1982
