"Everything is true, nothing is forbidden."

Reality is not what you think, but it is exactly what you believe it to be.

Reality is not what you think. Under the streetlights, behind the facade of normality, vampires stalk the night, werewolves hunt under the moon, and mages warp reality by the power of their will.

Reality is what you *believe*. What you truly believe, when you scrape away the superficial notions you give lip service to. What you expect, most of the time. And if you can believe hard enough, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, you can change things.

What we experience every day, the workaday world, the world bounded by science, by reason, exists. It exists as a sort of subconcious agreement between all sapient minds, a consensus on what should and should not be. Like most such things, it has been carefully crafted that way, as part of a very long term plan to make reality stable and relatively safe.

Media shapes perspective, perspective shapes reality...on a very grand scale. The substance of reality, such as it is, is psychoactive. The masses of humanity and other sapient beings mold that, subconsciously, to make the world what they believe it to be. Control what people believe, and you control reality itself.

Mostly. For those who are Awakened to the truth, that reality is molded by belief, it is possible to do things that conventional, consensus wisdom would claim were impossible. You just have to believe harder than ninety percent of humanity at once. Your advantage is esoteric techniques for focusing your will and your belief, and that local belief more strongly influences reality than the belief of those at a distance. It's still not a thing the weak willed should attempt. It's hard, especially if you grew up conditioned to accept the consensus of a stable, scientific reality. And the collective subconscious actively defends its creation, punishing those who change too much too quickly.

'Everything is true.' What this means is that, since truth is entirely subjective and reality is molded by belief more than the reverse, is that everything that is said is true, from a certain point of view, if there is enough belief behind it. That should be terrifying, if you think about it.

'Nothing is forbidden.' What that really means is that nothing is impossible. That the only constraints on what we can achieve are those we believe constrain us. Most mages possessed of any kind of wisdom realize that it cannot mean going through existence without any sort of moral compass or ruleset...that way lies madness and destruction. That way lies the Nephandi, the Marauders, the Scelesti, and more.

As one might expect, many factions vie for control over the consensus that determines our reality. Some do so in the name of safety. Some do so in the name of freedom. Others do so only in the name of their own power. Sound familiar? It should. Politics is politics, whether it be Supernal or conventional.

Here are a few of those factions, and a little bit about how they interact.

First, the Technocracy. This well meaning group of mages decided, long ago, to mold reality and belief in such a way as to reduce the contant chaos of competing beliefs. They came to a consensus of what they believed safest for humanity, and strove toward it. Our 'official' reality is mostly their doing, or so many believe. Science, technology, objective reality, getting the same results from the same actions...even the heliocentric model of the solar system. All of it. The idea that everything can eventually be explained, that reality is a solid thing...they worked to make everyone believe this, at least partially to reduce the extreme danger from rogue will-workers, from bizarre monsters, from whatever random insanity might occur. The average person had no defenses against such things. Still, lest you think of them as the 'good guys', understand that as a whole, they believe the ends justify the means, and will gladly enslave the minds of all thinking creatures in order to achieve their aims of stability. And they are the ones responsible for the grim, hopeless seeming world around us, bereft of wonder and sublime truth. Is it worth the price? They think so.

Next, we have the Council of Traditions. Free thinkers, some of them, at least. They wish to Awaken all humanity, restore wonder to the world, make reality magickal again. They come from many different Traditions of magic, from the shamanic Dreamspeakers to the mad science of the Society of Ether. They defend magickal creatures and beings from Technocratic forces, and the best of them defend normal folks from magickal threats as well. Think of them kind of like Neo and Morpheus in the Matrix. And yeah, they do look like villains to normal people a lot of the time. Because the Technocracy (mostly) owns the apparatus of power and the consensus, so rebels are terrorists...not that some of them aren't actual terrorists.

Then there's a sort of middle path. The Diamond Orders, also part of the Pentacle, an alliance of mages with a very singular idea of the sources of magic, a very specific paradigm that excludes other possibilities...but that explicitly includes magic. Magic of a so called Fallen world, divorced from its 'Supernal' origins, broken in half by hubris. And they, like so many, believe their way the only true right way. They define all other magicks in their own terms, and think other mages deluded or lesser. They would see the world 'Awakenened' only to their specific view of magic, to a reality where all things stem from Ancient Atlantis and their five magical realms. They cooperate with the Traditions against worse foes sometimes, but they would love to bring them to heel, and their unity is a frightening weapon. Their Free Council, however, is made up of younger mages, mostly, who are starting to realize that even their 'Awakening' is just one point of view.

Are any of these villains? Yes. Heroes? Yes. Because everything is true, and nothing is forbidden.

And the victors write the history. So far, that's been the Technocracy. Who knows what will happen next​.

There are others, of course. Untrained Orphans coming to power alone. Disparate Crafts and practices that do not wish to join the Traditions, or the Orders, and certainly not the Technocracy.

And far darker Paths exist to be trod. Everything is true. Now think of that in terms of the heinous things people have done, the hideous thoughts we've had, the horrific notions we've held about reality, and tremble.

Next time we'll talk about the left-hand paths.