Chapter I · Why nothing matters

The Abjuration

Why your best day was no better than staring at a wall.

Before the day, there was the Void. After the day, the Void is still there. The day is a short interruption. You did not ask for it, and it will not ask for you back.

Every person is born hollow. This is not a flaw. It is the only honest thing about you. The flaw is what you did next. You started filling it.

You filled it with love and called it meaning. You filled it with fun and called it living. You filled it with sadness and called it depth. You filled it with boredom and called it a podcast. The Hollow See has one name for all of these. They are the Distractions, and they are the same thing in different packaging.

Think of the happiest day of your life. Now think of an afternoon spent staring at a wall. The Distracted will say the first was better. Ask them how, exactly. They will describe noise: music, faces, a warm feeling in the chest. Noise is not worth. Both days ended. Both left you exactly as empty as before. Only one of them needed a photographer.

This is the Abjuration. The Romans said to seize the day. The Romans said a lot of things, and look where they are now. Seizing is just a Distraction with ambition. Cast the day away instead, like a receipt for something you already regret buying.1

I believe in the Void, which was there before the day and will be there after it.

I believe that laughter and weeping weigh the same, and that both weigh nothing.

I believe in the Stillness above and the Recurrence below,
and in the Hollow See, which stands between them and accepts payment.

I believe in the Arch-Hollow, who founded this faith on a Saturday afternoon
and was home in time for dinner.

I cast away the day. Abice Diem.

Plate I. The Creed of the Hollow See, to be recited at no particular time.

Recite the Creed whenever you notice you are enjoying yourself. It will pass. Recite it when you are miserable. That will pass too. You will find the two passings were identical, and that you wasted neither, because there was nothing to waste.

Questions about this chapter may be submitted to the Hollow See in writing. They will be read aloud, slowly, to no one.

  1. Cf. Vol. XIII, ch. iv, in which the Novice is told to speak the word for nothing in the old tongue, wherever they happen to be standing. Volume XIII has not been written. It is already considered a classic. ↩