ARCANA 3:

"On the Radiant One and the Shadowed One"

Harbinger Myth with Attendant Commentary by Professor Julian McCandless

THE RADIANT ONE AND THE SHADOWED ONE

Translated by Isabel Roser and Shira Langholtz

Published in The European Journal of Archeology

July, 2012

In the beginning, before the time of the sky and before the age of the ocean, there were the seven and the seven. 

They came from the world before the world, from the horizon and from the abyss. Seven angels and seven devils. Seven who would guard the interests of man, seven who would challenge them to rise to greater heights. 

Though they were separated by both nature and action, the angels and devils were born nemeses, forever in enmity against one another. And it was with the arrival of mortal man that two found their battlefield. It was through their works with mankind that the dance of their duel was carried out. And so their names and kindreds became known to man, for every angel and every devil. 

All save for that of the Radiant One and the Shadowed One.

Of their nature little is known. Some whisper that they were each the greatest among their kind, possessed of unmatched skill and ability. How they came about this power is a story lost to time - they simply were, much the way that the grass and the land and the sky are. 

Equally lost to the fog of ignorance is the account of how they first encountered one another. But meet they did, somewhere far and remote, away from the tools and fields of their war. And in that meeting, something new to the dimensions of the world occurred, an unseen configuration of the grains of sand in the desert of reality. An angel and a devil fell in love. 

What it was that they found in that which should have been their enemy to instead foster the music of love neither the wisest nor the maddest among us can guess at. But there was something in the version of themselves that they found in the reflection of the others’ eyes that kindled hope and sparked affection. 

For a turn of the stars, the two met in secret, stolen gatherings hidden from the eyes of all around them. And out of these encounters came things the world had never known before - instruments of forbidden creation and music that conducted new rhythms of the air. Those mortals who found bargain with the Radiant One and Shadowed One gained power and skill the likes of which the world had never seen. 

And it was through these disciples that they were found out. Erodeo, Devil of Inspiration, discovered the Shadowed One’s forbidden romance, and Arestra, Angel of Conviction, followed just a step behind his footsteps. And seeing the union of what was destined to be set against each other, Devil and Angel both saw the ends of the world. So, for the first time, the cause of angels and the cause of devils were as one. 

The Radiant One and the Shadowed One were hunted, and captured, and bound. And they were taken to farthest point beyond the horizon, a place of depth and solitude which no light ever reached. It was there that Ugario built a dungeon of pure twilight and Saelix forged chains that no worldly force could split. 

And in the deepest point of this cursed place is where the Shadowed One and the Radiant One were laid to rest. And as punishment should followed crime, so their fate followed their defiance. The two were placed together in a cell, just out of reach from one another. And Raelar dictated that until the end of the world, when impossible light defeats impenetrable darkness, the two would remain there, always together but always apart. 

And so satisfied, the remaining six angels and six devils departed, returning to their work and their war, never again to collaborate in any venture from that day forward. 

And to this day, the Radiant One and the Shadowed One await in their prison, fingers almost touching as they grasp for one another, destined to the eternal pain of being just out of reach from their beloved. 

Commentary

Published as Part of Harbinger Myth and Narrative

Out of all of the various apocryphal, unsubstantiated myths that buzz around the Harbinger milieu, this tragedy is far and away the most popular. Given how often it gets repeated, it is worth remembering and reiterating that it remains, to this day, completely unsubstantiated. While evolutions and deviations of it are found in many places that were once holdings of the Harbingers Empire, no version of it has ever been found within an authentic Harbinger site. Let us call it a secondary source, though a compelling one at that. Close, however, is best reserved for hand grenades and government work - until we find a reason to believe the Harbingers themselves told this story, it gets an asterisk in my book. 

Newcomers to the field are often inclined to ask if the details found within this story are consistent with the rest of our knowledge of Harbinger mythology - might that not be an easy way to rule whether this calamitous tale belongs in the cannon or not? If only our lives in the field of archeology were so easy. Details vary wildly from telling to telling when it comes to the Shadowed One and the Radiant One, including sometimes altering the number of challengers and guardians. In one particular outlier found in the highlands of Peru, the story claimed that there seventy-seven(!) of each. One wonders how any of the world would have been left standing in the wake of that conflict. 

In any case, to this date no full account of all seven guardians or challengers have been found in any of the Harbinger tombs or temples that have been uncovered. We have encountered neither conclusive proof that one member of each tribe was ever cast out into the mythological cold nor ironclad evidence that nothing like it ever happened. It remains possible, we are grudgingly forced to admit, that this could be a part of Harbinger mythology, and thus Radiant One and the Shadowed One truthers spring forth eternal with every new graduating class of anthropology majors. 

Careful readers may have already picked up on the subtle clues that point towards my reticence to consider this a true Harbinger myth. The version reproduced here, put together by the fearless Roser and Langholtz in 2012, does a heroic job of synthesizing the various versions the story that we’ve excavated from fields of human storytelling, as well bringing it in line with what we know of Harbinger ritualistic practice and tradition. Heroic, but perhaps misguided - like a math student who has already decided what the answer to a problem on a test is going to be, they strain and twist their sources because… well, because having a primordial Romeo and Juliet around the place certainly does liven things up a bit. Throw in the usual sins of their Judeo-Christian linguistic upbringing - they are challengers and guardians, not devils and angels, I will die on this hill - and I find it hard to embrace this narrative with as much open armed enthusiasm as many in my field. 

I hasten to add, lest anyone think me made of stone, that I am not completely immune to the charms of this story. There is plenty of beautiful imagery to infuse the poetic soul here, and the final, ironic fate of its star-crossed protagonists is the stuff of haunting, maudlin grandeur. And for a culture that conceives of divine beings that can only act upon the world in collaboration with the other, it is intriguing to consider the possibility of two of the divine in collaboration with one another. What sort of music could conduct new rhythms of the air? 

The truth, however, is that I remain first and foremost an insufferable linguist, and so the things that most linger with me are two moments in which I diverge from Roser and Langholtz in their translation. What they describe as “the dance of a duel” carried out in collaboration between the divine and the mortal, I would actually put in reverse order: “the duel of a dance.” More starkly than that, I disagree with my esteemed colleagues and role models at the end of the story. They say that the Shadowed One and the Radiant One will not be reunited until the end of the world. Having read almost every version of this story that has been unearthed, I think they have all the correct words but are off with their emphasis. 

In actuality, the end of the story should read that they will remain there until at least they touch and are reunited. And that when it happens - and text heavily implies that it will happen - it will bring with it the end of the world. 

- Julian McCandless

April, 2028

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