Churchmen were the guardians of the word. In the gray northern light of monastic scriptoria, countless monks patiently copied out the works of Plato and Aristotle and Pythagoras, of Boethius and Avicenna, of their own historians and philosophers. In elegant monkish calligraphy-with illuminations in gold and important letters in red-the monks defined the architecture of the universe.

The picture was one of wonderful plentitude and majestic logic. Just as human hands had groomed the wild fens of Somerset into a seemly and decorous farm- and pastureland, human minds had named and fitted everything in creation into a vast and harmonious pattern. The order of things were described in terms of a chain, descending from the base of God's throne, high in clear empyrean, to the solid earth far below. At the top of the chain were the three orders of angels, beings of pure thought, who- according to some scholars- directed the motions of the heavens, singing as they did so.

Below the angels' starry spheres, all things of the natural world observed degree, priority and place. Nearest the angels was man, the paragon of animals, who possessed the angels' faculty of thought but also summed up in himself or herself, all of the earthly phenomena beneath them. Below man came higher animals, such as horses. After these came animate creatures that lacked some senses- oysters for instance. Then came vegetables, living and growing but immobile and insensate. Lowest of all were inanimate objects, such as stones.

The comforting aspect of this arrangement was that everything fitted and nothing was left out. Everything in nature, no matter how humble, had some special attribute peculiar to itself: A stone, for example, might not be living, but it possessed a durability lacking in a plant, higher on the chain. All the creatures within each class were ranked, too, and every class had a leader: the dolphin among fish, the osprey among birds, the king among men, the seraph among angels, the sun among the heavenly bodies.

But inherent among the cosmic order was great danger, particularly for wizards. No matter what the class, all elements in creation were laced together by mirrored lines and patterns of correspondence. If any part of the delicate balance were disrupted, if any of the strings that made the harmony was untuned, the whole might be affected. To quote George Carlin, "It only takes one crazy glue freak. Oh, believe me, the whole society would grind to a halt." Chaos-a real universal chaos, of dying sun and boiling seas, of famine, plague and fire- could be let loose upon the world.

Indeed, the world was always threatened. To name something was not only to call it into being but also to suggest its opposite: Things are defined in terms of what they are not. Calling into existence an ordered world of light and harmony meant summoning its contrary as well. Hovering at the end of the great chain opposite God, was Satan - the Great Adversary - with his hierarchies of demons. He was the implacable enemy of order, the embodiment of discord, destruction and darkness. *



*Keep in mind that this was the main-stream of thought about the order of the animals in the 11th-15th centuries, so not all the information attached to the kingdoms of animals, fish, mammals, etc. etc. are not correct as we know it today.

A big thanks to Shamus O'Toole's Wizards and Witches, that helped me immensely when writing this volume.