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Deep, profound and mysterious to mortals -- numblingly simplistic to the defenders of Creation and their servants -- that's the Mandala Principle in a nutshell.

After all, to a mortal, existence obviously seems chaotic and disconnected from itself, but when one embodies a primal aspect of Creation and provides that aspect's intelligence and motive energy, the Mandala Principle is something less than a revelation, it's akin to a job description.

What most mortal rubes don't understand is that the Principle is something more; something much stronger. In a very real sense it is Creation's primal defense mechanism.

For the lay person to properly understand what is meant by the above, one must usually resort to simple analogies.

• Picture a cat's cradle network of silken threads upon which the entirety of Creation is hung -- the balance is not immediately evident as perfect, and the symmetry of the thing is only visible at distances few would find... relevant. Still, Everything is There, and it is in fact all connected.
• The network of silken threads have something like the consistency and tensile strength of piano wire (in mortal terms) and the entire mess is under a tremendous amount of pressure.

Now imagine cutting or releasing one of those threads while you are standing in the midst of the thing.

If the image in your mind is at all like the unpleasant effects of, for instance, a Jaunting gone awry -- that is no coincidence.

There are any number (literally, any number) of safe paths through this network of humming interconnections -- likewise, there are an equal number (or that number plus 1) of directions one should not go -- directions where a thread must be cut to proceed or where one might unwittingly jar loose a thread from it's mooring.

Creation itself will recover from this shift (in most cases, quite quickly) -- the individual responsible for it rarely fares so well.

Obviously, these more dangerous paths frequently relate to temporal travel rather than physical. One need only look at the tremendous amount of time and effort that Anthurian Azurus put into his recitation of the Perpetual Rose Ritual during his chancel creation (and then recognize that this was the will of an Aaron's Serpent at work) to realize that working crosswise to the Mandala Principle requires the utmost care even for the greatest among Creation. (A task of which not even Anthurian Azurus was entirely the master -- witness Chicago.)

It takes far less will (and time, and effort) to make a horrible tragedy of the entirely too well-known Ritual.

The natural defense mechanisms of Creation (embodied with the Mandala Principle) are terribly dangerous and, it should be noted, are not always kind enough to result in death:

• the untimely (pun intended) disbanding of the Order For Irresponsible Behavior...
• the dangers held within [Nashistrallia]...
• the half-dimension Causual Loop the Quantum Archivists have/will have tricked themselves into...

Any of these have provided more than enough object lessons to encourage restritive policies regarding temporal damage in today's more educated times (no pun intended).

In point of fact, the only thing more frightening than the action of the Mandala Principle itself are those instances in which the Principle failed.

See also:

• Anthurian Azurus
• Chicago
• Jaunting
• The Erased 500 Years
• Nashistrallia