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The Village Magician

Once there was a village with many problems: the young ran wild and chaotic in the streets, wives and husbands argued, whole families would rise up and fight each other. Often it seemed as though all were determined to destroy themselves.

The council of wise men and women who watched over the every-day affairs were often at their wits end; they cared about their work and truly believed themselves to be in earnest in their attempts to steer the village to prosperity and happiness. But no matter what they did, they couldn’t resolve a single issue for one simple reason: No one in the village, no one at all, would ever admit being wrong. No matter what happened between the people, they all, everyone one of them, laid all the blame at each other’s door and accepted none themselves. With such stubbornness and refusal to acknowledge any responsibility, the council could settle no disputes and the village grew ever more filled with strife and disharmony.

Then one day the council learned that a wandering magician had by chance stopped for the night in the village inn. They quickly called themselves together and as one hurried to meet with him.
The magician greeted them kindly and listened to their woes with interest.

“What we need,” the council told him, “is a way to make the people have to admit their faults.”

The magician frowned. “It is,” he said, “possible to create such a spell, to manifest such a reality for you. But I must warn you that to have no where to hide your faults is a hard road to walk, and one only the brave would choose. Think long and hard, and if you gain the agreement of your people, I will give you this gift.”

The council looked at each other; between them they had no doubts, their struggles with the villagers had been too long and frustrating for them to be swayed, but they wondered if they would be successful in getting the people’s agreement. The bade the magician stay as their guest while the question was sent out.

It happened that it took no more than a day for the answer to come speeding back - to the delight of the council. So strong was the villagers’ belief in their individual innocence, and the burden their neighbors’ faults placed upon them, that they unanimously agreed to the idea. The council brought the message back to the magician and eager to begin their new life of honesty, begged him to begin his spells. The magician held to his promise and told the council to gather the whole village that very evening.

The moon was full behind him as he stood before a large and eager crowd. “People of Verdad. You have told the council of your willingness to have the faults of your peers made visible and undeniable - in this you speak of your desire to be rid of your own faults too. Is their any who does not wish this?”

The villagers looked back at him with one face; no none said a word.

The magician raised his voice again. “The gift of truth I would bestow on you is that each and every person’s faults will appear on their face in the form of a purple sore. And that by looking into this sore the nature of the fault will be seen - it will be known. Again I ask - is there any who does not want this?”

The villagers remained quiet for several seconds before a voice called out: “Aye! Give us that gift Great One. Let us see the evil in our mists so that we may drive it out!” Barely had that voice died than another joined the cry; soon the whole village seem full of voices claiming their exasperation at the liars and offenders amongst them. The magician listened with ears that heard every voice, every heart, and when he had heard them all cry the same desire he raised his hands again for silence.

“So be it, so it is!” he called out. “Let your souls know themselves!”

The next day the magician left, saying he would return in one year.

A year passed and the magician returned. At the inn he waited for the council to come to him - but they did not come. Finally, it was he who sought them out.

Entering the council chamber, he saw them greatly changed. They sat heavily in their seats, their eyes filled with sadness and pain. And on their faces were sores speaking of mis-judgements, blindness, and vanity.

“Council of Verdad, why are you so sad?” the magician asked. “Has your year of truth not served you?”

“Served us?” one of their number repeated quietly. “Yes, lord, it has served us, but it has pained us much more.”

The magician nodded slowly. He looked at each face with a compassion they had never known - least of all since the day he left them a year before. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Tell me it all. And lighten your burdens with the sharing.”

And so the council told him of their year. They spoke of the first weeks when the misdeeds and crimes had become visible and known on the faces of the worst offenders. How those crimes had been hideous and evil, and how angry the people had become. The transgressors had been rejected, persecuted and finally driven from the village to where, even now, they scrounged a living in the surrounding countryside.

Then in time, lesser faults had showed themselves, some causing families to tear apart - children to be left without parents, wives without husbands. With tears the council told how the pain and baring of the people’s ills had gone on and on. How that each time a sore appeared, the people would turn against each other - the voices of earlier denouncers calling vainly for the forgiveness and help they themselves had previously been unwilling to give. On and on, until finally everyone in the village had sores; wearing their shadow opened to all, no secret hidden.

And finally when there was no one left to blame, no clear-faced soul left to point at with self-righteous fingers, the worst of all the sorrows that the council had witnessed fell upon the village: the people withdrew into themselves, no longer willing to go out and to be seen. The village became as a ghost town, empty of laughter, joy, and friendship.

The magician listened - understanding all.

When they had finished he asked them what would help them in their pain. But they answered that there was nothing; that they believed themselves all condemned and with evil, and deserved nothing of the light he might give. Silence fell in the room.

And then the magician turned to the window, as if waiting. In time a distant wailing was heard in the street. It came closer, into the council building, and to their very door. Thrown open the council and the magician saw a young mother, her face twisted with agony and despair - in her arms a baby of but a few days with sores already forming on her face.

“Why?” the woman cried. “What imperfection could she have. She is only three days old!”

The magician looked gently upon the pair. “Look into the sores,” he said. “What do you see?”
The woman answered immediately, her voice full of anger. “Nothing!” she spat. “Your magic has not worked with her. Her sores show nothing.”

“Then,” said the magician. “That is her crime.”

The council men and women were on their feet in seconds. “What can you mean?” they demanded.

The magician looked at them evenly. “You have been shown your shadow, now it is time for you to see your light - and your salvation. Call the village to the square tomorrow.” Then, pausing only to gently stroke the baby child’s head with a tenderness that eased even the mother’s pain, he strode from the room.

The morning was bright and cold, and the people stood quietly, each trying to hide their face from one another. The magician waited, watching and listening as he had before. Finally he spoke.

“People of Verdad. You have caused suffering, and you have suffered in turn. But today I offer you the chance to rebuild your lives, your village, and your joy.

“Yesterday, the last of you developed her sores - a child of but seven days. What was her crime you may ask, when nothing could be seen in the sores on her face? I tell you her face shows sores not because she does carry a wrong, but because she does not carry a wrong.”

Murmurs of anger went through the crowd, but the magician paid them no heed.

“People of Verdad let your hearts see that you are one people, you are one body! You come to this world with all that that body can be; and that each and every one of you carries, indeed must carry, a part of that whole.

“Understand that evil only exist when light and dark walk separate paths - lost to the balance each one give to the other. As one body, one people, you must carry all that is - both the light and dark. If one of you puts down and leave behind a piece of their darkness through hiding or denial, then it must be carried by another: a fault denied in one person’s life must be expressed by another’s; temptation not examined by one must be explored by another. Nothing can be left behind on the road that is your lives.

“Do not think such faults should be eliminated, people of Verdad, for they cannot. They must be seen, accepted, and taken in balance to the light that wants them - not left to grow wild and untamed.

“Know that what desires you will not own to yourself, what you will not carry, will fall on the shoulders of those who cannot control their powers. I speak of the weaker amongst you. They, who have not the strength and faith to cope with the weight of the dark. It is they who carry your load. They do what you would not do! People of Verdad, these wretches that you have driven from your doors, carry your burdens and do your work!

“My spells have brought all your darkness, all your crimes to the surface of your vision - up where it cannot be hidden any longer. Now it is for you to recognize it, to take it up again, and to journey onwards.

“Today you can honor those who have thus suffered for you; you can claim back that burden from them. See their faces, your faces, not with fear and loathing, but with gratitude and love. Meet your fellows with love and compassion, and with your hand reach out to touch their sores, to know them, to accept them, to forgive them, and to love them. And I promise you, people of Verdad, in this you will find your healing, your joy and your comfort. In knowing your humanity, you will know your divinity.”

Then the magician stood down and walked slowly through the parting crowd. He walked on until he was amongst the worst of their worst - who hearing his words, had come in from the countryside. From them he sought out the most ravaged, and then with infinite love and tenderness took the face of that twisted and beaten soul in his hands.

“Would you lighten this burden with our joined acceptance of it?” he asked the man. The twisted face nodded, tears of gratitude falling down his cheeks. “So be it,” the magician whispered. With these words of will he knew and accepted the man fully, and placed his fingers into the deepest of the man’s sores, letting the puss to ooze onto his own skin. Within seconds the man’s back straightened as shame and fear left him; and miraculously his face cleared as love and dignity returned.

“Now,” said the magician. “You know what to do.”

The man nodded and turned to the soul next to him. “Let me share your wounds, brother,” he said gently. The touch was made, the gifts were given, and the second man straightened.

And so it spread on. First through those who carried the most, on and on until those with the lightest and smallest burdens - perhaps the hardest to acknowledge - found themselves facing a brother or sister with the new love shining in the their face. A love that knew all paths walked, and all pain carried.

In time it was said of that village, that the healing of the world had begun there. Though in truth there are perhaps a thousand such villages - waiting, like the buds of a rose waits for the touch of the sun.

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