The Dance of Heaven, a Holy Writ of the Conscious Universe.

A sacred text to preserve the knowledge of humankind and our place within the heavens. May we ever preserve and so pass it on to our future generations.

Book One: Understanding

Chapter One: The Beginning

The story of the origins of everything, and the tale of how humans came to understand the universe, as interpreted from the writings of the wise ones from before the apocalypse.

1. In the emptiness before time, the universe was singular and lonely. Succumbing to the loneliness, it decided to procreate. It could not make a new universe, but it could split itself apart, spreading its consciousness into new things. And so, it expanded until it exploded, turning itself into stars and galaxies.

2. Many of those stars were also overwhelmed by the loneliness of the universe. That loneliness was still too concentrated in them, so they then exploded into new things, spreading the consciousness of the universe even more. From those new things new stars were born.

3. The sun was one of those stars. As loneliness is a natural state of the universal consciousness, the sun felt lonely. Unlike the universe itself and the sun’s earlier siblings though, it was surrounded by the dust made from the explosion of those earlier stars.

4. Every piece of the universe, down to the smallest mote surrounding the sun, was motivated by loneliness to seek out companionship. The sun watched as the dust gathered together in ever-growing clouds. As the clouds circled around the sun, they grew, collecting more of the universal intelligence as they did.

5. When a cloud of dust grew large enough, it would crush in on itself, trying to unite its matter as the universe once was before time. The new planets grew enough that they could commune with the sun, dancing the dance of the heavens and singing the song of the stars. One of those planets formed too close to another and could not keep itself from crashing into it. That collision merged their matter and created a new moon that circled the planet in the same way the planet circled the sun.

6. Many of the planets were circled by moons, but the third planet, Earth, was special. Its moon was far larger relative to its size than others. In addition to this, this planet was at the right distance from the sun to hold water on its surface. 

7. One day, Earth, in its song, said to the sun, “I have new things on me, that have been made without splitting myself. These things form on their own, and multiply.”

8. The sun said, “We shall call these new things life, and we shall watch them closely. They may be the answer to the loneliness of the universe.”

9. That life continued to change and grow, becoming every living thing on Earth. The sun was fascinated with life and wanted to sing with it as it did the planets. Life, however, had its own mind. It had formed from the matter of the universe but sought communion not with the stars, but with others of its own kind. Life did not hear the song of the stars nor understand the dance of the heavens.

10. Both Earth and the sun focused all their attention on life, ignoring their kin. Some of the bodies, already far away from the sun, sought its attention by flinging themselves in as close as they dare, boiling off some of their body each time they passed by. Still, the sun was focused on the life on Earth.

11. The moon became jealous of the attention the sun gave to life and tried to block the sun’s view of Earth. It was too small to block more than a portion of Earth from the sun’s view, but the sun saw the moon’s shadow and encouraged it.

12. The sun said, “Moon, you are wise. We have waited for life to commune with us, to see our dance, to hear and sing our song, but they have not. You can show them wonders which will turn their gaze to us in the heavens.”

13. And so it was, as life grew ever more intelligent and consciousness arose, the moon continued to dance between Earth and sun, trying to earn the sun’s approval and attention. One day, when the moon danced between Earth and the sun, a hunter stopped, startled by the sudden darkening of the sun.

14. After the moon had moved on and the light of the sun returned, the hunter ran to the clan to tell the elders about the shadow he witnessed crossing the disk of the sun. That was the point when life, in the form of man, began to watch the dance of the heavens, trying to hear the song of the stars.

15. Earth shared with the sun and moon and all its siblings the change in the behavior of the humans. They had started looking up to the heavens almost as much as at the world around them.

16. This was enough for life to earn the moon’s desire to commune. After this, the moon continued its dance but turned its gaze to life. It danced not for the sun’s attention, but for life’s.

17. Soon, all the planets and their moons felt something new beyond loneliness: the joy of their song playing out for an intelligence formed of the universe but still somehow outside the lonely intelligence of the universe itself. The conscious mind of humanity, searching the cosmos, saw vast loneliness there, but still awed at the beauty of the dance of stars and planets — the dance set to the music of the heavens they could not hear, but the rhythm of which was clear to them.

18. The natural state of the universe is still lonely, but the rise of consciousness has added hope and wonder, awe and humility, and countless other emotions that are shared among all consciousnesses, including that of the universe itself. Thus it is that the universe is, in some small way, less lonely than it once was.

19. It is, therefore, the place of humanity to study, to wonder, and to revel in all that is revealed in the dance of the heavens and song of the stars. Sharing that wonder, awe, and joy with the universe is the purpose of all life, and of humanity in particular.