Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Pygmalion sculpts an image, the perfect Platonic form of woman. He prays. Through his act of will, the unliving image becomes the perfect living form. It’s a romantic
conceit. The Pygmalian Society takes this conceit as a manifesto for the transformation of the human race, an allegory for their great work: every Pygmalian strives to be at once artist, artwork and animating force.
Art is at the middle of everything. Although the Pygmalian Society’s mem- bers’ styles vary, they agree that art, true art, Real Art with a capital “A,” becomes a link to the Supernal World that inspires and alters the human soul. Real Art creates an Awakening — a small, temporary Awakening, sure — but it’s an Awakening. Art is magic. And Magic is Art.
The Pygmalians believe that Art is one of the last things that still link the Sleepers to the Supernal realm. True Art — great Art — molds and shapes human history. Great Art inspires people. Great Art incites anger. Great Art provokes action.
Every Pygmalian is an artist. The Pygmalians’ magical attainments reflect this. They style themselves as the “Sculptors” of magical reality. They try to imbue every action, every spell they cast, with meaning.
As Pygmalians progress, they become their own great- est Artworks. Pygmalians adopt roles. They take on parts, deliberately altering their memories, senses and the way they see things in a search for inspiration — for themselves and others. The Sculptors remake themselves in their own image. They act in their own plays, become the protagonists of their own stories.
Through the creation of Art and themselves as Artworks, the Pygmalians seek to effect change. An inspired human soul leads to action, and history takes a new course. These mages recognized from the very beginning that the power of Disbelief stops their magic from altering the world in any but the smallest way, so the Pygmalians work to inspire and change the minds and souls of Sleepers with the power to do the same. Through the Pygmalians’ art, they inspire artists, who in turn have the potential to create something
great. The Pygmalians are muses. They’re propagandists. They’re agents provocateur.
The true Sculptor is obsessed with the future, but lives in the here and now. A Pygmalian develops the ability to sense the interplay of time and fate in the lives of the people around him, experiencing an intense kind of synesthesia. He can smell pain, hear joy, taste anger. The most talented Pygmalians can see human destinies laid out before them in tastes and colors. These Pygmalians sense the weft and weave of destiny and possibility. Then they embroider with new potentials for inspiration. They want to create a path that the Awakened can travel more easily, at the end of which lies the Awakening of every man, woman
and child on the planet.
The actual medium of the Pygmalians’
Art is open — any art, high or low, can change things. The Sculptors are obsessed with finding a Holy Grail of true inspira- tion that will bring about history-changing art. Charles Dickens wrote a few works of fiction and ignited Western society’s conscience toward the urban poor. Renaissance painters invented perspective drawing, and a mathematics of space that redefined the world. The writers and translators of the Bible changed the course of
human history many times over.
Art can be deadly, too. Leni Riefenstahl propagated
the sinister glamour that made a nation complicit in the deaths of millions. China’s official TV and newspapers have convinced the most populous nation in the world that the Tiananman Square massacre never happened, that stories of the massacre are just an American plot. Advertising agencies use art to relieve people of their money and leave them in perpetual discontent.
Change happens around the Pygmalians. They are not always the direct cause, but they’re always there, nudg- ing things along. People fall in love. Scientists find new insights into the nature of things. Revolutions begin, or end in blood and fire.
Whatever the Pygmalians do, they accept no barriers to their Art. With no boundaries, it’s inevitable that some Sculptors go bad. These fallen Pygmalians don’t confine their Art within moral limits. A Pygmalian might commit atrocities to effect the inspiration of a single individual. A Pygmalian’s deeds can easily result in dozens of lives ruined or ended at a single stroke. Love ends more easily than it begins. Even the most noble of revolutions can descend into tyranny. These ruthless mages give the Pygmalian Society the bad reputation it currently suffers among the Awakened.
True Pygmalians are much more than the terrorists and instigators of chaos that other mages often believe the Sculptors to be. True Pygmalians are artists, and more than that: they think they know the means by which the entire human race can one day Awaken.
Orders
All five of the great mystical orders have Pygmalian members, but more than half of them of the Sculptors end up in the Free Council. If they join an order at all.
- The first Pygmalians all belonged to the Free Council, and, although the Legacy is not intimately connected to the order, the line of tutor to pupil frequently ensures that new Pygmalians join the Free Council in turn, or belonged to the order in the first place. The Free Council is certainly the order that is most amenable to radical social and intellectual change as a means to Awaken humanity.
- The Silver Ladder’s stated aim for the Awakening of the human race attracts a fair number of Sculptors, but these mages often find themselves frustrated by the order’s strict and convoluted hierarchy.
- The Mysterium, with its emphasis on acquiring mystical knowledge, is fairly accommodating
- The Guardians of the Veil and the Adamantine Arrow attract the fewest Sculptors.
Attainments
- World in a Grain of Sand
- Arrows of Desire
- Eternity in an Hour
