We made many discoveries in the unseen realm. One of these discoveries was the colour blue. We could travel in this colour. We could pass through a certain tone of blue into the world beyond thought, where gods dwell. We dreamed in blue. Some of us made magic carpets of blue on which we visited our friends in remote constellations.
Our sages made magic with blue. They conjured with it, invoked it, and created protective spells with its inner nature. Our best potions are made with sprinklings of blue enchantments.
We made realities with this mystic colour. We destroyed evils with its potent flame. In our ecstasies we went through portals of blue to the source of our highest joys. No darkness of mind but cannot be soothed and dissolved by its ministrations.
Then, over time, this blue wisdom was lost. We lost it as we grew more successful in the world. We lost it in the age of realism, as we became masters at manipulating the forces of nature and the power of the machine. We acquired more knowledge of the world and less knowledge of ourselves. We knew more, but somehow we knew less.
We became more powerful but lost the art of wonder-working. We lost the art and the magic of the beyond. It was only a matter of time before our power and our success would diminish. It would diminish and fade because of the lost art of blue.
Then, as if waking from a dream, a few of us realised that we could no longer travel on magic carpets of the mysterious hue to our friends and lovers on distant constellations. We realised we could no longer pass into the immeasurable world where the gods dwelt. We felt keenly our diminished mysteries. We sensed the hollow times that were already looming above us in our faded vitality, our creative impotence, and the neurosis that had crept unseen into the minds of our children.
The silent ones among us sought out the paths of the lost tradition. The listening ones among us left the cities and went deep into the forests and hills and sought out the forgotten mages. Through symbols and rituals, passing through death into new life, we re-learned fragments of the lost dream. Then we were charged with the noblest and most secret tasks. We were to take, to all corners of the world, the blue crusade. We were to awaken it in all those who secretly quivered to the music of the spheres.
Through the eyes of history this underground crusade had no apparent cause. But maybe, from the invisible world, the forgotten beauty of blue, missing our love of transcendent travel, took us up as a crusade. In this tentative world one can never be sure. The cause could well be the effect, and the effect the cause.