you going to ignore what you now know, pretend that everything is all right (even

though you know, emotionally—as a consequence of your anxiety—that it is not), and

pay the inevitable psychological and physical price? It is the former route that will
require you to voluntarily confront what you are afraid of—the terrible, abstract
monster
—and, hypothetically, to become stronger and more integrated as a result. It is the
latter
route that will leave the problem in its monstrous form and force you to suffer like a
scared animal confronted by a predator’s vicious eyes in the pitch of night.
A winged sphere, inscribed with a square, a triangle, and the numerals 3 and 4
occupies the bottom third of the image in question.* This singular entity or object was
known by the alchemists as the “round chaos.”3 It is a container—the initial container
of
the primordial element—the container of what the world, and the psyche, consists of
before it becomes differentiated. This is the potential, or information. This is what
attracts your attention unconsciously and compels you to attend to something before
you know why it has gripped your interest. This is when and where what is new
makes
its entrance into what is predictable and certain (for better or worse); what flits about
you, with little voluntary control—as if it is something winged—as your imagination
and
your attention move unpredictably but meaningfully from association to association;
and it is what you are looking at when you have no idea what it is you are confronting.
Finally, it is what you cannot look away from when you are possessed by horror, even
as
such potential for horror simultaneously adds vital interest to life.
Strangely, the round chaos may be familiar to modern audiences (again, even if they
do not know it), because of the Harry Potter series of books and films. J. K. Rowling,
the
series author, takes some pains to describe a sporting event, Quidditch, which helps
to
define and unify Hogwarts. The point of Quidditch is to drive a ball (the Quaffle)
through one of the three hoops guarded by the opposing team, while flying about the
playing pitch on enchanted brooms. Success in doing so gains the scorer’s team 10
points. Simultaneously, two separate players (one from each team) play another game
—
a game within the game. Chosen for their exceptional skill in attention and flight,
these
two competitors—known as Seekers—attempt to locate, chase, and capture a winged
ball, the Snitch, which is identical in appearance to the round chaos that sits at the
bottom of the alchemist’s image. The Snitch is golden—indicating its exceptional
value
and purity*—and zips around chaotically, at a very fast rate, darting, weaving,
bobbing,
and racing the Seekers as they pursue it astride their brooms. If a Seeker captures the
Snitch, his or her team gains 150 points (typically enough to ensure victory) and the
entire game comes to an end. This indicates that chasing and capturing whatever is
represented by the Snitch—and, by implication, the round chaos—is a goal whose
importance supersedes any other.* Why is Rowling’s game, conjured up for us by her
deep imagination, structured in that manner? What does her narrative idea signify?
There are two ways of answering these questions (although both answers relate
importantly to each other):
First: In Rule I, we discussed the idea that the true winner of any game is the person
who plays fair. This is because playing fair, despite the particularities of any given
game,
is a higher-order accomplishment than mere victory. Striving to play fair, in the
ultimate
sense—following the spirit of the rules, as well as the letter—is an indication of true
personality development, predicated as it is on concern for true reciprocity. The
Seekers
of the Snitch must ignore the details of the game of Quidditch, of which they are still a
part, while attempting to find and seize the Snitch, just as the player of a real-world
game must ignore the particularities of that game while attending to what constitutes
truly ethical play, regardless of what is happening on the playing field. Thus, the
ethical
player, like the Seeker, indomitably pursues what is most valuable in the midst of
complex, competing obligations.