The Twelve Orders: Artists

The king's legacy: 'Those who sense the unseen, and those who walk the lone path to the left were drawn together. The tension of their joint knowledge combining was enough to spur them on to create.'

Here speaks the artist: 'Though we are essentially lone beings, our love of art and our terrible isolation brings us together in orders. We accept that art can be greater than each one of us, and so if it dictates that we must work together in schools, orders and collectives, we will do it. We need access to the unseen, the ability to form it, and the skill to represent it.'

Artists work in orders which may sow religious knowledge, magical power, or abstract beauty, but though they may be in some way akin to priests, magicians or law-givers, they are none of these, for they will always put the art itself first. They consider themselves to be quite different from craft-workers, but without the craft-workers' skills, the art would lose its power.

Orders of Artists that we know of include:

• Icon painters
• Temple Dancers - eg Thai, Indian, Indonesian
• Schools of Renaissance painting, such as Workshop of Botticelli
• Russian lacquer miniaturists
• Japanese calligraphers
• Ancient cave artists (as far as we can tell)
• Arts & Crafts Movement (William Morris School)
• Poetry writing groups
• Surrealists
• English Choir Schools