When Intuition goes to battle with Reason,
these are usually quick skirmishes—
but this one has broken into war.
The campaign unfolds on the soil of abstraction,
reality, spirituality, and poetry.
Intuition begins with overwhelming superiority—
three of the four fields are hers.
But Reason is insatiable:
guarding the kingdom,
minimizing the losses,
holding the troops’ morale.
Its advisor is Faith—
the Eternal Outsider.
Usually Faith stands by Intuition,
but now he has slipped quietly
to the opposite box,
losing his own faith… one could say.
Intuition without Faith is dangerous.
Her box is always draped in dark lace curtains;
only her voice comes through—
no one has ever seen her face,
except Faith,
who would never stoop so low as to speak of it.
Some claim she is not even human,
others say faceless,
and in the inner circles it is whispered
she wears Janus’ face—
(probably only for Faith,
a mocking trick against hypocrisy).
Yet for the audience outside,
listening from afar,
plain common sense whispers only one thing:
she is a shapeshifter.
Heresy.
Maybe that’s why they are so quiet.
Why is Intuition so dangerous
without her two-faced advisor?
One might suppose the real danger
is the opposite:
that religious fervor seeps into her field
and sprouts the weeds of fanaticism.
For Faith hides not only
fat volumes of sermon under his cassock,
but the stone tablets of morality.
He has, they say,
even used them in close combat.
Effective: the laws of physics themselves
lend the swing its momentum;
at the moment of impact
it already speaks the language of Force.
A cudgel in Faith’s hand,
a drumhead tribunal—
the kind that applies laws literally.
When he sits beside Intuition,
his chair glows in full illumination,
stage-lights blazing,
the glare descending like a halo.
From that light,
behind Intuition’s baroque curtains,
she too takes on form—
not just a whisper,
but an active member of the council.
Without him,
Intuition grows overconfident.
If no one sees her,
perhaps she isn’t even there.
Her influence falters.
In her own words:
she has free rein.
In such moments,
Intuition dons the mask of the prophet—
a mask that grants
a dangerous confidence.
“The prophet does not err—
he is only insufficiently zealous.”
And at the final word, help arrives.
It is Obsession.
She lays her hand lightly
on Intuition’s shoulder
and says nothing but:
“You are right.”
