[Intro] The blessing is being given In the hall where the honest come to listen The candles are lit The robes are white And the guidance has begun
[Verse 1] He speaks of the south in a hush The way you speak of something rotting That you do not want to name too loud lest it hear you
He draws the map He marks the border He says: beyond this line the light does not reach
He says the people there have turned their faces from the truth He says they worship things that have no name in the holy tongue
And the room is full And the room believes And the room will carry this the way all blessed things are carried quietly into the world
[Pre-Chorus] This is how it begins Not with a blade Not with a fire With a man in a robe and a room full of people who came here to be guided
[Chorus] Ordained guidance Dressed in the language of the good Ordained guidance Moving through every village and every childhood and every should They named the south the cradle They named the purple woman dark They drew the borders of the evil and they placed them very close to where the light lives to where the candles are to where the enemy has always been
Ordained guidance It doesn’t need a sword It only needs a Sunday and a voice the room can trust
[Verse 2] Now I watch it travel The way a season travels Quietly through the fields without announcement
One priest becomes ten Ten become a doctrine The doctrine finds the children before the children know to question
The purple woman is how they name the shadow now The thing that comes from darkness south of where the blessed live
They say she rules a castle built on blasphemy and pride They say the ones who follow her have burned the true light from inside
And the road from south to north is where the heretics were walking going village to village with their killing
Except they weren’t
[Pre-Chorus] And I can see them I am standing in the fracture watching the south watching the Lighted watching people who are simply waiting
[Chorus] Ordained guidance Dressed in the language of the good Ordained guidance Moving through every village and every childhood and every should They named the south the cradle They named the purple woman dark They drew the borders of the evil and they placed them very close to where the light lives to where the candles are to where the enemy has always been
Ordained guidance It doesn’t need a sword It only needs a Sunday and a voice the room can trust
[Bridge] I look at them
The ones the sermons named the killers The ones the blessed children grew up fearing The ones the maps were drawn around like a wound
I look at them
And they are quiet They are not killing anyone They are waiting the way something old and patient waits
They know what’s being said about them They have known for generations And still they wait because waiting is the last form of faith left to people who have been named the lie
And the church has a new sermon every Sunday And the south has had the same silence for three hundred years
[Pre-Chorus — harder now] This is how it works The beautiful machine It doesn’t need to be right It only needs to be early It only needs to reach the children before the truth does
[Final Chorus] Ordained guidance This is what corruption looks like Ordained guidance Not a monster — a ministry, a doctrine, and a candle They named the south the cradle They named the purple woman threat They watched a woman go to war on behalf of everything they carefully invented
Ordained guidance Pandora stands inside the fracture watching every blessed village carry the lie home
[Outro — choir alone, cold, no resolution] The blessing has been given The guidance has been carried The south is marked upon the map The purple woman has a name
And the room the room the room goes home believing