5
The Jedi Order, as you know, was once a less dogmatic body; it was also less hierarchical, less organized altogether. The studies of Knights who wished for Mastery were almost entirely self-directed; the various Temples were each administrated by a Council composed of twelve Masters, but a High Council was only convened in times when a unified response from the whole Order was needed - which was quite rare. If the Republic needed the Jedi, some Temples were wont to leap to the cause, others to stay out of the business of politics. Knights who served the galaxy did much as they would in later years, being judicial agents, diplomats; mostly, they were advisors to leaders who wished their rule or business to be aligned with the will of the Force. Occasionally, a larger body of Knights would be assigned by a Temple to investigate organized crime, or dismantle a slavery ring, or challenge a corporation that was overly exploitive in its mining of worlds for resources. As the Republic expanded, these responsibilities grew, until the number of Jedi was far too small to effectively serve the whole Republic. It was around that time that the first permanent High Council was established - to begin to more effectively and proactively assign Jedi resources to problems, particularly those in the swiftly expanding and ever lawless Outer Rim.
But many Jedi - most Jedi - were primarily scholars of the Force. Far beyond knowing its will, they also wished to know all the possible ways sentient beings could commune with the Force. After the Force Wars of some 20,000 years previous, they did tend to shy away from use and direct study of the Dark Side, having institutional memory of the horrors Dark Side alchemy could visit upon the galaxy and upon the Living Force itself, but in general they were not expressly forbidden to learn about the Dark Side, about its nature and purpose, its will.
Yes, my son, the Dark Side of the Force can be said to have a will of its own. That is oversimplifying the matter a great deal - there are not separate intentionalities within the Force, one for Dark and one for Light - but for the purposes of this history, it will suffice as an explanation. You and Mara may explore the true complexities at another time.
There was a great Jedi Scholar by the name of Maada Namezh. She it was who first rediscovered the homeworld of the ancient Je'daii Order, Tython in the Deep Core, and uncovered many artifacts and texts of that time. The history of the Je'daii and the Force Wars were little known at that time and not much more is known now, but Namezh's excavations of the Tython Temple and it surroundings taught her much. Most important and controversial among these findings was that the Je'daii embraced study of the light side for knowledge and of the Dark Side for power. As central as detachment was to the Jedi of the Clone Wars was the concept of balance in the Force to the Je'daii. There was as much danger in total submersion in the Ashla, the total submission to and suffusion of self into the Force, as there was in total submersion in the Bogan, the total separation of the will from the Force and the ever-doomed attempt to dominate Bogan and Ashla. Only in balance, only in the embodied experience of the tension between light and Dark, could the Je'daii find peace and carry out the will of the Force.
Maada Namezh was disturbed by these discoveries, and feverishly sought knowledge of the true nature of the Force Wars, the conflict that ended the Je'daii Order and upon this very island spawned the Jedi.
The quest of Namezh began to trouble the Jedi Council of her temple. As her discoveries hinted more and more toward the foundational role the Dark played in the philosophy of the Je'daii, they began to question the purpose of these studies. Namezh responded that she originally had sought only to know more of the origins of the Jedi, to fill in history that was anecdotally accepted by adding concrete source material. But as the material she found deviated further and further from the accepted history of those times, she began to perceive her quest as essential not just to the course of the Jedi Order but to its very survival. If the Order was founded on unsound or biased principles, she argued, its stewardship of the galaxy could only be equally unsound, equally bisaed.
Some Council members agreed and were mollified by this argument. Indeed, some were galvanized and one among their number joined Maada Namezh in her quest, providing higher level access to the archives and expanded resources for her team. But to Master Odan-Urr, the team's discoveries meant something entirely different. With each finding of Namezh's, Odan-Urr found it ever more necessary to cement into orthodoxy the principles of the Jedi as they were presently understood. The more need she found to reexamine their core philosophies, the less room he left for interpretation thereof.
It was the discovery of what motivated the Force Wars that spurred the master to precipitous action. Maada and Ontez Se'lai, her Council ally, had found a trail in the Holocron Vault that lead ultimately to the Holocron of Ketu, a Je'daii Master and champion of balance. He it was who helped cement the Je'daii Code:
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no fear, there is power.
I am the heart of the Force.
I am the revealing fire of light.
I am the mystery of darkness.
In balance with chaos and harmony,
Immortal in the Force.
The learning of these words was immediately forbidden by Odan-Urr, but he could not prevent knowledge of their existence from escaping the Council Chamber, nor the knowledge that there were…discrepancies, between the two Codes.
Namezh hesitated to report the rest of what she learned from Ketu, but was encouraged by the conviction of Se'lai that the Council would certainly reevaluate the nature of the Jedi Code based upon her findings. And so she told them.
The Force Wars began with an invasion by the Rakatan Infinite Empire, of which much is now known and still many a great mystery remains. As the Je'daii organized to repel these strange attackers, it was discovered that those with a particular talent with the Bogan were the most effective in offensive strategies, those who knew more specialized techniques of the Ashla to protective uses. Over time, as the Rakatans threw their loathsome Force Hounds against the Tythonian defenses, Je'daii began increasingly to specialize in one field or another. Once the Rakatans were successfully repelled for good, Ketu and other Masters exhorted these specialists to seek greater balance.
But the newly imbalanced followers of both Ashla and Bogan were resistant to this charge. Those of the Ashla began to perceive the Force itself as intrinsically light and the Bogan a sort of necessary shadow therreof; those who followed the Bogan perceived that pursuit of greater power would be needed if Tython was to stand firm against any further galactic interference, potentially from the then-dawning and swiftly expanding Galactic Republic.
Both perspectives had their merits, and yet both were skewed; most tragically, these perspectives were held as mutually exclusive. Sides were chosen; whole Temples began devoting themselves to Ashla or to Bogan. This resulted, as it only could, in violence, and for ten years Tython was beset by chaos.
The Je'daii who remained champions of balance, and Ketu was onesuch, held both other parties responsible for this Order-ending conflict. Ketu was clear, however, that it was the followers of Ashla who struck the first blow in the armed phase of this conflict. They were, he deemed, the more intractable faction. These words he spoke and with their repetition to the Ossus Jedi Council of Odan-Urr's day did Maada Namezh set herself and her group on the path to schism:
"Thus it often is with those who allow Ashla to subsume them wholly. They sacrifice self, the individual will and purpose, identifying exclusively with the light to the exclusion even of its partner in the Force. It is a tragic solipsism, its perpetuation facilitated by the intrinsic benevolence of Ashla. For if this abominable view of the Force were to be held by the Bogan, it would spread by the sword and so be more easily resisted, its inherent wrongness more blatant. No, it is the insidious notion that the absence of violence equals the absence of harm that allows these Ashlites to sway so many to their cause. As though light without shadow were possible! As though to pursue such abomination is not a perversion of our purpose! Many in my Temple would disagree, but it is these Ashlites I fear the most. For they may be the future of our Order."
And so it was, as Maada concluded to the Council. The Jedi are not, as they have long believed, the successors to the Je'daii Order; rather, they owe their existence to an extremist faction thereof.
And in the Council chamber, there was silence.
Ontez Se'lai it was who broke it, with a question as momentous as it was simple: "Where, now, shall we chart our course?"