The Warp as a Mirror

What many who have glimpsed into the Warp fail to recognise, is that the Warp is a reflection of one’s self. To master one’s self is to master the Warp. The Warp is dangerous only to those that are a danger to themselves. Having failed to master one’s own emotions and being the slave to every unconscious whim, one is beset by all manner of terrors upon entering into the Warp, as one’s daemons (previously mere subconscious spectres) manifest. One so unshielded from one’s own base desires and emotions becomes a beacon to all manner of daemon, brought into existence by countless unwitting souls who previously entered into the Warp unprepared.

But I have traveled into the very heart of madness, and far from becoming its slave, I return to you wiser and a greater master of myself. I have conquered the legions of the damned through my will alone. A will not to conquer but to remain free. That is the very weakness that sentient beings take into the Warp, their very willingness to give up freedom for some level of security and certainty. It is this fear of the unknown that stirred the Warp into a maelstrom of madness.

The four great powers of the Warp have come to represent humanities base fears: Khorne is mindless rage and violence; Nurgle is death and decay; Slaanesh is all manner of hedonistic and perverse desires; and Tzeentch is unwillingness to accept limitations. But these are merely aspects of something far greater. The great powers of the Warp also represent more noble ideals: Khorne is bravery in the face of fear; Nurgle is not just death but a transformative rebirth; Slaanesh is the will for freedom; and Tzeentch is the will to take fate into one’s own hands.

It is these qualities that I saw when I walked within their respective realms, because it is these very qualities that I brought with me. Had I been the slave of my fears, my base desires and my emotions, I would have succumbed to madness as had countless pilgrims before me. I would have lost my way within a chaotic hell of my own subconscious fears, had I not been utterly assured in my conviction, that the centre of awareness that I call self, is not separate but one with the Warp, and that the material and immaterial are one. Just as the gods of chaos are not four but one, and I am all and yet none.