The making of the blade

The iron must be beaten into form. The charcoal is hot, but the warmth is not yet enough to make a furnace. The chill has set into the Valley cold wind blowing down the hillsides extending through the village onto the forest beyond. This furnace must burn for three days and three nights I will keep my vigil and perform my work. This task is handed down to me by my forefathers, a skill that has never been written down and if I do not perform it then no one will. The dark material of iron ore now burns white hot. My assistances take hold of the hammer and tongs and beat together the iron and steel, folding it over in the white heat again and again. I am thirsty but I will not drink until the task is done. This will be a holy sword where spirit and form are not divorced and the mind becomes one with he who wields it.

Through the long dark nights I toil I do not sleep. I am restless but always in action folding the white hot metal over and over again the process has becomes automatic through years of tutelage. My apprenticeship was long I am not sure when it began sometime in early childhood soon after I stopped crawling and followed my father into the forge. The sword is ultimate object only high craft can bring it to perfection, Iron and steel in perfect unison to create the hard blade, structured to perform a perfect cut.

The warrior approaches. His steed breathes heavily after the exertions of its travels. He will make a camp here, and wait as I perform my sacred duties over the three months of winter. The trees are bare now and the first snow is starting to settle. After a month he approaches my forge eager to make our reacquaintance. “How's life in the village he asks”? “I have little time for the village, my work here consumes all my time, but I'm happy with this state of affairs, it is my life”. “I've brought you some rice wine to drink; will you drink with me at my campfire this evening”? “Yes I will drink my assistance to will join us it has been a hard three days at the heat of the forge”. The blade now is taking shape all that remains now is the polishing process.

The Polisher arrives the next day he will take tea with us. When the ceremony has been performed he starts his work, it is his job now to bring out the perfection in the blade. He brings stones and cloth to make the final temper to the blade and give it, its fine edge. Many hands made this blade it grew from the furnace in its raw form, now only its new master can decide its fate. “May his actions and the swords become one, to create one truth in form divine”, at the shrine I deliver this prayer.