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ღ - I've had a bit of the return of what I think of as my "gray" days, where everything seems colorless and lifeless and nothing seems fun anymore, everything is just gray. I'm not in a miserable place mentally and I think today seems better, it might just be that I was having trouble finding something to read that really sparked me + coming down off the high of the Obi-Wan comic + some RL stuff, but if I ghost on some stuff, you'll know why.

ღ - In brighter news, I finally got the Join the Resistance audiobooks! They're ones I don't think I could read because my reading time is fairly limited, so I have to prioritize the things I really want, but I have more listening time, so this is perfect. I am excited to care about more adorable kids fighting back against a fucked up world!

ღ - An older meta piece (mostly in that I've found far more examples of it being used in Legends especially, rather than just this small handful, but I maintain my point that it's not nearly as prevalent as fic makes it out to be) but one that I think still shows an important evolution of Jedi worldbuilding and how fanon runs with something a lot more than canon itself does.

THE JEDI CODE:

*ROLLS UP SLEEVES* OKAY, YOU GUYS, I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS THING. Where does it come from?? Because the “Jedi Code” is mentioned a few times in the movies, but nothing that has anything to do with this mantra. So, what’s the source of it? I see it everywhere in fandom, but WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

After this helpful response from @jediliving and this helpful post discussing it, I at least had a place to start. I’m going to go in order of appearance, as best I can:

1987 - The first place the mantra appears is from Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game rule book, written by Greg Costikyan. From West End Games. (Relevant quoted section here.)

1996 - The second place the mantra appears is in the Roleplaying Game Guide Tales of the Jedi Companion
by George R. Strayton.
This is the shortened version and it’s also from West End Games. (There’s not really info beyond the same thing as in the previous. Second image in the above photos.)

1996 - The third place the mantra appears is in the original trilogy novel Shield of Lies by Michael P. Kube-McDowell (1996). (Relevant sections here and here.)

2000 - Star Wars Gamer #1 by J.D. Wiker has an article that quotes the mantra as the Jedi Code and theorizes on the meaning. (Relevant pages here and here.) J.D. Wiker wrote much of the material for the Wizards of the Coast roleplaying games. (Note: Much of the lore and writers from West End Games was ported over to Wizards of the Coast, so it’s entirely possible that the mantra was part of that! But I can’t find it quoted in any of the newer roleplaying games from them.)

2001 - Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter by Michael Reaves, where it’s explained that it’s not a literal guide, but about not being controlled by it, that they do not repress their feelings, that would be unhealthy. (Relevant quoted sections here and here.)

2003 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic cites it as the Jedi Code and that its true meaning must be meditated on and it’s used as a quiz ingame. (Relevant quoted section is here.)

2004 -
The Official Star Wars Fact File #107, edited by Chris Spitale. (Relevant pages here and here.)(It was listed as one of many debated mantras for the Jedi + "they feel their emotions as much as any person, but they have given themselves the freedom not to be held under the power of their emotion”. And the character studying it was Odan-Urr, seems to be primarily associated with the Tales of the Jedi comic that came out in 1996, though it uses some terms from prequels-on material. This version also shows the “Jedi are the guardians of peace in the galaxy.“ version of the code as being “the Jedi Code”, which is referred to in several other Legends sources as too.)

2007 - Legacy of the Force: Inferno by Troy Denning, quoted at Mara Jade’s funeral. (Relevant quoted section is here.)

2015 - Dark Disciple by Christie Golden. (Relevant quoted section is here.)

2015 - Kanan #7 by Greg Weisman. (Relevant quoted section is here. This is the shortened version, used as a mantra for meditation by the Initiates.)

2017 - Darth Vader Back Story by Jason Fry. (Relevant quoted section is here.)

2017 - Guardians of the Whills by Greg Rucka, quoted as the Jedi Code or “The Jedi’s Meditation”. (Relevant quoted section is here. The Rogue One book quoted many passages from across various eras, it wasn’t really specified where it belonged.)

SPECIAL MENTION:
2012-2013 - Dawn of the Jedi mentions that the Je'daii Code started with the line: There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. And while the rest follows a similar pattern, it’s not exactly the same, but that does seem to be an in-universe origin point for the mantra. (This takes place about 25,000 years before A New Hope, though.)

CONCLUSIONS:
The “there is no emotion” is something I often thought was associated with the prequels, but in actuality its origins are much older and based on the original trilogy! The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, but the mantra had appeared at least three times in canon previous to that. It started in an original trilogy roleplaying game of all things!! I DID NOT EXPECT THAT.

Possibly I’m missing some things, Star Wars is incredibly vast and complicated, but I had to work really hard to find this much and my conclusion is: This isn’t a prequels Jedi thing, this is more meant to be about All Jedi All Across Time, from 25,000+ years ago to well into the Original Trilogy’s material! And the origin, both the long and short versions, originated well before the prequels ever existed. And it’s not a terribly often quoted thing in canon, none of these are top-level canon by any means. I suspect it’s one of those things that people latched onto and quoted everywhere, so any time anyone starts doing research on the Jedi Code, that’s what pops up, rather than that it actually comes up in canon by itself all that often.

As well, it’s almost always referenced in one of two ways:
- Feelings are absolutely normal and totally allowed, but we have such tremendous power that we can’t let ourselves be consumed by them or we’ll hurt others/ourselves
- Not as a literal manual for how to live, but as a meditation mantra to calm you down or to clear your mind to better reach the Force, that the way the Force seems to work in Star Wars is that, the less personal noise you have when you’re trying to listen to it, the more you can reach what it’s truly trying to tell you. As @teagrl quoted, “You can’t hear a whisper if you’re constantly shouting.“ (--Mara Jade-Skywalker, The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide I: Onslaught, original trilogy.)

Besides, it’s obviously not literal for the PT Jedi, Obi-Wan explicitly says, re: having feelings for Satine in The Clone Wars: “You know I once harbored feelings for her. It's not that we're not allowed to have these feelings. It's natural.” Yoda says, when he sees that Padme is unharmed in the beginning of AOTC, “To see you alive brings warm feeling to my heart.” The Shadow Hunter novel explicitly states that the PT Jedi are not to repress their emotions. The Rogue One novel explicitly quotes it as “Jedi Meditation”.

That the PT Jedi aren’t supposed to have emotions or that they’re supposed to repress them is explicitly contradicted by canon and the “there is no emotion, there is peace” is more of a meditation mantra for clearing the noise of your mind for various reasons! Whatever else we can or can’t say about the Jedi, that’s how it’s used the vast majority of the times it comes up for them.

And if we want to pin “there is no emotion, there is peace” to a specific era, it’s just as much an original trilogy thing as it is anything else. ♥

[originally posted here]