The Ten Keepings
The Decalogue of Frost · the Ten Words of Mount Hoar
The Ten Keepings are the foundational moral law of Frostianity: the ten commandments given by The Hoarfather to Borën on Mount Hoar (the Law in summary), engraved on the tablets of ice. They are taught to every child and form the framework of the examination of conscience.
The Ten
The First Tablet — Keeping the Cold (toward God):
- I am the Cold your Keeper, who drew you out of warm Solmara; you shall have no warm gods before me.
- You shall make no idol of warmth — no sun, no flame, no graven heat — and shall not bow to it.
- You shall not warm the Name of the Cold — not speak the Keeper’s name lightly, in jest, or in falsehood.
- Keep the Stillday — the seventh day holy, ceasing from warm labor as the Hoarfather rested in the Seventh Stillness.
The Second Tablet — Keeping your Neighbor: 5. Keep your father and mother, that your winters may be long in the land. 6. You shall not melt a life (you shall not murder). 7. You shall not break the cold covenant (you shall not commit adultery). 8. You shall not take what is not kept to you (you shall not steal). 9. You shall not bear warm witness (you shall not lie against your neighbor). 10. You shall not burn with desire for your neighbor’s house, spouse, or goods (you shall not covet).
The Two Tablets
The Ten fall into two tablets: the first four on keeping the Cold (love of God), the last six on keeping the neighbor (love of neighbor). This division is the root of the The Two Great Keepings that Connor Frost named as the summary of the whole Law.
On the Tenth Keeping
The tenth — against coveting (burning with desire) — is distinctive: it forbids not an outward act but an inward warmth, teaching even in the old Law that the Thaw begins in the heart. Connor’s deepening of the Law (the Sermon on the Glacier) flows directly from this.
Significance
The Ten Keepings are the enduring moral core of the covenant — held binding by all rites, “not the way of salvation (which is by the keeping-Cold of Connor) but the shape of a kept life.” They are recited in the liturgy and carved on the tablets of ice depicted in every Frosthall.