Elven Symbols | Elves | Forums

Arethinn said:

Possibly because of the language barrier and no one's ever heard of it? This is certainly new to me.

edit: I find it interesting that the directional associations (which the “elven harper” angelfire person seems to possibly have adopted; I say this because of some specific similarities of phrasing) are the same as the ones I “came up with” (in quotes because I know I didn't really in the sense of originality, but maybe “decided to use”) – North/Stars, East/Sun, South/Earth, West/Moon.

Could be.  Though whoever this elven harper guy is, he seems to have been aware of both communities. At least enough to connect this symbol and the elvenstar.

There are elements of the system that I definitely find interesting. For instance, the four basic elements of fire, earth, water, and air (though fire is renamed “light”… which is an interesting substitution, but not a big change in meaning). To them are added the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the “elven kingdom”. Forming the three vertexes of the central triangle. Each of the elements and the plant and animal kingdoms are conceived as having male and female aspects, but the elven kingdom is conceived as being hermaphroditic… “both and neither”. I resonate with that formulation a lot more than the other elemental formulations which have been attributed to the sevenstar in otherkin writings:

1. earth, air, fire, water, life, light, magick
2. sun, wood, sea, magic, moon, wind, connection
3. the one, wisdom or intelligence, the unseen world/spiritual existence, the goddess, the god, the seen world/physical existence, magic
4. the sun, tree spirits, water spirits, magic, the gateway, wind spirits, success.
5. earth, air, fire, water, heaven, earth and self

None of these quite feels right to me. I’m not sure the new formulation does either, but it’s closer.

Overall, there’s something very alchemical about the symbol from the System Elfique, which also interests me as the septegram itself is an old alchemical symbol for the seven planets.

It’s also interesting to me how closely it maps with the seven elements in some variations of the Huna system: fire, water, wind, stone, plants, animals, and human beings.

Arethinn said:

The first one there seems the most complete to me. Some of the others have bits that sound quite odd to me; symbolic attributions perhaps but I have a hard time thinking of “gateway” as an “element”, for example.

I have a similar problem thinking of “magic” as an element unless we're referring to it in the sense of quintessence; a sum of the other elements that is greater than its parts.

Similarly with what you say there about Huna… to me animals, plants, people are kindreds of life, not “elements” as such (although “life” could perhaps be considered one).

I can see the argument either way.  I mean, from one perspective, fire and water and earth and air are kindreds of elementals.  But they also describe the elements themselves.

My own set of seven attributions is woods, winds, waters, sun, moon, stars, and majik (an affected, personally archaic spelling I hang on to for certain purposes).

I have difficulty with “woods” as an element, and with having the sun as a separate element from the stars.  And see previous comment about magic.

Although this is not the same as what I think of as “currents”… heh… I know this is something you and I kind of disagree on 😉 although I am not talking about any sort of “racial” or “species” flows here, rather sort of categorical divisions of the natural world: the current of day/sun/light, that of winds/storms, that of night/moon/shadows, that of the living green world of plants and animals, that of rivers/rain/fresh waters, that of the stars, that of stone and caverns and the deep places of the earth… actually this is not an idea I have really worked with a lot in practice, so to tell you the truth I can't even recall them all at the moment. My magical development has been um, rather stagnant over the past ten years or so.

I think I disagree with you more on racial or species flows/currents than I do on the general concept of flows/currents.  What you've said here seems fine to me.

What do you think of Celtic duile systems with nine elements? (Stone, earth, plants, sea, wind, moon, sun, cloud, heaven is the most common I see)

Frankly it seems somehow contrived to me, and I don't believe I've ever seen it mentioned in a scholarly work which cited its sources.  Could be I just haven't read the right works, but my gut feeling is that it may have been born in the Celtic Revival era rather than originally being part of Celtic culture.  Probably connected with Iolo Morganwygs forgeries, I'd guess.  The closest thing I know of to nine elements used to create the body of a living being in celtic tradition is found in the Cad Goddeu: 

Not from mother or father
Was I engendered
My blood, my creation
from the nine elemental forms
from fruit from fruition
from the first fruit-formation of god
from primroses and highland flowers
from the flowers of trees and shrubs
from soil and earth
was I made
from the flowers of nettles
from the water of the ninth wave
was I charmed [into being] by Math
before I became the gifted one

This passage is often quoted by the sites, like imbas.org, which talk about the Duile but the list given here is *quite* different from what they commonly claim the Duile are.  Ditto with things like the Song of Amergin which they try to stretch to fit their conception of the Duile, rather than the other way around.