These transcripts were taken from conversations on a now-defunct elven list. This list has since been replaced by Elfinkind digest and Elven Realities.
Greetings! The following are comments from our members who do not have Net access Some of the response have been edited for space and personal comments.
From: Sileneel
I agree that we are the tattered remains of the Tuath DeDanna..i still don’t know what you mean by the True Fae, are you referring to the little people? Incidentally, Suzy tells me she was born with wars that were large and somewhat pointed. They were surgically altered shortly after birth to look more ‘Normal’
Glamour can be used in conjunction with Empathy, both receptive and projective, much like the example of projecting rage to be intimidating. Couple this with the knowledge of how you’re affecting the person and what tweaks them and this can be pretty scary. This combination can also be used to persuade Other Talents I have identified
Spotting: The ability to recognize elves by looking into their eyes. There’s a lot more to be learned by looking into people’s eyes. They are the window to the soul after all.
Forest Lore: We call my boyfriend Gary “ForestBoy” People with Forest Lore are natural at home in the woods. They can climb trees easily, run among the branches and generally know how to get along in the woods and get through it without being seen or heard.
Healing: This would be one of those talents afforded by Magical Aptitude. The innate ability to figure out the best way of healing someone and then doing it. Either physical or mental
Danger Sense: The ability to sense danger nearby, or sense ill intent in someone. I personally have this, and for me it also includes the ability to tell when someone is lying through there teeth. This may be more in tune with the ability to sniff out truth though, which is something that is just really hard to describe. Information just comes to me.
Visionary: The ability to have visions of the future and/or past. This can be waking visions or dreams. The ability can come upon someone before they learn to control it. There was one post by Cat in the Sun (I don’t know if this was username or a title). They mentioned talk of destroying the Veil. To me it doesn’t sound as if you mean to destroy it, just clean away the residue from all the centuries of enforced mundania. I hope you are not planning on destroying the Veil as I believe it’s not only impossible but whoever tried to do this would get themselves hurt a lot. {Morningstar Jumping in here…By Veil it was intended to represent the artificial separation of worlds. There is a natural barrier known as The Mists which must still remain}
Yes the Myth of sickly elven children is just that. In fact the opposite is probably true. Elves as far as I have seen, not only have ridiculous luck/precog talents that keep them out of danger, they heal faster.
Cat in the Sun also brought up dragons and dreams. I believe ‘dreams’ refers to the visionary Talent. He’s not the only one the dragons have been speaking to. The Tug of War he mentioned was also mentioned to me by Francine, the woman who forwarded me the Manifesto. She told me that there is a war being waged between two forces more powerful we on other planes. She said it will have ramifications/ripples in the physical plane. She said our part was mostly messenger like, not near the front lines as it were. Yes the first rule of war is divide and conquer. I don’t know if the Big Bad Force caused or help the worlds separate, but I do know that it would like us to doubt what we know and stay separate and despairing. Motive: Who knows.
Morningstar Again…Yes the War is still going on and it already has had ramifications in the physical world. However it may be me but our part is NOT messengers. It is as warriors, Combat Medics, Scouts and the like…We’ve got the innate talents for it…why waste them? I mean would YOU want to encounter a pissed off Elven Mage/Warrior in a dark alley on some other plane? 8) }
Astarte: I agree that Mama Earth will be doing a shake, shower and bake. This will be the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. The good news is that it will be the beginning of a new way of thinking, a new society. This may the point in time where we see the fruits of our efforts to bring magic back into the world. I know we will succeed, I’m just not sure when.
-Sileneel
Well, since it is the full moon, the time that magnifies this aspect of me, I can answer both “What does the full moon do to you” and “Who is the Unknown between Order and Chaos” questions that have been posed on the list. “The Fool” (without the negative implications of modern English) is a very important part of who I am. In the time of the full moon, I feel it most strong within me. I remember that which I have forgotten. I feel the joy coursing through me. I begin talking like a character in a bad fantasy novel ;^)
The Fool is the Neutral, he who stands between Order and Chaos. He is balance. He is whatever gender he chooses, but since I am male I will call him he, and it’s my marbles and if you don’t like it you can’t play with me. He is also damn annoying. The fool is also three-in-one. He is best known as Loki, who is often associated with Chaos, but truly isn’t. He is the one whose response to the serious, the hopeless, and the destructive is to moon them. If he falls off a cliff he will enjoy the view all the way down, and with his last ounce of life try to twist his body to leave the most confusing/obscene chalk outline if stabbed by an ex-football-player. He laughs at life, and considers it the most worthy goal to get others to laugh with him (or at him as long as they are laughing). He is the bringer of chaos to order, but just as importantly the bringer of order to chaos. He always roots for the underdog or the underrhinoceros (check local zoning laws for which) as the case may be. But the Fool is also Gandalf the Grey. He is the uncle who slips you $10 when your dad isn’t looking. He is the kindly local priest/witch/street musician who provides a friendly ear and a strong shoulder to dampen. He will be your backup, your medic, and your advisor, but he knows only you can fight your battles. But he will be there to pull you out if you go in under your head. The Fool is also Prometheus, the one who defied the gods to bring fire to mankind, and gladly suffered the punishment. For he is the wisdom bringer, the creator, Odin the shaman who hung on Yggdrasil upside-down for 9 days and nights to learn the secrets of the runes, and gave them as a gift to us. But he is a foolish fool because he enjoys the image of the tragic hero of the Norse and Shakespearean sagas and even as he knows it is foolish and pointless, he does it anyway, because he is too afraid to look into the maelstrom within to find the true source of knowledge, yet is the only one brave enough to do it. And if you understand the reason that isn’t a paradox, then you are well along the way of understanding the fool. And it is because you have been listening to him who is the god of storytellers, who combines all three aspects to create that which is both entertaining and educational.
That is but a small fraction of what the Neutral One, the Balance Between Order and Chaos, is. But I hope it helps and entertains.{Jerry “So I says to Borg, ‘Yaknow, as long as we’re under siege, one of us oughta moon those Saxon dogs.’
I am responding to the person who disagreed with Jerry’s post about the Fool. I think you are confusing a fool with the Fool. The Fool he is talking about is the archetype, like in the Tarot.
I disagree with your definitions of light and dark. They do not, in my opinion, equate with good and evil. They are much different. I will explain how I see them. I would describe a “light” person as being sunny, positive, optimistic, straightforward, etc. I would describe a “dark” person as being secretive, mysterious, realistic. It’s hard for me to really pinpoint, it’s more a perspective thing. But to put it another way, the day is light, and the night is dark. This does not mean that the day is good and the night evil. There is just a difference in the way things appear and are perceived.
Now, of course, things are not always black and white. There is a lot of grey area, or neutral area. Balance, justice, equality.
Just my 2 cents.
Sileniel
From an anonymous post:
=====Slight disagreement with Jerry’s post about the “fool”. I don’t see why you label a third power, or a neutral power a fool.
It’s only in modern English that the word “fool” has negative connotations. When I use it capitalized (“Fool”), it is referring to the original meaning which implied innocence, as is referred to in the Tarot deck. While innocence may seem an odd description, we again strip away the modern connotations hung on it to find the original meaning of non-worldliness. Then it becomes the perfect descriptive, as the Fool, though he is IN the world, he is not OF the world. This differentiates him from the two Polarities(Yin/Yang, Chaos/Order, God/Goddess) who are part of and infuse the world. This explains many of his characteristics, not the least of which is the reason for his neutrality. He has no stake in the outcome of the world. He has no agenda, save a dislike of extremes. His motives are neither pure nor corrupt, they simply are. This is why he is both Loki(Trickster) and Prometheus(Lightbringer) in one. He is kind simply as there is no reason not to. But piss him off and he will hand you your reproductive organs on a platter.
So he is a Fool, not a fool. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t occasionally act foolishly, for he (if I might quote Marvel Comics here) ” …is not all-knowing or infallible. Indeed, within the parameters of [his] existence are both power and weakness, knowledge and ignorance.”
====Something like this, to me, would be like striding up to the dark power, satan, whatever, and calling him a fool. So much for your personal self and your immortal soul. I dunno, just doesn’t set right with me.
Belief in a pure evil entity who has nothing better to do with his time but make all humans miserable is a Gnostic concept that Christianity popularized. It is not one that I subscribe to. (for those of you who are interested, my religiophilosophy is basically Wicca, with a belief in a three aspect God, a three aspect Goddess, and a three aspect Fool)
And on Yael’s question of whether being mundane makes you immune to magickal attacks, it’s more a question of sensitivity. By necessity, a magick wielder must be open and attuned to the magick field, but this makes him/her/it (I’m certainly not going to turn over a dragon to find out which) more vulnerable.
Or in other words, shining a bright light in the average person’s eyes will hurt him, while a blind person would not be affected. But intensify and focus that light enough and you will get a laser that would burn someone sighted or blind.
As others have said, be cautious (but not paranoid) and shield. And don’t go picking fights with bignasties that you can’t handle.
(I should never .Net when I’m tired. I get stuck in lecture mode) In any case, Blessed Be and Well Met on the Net, J e r r y
===== connotations. When I use it capitalized (“Fool”), it is referring to the original meaning which implied innocence, as is referred to in the Tarot deck.
I see someone hasn’t really delved into talking with the Fool. sorry about that slam, but anyone who deals with tarot cards should know BY NOW at least that there are always things wrong with “printed” and mass produced decks.. the people who DO know the real meanings and drawing symbolism aren’t allowed to draw the correct pictures or give the correct meanings.. the Fool is not innocence… just much of an uncaring.. so he might fall off a cliff.. so what? he knows it’s there.. it doesn’t really matter to him though whether he falls off it or not..
=====extremes. His motives are neither pure nor corrupt, they simply are.
i will agree with this bit though.
-Urox!
Happy Birthday Morningstar!! and thank you for taking time to put the e-mails together and all the other things you do!!
To the person who talked about the “Fool” in the tarot cards. This is what I think about the card. A new stage;start, there is a search for “self” and “individuality”. Spontaneous, wild, “animalistic” (animal sense). Take Chances (risks). Can be dangerous, adventurous. A search for answers and meanings, expressing creativity, and a step onto an unknown and new path into the future, starting today.
Fill the emptiness, grow. Get in touch with ourselves inside. There is an impulse for change, craziness, madness. You have to take risks in order to gain something, if you don’t then you shall remain forever where you are, and you might end up stepping down, if you don’t go forward. I agree with you. The fool is neither completely good, nor completely bad. Please do not take my words out of context, they all belong together. It doesn’t mean all of these things will apply, but neither will they apply with only themselves. And what I am saying is do not take out madness and say that does not hold. The madness is not “madness” but a sense of craziness and the risk-taking involved, cause before we do something, we are thinking should I do this or this, and then when we take a step, and if it doesn’t turn out the way we want, or even if it does, it can worry us, make us think terrible thoughts or just cause us to worry about the next step, we have mixed emotions (may) and this can cause just a whole assortment of things to go through our mind, but as long as we have hope/faith for the future, then you will continue to take those steps we should all be taking. IN a sense, the Fool represents an innocence in the beginning, for we don’t know what is out there, we are learning with every step, but there is no way to be completely innocent on our journey, for we are human and are bound to make mistakes, but hopefully we will grow we will use those to grow from and continue on our path. To go further, the madness is like recklessness, and yes, to you had said this, I have the mythic tarot deck and the Fool, that the Fool is right at the cliff is about to take a step, you should not necessarily think he is going to kill himself, but that when we take each step into the future, there is a lot that we do not know, but we cannot allow fear to prevent us from searching. In this sense, the search for ourselves, for new meanings is far more important than securing one-self in a hole and rarely coming out. There is more “Care” for the search, because the search is what keeps us “Alive”. It keeps us more into actually living our lives to the fullest.
Note: My words come from my own analysis of the mythic tarot by sharman-burke and greene and tarot made easy by garen with my views of the pictures of the cards with the interpretations of sharman-burke, greene, garen and various people I have talked to. I do not take any of this as my own work, but only take responsibility for any errors I may have made.
Feel free to disagree.
charlotte.
Whoops…I’d like to clarify something. Awhile ago after I had posted the Elven Nation glyph Basileus posted an addition to it. I kind of jumped on him for that . Anyway, the other day I ran across the glyph and invocation while searching for something else It’s on page 275 of the book “21 Lessons of Merlin” by Douglas Monroe who states the Book of Pheryllt as the source. However it still gives no translation for the Latin . Also it gives the usual warnings about being in a protective circle and not to leave until banishing the Dragon . If people want to experiment and see what happens I’d be interested in hearing the results, though personally I’ll use the original glyph. Namarie!
-Morningstar * Reality Hacker * P.S. Sorry Again Basileus, I just like knowing the source of things I use
To this end I propose the formation of a The Elven Nation, a group being a rallying point for all non-humans to focus their energies unto these goals. To provide a common meeting ground for discussion and debate all things non-human and/or magical, as well as sharing strategy to attain these goals. E-mail discussion is encouraged. Starting with a mailing list, and when time and input permit, a newsletter. To subscribe to the list send email to [email protected] or [email protected] with ‘subscribe elven-nation’ in the text of the message. Personal e-mail may be sent to [email protected] or [email protected]. Snail mail to Morningstar, Terrace 3A Room 205 Ithaca College Ithaca NY 14850.
Please pass this onto anyone who might be interested. Submissions of anything are very welcome. Stories, essays, experiences, networking info, strategy etc…Thank you.
-Morningstar
([email protected])
(Adrian Mulvaney )
NOTE: This server (Elven Nation) is now defunct. This is here for historical purposes only.
This article is about the Mythos of the Trickster which is related to the concept of Pranking . Hopefully this will help people identify more with and understand the Trickster. For everyone, espeicaly elves, have the Trickster at heart. -Morningstar
This article is excerpted from the Rocky Mountain Pagan Journal. Each issue of the Rocky Mountain Pagan Journal is published by High Plains Arts and Sciences; P.O. Box 620604, Littleton Co., 80123, a Colorado Non-Profit Corporation, under a Public Domain Copyright, which entitles any person or group of persons to reproduce, in any form whatsoever, any material contained therein without restriction, so long as articles are not condensed or abbreviated in any fashion, and credit is given the original author.!
a cross-cultural overview
by Thunderspud of Dragonfhain
Whoever has created a dance, a song, written a ritual, tailor-made a job, birthed a child or invented a game has partaken of a controlled Trickster energy. After all, in Northwest Native and Inuit tradition, Raven created the world; Loki is known to the Norse as a co creator (and the bringer of Ragnarok); Anansi the spider-trickster among the Ashanti of Ghana and Nareau the spider in Micronesia; Coyote among the Southwest Natives –these are the creator aspects of this wild and uncontrolled energy. Trickster often begins in the void, desiring to bring Order out of Chaos; once Order is imposed, however, Trickster represents the breaking free of negative power from the Universal Order of things. As a shape-shifter, Trickster is all things to all people, at one time or another, and often simultaneously. Of course Trickster is a creator and a destroyer. Sure he’s a family man and a vagabond. Naturally he gives fire to humans and then steals their food before they can cook it. This is his style; when he acts out of selfishness, everyone benefits — Maui of the Thousand Tricks might snare the Sun to slow it down, making life easier for humans, but he did it so his mother would have more time to cook for him. When he acts out of altruism, there’s most always a negative effect –Marawa, a Lou Costello prototype from Banks Island carved human figures from wood and put them in the ground so they would grow and be strong; however, they merely rotted and death came into the world of humans. This shape-shifter not only moves from shape to shape, but from world to world. Number Eleven suffered at the hands of death to free his brothers; his brothers then took his lifeless body away and revived him. In the Winnebago cycle, Trickster dies three times and returns to life three times. In just one collection of Coyote stories, Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter, Coyote dies of a snake bite, a gunshot, an arrow wound, a broken heart, a rock-fall and a drowning; this resembles nothing so much as a Roadrunner cartoon.
Trickster fuzzes the lines between Male and Female, between cunning and stupidity (in one story Coyote steals a horse, in another he almost drowns trying to eat some berries reflected in a stream), between wisdom and stupidity. Trickster tells us the truth about our selves, showing us with truth and wit the sides of our nature that we may be more comfortable not acknowledging; he’s the one who points at the Emperor’s nakedness, he’s Lenny Bruce and Ashleigh Brilliant, Ken Kesey and Uncle Remus, Opus, Geech, Tom Robbins, Abbie Hoffman, Don Becker, Weird Al Yankovich and David Letterman, holding up a skewed mirror of reality for us to look into. Among the Aztecs, as serious a culture as this continent has ever seen, Ueuecoyotl, a funny and outrageously unacceptable clown figure; in the Southwest, at serious rituals, he’s the Koshare speeding around the circle with tickling feathers and rattle, being ignored completely by the priest.
Trickster shines on as a culture bringer: Prometheus steals fire for his poor stunted creations, and pays a terrible and eternal price for his philanthropy. Loki also steals fire for humans, as do Anansi, Raven, Coyote, Maui; so far I have found no less than seventeen stories from different cultures on this theme. Anansi tricked Nyankopon the Sky-God out of his stories and gave them to the humans. Clat, from Banks Island, taught humans how to sleep.
In the stories of the Ashanti, Anansi invented the tar-baby as a ruse to trap an elemental spirit, but in the Native American stories, Coyote is trapped by a tar-baby set up by a farmer. Actually the farmer had caught a rabbit with his tar-baby, but Coyote happened along and asked Rabbit what he was doing there. “The farmer who owns this field got mad at me because I wouldn’t eat his melons, so he stuck me here and said he’d come back and make me eat chicken.” Rabbit replies, “But I told him I wouldn’t do it.” Of course, greedy Coyote extricates Rabbit and wraps himself around the tar-baby where he still his when the farmer comes out and shoots him.
So this is the Trickster, the energy that allows us to break out of our stereotypes, whether they’ve been imposed by ourselves, our families, our culture. This is the energy that opens the world of limitless possibilities and it behooves us all to work with it before it destroys us, to touch the Trickster as he touches us.