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wingedblooms · 8 months

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Like a moth to a flame

Maasverse spoilers below. Proceed with caution.

When Feyre and Elain visit the weaver near solstice, we learn that there is a very specific kind of light that not only withstands the darkness, but cuts through it like a blade.

"The silver thread," Elain asked. "What is that called?" The weaver paused the loom again, the colorful strings vibrating. She held my sister's gaze. No attempt at a smile this time. "I call it Hope." My throat became unbearably tight, my eyes stinging enough that I had to turn away, to walk back toward that extraordinary tapestry. The weave explained to my sister, "I made it after I mastered Void." I stared and stared at the black fabric that was like peering into a pit of hell. And then stared at the iridescent, living silver thread that cut through it, bright despite the darkness that devoured all other light and color. (acofas)

That light is Hope. It is a living thread of iridescent light like the healing light that flows from Nesta:

Iridescent light began flowing from Nesta's body. Into Feyre. [...] Tendrils of light drifted between the sisters. And one, delicate and loving, floated toward Mor. (acosf)

I’ve always wondered if the tendrils of iridescent light between the sisters is a hint of what lies between them: raw magic.

“Once, the High Fae were more elemental, more given to reading the stars and crafting masterpieces of art and jewelry and weaponry. Their gifts were rawer, more connected to nature, and they could imbue objects with that power.” (acosf)

We hear about the raw magic of High Fae when the inner circle learns about Nesta’s Made swords. And Sarah just happens to drop art, jewelry, and weaponry as objects that can be imbued with raw magic. Objects that make us think of the sisters: Feyre creates art, Nesta is compared to and actually forges swords, and Elain is gifted art and jewelry that embody nature. She is a blooming flower compared to Nesta’s freshly forged sword (acowar). And the two sisters who have had their stories told have used raw magic to heal (Cauldron; Feyre, Nyx), to create, like the High Fae once did. We will likely see the third sister exhibit rawer magic as well.

We're led to believe that the Mother shows Nesta how to heal Feyre with iridescent light when she agrees to return her magic. We also see a luminous hand (presumably the Mother's) prevent the Cauldron from taking all of Nesta's power, which may be connected to the hand on the mural in Spring that pours the contents of the Cauldron into the void to create Prythian's world. In Herbs she planted, I discussed Elain’s connections to witches and healers (and these categories often overlap, like witches and seers; since the sisters may all possess raw magic, it is not far fetched that Elain could weave sight and healing together as a mystical forest witch would). In that post, I also review how the being we call the Mother behaves a lot like the Other who appears to Yrene in Tower of Dawn. This Other is believed to be Silba, the goddess of healing and gentle deaths. Like the Mother, Silba is also associated with a dark womb, and her healing magic is referred to as world-making power, which brings to mind the hands of creation in Spring.

Yrene, the healer Silba appears to, possesses raw healing magic and it manifests as white light. She uses it to battle Valg magic, which is compared to darkness, void, and hell.

He’d roared around it. His bellowing had been almost as bad as the magic itself. It was a void. It was a new, dark hell. […] She’d hurled her magic against the wall, letting its swarm of burning white lights attack in wave after wave, but—nothing. (tod)

Like water, it seeps into Chaol's legs, and acts like a swarm of fireflies.

Closing her eyes, Yrene let her power seep into his legs like a swarm of white fireflies, finding those damaged pathways and congregating, surrounding the frayed bits that went silent during these exercises, when they should have been lit up like the rest of him. (tod)

Healers' lights are also compared to blooms, and together, they are a field of white flowers.

Blooming lights, along that broken interior. And where they shone... Flesh knitted. Bone smoothed. Light after light after light. [...] Yrene brushed herself along them, waded through them like a field of white flowers, the lights bobbing and swaying in this quiet place of pain. Not lights...but healers. She knew their lights, their essences. (tod)

Her power can also cut through the dark like a weapon, like Hope.

No way to stop Yrene as she plunged into his body, her magic a white swarming light around them, inside them. […] Yrene did not hesitate. She soared through him, down the ladder of his spine, down the corridors of his bones and blood. She was a spear of light, fired straight into the dark, aiming for that hovering shadow that had stretched out once more. That had tried to reclaim him. Yrene slammed into the darkness and screamed. (tod)

Healing magic is repeatedly compared to living things, and we often see Yrene’s raw gift swarm when it attacks the darkness. The term swarm is associated with flying insects, and in particular, honeybees. They swarm protectively when they leave the hive with new life.

“Fire is cleansing. Purifying. But amongst the healing arts, it’s not often used. Too unwieldy. Water is better-tuned to the healing. But then there are raw healing gifts. Like mine.”

“Light,” Chaol said. “It looked like swarming lights, against their darkness.” (tod)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Elain rose early to accompany Feyre and asked the weaver about the living thread of Hope, especially since this thread resembles the way raw healing magic—living light—behaves in the darkness. We learn that life, in the form of living light, not only pierces the void, but travels through it. Elain is consistently linked to rebirth and the dawn through imagery and her daily routine, rising with the dawn to tend to gardens or help the twins in the kitchen. Dawn is connected to healing magic, and ahappyhermit theorized that Elain may have even healed Cassian’s wounds as Nesta beheaded Hybern in acowar. @silverlinedeyes and @offtorivendell also theorized that Elain might be a Lifesinger, calling to living things around her as she creates. She is often (if not constantly) creating. Whatever happens in canon, it’s clear Elain is the epitome of living light, of Hope:

Beautiful - she'd always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer dawn. (acomaf)

She was a rose bloom in a mud field.(acowar)

Even in the middle of winter, she was a bloom of color and sunshine. (acofas)

Her sister's delicate scent of jasmine and honey lingered in the red-stoned hall like a promise of spring, a sparkling river that she followed to the open doors of the chamber. [...] Her sister turned toward her, glowing with health. Elain's smile was as bright as the setting sun beyond the windows. (acosf)

Her brown eyes were bright with tears, but she kept her chin high. (acosf)

Even on the longest night of the year, she glows like the dawn, when light pierces the darkness.

But even the silence weighed too heavily, and though the shadows kept him company, as they always had, as they always would, he found himself leaving the room. Entering the foyer. Soft steps padded from under the stair archway, and there she was. The Fanlights gilded Elain's unbound hair, making her glow like the sun at dawn. She halted, her breath catching in her throat. (Azriel's bonus chapter)

Nesta placed her symbol, a bloom made in the icy darkness of winter, next to the Mother's figurine on the mantle. The Mother who showed Nesta how to use her raw magic to heal. We learn in tod that healers sense Death nearby when they are called upon to heal someone’s wounds or ease their passing (hence the reference to gentle deaths). And as @psychologynerd reminded me, Elain uses her hands to bring joy and beauty to others, even in death.

Elain quietly washed his face. Combed out his hair and beard. Straightened his clothes.

She found flowers—somewhere. She laid them at his head, on his chest.

We stared down at him in silence. “I love you,” Elain whispered, voice breaking.

Nesta said nothing, face unreadable. There were such shadows in her eyes. I had not told her what I’d seen—had let them tell me what they wanted.

Elain breathed, “Should we—say a prayer?”

We did not have such things in the human world, I remembered. My sisters had no prayers to offer him. But in Prythian …

“Mother hold you,” I whispered, reciting words I had not heard since that day Under the Mountain. “May you pass through the gates; may you smell that immortal land of milk and honey.” Flame ignited at my fingertips. All I could muster. All that was left. “Fear no evil. Feel no pain.” My mouth trembled as I breathed, “May you enter eternity.”

Tears slid down Elain’s pallid cheeks as she adjusted an errant flower on our father’s chest, white-petaled and delicate, and then backed away to my side with a nod. (acowar)

I can’t help but wonder where she might’ve found those white flowers on a blood-stained battlefield. Did she actually find them, or did she will them from the soil with her own magic? I love that she does not balk from death and finds a way to nurture life amid bloodshed.

And like a moth to a flame, Azriel—Death incarnate—is repeatedly drawn to Elain, whose light seems to be able to cut through his shadows. A match in power for the darkness.

Elain looked up at Azriel, their eyes meeting, his hands still lingering on the hilt of the blade. I saw the painting in my mind: the lovely fawn, blooming spring vibrant behind her. Standing before Death, shadows and terrors lurking over his shoulder. Light and dark, the space between their bodies a blend of the two. The only bridge of connection...that knife. (acowar)

Truth-Teller, a Starborn heirloom, is the bridge between them. It is a bridge of power, where dark and light blend together, creating the harmonious contrast of dawn and dusk. Dark light. @offtorivendell wrote beautifully about how this scene hints at their future, and @psychologynerd suggested it represents an alchemical marriage. I have also wondered what might happen if their powers are joined like their hands in this scene. In one hand, Elain creates joy and life, and in the other hand, Azriel inflicts pain and death. They have also traded roles when called upon, usually in response to the other. This might explain why Azriel’s power also behaves like a dark counterpart to Elain’s, shadows gathering information as her Sight does, twining like her prophetic vine of flowers. They also swarm like the living light of healing when Azriel—or someone he cares about—is threatened.

"Because of the shit with Elain?" Azriel stilled. "What happened to Elain?" Cassian waved a hand. "A fight with Nesta. Don't bring it up," he warned when Azriel's eyes darkened. Cassian blew out a breath. "I take that as a no regarding the meeting topic, then." "It's about what I discovered. Rhys said he requires you both there." "It's bad, then." Cassian surveyed the shadows gathered around Az. "You all right?" His brother nodded. "Fine." But the shadows still swarmed him. Cassian knew it was a lie, but didn't push it. Az would speak when he was ready, and Cassian would have better success convincing a mountain to move than getting Az to open up. (acosf)

Elain had a mere fight with her sister and cold-as-death Azriel nearly lost his shit. His eyes darkened and his shadows swarmed him, promising pain. He wasn’t even there to witness the fight, he just heard about it after the fact. Death clearly has it bad for the lovely fawn. And I fully expect to see her living light bring him to his knees. Like a moth to a flame.

#living light #a match in power for the dark #power attracts power #Death and the lovely fawn #twining vines and shadows #swarming light and shadows #like a moth to a flame #Hope and Void #a blend of the two #dark light #elriel #elain archeron #azriel shadowsinger #tog healers #maasverse connections #elainarcheronweek2023 #day 7 #elain archeron week 2023

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i-might-be-weird-barbie · 8 months

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“We understand that our story is different from yours in many ways and similar in other ways in that we are a hybrid civilization created out of your civilization and another culture from a parallel reality that you have referred to as the Greys. And there being 5 hybrid civilizations of which we are one.

The idea then is that we have our own stories and different kinds of experiences. Some again different and similar to your own.

But primarily where we share most strongly is in the concept of the stories of family because we are connected to you. You are our family in many different ways and so we communicate to you along the lines of understanding that WE ARE FAMILY.

We also understand the commonality between us that we are creators, that we are inventors, we are beings who experience the concept of joy and love and ecstasy just as you can as well and even more than you do already.

But we do not have stories of fear in our world that you may have in your world. We know that fear exists. We know that choice exists. But we simply choose other stories. It is up to you also to learn to choose other stories other than fearful ones if that is what you prefer. You will never lose your understanding. You will never lose your ability to choose the idea of fear. You will actually find more and more ability to choose fear. You will always become more aware of the negative side as you expand the positive, because as you become more of who you are, you become more aware of all possible choices. So the idea is not that fear goes away as a choice. It is simply that the experience of fear is not chosen. That you choose stories that are relevant to the idea of your acknowledgment of yourself as a being of light, your acknowledgment of yourself as an aspect of creation in the way that resonates most strongly with the vibration of your preference in the moment as you choose to exist- in every moment that you choose to experience from a different perspective of the same moment - because it is all one moment.

It is all now every. Every now that you experience is simply the same now from a different point of you. And you tell yourself a different story. And as you tell yourself a story you create the shifts of different parallel reality experiences that you have.

As you tell yourself a story. You create the experience of the shift that you go through from parallel reality to parallel reality. You are designing your experience based on the story you tell yourself that is most true for you - the story you relate to most strongly with your belief systems.

So if you do not prefer the story you are experiencing then tell yourselves a different story. “Tell me another story Mother”, “Tell me another story Father”, “Happily Ever After ” - tell yourself that story. Happily now. Happily ever after.

You will have your challenges. For what is a story without challenges? Because that is one of the resonant points of storytelling. There must be a challenge. There must be transformation. And that is all right. Because in telling yourself the story that way you will tell yourself the story that allows you to know that you have the ability to transform the challenge into something that expands your story, something that works for you. Something that resonates most closely with who it is you believe yourself to be.

Tell yourself the story that you know is true for you. Be the storyteller to yourself just as All That Is is telling itself the story of all that it is - through all of you! Through all of us. Through all beings in creation. It is telling itself the story of who and what it is. Through all the different perspectives it has created itself to be. All the aspects. All the pieces. All the stories. An infinite infinite infinite array of stories is all that all that is is made of. It is one giant experience of a multitude, an infinite multitude of stories and perspectives about itself. Thus experiencing itself in all the ways, in all the stories that it can.

Existence is one big story. Goes on and on and on and never ends. You can decide what aspects of that story you get to experience yourself to be.

Tell yourself the story you prefer to be. For you are an unfolding story. Always, always, always and forever.

On our world we also relate to many different levels of our planet in that sense. What you call the idea of the beings that are like us, and the beings that are not - the animals beings, the tree beings, the rock beings, the star beings, the energy beings, all the different kind of beings. Even as many indigenous cultures on your planet relate to these things as people, relate to these realms, these dimensions, these worlds - as their own stories, different kinds of stories. But you can share their stories as well and the story structure will work for them as well. So when you allow yourself to really understand and learn and master story structure. Being that it is, again, archetypally embedded in your consciousness you will realize it is archetypally embedded in the consciousness of all the other kinds of beings on your planet as well.

So that when you share information or wish to learn information from them if you approach them through the idea of “tell me a story” or let me tell you a story. And learn the idea of how to communicate through story structure it will be easier for you to understand the stories of many other beings as well.

This is the innate template of communication - story structure is what it is called on your planet. It is the innate template of communication.

Practical example of story structure and templating via communicating through a Channel:

Our ships are extensions of our own consciousness. A ship in a sense is a crystallized form of our own higher mind and we are constantly in communion with it in communicating these ideas to you.

The sentence as follows - this is the template by which the ship understands this concept using story structure: “planetary symbol, linguistics temporal, archetypal interactive idiomatic communication”. That is our ships way of saying “your world is getting smaller everyday”,

Breaking it down:

“Planetary symbol” - your world

“Linguistic idiomatic” - an idiom from your own language

to represent archetypal interactivity in a temporal fashion. Your world, in your language, idiomatically is getting smaller everyday. Interactivity is increasing and accelerating.

But that phrase is how our ship translates that story structure using the template in its most raw form. Because that’s all the ship needs to do. There are not the nuances of culture for the ship. The ship is just a raw template format of communication of the raw story structure in its most simplistic archetypal format as far as the ship understands.

This is the process that is going on and us transmitting these communications through that template of the ship, through the story structure our own society understands that our ship uses to translate into the idiomatic phrasing that makes sense and resonates within the Channel’s consciousness to bring up the translations necessary for this communication.

So it gives you a little bit of understanding of the translation processes that go on but still work to tell the story. Even though it may seem very alien and very foreign to you to hear it in the raw template form. And not really translate in that form to you. It automatically, using that template pulls through and from the Channel the idea of the appropriate terminologies that are idiomatically representative in your culture to represent what it is we are transmitting from ours. Because if we were to simply transmit it ,in direct form, as we understand it, the communication would be too alien for you to understand. It would not translate into your language in a way that would make sense as we have demonstrated (with the above example with the raw in a sense template form). Hence a demonstration of how these transmissions occur and why it sometimes takes a little time in your terms of time for channeling to be something that is, shall we say, improved upon, and practiced so that bit by bit as the Channels allow themselves to relax into the story structure of their being, we can pluck the necessary chords more quickly, more automatically, more effortlessly to allow the idea of the template to bring forth from the Channels exactly what needs to be said. More and more fluidly and fluently every single time the Channel allows such things to come through…”

An Essassani Story - Psychology, Metaphysics & Reality Creation as channeled through Darryl Anka from Bashar

#living light #family #the essassani #essassani #story template #story structure #linguistics #arrival #it’s giving arrival #and also the Star Trek episode where they meet civilizations they have to learn to communicate with #channeling #Bashar #Darryl Anka #alien #preparing for first contact #existence #all that is #the story of us

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