Monday 4 April 2011

Wind Gods or elemental guardians?

During the time I studied with Joe he was often insistent that the four Wind Gods, Lucet, Carenos, Node and Tettens, were not primarily elemental guardians and were not Celtic either. This might, if you view the matter superficially, seem to go against the evidence, but both are definitely justifiable and reveal a different pattern of thinking to anybody who cares to look further.

The Wind Gods are so called because they are precisely wind gods and the concept is first and foremost the winds, not the elements. Elemental correspondences are an important secondary attribution, but it should not be thought that at any time one is doing standard Western Tradition magic as filtered through Golden Dawn correspondences and continued by Wicca.

By looking at the concept of the winds in various cultures and systems much can be learned. In one of her recent posts Jane mentioned the Anemoi, that could be a good place to start. The other point to be made is concerned with the names, Lucet, Carenos, Node and Tettens. I must start by saying we do use these names, but we do not see them as Celtic and the apparently celtic-sounding ring they have is, it seems, something of a blind. The names are, it seems, of recent provenance and in at least one case they would appear to convey by hint, at least a little bit of information concerning Fate, or the Fates.


Stuart

1 comment:

  1. One of the things that Joe complained to me about in the early 1980s was that people kept wanting to force 1734 into a Wiccan tradition, which he held it was not (and I must agree with him, he being the founder!)
    The reshaping of the Wind Gods into personifications of elemental guardians is an excellent example of that, and one, that IIRC, began with Roebuck 'back in the day'.

    Nice to stumble across your blog again; I had found it sometime back and misplaced the bookmark when a computer died. found it again today looking for references to Joe's Waxing Moon magazine.

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