The Old One

November 13, 2021November 13, 2021 / F.T. McKinstry

In the Chronicles of Ealiron, the Old One is a primordial goddess of nature, life, death, and transformation. Often referred to as Maern, which means “mother” in the wizard’s tongue, she is unknowable in her true form, but perceived as the concept of the Triple Goddess, a being that comprises three aspects of the Divine Feminine integrated as one: Maiden, Mother and Crone. These aspects exist and are manifested in all things, whether nature, events or the shadows of the psyche.

In the world of Ealiron, wizards govern balance in the realms and gods walk among them; but both mortals and immortals revere the Old One as sovereign. While referred to as a deity, she is more like a force underlying all things. She is inexorable; she is wyrd; she is the void from which all creation emerges. Life always comes, it preserves itself to its own expression, and all things die. She is the power by which consciousness knows itself.

Maiden

She was the first woman, the only woman, the one all women knew. She was as pure as the first breath, soft as flowers and fresh cream as she yielded to him, her cry blowing through the tree in the swirling language of the lair as he broke through her maidenhead and into the eternal warmth and safety of a mother’s womb. – From The Winged Hunter

The Maiden emerges from the void as new: birth, spring, desire, unfolding. She is the individuality of a bud, an egg or a fresh idea, innocent of darkness. Her light shines like a beacon attracting its own demise, as the cycle begins.

Mother

She was all cycles, all changes, all movements in the shapes of waves, circles, wells, and caves protecting the wounded. – From The Winged Hunter

The Mother is the abundance of life. She nourishes, grows, heals and protects. She is the exuberance of a blooming garden in full summer, the blush and glow of pregnancy, the instinct of a mother protecting her offspring and the healing of a warrior’s wounds.

Crone

The Destroyer curled her body with supple grace, caressing the depths. She moved up towards the shimmering surface in a silent spiral, hungry and inexorable. To be worthy of providing a vessel in which to hide her child, these mortals would surrender to the forces that gave him life. – From The Gray Isles

The Crone is the Unknown, the Void, Formlessness, that from which all things come and to which all things must return, from a blade of grass to a galaxy. Hers is the power of death, transformation, rebirth and regeneration. All things must pass through the darkness to know the light, and it is usually through her that one can perceive the aspects of the Old One as inseparable. There can be no birth without death; no protection without swords; no healing without destruction; and no innocence that cannot fall. Likewise, there can be no destruction without rebirth. Every phase of life depends on the other.

The Old One appears in one shape or another throughout the Chronicles of Ealiron and many of the short stories in Wizards, Woods and Gods.

The Source

December 21, 2014July 10, 2021 / F.T. McKinstry / 4 Comments

Greetings on this Winter Solstice!

The shortest day of the year captivates the imagination and connects us to a universal truth that’s often easy to forget in the throes of life. A seed in the earth about to germinate, a flash of inspiration in the depths of despair, light emerges from the Void.

The winter solstice brings living things to an instinctual awareness of the Source. The moment the shift happens there is a spark, a sigh, a ray of hope. The days will now begin to lengthen. Little wonder this is a time of celebration. No matter how dark it gets, the light always comes, usually when the darkness is complete.

Being creative and somewhat broody — ok that’s an understatement, how about Underworldish — I’m a seasoned veteran in the Dark Night of the Soul. As many times as I’ve stood before the abyss, each time is always the very first time, as if I’ve never done it before. It never ceases to amaze me, the Void’s powers of resilience and renewal. “But this time is different,” I say. “No light can come out of this.” Hel knows it’s no different. It’s always the same. Light comes from the darkness.

This finds its way into my art: novels, stories, poetry, paintings, gardening, music, aquariums — it’s everywhere. I stare into the abyss every time I type a word, hold a brush to a canvas or put a seed into the dirt. I listen to death metal looking for a glint of the sublime. I fret over my seedlings in the greenhouse one moment and mercilessly pull weeds from the ground the next. I stand in awe each 21st of December, like a votary of the Dark Night, waiting for the light I know will come. The sun is reliable, after all.

“Only wizards and hunters know the true meaning of darkness.” – From The Hunter’s Rede

“Gardens are made of darkness and light entwined.” – From The Winged Hunter

“In the dark, a call to love; in the light, a bridge.” – From “The Fifth Verse“, Wizards, Woods and Gods

“Where the heart yearns, there is the point of Mystery. Though the Old One holds in her arms the seeds of new awareness, healing and light, she cannot be seen or understood by the seed itself.” – From Raven of the West

Ealiron Glossary Terms: Loerfalos

October 24, 2014November 4, 2018 / F.T. McKinstry

Welcome to Ealiron Glossary Terms, a series of posts in which I discuss fantasy terms in Chronicles of Ealiron: Terms and Places, the online glossary for the series. Today’s term is loerfalos.

loerfalos (lo ER vah los): In Aenspeak, “serpent of green darkness.” A very large, immortal dragon-like creature that lives in the northern seas. A First One. Always female. See also First One.

Loerfalos

When the moon stares dark, she sees true;
Beneath the surface, green and blue.
Living darkness births the light;
Out of sight, out of sight. – From The Gray Isles

Also called the Mistress of the Sea, the loerfalos is, to most folks in the world of Ealiron, a legend. The Keepers of the Eye, wizards who generally know better, call her a First One, an immortal created by a union between the Old One and a god named Om, the creator of Ealiron himself.

Mistress of the Sea

The loerfalos is a creature of the Divine Feminine, and the sea is her domain. An awesome force, vast, mysterious and mostly unseen, the sea is a metaphor par excellence for the Old One, the primeval void from which all things come. A creature of the Otherworld, the loerfalos moves between dimensions, making her elusive and unbelievable. This is typical of the Otherworld, as it exists above the time-space matrix. The appearance of beings such as gods or immortal creatures bears a quality of the unreal because Others are not bound to the structures of the physical dimension. To mortals, they don’t make sense. Like dreams.

Annihilation

The sailors of Ealiron’s northern seas are a superstitious lot and wouldn’t dare to speak of the Mistress as a mere legend. But in places like the Gray Isles, the boundaries between truth and legend are as blurred as an autumn fog. In a port tavern on a busy night one might hear many yarns which can be chalked up to rumors, the weird nature of the sea or too much whisky; but in truth, seeing a loerfalos is exceedingly rare. Wizards maintain that her appearance heralds transformation on a large scale…usually unpleasant. For this reason, sighting her is considered most inauspicious.

Nightshade by the Sea

In The Gray Isles, Book Two in the Chronicles of Ealiron, the Mistress of the Sea makes numerous appearances as she takes an unheard-of interest in a fisherman’s son surrounded by tragedy, mystery and dreams. Enter a powerful wizard on a routine mission and an assassin with a broken mind and the realm is faced with annihilation at the hands of the Otherworld.

In The Riven God, Book Four in the Chronicles of Ealiron, the Mistress assumes the mantle of the Destroyer, the darkest aspect of the Old One, to protect and avenge an ancient wrong hidden in the Otherworld by a god.