The spiritual pentacle and the elements

In this post I explain the spiritual meaning of the Nephilim’s pentacle and the Ka-elements themselves.

Although linked to specific game statistics, like Fire to Strength and Moon to Charisma, all of the elements have physical, mental and spiritual correspondences and manifestations. It’s not one or the other. You don’t have to posit different cultures all have different elements to explain varying beliefs. Real occultism isn’t supposed to be accurate in the game world anyway, but the result of information leaks and cargo cults by muggles.

Liam Routt gave a good explanation in his old FAQ: (I’m putting it between horizontal rules because blogger has issues with formatting)

The Spiritual Pentagram

Traditionally, the pentagram represents our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical composition:

Fire
Doing—Fire is energy, the power to act. But it is pure action, undirected by thought or feeling.

Air
Thinking—Air is thinking, ideation, mental activity, but it can lack action or feeling.

Water
Feeling—The emotions are like the hidden realm beneath the surface of the water. In our culture, Air often dominates Water as people do what they think is right but feel is wrong. In other cultures (much of the Orient) people would not do something unless they both thought and felt it was right.

Earth
Being—Earth is stability, grounding, security. It is also that which is doing, thinking, and feeling.

Moon
Changing—All things come and all things go. The old must make way for the new, and release its essence back into the eternal cycle of creation, existence, decrepitude and death, then rebirth in a new form.

Akasha
The traditional system has Akasha as the fifth element, instead of moon. It is the combination of the other four, and represent pure spirit. In Nephilim, this is Solar Ka, and it sits in the center of the pentagram. See the cover of Chronicle of the Awakenings for a graphic depiction of this concept.

All of the elements can be seen in two ways, or from two different angles:

The Material
Concerned with the physical realm. Also known as Unfocused.

The Spiritual
Concerned with the immaterial source. Also known as Focused.


Andrew Montgomery gives a good explanation of the Solar system of elements:

In the primordial Chaos, the ether, centers of order began to form; the stars.  Our local one was the Sun.  Its life-giving and creative solar energies brought planets into being around it.  Each acted as a sort of lens, transmuting the solar force into something else.  Mercury generated the force of Air; Venus generated the force of Water; Mars generated the force of Fire; Jupiter formed the force of Earth.  Another body, the Moon, generated the Lunar force, and out beyond Jupiter on the edge of the Void a dark force manifested in the form of Saturn.    
There are, of course, elements in the classic sense, meaning they have spiritual, celestial, and material correspondences.  Everything in the mythology of Nephilim depends on them.  Certain colors, certain forms of life, certain gems and minerals, days of the week, signs of the Zodiac, etc etc ad infinitum are associated with them. 

…and good explanation of how the Pentacle mirrors the Solar system:

In Nephilim, the elemental spirit lacks a soul (Sol, Solar Ka). It is made of five other elements corresponding to heavenly bodies (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Luna) but has no center, no core. Humans possess only Solar Ka. Incarnation then is the reformation of a complete microcosm, with the Nephilim's elements coming into orbit around the human's Sol. It makes both the elemental spirit, and the human host, a complete being. But as the core element, Solar Ka can dominate the elemental forces, so prior to incarnation, the Nephilim blindly and instinctively seeks out hosts in a period of crisis, a moment of weakness when the Sol is wavering. 

Hope you enjoyed!

EDIT 6/29/2023: Here's a visual depiction of the pentacle described above, the five chromatic Ka-elements orbiting the Solar-Ka, from the 2001 third edition game Nephilim: Revelation.



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