Domain Overview

Note 2023: mobile-responsive table WIP

Here is an overview of the three Domain, and how they relate to one another. This chart refers to “meaning” or "thematic" correspondences. By this, I mean we are not yet discussing colour, trees, objects, gods or so forth. Instead, these can be applied to objects, beings and places to influence their mood and affiliations.

Don’t feel you have to learn every word here – grasping the vague shape of the map is enough, enough to be able to devise your own correspondences, and to see these directions and contrasts in the folklore you encounter. I always welcome new suggestions to add to this chart, but because it’s so central to the system please understand if I am slow to “officially” add and approve them.

One thing to be aware of is that the contrasts here are usually Solar/Lunar, or Solar/Stellar, or a journey travelled from Solar through Lunar to Stellar. Lunar/Stellar is an odd one, and I’ve got more thoughts about it than I’m ready to share.

☉ Solar ☽︎ Lunar 🞱 Stellar
Pure, holy, good, correct, moral, normal Impure, unhallowed, wicked, queer, amoral ?!?! Outside man’s moral and ethical conception or control
Friend to man, domestic, human, anthropocentric, beneficial, protection Friend to itself, outskirts, magical/monstrous, outside the walls; human-like-yet-non-human, such as an elf or fairy. ???!?. The great Outside. Wilderness, alien minds, things which do not think or behave in any way we can intutiviely grasp. The non-human (consider models of gender, ways of having sex, community structures, senses, and so forth which some insects or underwater creatures have which are really nothing like us at all. Consider also extrapolating this beyond insect life, to the infinite and unknown)
Everyday, safe, known, usual, mundane Unusual, strange, scary, dangerous, hidden/arcane/occult, alternate Profoundly unknowable. Mystery. The unexplained. That which can not be known or explained
Local, small, stagnant, predictable, hearth and home, conservatism, Wanderlust, distance, motion, change, options/choices, travelling, exploring, temptation Immensity. Fathomlessness. Eternity
Certainty, dogma, tradition, permanence Unorthodoxy, challenge, disruption, revolution, doubt, questions, exploration, experimentation, interpretation, analysis, organisation, systemetisation Pure creative chaos, abstraction, conceptual, a formless idea-space where unique and novel connections can be made; outside everyday human frameworks. Hunches, instincts, creativity, inner wisdom
Solid, fixed, mapped, physical Fluid, flexible, hidden ways, imagination/dreaming, new paths Unmappable, conceptual, abstract, wayless
Others, Selfless, community, collective, unity, civilisation, family, the state, institutions (police, law, academia, government, etc) Self, independence, solitary, selfishness, originality; chosen family or alternative, self-defined communities Breakdown of civilisation. Chaos. Monsters from the ID. Hives, and other non-human ways of relating
External, public, open to others, exuberant Quiet, still, internal, reflctive, meditative, hermit, self-mastery, clarity Open to the infinite, receptive, influenced, tossed on the tides, “psychic” sensitivity to other modes and sensations in the landscape, overwhelmed and made part of them, lost in reverie, under the influence of the strange, land-touched
Mutual, equal, harmony, bonds of duty and tradition, honour - the fantasy feudalism in which everyone has a place within society, and is perfectly suited to it. Being the Master, power, control, unequal relationships, alliances/pacts, situational relationships Mastered, overwhelmed, uncontrolled, self-loss, unformed magic
Records, history, heredity, ancestors, what is known Hidden/forbidden knowledge, consciousness, ideas, teachers and students, interpretation, experimentation, doubt, distrust of authority Fallible knowledge, lost things, unknowable, the subconscious, memory (and fallible memory), imaginary, Landweird, recording media (vinyl, cassette, photograph) when it makes us aware of the fallibility of what has been recorded, remembering
Man and nature (what is natural, organic, right, authentic). Living in natural, traditional harmony with the land. We protect it, and it protects us. Man and machine (craft, skill, cunning, learning). What man can control, shape and dictate about his environment. Order, control, systemisation, mastery. Nature without man. Wilderness that is ignorant and uncaring of man, without our presence. Natural disasters which do not even notice our presence. The scale of the universe, in which we are an incidental blip.
Everyday, comfortable, familiar, predictable, safe Daring, experimenting, ambition, drive, out of comfort zone, attempting, challenging Going too far, going beyond, getting lost, becoming beyond the limits of human endurance or survival, becoming profoundly other and strange, discovering there is no way back
Physical matter, reality, things, passive (“acted-upon”) Actions, energy, motion, change, processes, active (“acts upon things to cause change”) Conceptual, abstract, intangible, imaginary, influences, senses, moods and atmospheres
Being; Continuity Doing; Change Encountering; Chaos