sententia

In this series

1. Breaking the Golden Bough
2. The Myth of Elune
3. The Rituals of Elune
4. The Nature of Elune

What if Sir James George Frazer were alive today? It’s possible he would have written about World of Warcraft’s Night Elves in his classic book, “The Golden Bough”. Frazer was notorious for using fictional stories in his work, misrepresenting those stories, and then treating the whole mish-mash as if it were fact. What follows is the third and final part of a “lost chapter” from “The Golden Bough” – an analysis of Night Elf religion written in the voice of Frazer.  This work has been reformatted for easier online reading.

Elune and the Moon

Elune is commonly referred to as a moon-goddess, and in the myths surrounding her this view has been established from the fore. The evidence on which Elune is identified with the moon is certainly not dubious in either quantity, nor in quality. That her name, in our modern translations of the myth, is derived from the French lune certainly acquiesces to this supposed aspect of her nature.

But that she is identified with the moon comes largely from the Tauren myth surrounding her birth from the Earthmother’s eye, and not that her story fits better with the moon than with any other natural phenomena. For her association with the festivals of planting and harvest certainly do not align with her nature as a lunar deity.

If her daily dying and rising (sleeping and waking) was the theme of the legend, certainly it would not have been celebrated with annual ceremony. And again, though the moon may be described as sleeping during the day-time, where does the moon become associated with the growth and sustenance of all living things?

Though Elune may have been conceived by times as being a moon goddess, this clearly was not her primary function among the people of Azeroth. History has certainly demonstrated that folk-custom tends toward homoeopathic magic on the basis of the Law of Similarity. As we have shown numerous times, the phenomenon of nature to which death and renewal apply most properly is not solar or lunar risings and settings.

But the cycles of both sun and moon are daily, and not annually, similarity dictates that the primary association of a deity celebrated annually be not with solar or lunar phenomena. Thus that phenomenon which is celebrated throughout the cultures of antiquity, through the myths of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Demeter and now Elune, is certainly that of the annual growth and decay of the cereals, and vegetation in general.

Elune as Tree-Spirit

Elune was clearly more than a moon goddess to the people of Azeroth; she was also a spirit of the tree as represented in the myths we previously described. Having fallen into a trance within the Well of Eternity, Elune was drawn up like water through the roots into the World Tree Nordrassil. One can hardly imagine a more graphic description of a divinity dwelling within a tree, making it her own permanent abode.

The ceremonies and celebrations of the Lunar Festival take place in the realm of Moonglade, amongst those same trees in which Elune, so they say, not only met her love Marlorne and gave birth to Cernarius. The scenes of her fertility being linked with the forest thus corresponds closely to both the myth and ceremonies described in Azeroth’s legends.

The depiction of Elune in the Ysera myths as always wearing a dress of green, emerald jewelry and having emerald-green hair are indicative of her nature as a tree-spirit, much like the green of pine-trees and ivy was important to the Phrygian worshippers of Attis.

In each case, the sight of changeless green trees – be they the pines of Attis or the ever-green trees of Elune – may have marked the changelessness of the divinity’s own home, or something beyond the ravages of the seasons, being as constant and unchanging as the moon which Elune is said also to represent.

Wildkin and the World Tree

In the Temple of the Moon at Darnassus the lone statue depicting Elune in all of Azeroth stands enclosed within the delicately tended groves of the island of Teldrassil, guarded by Ancients or Treants; these walking trees, so they say, have undoubtedly been imbued with her spirit to guard the land.

Her followers dwell in wood crafted lodges high atop the boughs of the great tree Teldrassil and the greatest part of the main Kaldorei city Darnassus consists of treed temple grounds dedicated in her honour. In close proximity to her temple are numerous other glades and woods, and in each Sentinels and wildkin guard the trees.

On the wildkin, a Kaldorei myth from Winterspring, if this account is to be trusted, records a dialogue between a legendary Priestess of Elune and a female Kaldorei named Ranshalla. On this subject I will let the account speak for itself.

Enu thora’serador. This is a sacred place. We will show you. Look above you; thara dormil dorah. This gem once allowed direct communication with Elune, herself. Through the gem, Elune channeled her infinite wisdom. Realizing that the gem needed to be protected, we turned to the goddess herself. Soon after, we began to have visions of a creature. A creature with the feathers of an owl, but the will and might of a bear. It was on that day that the wildkin were given to us. Fierce guardians, the goddess assigned the wildkin to protect all of her sacred places… Wildkin are inherently magical; this power was bestowed upon them by the goddess. Know that wherever you might find them in the world, they are protecting something of importance, as they were entrusted to do so long ago.

The gem of Elune, by which is apparently meant the Emerald Dream of the Ysera legend, is simply a description of the Nordrassil, the World Tree which connects the Emerald Dream and Azeroth. Thus the nature of Elune as a tree-spirit is clearly depicted; the gem through which Elune is contacted is also that World Tree which she inhabits. The wildkin of myth thus served the purpose of guarding the spirit of Elune in Nordrassil as well as all other trees which have been imbued with her power.

Elune as Corn-Goddess

Though the character of Elune as a tree-spirit is undoubtedly more primitive than that of her as a corn-spirit, since as we have seen the worship of trees is older in the history of religion than that of cereals, there are few but significant indications that Elune was understood as a goddess of agriculture and of sustenance.

She is spoken of as having been the first to empower the waters of the Well of Eternity that allowed all of Azeroth bear fruit, which before had been limited to the land immediately surrounding the lake; and she is said to be the patron to the druids of the wild who draw upon the life-giving soil.

Further, we are told that at the Temple of the Moon in Suramar, there were mosaics and frescos depicting Elune shaping the world, making it fertile and good for planting. Thus like other gods of vegetation Elune was believed to be responsible for the abundant harvest necessary to sustain the life of the Kaldorei.

When we turn our attention from myth to ritual, it is clear that the Kaldorei considered Elune to have fallen into eternal sleep, but to have woken again; thus she like other gods of the cereals was believed to have died and resurrected, and this was celebrated in the annual agricultural festivals.

As we have seen, the image of death and renewal was also depicted dramatically and mythically at the lunar and harvest festivals. But even if these celebrations were in form dramatic, depicting the power of Elune over nature, they were in their substance magical.

Thus we can say that the rituals of Elune, on the basis of sympathetic magic, were imagined to guarantee the annual renewal of plants and especially cereals as well as to ensure a plentiful bounty at their harvest. Some of the later Kaldorei druids, it is said, recognized the power of the ancients as magic. But the larger part of those in Azeroth clearly attributed the qualities of the corn-spirit to Elune.

This concludes my “lost chapter” of “The Golden Bough”. A note to WoW players — I realize that I have horribly misrepresented some aspects of the Moon Goddess and her following, but honestly, that’s one of those other things that Frazer was good at: taking things out of context and making them mean something completely different. Regardless, I hope you’ve enjoyed my pseudo-Frazarian take on Night Elf religion.

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