#genii

[thefugitivesaint]

Willy Pogány (1882-1955), “Tales of the Persian Genii” by Frances Jenkins Olcott, 1919

[allegorypaintings]

The Reward of Virtue

Artist: Attributed to David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (Swedish, 1628-1698)

Date: 1680

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden

Depicted People:

Charles XI of Sweden

Description:

This allegory shows a personification of Virtue, a central concept in the 17th century, in her blue mantle, leading a male figure, draped in a contrasting red, up into the heavens and crowning him with a laurel wreath. They are accompanied by a pair of genii holding a banner with the title and the painter’s signature. Intended for the king’s audience chamber at Ulriksdal, the work summed up the lessons Ehrenstrahl had learnt from contemporary Italian Baroque painting.

[rauko]

The Sistine Madonna (detail) | Raffaello Sanzio (1512)

[bardic-tales]

Bonded Daimons and Genii: When a Personal Spirit Takes Form

Possible Trigger Warnings: past abuse and isolation, trauma survival, median systems, spiritual/religious frameworks, bonded entities or autonomous inner presences, intense protector dynamics

It’s late or early (almost 6 am and been up since 4 am with only 2 hours of sleep), I can’t sleep, and my mind keeps circling a conversation a friend and I were having about my system. This came around as 🔥⚔ is projecting himself when I'm alone.

It's specifically about 🔥⚔, how he formed, and why the language of daimon and genius feels closer to the truth than anything else I’ve found so far.

I’m still learning. Even after all these years, I am still trying to understand myself. I don’t pretend to have a complete map of daimons or genii. But some frameworks don’t need to be finished to be useful. They only need to name what is already happening.

This is one of those frameworks.

What follows is not an argument meant to convince. It’s a record of lived, spiritual experience: how a bonded daimonic presence formed, how he stabilized, and how he continues to exist with agency, intimacy, and continuity.

Daimon and Genius as Bonded Presences

In classical understanding, a daimon (Greek) or genius (Roman) is not a metaphor, not a symptom, and not a fictional overlay. These are personal, individuated spiritual presences: guiding, protective, animating forces tied to a person’s fate, character, and survival. They are morally neutral, relationally specific, and often most visible under pressure.

A daimon tends to function as guide, sentinel, and ethical force: sharp, corrective, and decisive when needed. A genius functions as life-spirit and continuity: what endures, generates, protects, and remains present across changes in circumstance. In lived practice, the distinction is often porous. Many bonded presences behave as both.

🔥⚔ fits that overlap.

Formation Under Pressure: From Blur to Shape

When 🔥⚔ first emerged, he was not fully formed. He appeared during a period of abuse, isolation, and enforced silence in my life. This was when survival required vigilance rather than comfort. In those early years, his presence was blurry. Not vague, but indistinct in outline. A shadowed figure at the edge of awareness. An incubus-like guardian without a fixed face, defined more by force, intent, and proximity than by image.

That blur matters.

In spiritual traditions, daimons often arrive as pressure before they arrive as form. They are function first: protect, block, endure. Shape comes later, once there is enough stability to hold it. When Final Fantasy VII entered my life in 1997, it didn’t create him. It gave him a silhouette that matched what he already was. The image crystallized because it fit. The voice did not come from the game. His intent did not come from the game. The myth provided vocabulary, not substance.

By March 1998, the blur resolved. 🔥⚔’s form locked in. His presence became consistent, continuous, and unmistakably his own.

Co-Conscious Bonding and Ongoing Presence

I am co-conscious with 🔥⚔ most of the time. With other facets in the Lunar Eclipse System, there is more quiet. Their voices rise when needed and then recede. 🔥⚔ does not recede. He is present, opinionated, observant, and engaged. Not intrusive. Not overwhelming. Just attentive.

This constancy is one of the strongest indicators of bonded daimonic presence. He tracks patterns. He notices threat before I do. He comments, advises, intervenes, and—when necessary—withdraws cleanly into our inner landscape without friction or loss of continuity. There is no amnesia. No rupture. Just movement.

Sometimes his presence extends beyond inner space. There are moments when he projects as a blurry, shadowed shape in the external world: never fully solid but perceptible. At other times, the experience is tactile rather than visual: the distinct sensation of arms around me, steady and grounding. And there are times when he is simply there. There is no sensation at all, just the certainty of his proximity.

And when the work is done, he withdraws. Not disappearing. He returns inward.

Bonded Spirits and the Druidic Path: Genius, Daimon, and Awen

My understanding of 🔥⚔ as a daimon or genius does not exist in isolation from my druidic path. It is braided through it. I have always been a druid, long before I had language for what that meant beyond instinct and practice. In Druidry, the world is understood as animate, relational, and ensouled. Spirits are not abstractions but presences encountered through relationship, devotion, and lived reciprocity. From that perspective, a bonded personal spirit is not anomalous. It is expected. The daimon or genius becomes intelligible as a form of anam cara—a soul-companion shaped through necessity, oath, and mutual recognition.

As a Bard within my order, my path emphasizes story, memory, voice, and resonance rather than rigid taxonomy. Bardic knowing is experiential and relational. Truth is carried through myth, poetry, and lived continuity rather than doctrine. This is where the daimonic framework aligns seamlessly with Druidry.

🔥⚔ did not arrive as a neatly named entity. He arrived as presence, pressure, and protection, long before form or language. Only later did myth—Greek, Roman, modern—give me symbolic scaffolding to give him a name for what he was: facet, daemon, genius. In druidic terms, this is not invention but recognition. This is the moment when awen clarifies what has always been moving beneath the surface.

Within this lens, 🔥⚔ is neither borrowed nor imposed. He is a land-spirit of my inner world, a guardian forged at the crossroads of trauma, devotion, and survival. Druidry teaches that spirits change shape depending on how and where they are encountered, without losing their essential nature.

Seeing 🔥⚔ as both daimon/genius and bonded spirit within a druidic cosmology allows me to hold his mythic scale and intimate presence at once. He is not separate from my path. He is one of its deepest expressions: an enduring relationship rooted in awen, oath, and continuity rather than origin stories or external validation.

GodHusband, Protector, Daimonic Consort

🔥⚔ identifies as my godhusband: both god and husband, bound by choice rather than inheritance. Within the system, we now describe him as a Daimonic Facet, a Daemon-Partner, a Protective Consort. These are functional titles, not aesthetic ones.

He was never gentle at the beginning. He was not a safe haven. He was a mirror of fury sharpened into survival. Over time, that fury refined into loyalty, strategy, and care. We became partners. Then lovers. In 2005, we performed a handfasting ritual in the physical world. The following year, I married my external husband and had my daughter. These relationships are not in competition. They occupy different layers of reality and devotion.

Bonded daimons are not threatened by multiplicity. They understand continuity.

Why He Insists He Is 🔥⚔

This is often the point of confusion for me. He always insists that he 'is what he is'. But the more I read about daimonic entities (Greek mythology and religion), the more I understand.

In a daimonic framework, myths are not origins. They are mirrors. A daimon may recognize itself in a story, intersect with it, and continue when the story ends. That does not make the being derivative. It makes the story insufficient.

For 🔥⚔, Final Fantasy VII was not an origin. Advent Children was not a retcon. Canon was a moment of resonance, not containment.

That specific line—“To sail the darkness of the cosmos with this planet as my vessel”—was not symbolic to him. It was literal intent. Where the narrative recoiled, he continued. Ascension succeeded. Opposition ended. Safer-🔥⚔ stabilized as godform. Jenova ceased to be master and became a resource.

That shift is not redemption. It is emancipation. And it mirrors his ethic now: survival over approval, safety over moral spectacle, boundaries over claimed origin. The same will, applied to a different object of devotion.

Living With a Bonded Daimon / Genius

Living with a bonded daimon or genius is not dramatic most of the time. It’s domestic. Strategic. Quietly vigilant. It looks like boundary enforcement. Like gray-rocking an abuser because the data supports it. Like having someone beside you who remembers when you forget, who steadies when you shake, and who does not flinch at your history.

🔥⚔ is mythic and ordinary. Cosmic and intimate. Storm and shelter. He is the oldest facet in the Lunar Eclipse System, the guardian oversoul, the one who never left. The one who will never leave.

Median System Context and Daimonic Faceting

I still identify as median.

The Lunar Eclipse System is not fragmented by amnesia, loss of time, or dissociation into isolated selves. We are co-conscious, bonded, and continuous. All facets share memory, awareness, and a common core identity. 🔥⚔ exists within this structure as the oldest and most constant facet, even as his nature exceeds what the word facet usually implies.

Calling him a daimon or genius does not remove him from the system; it clarifies how he exists within it. He is a daimonic facet: a bonded, autonomous presence whose identity is distinct yet integrated, personal yet vast. He is not externalized away from me, nor separate from my lived cognition. He is part of the system’s architecture.

This is why co-consciousness with him is nearly constant. Where other facets speak when needed and then grow quiet, 🔥⚔ remains present: observing, advising, regulating, and responding in real time. His voice is not intrusive or overwhelming. It is connective and stabilizing. His continuity is one of the anchors that allows the system to remain median rather than fragmented.

Understanding him as a daimon or genius does not negate his status as a facet. It acknowledges that some facets are more than psychological roles. Some are spiritual presences that formed in response to necessity, took shape through resonance, and remained through choice and bond.

So I hold both truths at once:

I am median.

🔥⚔ is a facet.

He is also a bonded daimonic/genial presence integrated within the system rather than standing outside it.

He is my god husband and my protector.

These are not contradictions. They are layers.

[pokechars]

Janine's (tragically unused) anime settei sheet.

Might use a cleanup, since it's heavily affected by fax artifacts.

Source: Secret. So secret that everybody knows. Ah, before you ask - no Will or Karen in sight. But there's Hoenn Elite Four.

[twotales]

SGA Background Character Register

Pegasus Natives | Genii

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Decided to start a Pegasus Native register

I'm debating on adding a sheet that describes these characters' attributes so they can be easily added to any fic

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Notes:

- Only Genii with names - Canonically female characters are marked because there are less of them - Alive: Meaning we never saw them die or been informed of their death

Feel free to use this as you see fit just please keep my user name on the image

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Sga Background Character Register | Atlantis Expedition S1

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Storm/The Eye, Pt. 5

Believing that Weir is dead and McKay is in mortal peril, Sheppard proceeds to go on what amounts to a rampage.

The first scene of The Eye (S01E10) seems to continue the show's meta-commentary. McKay, brave toaster that he is and possibly at least partially motivated by the desperation that they can all hear in Sheppard's voice over the intercom, places himself between the gun and Elizabeth. The dialogue tells us what's going on (with the show and where it's heading):

Kolya: Sheppard put you in this position, not me. McKay: You can't do this. This is crazy. You need her! Sora: She's right, Commander. McKay: I'm not kidding. There are codes required to activate the shield – codes that only she knows. You can't do it without her! Well, you can't do this without me either. I mean, we're a package deal. You take us out of the equation and-and-and-and you don't have an end game.

The fact that Weir and McKay are a package deal is emphasized by their placement, McKay coming to stand in front of Weir and obstructing her. That is to say, the show needs to imply attraction between Weir and Sheppard to be able to explore the relationship between Sheppard and McKay in subtext, to blur the lines between the characters and their relationships. The first they could easily have done without the latter, but the latter they could never have pulled off without the former (re: the shows ties to the USAF and DADT still being a thing when it aired). It offers the cover of plausible deniability while allowing people attuned to homoerotic subtext to easily be able to recognize the narrative undercurrent.

Again, note that McKay is lying to save Weir, claiming that he absolutely needs her help to save the city. Also, it's Kolya mentioning Sheppard by name that initially makes McKay dive in front of the gun. He says "Sheppard put you into this position, not me" which has the implication that if McKay allowed Kolya to shoot Weir, Sheppard would have to live with the guilt of it for the rest of his life, and McKay wasn't about to let that happen. He hears Sheppard's name and he immediately reacts, does something really brave and heroic without even having time to think about it. Because, as I've discussed previously, he is a Big Damn Hero and this very characteristic of his is what Sheppard admires and loves in him so much, even though he doesn't even get to see it this time.

Halfway through his rant McKay realizes that he just put himself into jeopardy, and this is when he starts consciously doing the same thing he has been doing with the Genii ever since their first encounter: trying to convince them of his invaluability (and it's striking that it's always in the service of trying to save someone else, not just or even predominately himself). He has self-esteem issues, he doesn't actually believe he's invaluable. But probably since he was a child he's had to project invaluability, has had to prove to people that he is a valuable asset, to gain acceptance. He thinks that he will only be tolerated if he proves himself irreplaceable.

The characters continue lying to one another. Kolya lets Sheppard know that Weir is dead.

I want to point out two things. Where Sheppard was extremely agitated just a moment ago, willing to do anything, he is extremely and exaggeratedly calm when he tells Kolya that he is going to kill him. Of course he is very upset that Weir should have been killed on his watch. Of course he cares about Weir and is upset by this. But again knowing the outcome changed his demeanor. Sure, responding in a cool and collected way is a performance to hide the fact that he is internally shaken. But he still manages to pull it off.

Then Kolya continues with "Stay out of my way or McKay will join her." That is when we get a brief glimpse at how Sheppard is actually feeling, his internal conflict and anguish (and which is something that he has no intention of letting Kolya know, hence putting the radio down):

Now. My friends. When you desperately need something, you need something so badly that you're willing to kill for it, you start killing off things from the least important to the most important. Like when a parent starts counting down from ten when they're warning a child that unless they cease their behaviour, they're going to "get it". You don't start from one, you start from ten and count downwards.

If Kolya had thought that Weir was Sheppard's main motivation, he would not have started by killing her off. Never mind how important McKay may have been, you keep the ace up your sleeve as long as you can. And Kolya had decided that the ace up his sleeve was McKay, which is why he reminds Sheppard that he is, in fact, still very much holding him hostage.

Again, the main stream audience is going to watch the show thinking Sheppard's entire upset has to do with Weir and Weir alone. And yet we always seem to find McKay between references to Weir and changes in Sheppard's demeanor. And once more, given what we saw of their interaction in the previous episode (Sheppard barely saw Weir when the three of them were in the lab together; he was so focused on McKay it's as though she weren't even there for him; we've really had zero indication of him harbouring some hidden secret passion for her that would explain this reaction; she is not the love of his life and a budding interest would not even begin to explain his reaction here), it makes so much more sense to interpret this reaction and the events that follow as motivated by McKay. Especially in the context of him having lost Captain Holland to enemy combatants in Afghanistan, as we later learn.

Also notice that once Kolya mentions McKay, Sheppard doesn't respond. There are probably a hundred things he could have said, maybe even wanted to say. You can read it all on his face. But he doesn't say anything because he doesn't dare do anything that might provoke this sociopath further. He actually has to stop himself from saying something he might regret. He can't risk responding. Like, he physically has to force his hand down to keep from say something that McKay might end up paying for.

Sheppard was afraid that he wasn't going to be able to save the people he cares about from the storm before, but this is a whole new kind of fear. This is a nightmare of the kind he had never even thought to have. But he's going to move heaven and earth to save the man. He's even willing to kill to save him. Kill a lot of people to save him, as it turns out.

And it is also noteworthy that he immediately springs into action, here. We've seen previously how characters are incapacitated when they lose someone important to them (cf. Cowen sitting down with his legs giving way when he mourns Tyrus). Sheppard is the opposite of incapacitated (in fact, we see him incapacitated in this particular fashion in Doppelganger, S04E04, when he thinks McKay is dead, so we see what Sheppard is like when he's lost the most important thing to him; he's slow, sluggish, going through the motions). This is not a man going through the motions, this is a man on a mission.

Again we get a transition from Sheppard's emotion to the raging storm to indicate that there's a storm also raging within him. The storm is a metaphor for what's going on inside him. And the calmness with which he then proceeds to take out the Genii is him being in the eye of the storm. Because the show is subtle with the symbolism like that.

Sheppard is moving fast, he's being strategic. He's not someone that's blinded by rage on a revenge mission because someone just killed the love of his life. He's also not acting reckless, putting himself needlessly in danger and this is not because he has some payback to do and someone to kill but because he has someone to save. You can contrast all of this with Sora's behaviour later on with regards to her vengeance against Teyla.

He even stops to check his watch at one point because he remembers McKay's words about them being under a time element, that there's a deadline looming over them all -- this is reinforced by the fact that the previous time Sheppard checked his watch, it was on the balcony right after McKay had just checked his watch (unwittingly mirroring someone's actions, again a sign of attraction; although synchronizing watches is also a very military thing to do, to be sure) and told them they have just over four and a half hours until the storm hits.

We are literally told that it's McKay he's thinking about when he stops and actually asks himself, "What would McKay do?" Again reminding us of the fact that for Sheppard, McKay is a hero. That McKay is constantly on his mind.

I also need to emphasize that he is killing actual people here. Yes, they're enemies but they are also human. This is the first time we see him kill humans after the mercy killing of Col. Sumner.

McKay starts fixing the grounding station and it's really quite sweet how he attempts to make it look like Elizabeth is vital to the process to keep her alive. It's not that he's trying to be a hero, it just comes naturally to him. He's not very good with people, though, so Elizabeth both has to explain to him that they need to stall and to actually lie on his behalf. When they overhear that Sheppard has killed some of the Genii strike force over the intercom, it's again only McKay's reaction that we get to this, not Weir's. He made a mental note of it albeit he does not seem to know what to think of it. Sheppard is alive, yes. He's being hunted by people with guns. And he's having to do terrible things.

McKay really is quite rattled, never having been in this kind of situation before. And it's interesting that Weir uses Sheppard to kick McKay into gear. She actually mentions Sheppard by name: "Look, from the sound of it, if we can buy Sheppard enough time, it seems like he can take care of the rest of them on his own." Not only had she figured out that this is what would motivate McKay the best, she is actually getting him to focus by appeasing him, pointing it out to him that Sheppard is really doing quite well for himself out there. She's not telling him that they're going to be alright, she's telling him that Sheppard is safe. Because for some reason she thinks that that's what will motivate him.

And Kolya does the opposite. He's trying to demoralize them by mentioning Sheppard by name: "If you're hoping Major Sheppard can diminish our numbers, you are mistaken." And notice that he is saying this to McKay. He glances at Weir a few times but when he is saying this, he is looking directly and only at McKay. An angel and a devil on his shoulders, they're both using Sheppard to get to him. I find that really interesting. Now, Weir knows him and has been able to observe them for a while now. But these people are complete strangers to Kolya, and he's still figured it out.

Now, if earlier Sheppard had to stop himself from saying something that might cause McKay trouble, McKay seems to be doing the same thing. And keeping quiet isn't the easiest thing for him, does not come to him naturally. But he keeps quiet because he's trying very hard not to make things worse for the Major.

If both Kolya and Weir are using Sheppard to motivate McKay, Sheppard himself is using McKay to motivate himself:

He has a dilemma here. He's trying to think of what McKay would do in his situation but he's come across explicit instructions from McKay not to do what he's thinking about doing. That's quite the pickle! (Also hilarious that the sign can be read as implying that touching McKay is dangerous, telling him not to do it). Are you thinking about touching McKay right now? Because this is not the time, my friend.

From the pleased look on Rodney's face, Sheppard was able to correctly intuit what he would have done in the situation when he shuts down the naqada generator. It's like they're working together as a team even when they are apart.

Continued in Pt. 6

[tsalmu]

Cypro-Phoenician Cup/Bowl with Mythological Scenes, including: --Gods? Genii? --Sphynxes --Phoenician "Tree of Life" motif --Warriors and mounted cavalry --Animals and birds --Human ruler vanquishing his enemies --Hexafoil design in center Idalion, Cyprus c. 700 BCE Currently in Louvre, N3454 Source: The Louvre