Symbols of Chaos the Arrows of Chaos… and Others

Ant’s Old HomePage Symbols of Chaos ⇧ About Ant ⇧ Favourite Things The arrows of chaos… and others ⇧ Elric of Melniboné ⇧ The Multiverse and the Eternal Champion ⇧ Symbols of Chaos In Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion stories, the symbol of Chaos comprises eight arrows in a radial pattern. (In contrast, the symbol of Law is a single upright arrow.) Moorcockian (eight arrows) It is also called – sometimes by Mike, sometimes by others – the Chaos symbol, the Equal arms (45° arms of Chaos, the arrows of Chaos, and the Chaos star (sometimes written rotational Chasostar). symmetry) Unequal arms (90° or 180° Moorcock conceived this symbol while writing the first Elric of Melniboné stories in rotational the early 1960s. symmetry) Unequal arms The origin of the Chaos Symbol was me doodling sitting at the kitchen table and wondering what to (bilateral tell Jim Cawthorn the arms of Chaos looked like. I drew a straightforward geographical quadrant symmetry) Unequal arms (no (which often has arrows, too!) – N, S, E, W – and then added another four directions and that was symmetry) that – eight arrows representing all possibilities, one arrow representing the single, certain road of Spiral Law. I have since been told to my face that it is an "ancient symbol of Chaos" and if it is then it Fewer than eight confirms a lot of theories about the race mind. … As far as I know the symbol, drawn by Jim arrows Six Cawthorn, first appeared on an Elric cover of Science Fantasy in 1962, then later appeared in his Four (8 × ½!) first comic version of Stormbringer done by Savoy. Three Two: “The Hand It was subsequently adopted into the pop-cultural mainstream, turning up in such diverse places as modern of Eris” occult traditions and role-playing games. Chaos… that is, more than one chao The symbol’s first appearance in a commercial RPG was in TSR’s Dungeons & Other chaos symbols Dragons supplement, Deities & Demigods which included the gods, monsters, and heroes from Moorcock’s Elric books as one of 17 mythological and fictional “pantheons”. The symbol can be seen in Jeff Dee’s fine drawing of Arioch.

It then turned up quite naturally in Chaosium’s Stormbringer RPG. The 1987 edition of Stormbringer was published jointly by Chaosium in the U.S. and Games Workshop (GW) in the UK.

Moorcock’s eight-arrow symbol of Chaos was subsequently arrogated by GW and became a frequent graphic element in their own Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 games and the related miniature figures.

Their copyrights page says:

… which is something that Moorcock’s lawyers might dispute.

But Mike himself is quite sanguine about this:

I could have trademarked it at some point, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want to. Games Workshop’s lifting from me and Tolkien might have introduced new readers, but it’s still irritating! However, there’s a certain satisfaction of having added a few bits and pieces to the common culture to the extent that people actually don’t know the origins of stuff and ideas they now use casually. None of that bothers me. … It’s a very strange feeling to have ideas which you regard as your individual ideas become part of the common culture.

There are a number of traditional symbols that have the same geometrical pattern as Moorcock’s symbol of Chaos – for example the Dharma wheel, the Star of Ishtar, the Wheel of Life (or Wheel of the Teaching), or the Wheel of the year (or Sun Cross).

But Moorcock was the first to make explicit the association between a star of eight arrows and Chaos. And, as he says, the arrows of chaos symbol has now become part of the common culture. There’s a huge variety of symbols that are derived from Mike’s original – and here I’ve done a very unchaotic thing by creating a taxonomy for the different variations! (There are other symbols that also have an association with Chaos, and I’ve included those here too.)

Moorcockian (eight arrows)

Equal arms (45° rotational symmetry)

These are examples of the simplest design: eight arrows of equal length, arranged symmetrically. My Arioch “banner” (near right) introduces some asymmetry by varying the arrowheads, but it’s essentially of this type.

A simple variation is to add a ring.

The arms may be erased within the ring…

… or the ring filled in to form a disc (or – in the example on the far right – an octagon!).

Another variation is to overlay the simple design with another image.

Unequal arms (90° or 180° rotational symmetry)

In this class the alternate arms are shorter and thinner. It’s common for the longer, broader arms to be vertical and horizontal, so the whole symbol fits more or less within a diamond, but you might also see “square” variants. This symbol (near right) was used in a series of advertisements for Hewlett-Packard at London Heathrow Airport. The ads featured a series of figures illustrating various benefits of “change”; the caption for this figure was, “Change is potential”.

The symbol on the brooch on this bust of Loki is hard to see; I’ve redrawn it (far right) from a pencil sketch from the real thing. It’s unusual in that the broader arrows aren’t rectilinear, but it exhibits the same symmetry as others of this type.

The arrows may emerge from a hollow ring…

… or the ring may include the arms, with the shorter arrows towards the inside of the ring and the longer towards the outside. Either set of arrowheads, or both, may lay across the ring.

The design may be overlayed by a disc. Note the design by “Razorslave” (near right), where the symbols have been distorted by stretching them vertically or horizontally.

And, as before, you can overlay the simple design (which may be distorted) with another image…

… or enclose another image within a ring…

… or put it on a disc.

Unequal arms (bilateral symmetry)

Why should a symbol of chaos be symmetric? These variants display only bilateral symmetry. This type works well as a heraldic device on a traditional iron-shaped shield.

Unequal arms (no symmetry)

Then we can dispense with even bilateral symmetry. Moorcock says:

My favourite representation is Walter Simonson’s, which he first did in the Multiverse comic. It’s an asymmetrical version. Spiral

This is a final, rare variant of the eight-armed symbol.

Fewer than eight arrows

Six

Sometimes you’ll see the “chaos arrows” with only six arms…

Four (8 × ½!)

… or four…

Three

… or only three!

This is – ostensibly – an Icelandic chaos arrow pendant.

Two: “The Hand of Eris”

“This design is one of the many strange revelations of Malaclypse the Younger. The crescent shapes are often mistaken for devil horns or some sort of triple goddess thing, but we all know that there is nothing Satanic or Wiccan about Discordianism. ” Chaos… that is, more than one chao

The word Chao (pronounced “cow”) was coined as the singular of chaos. In the Discordian religion the chao is a symbol of the pataphysical nature of reality; singular instances of chaos being at the center of pataphysical theory.

The Sacred Chao resembles a yin-yang symbol, but according to Principia Discordia―

[It] is not the Yin-Yang of the Taoists. It is the Hodge-Podge of the Erisians. And, instead of a Podge spot on the Hodge side, it has a pentagon which symbolizes the Aneristic Principle [apparent order], and instead of a Hodge spot on the Podge side, it depicts the Golden Apple of Discordia to symbolize the Eristic Principle [apparent disorder].

The Golden Apple of Discordia, of course, is the one at the root of the Trojan War.

Other chaos symbols

Finally, two “unclassifiable” “symbols”: the chaos rune from the Runequest FRPG and the Chinese (Pinyin) characters for chaos (hun2 dun4).

The moral and legal rights of the artists are freely acknowledged

Last updated Thursday 1 March 2007 – Copyleft & Creative Commons (cc) 2004–2007 Ant – Disclaimer URL: http://homepage.mac.com/antallan/chaos.html