foolsguinea:

My Cognizance (maybe):

(composed 31 March 2000; revised April 5, April 22)

I'm thinking again of joining the Society for Creative Anachronism.  I have a device I've drawn up which I'd like to register as my "cognizance"--a device which signifies my SCA persona, & which, if I ever get an Award of Arms in the SCA, will be my (or, properly, my persona's) coat of arms.  Here's a little about my possible heraldic device.

All designs here (except the sun from the Vocabulaire-Atlas Héraldique, which I got from www.heraldica.org, and is noted as such) are my own.

[Notes on heraldic descriptions:
1:  I'm unsure of the best phrasing on a couple of blazonings, so please bear with me.
2:  I'm using the SCA style, which capitalizes or--meaning gold--as Or.   This is normal in the Society, but not, to my knowledge, practiced elsewhere.]

I'd had one idea which centered around what I've come to call my "sunflower" (seen below left).  I may still use this as my badge, 'cos it's kind of cool.  It may variously represent a solar eclipse, a cannonball surrounded by flame, a sunflower (natch), or the pupil and whorls of a human being with golden-whorled eyes--like me.   (Such eyes are sometimes called "golden eyes," or, erroneously, "hazel.")

Heraldically, it's more or less "a pellet en soleil"--a cannonball with the rays of the sun issuing from it.  But inasmuch as I've drawn it with all the rays squiggly (rayonny) and it seems the sun (as seen above right) is commonly drawn with alternating straight and squiggly rays, maybe I should say "a pellet ensorceled* rayonny Or" or something of the kind.  I'm not sure.  Of course, I could change it to the alternating rays, too. *(Ensorceled?  Where'd I get that?  I mean something like "fimbriated."  Is "ensorceled" even a heraldic term?)

Anyway, I had the idea of having a device inspired by my eyes--which are sort of grayish aqua with yellow whorls.  The primary charge would be the sunflower (in some form), and the field would be--well, neither gray nor aqua/cyan is a heraldic tincture,* so--green?  blue? vair (squirrel fur)?   Well, I thought maybe vair, which is usually represented as alternating patches of silver (or white) and blue (or blue-grey).  But when I drew this up (see below), it seemed too white--too light overall.  *(Since I wrote this, I was looking at a copy of Woodward's A Treatise on Heraldry: British and Foreign, and noticed that the plates represent "azure"--which is usually considered "blue"--in a decidedly cyan ink.  Of course, the English conception of "blue" is rather fuzzily broad, often encompassing a range of hues from cyan to indigo.  Maybe I should consider my eyes azure after all.)

Vair, a pellet en soleil

Besides, I came up with something I liked better.  I was looking in a book on heraldry and saw something that gave me an idea.  I played around with that idea until I hit this:  Party per bend sinister wavy, bendy sinister wavy vert and Or, and sable, in sinister base a roundel bendy sinister wavy vert and Or.  Which see here:

Party per bend sinister wavy, bendy sinister wavy vert & Or, & sable, in sinister base a roundel bendy sinister wavy vert and Or.

The wavy lines are a variation on the typical "water" pattern in heraldry: barry wavy azure and argent, which is in plain English horizontal wavy lines alternating blue and silver (or white).  The roundel--disk--in this device is a variation on the heraldic fountain, which is a disk with that pattern.  Mine is tinted yellow/gold overall, rendering it green and gold, and turned to parallel the similar lines above it--thus one half of the field is echoed in the charge.  Why bendy sinister (lines running from left shoulder to right hip)?  'Cos I like it that way.  OK?

Okay, so I came up with the above design, and liked it so much that I thought if I ever had opportunity to register arms in my own name ("mundanely," as we'd say in the SCA), I would want to use that pattern.   It's simple, classic enough for the SCA*, but has a cool, unconventional look that seems at least as Twentieth Century as Fifteenth Century.

*Or so I had hoped when I wrote this, based on rules I'd read on SCA-related webpages.  Since then, I've been looking at Woodward's Treatise on Heraldry, and discussing this online with some people, and I find that medieval coats of arms were typically brutally simple to blazon.  ("Gules, flaunches ermine" could be an entire blazon.)  I think my device is distinctive, recognizable, and doesn't look like it was cobbled together out of previously existent arms.  But it isn't that simple.  Simple enough to the eye, yes; but not by a standard concerned with ease of description.  And no, I don't really think it looks "medieval."

But then I got to thinking about things: like how SCA arms, being registered in the name of a fictitious "persona," would not be my own to use outside the SCA, nor to pass on to any children I might have (not that there is any possibility of a Yank like me having mundane arms in a strict sense); and how much I still liked that "sunflower" badge, and wanted to use it in some way.  This line of thought led to the idea of having two forms: one for my own real self--for whatever purposes--and one for my SCA persona.  One form would be a modified version of the original form, incorporating the sunflower design into my device.  Here's one likely way: 

This would be blazoned something like this:  Party per bend sinister wavy, bendy sinister wavy vert and Or, and sable, in sinister base a roundel bendy sinister wavy vert and Or, in fess point a demi-pellet en soleil bendwise sinister reversed issuant from ... the partition?  This is where it breaks down.

OK, if the first one was possibly passable, even with (a) a field division within another field division and (b) a charge decidedly off-center, this one is decidedly freaky.  I now expect that this will not fly in the SCA.  Which is OK, as I can try to use the simpler one.

Or is it OK?  This is one of those things that get me thinking.  The whole pretentious fake-identity and costume thing appeals to me, as does the imaginary geography.  But my ideas about some things are perhaps a bit more modern, somehow.  For example, I was decidedly leery of trying to register a device that was too simple--not just because someone else might have it, but because I didn't feel right taking it.  And I did want something visually more complex.  This clash between my tastes and the SCA's focus goes beyond heraldry.   The SCA can be, if one wants to really get into it, a lot of work--more than I want to put into a recreational lark; and I'm not sure how much I like an organization that glorifies--well, the Dark Ages, pretty much.

I mean, come on!  Mead?

Oh, well, that's where things stand right now.

There, aren't you bored stiff?