The Wind Rose That Changed
At the very beginning of this project, it started with something simple.
A wind rose.
I imagined each direction as a fae. Each petal a personality. Each wind coming from somewhere.
North felt cold. South felt warm. West, to me, was Ancient Greece — the cradle of European civilization. East was the desert.
These winds were abstract. They were not tied to any specific geography. They were the kind of universal images many of us grow up with — a shared cultural shorthand.
Then, while researching, I stumbled upon an old Mediterranean wind map — with ancient names of winds, each assigned to a precise direction, each connected to a place, a climate, a temperament.
And suddenly everything shifted.
Those winds were not symbolic arrows. They were geographical.
For the Greeks and Romans, each wind came from somewhere real — over mountains, across seas, from deserts or cold lands. Their weather, agriculture, and daily life depended on them.
So I went deeper.
And I began reading about winds in Israel.
There, I discovered something even more striking: orientation itself was different.
West was the sea — and it was often perceived as “behind.” East was “forward.” In some traditional layouts, west appears visually below, because the sea defined the reference point.
And the eastern wind was not poetic — it was feared. It carried desert heat in summer and cutting cold in winter. It could scorch crops and change entire seasons.
These were not decorative directions.
They were lived realities.
My first wind fae belonged to a modern, abstract map. But wind is never abstract.
It is local. It is physical. It belongs to terrain.
So those early fae will remain in the drawer.
They were necessary.
But the wind rose had to change.
