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Symbols of chaos

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A range of “symbol of chaos” design templates, showing different ways of constructing chaos stars, as seen amongst different artists’ renderings. (See www.deviantart.com/deviantalla….) The jigsaw piece represents any graphical element — an eye, a skull, and so on.

The eight-pointed symbol of chaos was originally devised by Michael Moorcock for his Elric of Melniboné stories. He says —

“The origin of the Chaos Symbol was me doodling sitting at the kitchen table and wondering what to tell Jim Cawthorn the arms of Chaos looked like. I drew a straightforward geographical quadrant (which often has arrows, too!) – N, S, E, W – and then added another four directions and that was that – eight arrows representing all possibilities, one arrow representing the single, certain road of Law. I have since been told to my face that it is an ‘ancient symbol of Chaos’ and if it is then it confirms a lot of theories about the race mind. … As far as I know the symbol, drawn by Jim Cawthorn, first appeared on an Elric cover of Science Fantasy in 1962, then later appeared in his first comic version of Stormbringer done by Savoy.”

It is also called – sometimes by Mike, sometimes by others – the chaos symbol, the arms of chaos, the arrows of chaos, and the chaos star.

The symbol of chaos was subsequently arrogated by Games Workshop and became a frequent graphic element in their own Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 games and the related miniature figures.

(These images originally date from about 2004 and were drawn using OmniGraffle.)

See also: Arioch’s and Pyaray’s banners!
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