Vila

Symbols

Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.

• Hair bears image-domain Hair denotes vitality and the state of the head it grows from, ordered or wild, shorn in renunciation, and red for ardour and suspicion alike.
  why

  She is typically described as a beautiful young woman with long, flowing hair, often blonde or wearing a white gown, who dwells in forests, mountains, clouds, or near lakes, springs, and rivers.

• Swan is The swan denotes a union of air and water, opposites, solar life, purity, poetry, fertility, and spiritual breath; heraldry uses it decoratively.
  why

  Vile are consistently described as skilled shape-shifters, able to take the form of a swan, a horse, a wolf, a falcon, or a whirlwind, and some tellings hold that a Vila can be captured or bound by stealing her wings, veil, or a lock of her hair while she bathes or dances, a motif shared with swan-maiden tales found elsewhere in Europe.

• Veil bears image-domain The veil denotes what conceals and thereby marks as sacred, guarding a face, a truth or a deity, and figuring appearance that hides the real.
  why

  Vile are consistently described as skilled shape-shifters, able to take the form of a swan, a horse, a wolf, a falcon, or a whirlwind, and some tellings hold that a Vila can be captured or bound by stealing her wings, veil, or a lock of her hair while she bathes or dances, a motif shared with swan-maiden tales found elsewhere in Europe.

• White bears image-domain White denotes the blank that precedes and harbours colour, worn for baptism, spring and weddings, and at the other end signalling bloodlessness, infirmity and erasure.
  why

  She is typically described as a beautiful young woman with long, flowing hair, often blonde or wearing a white gown, who dwells in forests, mountains, clouds, or near lakes, springs, and rivers.

• woman is Woman denotes a complex feminine principle linked to moon, earth, water, instinct, nourishment, protection, and destruction; folklore also embeds patriarchal creation anxieties.
  why

  She is typically described as a beautiful young woman with long, flowing hair, often blonde or wearing a white gown, who dwells in forests, mountains, clouds, or near lakes, springs, and rivers.