Sylphs

Sylphs are elemental spirits of air. Their name comes from the Greek silphe, meaning "butterfly" or "moth." They often appear as bird-winged faeries and according to mythology, tend to shy away from humans, preferring to live alone on remote mountaintops, where they can fly with the birds. They tend to be mercurial loners. As a guide, they help us find inspiration and creativity.

Sylphs are beings of wide-open spaces and the air. Sometimes they are depicted as cloud beings. Sylphs are responsible for the myths of "angels", the winged protectors of the Garden of Eden. Their attitudes embody the extremes of nature, mercurial and intense. Most of all, they defend the high peaks and wilderness mountains that are their home. They are believed to be an offshoot branch of the sidhe, winged rulers of the Dreaming, controllers of the weather and the great birds of the mountains.

They care little for the machinations and politics of "ground folk", and they rarely interfere with changeling society. Like trolls, sylphs hold their word of honor to be inviolate, and once sworn to protect something, they will defend it to (or even past) their death.

Sylphs look like white balls of light, darting around the sky rapidly unless they are involved in a creation, in which case they will remain in place for a while. One must learn to distinguish between the sylphs and the communications balls that the mountains and clouds and so on use to communicate with one another. The key is in the emotional content of each, as usual. The sylph is itself a Being, while the the white communications balls are devices sent between one Being and another. Also, communications balls are usually slower moving than the observable activites of sylphs.

Some cridit the desgins, shapes, and images that we often see formed within the clouds as being the artwork and creatuon of the sylphs.