National symbology of Aethodia

This article explains the official symbols of the Technocratic Republic of Aethodia.

This article was current as of July 2022.

Words

Motto

"Innovation, Industry, Integrity" has been the national motto of Aethodia since foundation, in one form or another. These words were intended to capture the focus of the project: innovative solutions, hard work, and honesty. These words are now mostly of historical interest – the national tagline is more-common these days.

Note that the ordering of the words is significant: it is traditional in Aethodia for the most-important item to come first, and the least-important item to go in the middle (This has been true since the time of foundation, and has its origins in Swena's awareness of the Serial Position Effect.)

Here's how the motto has changed over time:

• At the beginning of the Foundational Era, the motto was in somewhat agrammatical Latin: Sinceritas, Industrius, et Sollertia ("Sinceritas, Industria, Innovatioque" would have been better.). This Latin motto was ceremonially written in Milic Runes.

• From the middle of the Foundational Era through the Transitional Era, the motto was in English, and a couple words were different: "Innovativeness, Industriousness, Resourcefulness".

• Some time around the end of the Transitional Era or the beginning of the Maturational Era, the English motto became "Innovation, Industry, Integrity".

• From the middle of the Maturational Era, the motto has been in Aethodian: ŋyɔ́u fa , núh dri , té kri.

Tagline

The national tagline is "Rethink Everything.". This was adopted in the middle of the Maturational Era and intended to, as succinctly as possible, summarize the goals, scope, and operations of "New" Theodia (Aethodia from the middle of the Transitional Era).

The tagline was adopted much later in Aethodia's history than the motto. It was originally inteded to be its replacement; but it was eventually decided to keep both, in different capacities.

Anthem

The national anthem is a custom remix of the anthems for Golden Sun: Broken Seal and Dark Dawn. The Golden Sun series was extremely influential on young Swena's life (It catalyzed Swena's introduction to the occult.), and se wanted to honour it somehow in ser micronation.

Emblems

Hex-Cog

The Hex-Cog
of the 4th nat'l flag

The iconic Hex-Cog (aka, the "Snowflake") of Aethodia was designed in 2012, with citizen input. Swena chose to base the design on a hexagon, to represent optimality – the hexagon is the largest tileable regular polygon, it tiles like a circle, it's a good approximation of a circle, and it's one of two possible regular cross-sections of a cube, which is itself a perfect representation of 3 spatial dimensions. The hexagonal shape corresponds to "innovation" in the national motto.

Sakio suggested adding spokes to the hexagon, to make it into a cog. Swena loved that idea, and immediately implemented it. The cog was to represent "industriousness", one of the components of the national motto. Unbeknownst to Swena at the time, Sakio's idea to add spokes was probably inspired by the Empire's logo in Star Wars – Sakio is an avid Star Wars fan.

A cube was then added to the interior of the cog. This cube has been represented by a simple hexagon on every national flag after the 3rd one, with the notable exceptions of the 6th and 8th flags, where it is missing entirely.

The hexagon is vertical rather than horizontal because Swena found it more aesthetic and figured it would be more sattvik.

Nordic Cross

The Nordic Cross
of the 2nd nat'l flag

The Nordic Cross was chosen at Aethodia's foundation in 2010 to represent the country's Scandinavian/Germanic heritage.

In the 2nd national flag, the cross's spokes are slightly offset in order to make the flag appear to be warped in a clockwise direction, since clockwise is considered sattvik (Swena was, at that time, interested in aspects of Hinduism such as the Triguṇa; and this influenced national symbology.).

Colours

Current

Aethodia's current colour-scheme

White

The white in the flag represents brilliance and hope. It corresponds to "integrity" in the national motto.

Magenta

300° magenta was chosen as the primary colour of the eighth national flag, because it is the only colour that is purely emergent – it cannot be created with just a single wavelength of light. Instead, one must combine red and blue in relatively balanced quantities. Red and blue are at completely opposite ends of the visible spectrum; their coming together to emerge something truly novel is intended to symbolize Aethodian radical centrism. Not only is the hue of the flag's magenta a mixture of two extremes, but its lightness is too – it's perceptually midway between white and black in the CIELAB colourspace. It corresponds to the national tagline, "rethink everything".

Historical

The 6th nat'l flag had more colours than any other

Violet/Purple

Violet was the primary colour of the first national flag. Swena had always liked the colours of Byzantium in the game Medieval II: Total War, and had used the purple+white combination on several projects even before Aethodia. By the time Theodia was founded, it was Swena's go-to colour combo for flags.

The national flag changed colours from violet in 2011. The 6th and 7th national flags returned to violet in an effort to reclaim something that made Theodia unique: no macronation has violet/purple/magenta/etc in its national flag.

Orange/Gold/Yellow

Orange was the primary colour of Theodia's second national flag. This was precipitated by the founder's foray into Indopaganism, and particularly ser interest in the Triguṇa. The SSRF taught that violet was a tamasik colour, and Swena wanted Theodia to be represented by something sattvik. At the time the second flag was chosen, Theodia had just come out of its first bout of inactivity, and Swena wanted to declare the country "reborn" into a golden age. To symbolize that, Swena chose to make the national flag a mixture of orange and yellow – colours which average out to gold.

Gold was used again in the 6th national flag – both to hearken unto days past, and because Swena had always thought that purple and yellow looked nice next to each other, even in early elementary school.

Azure/Cerulean

In 2012, the primary colour of Theodia's national flag changed to azure. Azure was chosen because Swena liked the colour, and because blue is often cited as the most popular colour in the world. It is also considered sattvik by the SSRF.

The 4th national flag specifically used the UN's shade of blue, in a gesture to show Theodia as willing to accept international standards when they make sense.

Flag dimensions

The dimensions of Aethodia's various national flags have varied quite a lot over the years. The first two flags both had a 3:2 aspect ratio for no particular reason. Starting with the third flag and continuing until the seventh flag, the aspect ratio was 16:9, the compromise ratio made for TV and computer screens. The eighth and current flag bucked this trend, and has a relatively bizarre aspect ratio of 4.3:2.5 (very close to 7:4), which was determined by the designs on the flag, rather than per any external criteria.

The first four national flags were horizontal; but since the fifth, every flag has been vertical (and so has an inverted aspect ratio). The main reason for the change, was to allow the flag to display better in conditions of low wind.

Heraldric achievement

Aethodia's heraldric achievement was designed per purely aesthetic criteria in 2011. It is always updated alongside the national flag.

There have been efforts to redesign this achievement, but none have yet come to fruition.

The blazon for the current coat of arms is: "On a honeycomb purpure: a honeycomb embattled pointed argent; therein, a honeycomb purpure; around all, a bordure argent.".