Located in Northwest Europe, where eighty-six percent of my DNA rests beneath its ancient soil, there lies Edian. The word itself divides like land into purpose—the ian and the nai. The ian are the garden beds: bordered, deliberate, the places where life unfurls—rooting, sprouting, ripening, and returning. Within these beds, the cycle breathes. Surrounding them, the nai emerges—not as emptiness, but as the still geometry of restraint. Formed by red brick paths tracing an X between beds, it is neither decay nor bloom, but pause—the sacred rhythm that gives motion its meaning. As in French intensive gardening, where boundaries increase abundance, so too does Edian’s order mirror a higher one. The ian is what grows; the nai is what holds. And through it all, one truth endures: Lamedh ad verum ethos nos ducit — The staff leads us to the true ethos. The garden is no metaphor; it is covenant and compass, a living architecture of trust.

In Edian, the ian forms the bed—the fertile nine, drawn like the curve of November. November, the ninth month by ancient reckoning, is the time of late harvest and quiet reckoning. It is here, within form, that life takes place—rooted, deliberate, sacred. Surrounding it, the nai stands as ten—drawn as an X, the Roman numeral for December. It marks the end and the beginning, the resting place between acts. The red brick paths, like arteries of pause, give shape to what grows. They are not death, but breath between cycles. Together, ian (9) and nai (10) embody the Archer—Sagittarius—who lives in motion yet aims with precision. The zodiac spans them both: November’s inward flame and December’s outward dawn. Growth and stillness, aim and release, all held in the bow’s arc of truth. The garden is a covenant. The path is a vow. Within this design lies a map—of time, of self, of trust.

The suffix “-ian” means of, belonging to, connected with. It names the ones who come from somewhere, who continue something. In surnames, it marks the lineage: the son of. As a given name, Ian is Scottish from the Hebrew Yohanan—“God is gracious.” Shane, too, is born of Seán—another child of Yohanan. Both speak of grace, both whisper of gift. And Edian—the name—carries older tongues still: In Hebrew, “decoration for God.” In Celtic and Arabic roots, “strong,” “time,” “little fire.” Thus Edian becomes not a place alone, but a convergence of meanings: belonging, grace, strength, and flame. Even in the written word, form mirrors cosmos— the b in -berian rising above the baseline like an ascendant star. And so in astrology, the ascendant—the rising sign—is the mask through which the soul meets the world. Mine is Leo—the radiant center. And my middle name, Jonathan, my inner sun. Together they complete the signature: Grace in form. Fire in truth.

Long ago, royalty learned to plant. They bent their jeweled knees to soil, in silence, in reversal. It was said: one must stand with their back to the sun—the ancestor—while another kneels to plant the seed—the heir. No witness was permitted. For none were meant to know before whom royalty knelt. Between them fell the shadow— not as symbol of dominance, but of continuity, the transmission of ethos. In my family, that lineage ran deep. All were of royal blood, but the true inheritance was humility: the act of tending what one cannot own. The standing figure bore the aperture—ɘ, the ear turned toward heaven. The kneeling one mirrored it as e, the ear turned toward earth. Between them—between sky and soil—passed the eternal dialogue: ethos and lamedh, listening and sowing. Here lies the divine geometry of understanding— where the celestial and the terrestrial meet, and truth takes root again.