January 2018 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

Ordinaries and Divisions and Arrangements, Oh My!

[Update, January 2024:] For the latest version of this document, see Ordinaries, Divisions, and Arrangements Revisited which includes a few additional terms.

While the language of blazon used to describe armory is filled with hundreds of specialized terms which need to be memorized individually, at its core there’s a set of basic terms that describe a matrix of related ordinaries (simple geometric charges defined by their relationship to the field), divisions (lines splitting the field or a charge into two tinctures), arrangements (placements of charges in a group), and orientations (alignments of charges in a particular direction).

Heraldic Templates

Torric inn Björn’s Heraldic Templates was published in 1992 and is, as far as I know, the earliest collection of art distributed specifically to facilitate tracing in construction of society armory.

It has fallen out of circulation and was not been available online until now. Lord Torric has recently granted permission for this material to be re-published, for which he has my sincere thanks.

Court Report, Deck The Halls of Valhalla

On the thirteenth day of January, Anno Societatis 52, their excellencies Suuder Saran and Lada Monguligin, Il-Kha’an and Il-Khatun of the Il-Khanate of Østgarđr, did progress to Deck The Halls of Valhalla, held in the Old Stone House in their canton of Brokenbridge, and therein did they hold court.

Firstly his excellency Suuder addressed the populace and thanked them for their attendance in that hall.

A Glossary of Heraldic Terms

In addition to 45 pages of traceable art, Torric inn Björn’s 1992 collection of Heraldic Templates also contains a ten-page glossary which contains many of the specialized terms used in society blazons, as well as defining the default position of many charges.

It has fallen out of circulation and was not been available online until now. Lord Torric has recently granted permission for this material to be re-published, for which he has my sincere thanks.

I have converted this document to a web-accessible format and posted it online in hopes that it may prove useful to current practitioners.