Zompist Bboard Again

In the article on Mešaism there is a line thus:

In the early days the Wede:i gods had totems, and the Ezičimi gods elements; the fused gods had both.

Further up the page there is a list of the major deities, all of whom are assigned (naturally) a specific element alongside their totem animal. What is curious, however, is that while the four standard classical elements and four of the seven best-known metals are represented, a) copper (at the very least) is missing, and b) gemstones such as diamonds and emeralds--known from India and Egypt respectively--are given prominence. Now, it’s understandable that perhaps the Ezičimi would have known about gold and silver, and could possibly have learned about ironworking from the Wede:i--but why not copper, from the bronze-working they surely had at the time instead of the iron that the Cuzeians to the north only started working some 350 years later? Or perhaps there was a copper deity, but they were discarded by the whims of religious politics in Xengiman? And what of the gemstones? Given their relative scarcity in early post-Neolithic Earth societies--especially nomadic ones--how did it come to be that they could be assigned to the gods of a pastoral people, even one that expanded so quickly and had such trade with the more advanced civilizations to the north and south? Perhaps they originally were associated with other stones, or even with more classical elements, and their elemental connections were slowly subverted?
Just a small query, nothing too big one hopes.

The list is classical, thus a thousand years or more from the times when the Ezičimi were nomads. So there was very likely change over time. Also compare the list of city gods: gods went in and out of fashion. Very likely there was a copper god who got less popular. Or perhaps (say) Hírumor was associated with malachite, but with emeralds when those were better known.

Eh, fair.
So how would the nomads have used the elements in combination with the deities before the fusion, do you reckon? The magic system seems to rely on a fusion of the element and the totem animal; would there have been similar beliefs among the Ezičimi (that the raw elements provided powers, like in the Mistborn Trilogy), or was that purely a Wede:i-Axunemi fusion thing? Is there anything of note in the earliest works (the ones listed as being about family exploits and prayers to the gods), or were all of those destroyed when the Gelyet came along?

Ezičimi religion was family-based, so there wasn't as much elaboration of magic. The elements were key to thinking about the gods: imagining their nature, finding pointers to their presence, decorating their shrines, doing rituals and magic. There were likely to be half-crazy lone 'priests' with their own rites and gods, similar to the Cadhinorian godspeakers, resorted to when you needed some serious spells cast or diseases healed, but there was no documentation of their methods or recipes, except when they got incorporated into some family's rites.

(I should maybe clarify that the elements didn't actually have magical powers... magic works on Almea, but not that way.)

zompist wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 6:01 pm Ezičimi religion was family-based, so there wasn't as much elaboration of magic. The elements were key to thinking about the gods: imagining their nature, finding pointers to their presence, decorating their shrines, doing rituals and magic. There were likely to be half-crazy lone 'priests' with their own rites and gods, similar to the Cadhinorian godspeakers, resorted to when you needed some serious spells cast or diseases healed, but there was no documentation of their methods or recipes, except when they got incorporated into some family's rites.

(I should maybe clarify that the elements didn't actually have magical powers... magic works on Almea, but not that way.)

Seems reasonable enough.
(No worries, I remember...)