Faery Craft: Weaving Connections with the Enchanted Realm (3 page)

Take my hand as I lead you through the pages of this book. Let us adventure together, discovering our own unique gifts and strengths that we can bring to the world of Faery, working together with our Faery cousins to build bridges between our worlds so that we need no longer dwell in the damaging and painful illusion of disconnection.

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild,
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand…”

W. B. Yeats, “The Stolen Child”

[contents]

chapter one
Knowledge

W
e begin our journey into Faery in the direction of east, the element of air, and the quality of knowledge. Within the Western Mystery tradition, which has been highly influential in most modern esoteric teachings, the element of air is associated with logic, law, and the mental realm. This led clearly to my choice of knowledge as being the quality to be associated with this direction and element.

In order to be able to better understand your experiences as you progress through the book, it is essential to have some background knowledge on the subject. This will mean that you are building on a strong foundation, enabling you to place any experiences into context and equipping you with the necessary tools of interpretation and discrimination. It also helps prevent making easy yet critical mistakes due to simply not knowing any better! If early time is spent in dedication to learning as much as possible about Faery lore and history, as well as the traditions of the land around you, then this knowledge has time to properly grow within you like a seed, as you nourish it with the spiritual work of the successive chapters.

In this chapter we will cover the origins and nature of Faery, the concept of hierarchy, the darker side of Faery, basic etiquette, Faery beasts, and important symbols that are connected with the Faery realm.

The Origins and Nature of Faery

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born, its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.”

J. M. Barrie,
Peter Pan and Wendy

Unlike the fairies of J. M. Barrie’s Neverland, we do not need to believe in Faery beings in order for them to exist, any more than we need to believe in the postman to receive our mail. But even those of us with close connections to the elusive Faery realm can find it difficult to explain exactly who they are, for their origins are as mysterious as their destiny, which is inextricably tied to our own.

As definitions and understandings grow and change over the years, the term Faery has come to cover a vast variety of beings. In many ways, the more you learn, the more confusing it becomes, as the lines between faeries, gods, angels, elementals, ghosts, and other spirits become very blurred, if indeed those lines exist at all in some cases. We can expand our understanding by looking at myth and folklore. It is then up to individuals to find, through their own experiential and intellectual exploration, their own insights, the grain of original truth that formed the pearl of myth.

Nature Spirits

“They were not the same as nature spirits, though they were allied to them. They were a race apart, with their own laws and rulers, their own ambitions and occupations, marriages, births and even, at long last, deaths.”

Christina Hole,
English Folklore

As explained in the introduction, the term Faery has become, in recent years, an umbrella term for many different classes of beings, though they were more distinctly divided in the past. This, allied with the wide availability of works founded on fancy rather than experience or research, may lead to some confusion. The modern interpretation of Faery beings is that they are first and foremost nature spirits—that is, the spirits of trees, plants, rivers, and the spirits of place. Perhaps that is because it is these beings who most call out for our attention at this time of environmental crisis, and forming a connection with these beings certainly forms the basis of most Faery work, as indeed it does in this book.

However, if you look into older teachings and folklore, which are the only real written sources we have at our disposal, we can see that there is a distinct race, or perhaps several races, of beings whose existence is clearly connected to, yet independent of, the land. Activities such as stealing babies and kidnapping midwives to look after them, or even stealing away young women for breeding purposes, speak of a dwindling race living out of time, who have, in the past, mixed their blood with ours to keep them from extinction. Are such stories simply propaganda on the part of a church wishing to keep the powers of the otherworld as something to be feared? It becomes very difficult to know for certain. The Faery race (or races) was always considered to be made up of powerful beings who were often to be feared, especially if crossed in any way. Throughout the old tales it is clear that they have lives and a culture that is distinct and comparable with our own, with marriages, births, and funerals. Though it has been suggested that these may be simple mockeries or reflections of our civilization, there seems to be more depth to it than that—some subtle and intrinsic connection with our own lives and events. Through my own otherworldly contacts, I have experienced events that reflect our own customs, but with a very distinct cultural identity of their own. Thus it may be inaccurate terminology to refer to the Faery race as nature spirits, yet they are inhabitants and guardians of the inner landscape of our world, just as we are of the outer landscape, no matter what poor a job we make of our guardianship.

Nature spirits are an extremely important part of Faery work. We may see them as a point of mutual interaction and responsibility between ourselves and the Faery race—and, through them, the world soul, a relationship in which we are currently out of balance. Nature spirits may be found in all traditions around the world, reflecting the nature of the varying landscapes that they inhabit. In the Hindu tradition they are known as Vidyeshvaras, the guardians of the living world. In ancient Greece the legends are full of nymphs, dryads, and satyrs, who often mix and interbreed both with humans and gods. Native cultures around the world have a close relationship with the spirits of their land and a deep awareness of the mutual need for that connection.

It is worth noting that the wilder and more inhospitable to human life the landscape is, the stronger and potentially more dangerous the spirits of that place will be. Hence in mountainous regions you will find great tall beings and races of giants, but in mostly domesticated and inhabited areas, the nature spirits can seem much gentler and smaller, unless there is an underlying power to the place that remains.

Even when experienced in connecting with the spirits of the land, it can take some adjustment when travelling—normally a few days spent in an unfamiliar or ancestrally alien landscape—to make the energetic shift necessary to perceive them, but they are always there. To connect with the living energies of the world around us, from the tiniest flower to the greatest continent, is to live in harmony with our Faery cousins and experience a deeper understanding of the world and its needs. Since the realm of Faery is so all-encompassing and fluid in its nature, it is difficult and confusing to dwell too much on terminology, but it is beneficial to reach the understanding that not all beings that we think of as being Faery have the same natures, powers, or origins. As with any experience of Faery, if we try to grasp it too tightly, our understanding may slip away. Certainly the closer you look, the more blurred any dividing lines become between faeries, nature spirits, elementals, spirits of place, and even the ancient gods.

Julia Jeffrey, “Queen of the Skies”

Ancient Gods

“The earlier Celtic Gods and Goddesses are better represented among the fairies. Morgan le Fay is generally considered to descend from Morrigan, the War Goddess. Aynia, who is the Fairy Queen in Tyrone, is one form of Anu…”

Katharine Briggs,
The Fairies in Tradition and Literature

For anyone used to the modern-day disempowered image of the tiny, childlike, winged fairy that lives in a mushroom or shyly hides behind a flower, it would seem quite a leap to suggest that many Faery beings were, or indeed are, gods. However, you do not need to delve very deeply into ancient tradition to discover that most of what are considered to be Faery kings and queens have also been worshipped as gods, nor indeed do you need to take many steps into their world to understand the power that they hold. One of the best-known examples of a crossover between deities and Faery lore may be found in the ancient Celtic myths of the Tuatha de Danann, our best source for which is the famous
Book of Invasions
. Though the text dates back to the eleventh century, the original sources are widely believed to date back much further, incorporating material from as far back as the fourth century
ce
.

Through the ancient myths, we learn that the Tuatha de Danann (children of Danu) were a powerful race of magickal beings who inhabited Ireland before they were driven underground by the Milesians, a race of mortal men. They arrived on ships from the four mystical cities of Falias, Gorias, Murias, and Finias, bringing with them treasures that bear a remarkable resemblance to the four grail hallows of Arthurian lore: the spear of Lugh, the sword of Nuada, the stone of Fal, and the cauldron of the Dagda; we can also recognize these treasures in the four suits of the tarot. The Tuatha de Danann are considered to be the pre-Christian gods of Ireland; interestingly, they were preceded by a race of giants called the Firbolgs, with whom they shared the land for a while before eventually going to war with another race of giants, the Fomorians. Both may be compared to the Titans of Greek mythology, great primal forces of the planet who were overcome eventually by the Olympian pantheon we are familiar with today. Indeed, there are many tales throughout the world of an ancient race of giants who inhabited the earth before humanity, and these are also significant in Faery lore. The sidhe (pronounced
shee
), the Faery people of the Celtic lands, are believed to be the descendants of these gods and, in some cases, the gods themselves.

Probably the best-known example of one of the sidhe who is both a Faery queen and a goddess is the Irish war goddess named the Morrigan. She plays a major part in all the battles of the Tuatha de Danann and is a significant power within the Celtic pantheon. Her name has been given to many places within the Celtic landscape, and her influence can be seen to spread through the lands and ages into many other tales and cultures. True to her shapeshifting nature, she has many guises, most notably Morgan le Fay of the Arthurian tales. Other people of the sidhe who may be considered deities include Lugh, a solar deity from whom we get the Irish harvest festival of Lughnasadh; Nuada of the silver hand, who was their king; Manannan Mac Lir, a god of the sea; and Etain, who was both a sorceress and a goddess of sovereignty.

Scotland brings us strong, powerful giantess faery queens to suit its rugged landscape and unforgiving climate. Here we find such fascinating figures as the Cailleach, a great shapeshifter of tremendous strength who is often credited with forming the landscape, whose presence may be seen in folklore throughout the British Isles and beyond. A similar figure may be found in Nicneven, the great faery queen of Scottish lore who dwells beneath the mountain Ben Nevis. She has often been equated with the ancient Greek goddess Hekate, seen as being not only the queen of the Faeries, but also of witches and the dead.

Nearby Wales also gives us a rich vein of Faery gods and goddesses, including Gwyn Ap Nudd, the king of the Tylwyth Teg (the Welsh Faery race), who rules the Welsh underworld, Annwn, and leads the wild hunt with his Faery hounds.

In other lands, similarly blurred lines may be found between Faery and deity. Within Nordic tradition we find gods such as Loki, who is descended from giants (who again are defeated by the Nordic pantheon), and Freyr, who is the king of Alfheim, the land of the light elves. In fact, the Nordic gods are separated into two races, the Aesir and the Vanir, and the Vanir share many qualities with Faery races such as the sidhe, such as great beauty and the gifts of prophecy and sorcery. They are also deeply connected to agriculture and the land. In his book
Leechcraft,
Stephen Pollington tells us that while “the Norse myths mostly concern the two main races of gods—Aesir and Vanir—the poetic tradition often juxtaposes Aesir and Alvar as ‘gods and elves.’ ”