The Return of the Otherfolk and the Puritan Egregore

For several years now there has been talk among some practitioners (of various sorts) in North America suggesting both that the Otherworldly energy present here has been increasing and that the Otherfolk themselves have been pushing through into the human world more strongly. I wrote about it on my Patheos blog in a piece titled 'Return of the Othercrowd' and Seo Helrune and John Beckett have also discussed this.

Many people approach this idea of a restoration of the Other eagerly, others with trepidation. But I haven't seen many yet discussing the inevitable pushback from the existing paradigm and I think it's important to talk about that as well in part because we are already seeing it.

So. Part of the idea that this concept rests on, much more eloquently explained by Seo Helrune in the blog I link above 'Restoration Not Re-enchantment', is that the force which originally drove the Otherfolk to the fringes of the human world was Christian Dominionism. This philosophy carried by Protestants in both Europe and colonizing North America demonized the Good Neighbours and made them into evil forces to be driven out or fictions to be dis-believed in. It strongly perpetuated the idea that the fairies had left the human world and were a thing of the past and encouraged trivializing and infantilizing them.

What we are, perhaps, seeing now in some places is the Other fighting back against that and pushing to strengthen their presence in the world again. Why now? I can only guess. Certainly they have never truly left no matter what the poets have said so it is not a matter of a return so much as a re-empowering. This seems to be happening across a wide span of time, at least a decade at this point with the last 5 years being more active, which I'd think would be expected. How long will it go on for? How will it end? We will have to wait and see.

Is this happening because of the upheaval in the human world around the same areas or is that upheaval a symptom of what is happening in with the Other? Or are both impacting each other? We don't know. There is turmoil here, but that does happen and is always happening somewhere. There is turmoil there as well which seems to be spilling over to here in some places. We are sitting in the middle of the pattern and I don't think we can see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

That all said my main point here is that as we see this increase in Otherworldly energy and this upsurge in activity we have been tending to focus on it, which is perhaps natural. But we would be wise to remember that the dominant cultural force that caused Them to be subsumed in the first place - whether you want to label it the collective puritan unconscious (in the US) or the Protestant paradigm or the egregore of the over-culture - is still there. It still exists. And whatever it is, however you choose to understand it, it is connected to millions of living and dead humans that empower it and it is going to and is fighting against this current shift. I think we are seeing that manifest in the US in many ways, small and large, and we need to be very wary during this period.

While some of us may be cheering on the Otherfolk and eager to see them returned to their former glory - whether that's wise or foolish on our parts - we must not assume that such a return or shift in energy will be easy or painless. History shows us that major shifts of any sort never are. The Other are fighting to return, and we can be very sure that the force that pushed them out will fight just as hard to keep them out. We need to be prepared for that and understand that it may mean that force, that cultural egregore, that puritan unconscious, may strengthen before (if) it is broken. And we need to understand that the Other fighting to return isn't going to be painless for us either whether we are on the sidelines or trying to encourage it to happen.




A few points I feel obligated to make:

• remember that the Otherworld isn't one monolithic thing. There is diversity there and factions and politics. In other words, not all of the Good Folk get along with each other.
• the Otherfolk seem to move with human populations they are attached to, meaning that in a multicultural human world we see also a kind of mixed or multicultural Other
• the concepts above comes from private discussions with friends and represents shared gnosis more than personal gnosis. That said I realize it will not resonate with everyone. 
• This phenomena appears to be happening in some places and not others, so take this for what it is. Not everyone has driven out and alienated their Fair Folk.