Fairy Help, Fairy Harm

Modern paganism, and perhaps more broadly mainstream Western culture, seems to constantly be trapped in a mobius strip argument about the potential help or harm caused by fairies. There is one side that argues, staunchly, that the Good Folk are entirely benevolent and benign to humans. In contrast there is another side that argues just as fervently that the Othercrowd should be entirely avoided and warded against because of the danger they represent. And then there's the people, like myself, who argue for a kind of middle ground that acknowledges the very tangible dangers but also the potential advantages to fairies. When in doubt however always act with caution and keep the risk in mind because there are serious and sometimes permanent consequences.

What I want to do here is look at the evidence we have for both sides in folklore. I think too often people, especially outside places that have maintained some degree of belief in these beings, rely entirely on their own personal experiences and perceptions. I'm not saying to ignore your own experiences of course but I am suggesting that one person's experiences don't a body of lore make. I have never drowned for example but I fully believe that people who go swimming may drown under various conditions - because I know that my personal experiences are not the sum total of the subject. Hopefully the following material will provide a wider view.

The Blessing
First let's look at a few examples of fairy help. These are harder to find in the source material and often come from folk tales rather than folklore, which should be noted. This may be because there have long been prohibitions in many cultures that believe in these beings that to brag or boast of the good they might do a human will result in that goodness being revoked. This extends to talking about a wide array of fairy interference in one's life including having a leannán sidhe [fairy lover] or learning from them. That all said:

1. Healing physical maladies. This can include both illnesses and deformities. There is a very famous story, often repeated sometimes under the title of 'Lushmore', of a man with a hunchback in Ireland who was passing a fairy fort, heard the fairies singing, politely joined in and was reward by having his back healed. Several versions of the tale can be found on the Duchas.ie site, but one example: "He heard the fairies singing - Monday, Tuesday. The man said Monday Tuesday and Wednesday. The fairies ran up to the man and asked him to teach them that song. The man taught them the song. The fairies asked him that gift die he want he said to take the hump off his back. The man went home without the hump." (Duchas, entry 453). 
2. Help with work. There are accounts of fairies doing work for humans they like. Often there isn't any reason given to explain why they liked that person, as we see in this example: "This man was supposed to have something to do with the fairies. The fairies used to do all the work for him at night time." (Duchas, entry 246).
3. Money - in one late 19th century story an Irish Fairy king helps a man about to be evicted pay his rent by giving him gingerbread made to look like gold. The man is told to get a receipt when he pays, which he does, so that when the gold turns back to gingerbread the next day he can't be held accountable. This story is inline with wider tales of fairies giving money or support to people they favour or take pity on.
4. Removing curses. In the ballad of Alison Gross a man who has been cursed by a witch is rescued by the Queen of the Seely court who removes the curse. 

I have also had what I would describe as blessing experiences, including the apparently miraculous healing of my middle child's back deformity, and I do think it is important to understand that the Good Folk can interact in a positive way with people. The possibility of positive results however should not negate the dangers. 

The Dangerous
Now that we've established the Good Neighbours can be helpful let's look at a fraction of the evidence that they can represent risk to humans. I have seen some people try to argue that all of these examples are either propaganda from those antithetical to fairies or the result of people with the wrong mindset who expected bad and so got it. I want to say this as nicely as I can: the entirety of folklore and many, many people's modern experiences are not lies or wrong because a person doesn't happen to like the way they depict the Shining Ones. If we look beyond western Europe and the diaspora we can find a multitude of examples from other cultures, including those that are still non-Christian, of equally dangerous or ambivalent spirit beings. I am actually not aware of any culture that has only benevolent spirits in their belief system, so it strikes me as extremely odd to view fairies that way.
   In the below examples we will be looking strictly at direct harm caused to humans in the human world by fairies. One can argue that such things as fairy abductions and possession also qualify as harm but those topics are nuanced and deserve a fuller discussion than what we will be doing here.

1. Causing deformities. In point 1 above I mentioned fairies straightening a man's back in a story; that story ends with another man similarly afflicted trying the same cure and getting twice the hunch on his back for his efforts: "The fairies did not like his song and instead of taking the hump off him they put the other man's hump on him and the man went home with two humps." (Duchas, entry 454). Briggs attributes anything that deforms or warps the human body to possible invisible fairy blows or injuries, particularly issues of the joints or spine. 
2. Killing or sickening livestock. Fairies are very well known for afflicting domestic animals, especially cows. This was sometimes called 'elf-struck' or 'elf-shot' and may be marked by a mark or lump on the animal to indicate where it was struck (Narvaez, 1991). Accounts of this can be found in the Duchas.ie archives describing the results: "Also we are told that fairies used to shoot cows, when the cows would "graze on a "gentle" spot. We call a place "gentle" when it is supposed to belong to fairies. A "shot" cow became weak and would not eat." (Duchas, entry 231).  
3. Exhausting people nearly to death. There is another account on Duchas of a man who saw the fairies hurling in a field and went to join them only to be kept playing until he almost died of exhaustion. In folklore we find tales of fairies making people dance until they collapse or die. 
4. They will kill you. There are many accounts of fairies physically harming or just directly killing people for offenses, so much so that Patricia Lysaght says "That physical disability or even death can result from interference with fairy property such as a rath is well attested in Irish tradition. Many examples are evident..." (Narvaez, 1991, p 45). These are often related to harm a human has done to a fairy place or fairy tree. However sometimes it's just because the person offended them by breaking the fairies' rules of etiquette, as in this example where death was threatened for trying to join a fairy song: "All the fairies went in to Harvey's fort, and they began singing and dancing and inside in the fort. One of the men had a fiddle and he began to play a tune the fairies were playing One of the fairies came out of the fort and told the man that if he played that tune again he would kill him and the man ran home as fast as he could." (Duchas, entry 75). Even into the 21st century there are stories of people dying after damaging fairy trees. 
5. Blinding. The fairies are known to blind people, something that is found as a staple in the 'Midwife to the Fairies' stories where a midwife who accidently touches her eye with fairy ointment lets slip she can see them and is blinded or has her eye put out. An anecdotal account from late 20th century Newfoundland describes a man harrassed by faires who is eventually blinded by them (Narvaez, 1991). There is an account on the Duchas site of a fiddler who refused fairy food and was blinded in one eye by an angry fairy woman. 
6. Tumours. Multiple accounts support victims of a fairy blast or fairy wind suffering from immediate and inexplicable swellings which are found to be tumours; there are also anecdotal accounts of people with these swellings where random objects like bones, grass, or straw are found inside them (Narvaez, 1991). 
7. Madness or loss of cognitive abilities or speech. Anecdotal accounts from Yeats 'Celtic Twilight' to Narvaez's 'Newfoundland Berry Pickers in the Fairies' discuss the fairies driving people mad or taking away their cognitive function. Narvaez also discusses accounts of encounters which resulted in speech impairment and there are folktales of fairies taking a person's speech entirely something that is also discussed by Emma Wilby in relation to a Scottish witch who dealt with fairies.  
8. Strokes - the term stroke for a cerebral accident or aneurysm comes from the term 'fairy stroke' or 'elf stroke' and the idea that a blow from the Good Folk could cause this physical issue. Briggs mentions this as a method used by the fairies to steal humans and livestock, but the concept behind it is also mentioned as kind of fairy punishment in 'The Good People' anthology. Paralysis is also attributed to fairy anger in some cases (Briggs, 1976). Alaric Hall discusses elf-shot at length in his book, and mentions its use on humans and animals as well as its usually permanent effects on a person. elf stroke in itself is a complicated subject and being shot by the fairies can have multiple effects on a person including many of the other issues listed here. 
9. Bruising and Muscle Cramps - on the mildest end fairies are known to pinch, hit, and otherwise assault humans resulting in bruising and cramping (Briggs, 1976). The fairies are not averse to beating a person into cooperating as we see in an account by Wilby relating to a Scottish witch reluctant to do what the fairies were asking her; they are also not averse to beating a person because they want to as we find in an account on Duchas where a man who sees the fairies and acknowledges that he can see them is attacked and beaten nearly to death by them. 

I also want to include some anecdotal examples, both my own experiences and those that have been shared with me to demonstrate that this isn't all just old stories:

1. Blindness - going temporarily blind for not doing what the fairies ask. 
2. Madness - driving a person crazy to try to force compliance on an issue
3. Physical marks - ranging from bruising to scratching
4. Trying to Kill Someone - I have heard a few accounts of the Fair Folk causing serious bodily harm bordering on near death

Final Thoughts
There is a reason that all cultures which believe in the Good Neighbours have so very many protections against them and such caution in dealing with them.


References
Narvaez, P., (1991) The Good People: New Fairylore Essays
Duchas (2020) Duchas.ie; Fairies Retrieved from https://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=fairies
Briggs, K., (1976) A Dictionary of Fairies
Hall, A., (2007) Elves in Anglo-Saxon England
Wilby, E., (2009) Cunningfolk and Familiar Spirits

Book Review: Royal Roads

So time for another book review. Today I want to write about my friend* Dana Corby's book 'royal Roads: Pilgrimages through the Four Elements and Beyond' co-authored with Bjeon-Erik Hartsfvang. I'm friends with Dana on social media and became aware of this book when I saw her posting about it. Its a bit outside my usual purview but I think it overlaps enough with my own witchcraft practices that it makes sense to review it here.

Royal Roads, on the surface, would appear to be a book about connecting to the four elemental realms of Wicca and most popular forms of paganism. However this slim books is about far more than just that, digging into vital topics like spiritual journeywork and warding. I particularly liked that it used practical examples to illustrate points and also included a lot of clear instructions for the exercises. It's the sort of book that manages to convey more complicated material in a very accessible way, and that is something I wish I could say about more books.

After the introduction the first three chapters teach the reader how to make a scrying mirror, create magical fluids, and cast a circle. Although my own witchcraft has a different flow to it I appreciated learning these methods and understanding the concepts behind them. It was particularly nice to see the older method of creating a scrying mirror described, as that's something I haven't seen discussed in a long time. I also very much liked that the chapter on circle casting laid out various reasons why a person might cast a circle, another subject which often tends to be ignored or only get a surface treatment.

Possibly my favourite chapter was 5 'Standing Black Watch'. This revolves around the wider concept of properly warding a ritual space by having a person outside the ritual activity guard the area and people. It is particularly essential in group workings (as well as some types of ritual seeing or oracle practices) but isn't something I have personally seen written about very often. I think the authors here handled it very well and loved that they included practical examples of the concerns that come up when a group isn't properly warded or the energy handled as it should be. Honestly I would recommend this book just for this chapter.

The chapter 6 gets into how to engage in spiritual journeywork through guided relaxation and 7 through 11 are various suggested 'pilgrimages' or journeys. Some of the initial structuring is heavily focused on a specific Wiccan approach, which isn't my personal path, but even for people like me who don't tend to be correspondence heavy with their approach I think these exercises have a lot of value. The actual guided script is very good and takes a thorough approach to getting people in and out of themselves.

Chapter 12 is a short discussion of the post journey experience, including a method to retain as much information as possible. Again this is something that other books often lack and although its a short chapter it includes an excellent group of questions to answer framed to help maximize how much is retained. I've always been an advocate of journaling immediately after journeying but I had never thought to use a specific set list of questions to help with that. Its an idea I intend to use myself going forward.

The last few chapters are lists and discussion of elemental correspondences, with a final discussion on the value of elemental focus and connection. This nicely wraps up the small text and emphasizes the value of the work that has been suggested throughout.

Overall I found this book valuable, despite its divergence form my own personal practice, and enjoyed both the material I was familiar with as well as that which was new to me. I think the book would be useful for those just starting out but can also offer some useful tips for more experienced people. The exercises are some of the best I've seen and I believe the results people can get from them will be both interesting and useful.



*I am friends with Dana Corby on social media, however that has not influenced this review. If I had not liked the book or thought it was worth recommending to others, I would simply not have reviewed it.

Sources for Working with Fairies

Since I am asked pretty regularly for opinions on specific books relating to Fairies or more generally recommendations on the wider subject I thought I'd do a full blog on it.

My main resources are folklore, mythology, folk practice, and academic articles and books. I encourage everyone to start there. There's a large number of books I could recommend here but for a half dozen suggestions:

1. Elf Queens and Holy Friars by Richard Firth Green. focusing more on British fairies but extremely indepth look at the earlier beliefs around fairies and how those beliefs were influenced and shaped by Christianity
2. Emma Wilby's Cunningfolk and Familiar Spirits and her The Visions of Isobel Gowdie. Both explore beliefs intertwining fairies and witchcraft in the early modern period
3. Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies by Claude Lecouteux. Including an array of cultural evidence across Europe that explores the connection between witches and supernatural beings
4. The Good People edited by Narvaez. A late 20th century work that includes a variety of articles form different authors focusing on fairy belief across the Celtic language speaking countries and diaspora.
5. Airy Nothings edited by Olsen and Veenstra. Another anthology of collected articles this book discusses aspects of fairylore across Europe within very specific contexts.
6. Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits edited by Ostling. Again collected articles from various academics, but offers some very good insight into fairylore and belief and crossover with related subjects. 

When it comes to folklore my own focus is Irish and my sources are based there. There are a handful of books that are valuable here from Lysaght's 'The Banshee' to Sneddon's 'witchcraft and Magic in Ireland', but the best resources in my opinion are from people in the various communities actively recording the living folk beliefs. This would include Michael Fortune on Youtube, Lora O'Brien, Circle Stories on Facebook, Anthony Murphy of Mythical Ireland, and the Duchas.ie website. For people who have a different focus I recommend seeking out solid resources within that culture. 

I would also add to the above:

1. Katherine Briggs is a good resource to begin with. Although  a bit dated now Brigg's writing will give anyone seeking to engage in this work a solid foundation to work from.
2. John Kruse's book Faery is a really solid intro to who and what (British) fairies are and can be foundational for engaging with them

I fully admit I am very, very picky when it comes to modern practical material. I also fully admit I am no fan of post Victorian new age fairies. This inherently affects which modern pagan-aimed books I will prefer. I always encourage people to begin by studying the folklore so that actual practice is rooted firmly in something solid.
That all said what do I recommend for actively working witchcraft with fairies?

1.  Seo Helrune's forthcoming book or any of their online writing about elves
2. Lora O'Brien's online fairy material. Also, not fairy specific per se but intersectional with the concepts, I'd add in Lora O'Brien's 'Practical Guide to Irish Spirituality', 
3. Lee Morgan's Deed Without A Name is a good primer for witchcraft that intersects with Themselves, as is Morgan's 'Sounds of Infinity'
4. Nigel Pearson's 'Treading the Mill', 
5. Gemma Gary's 'Traditional Witchcraft', 
6. Peter Paddon's 'A Grimoire for Modern Cunningfolk'
7. Nigel Kackson's 'Call of the Horned Piper'

The last four are traditional witchcraft specific rather than fairy specific but offer a good workable framework to integrate fairy beliefs into if a person is seeking such a structure. 

Obviously I have also written about fairies and fairy witchcraft myself.

If older grimoire material interests you then the Book of Oberon is a good resource. Not my jam but its solid.

That's it.

Book Review: Breaking Silence by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is a sequel to 'Silence' and continuation of the SERRAted Edge series.
It is a significant improvement on the last book: the plot is tighter, the characters have more depth, and the book feels more a part of the wider series.

First things I liked. The book is written in limited third person and like most others in the series does offer glimpses into other characters points of view. This is useful in context because it allows the reader a better understanding of what is going on. The characters are fairly well developed and feel like individual people, and the elves are each clearly different characters. The characters are nicely nuanced, and the relationships are complex. As with the previous book there is a lot of shades of morality and I really enjoyed the way the authors made characters that seemed to be 'good' or 'bad' be much more ambiguous than that. The big open question in the plot does get answered in a very satisfying way by the end which made the ending feel more complete.

The reason I'm only giving it 3 stars however is much like the previous book there are some significant continuity errors and plot holes. I don't want to list them here and give any spoilers, but for a couple mostly spoiler free examples: in the last book we were told the main character had Elven ancestry on both sides but now apparently it's just from her mother, and the elves refer to the mc as everything from half-elven, to part fae, to human. For another, there's a scene where 2 elvensteeds jump somewhere then on the next page...2 elvensteeds jump somewhere, as if the authors forgot that had just happened. It really would have benefited from beta readers or a good editor.
There were also some story details that I found difficult. I could have suspended my disbelief enough to ignore that the characters seem to live in a perpetual summer; Staci arrives at the beginning of summer, the events in Silence take weeks at a minimum, months have now gone by and weeks pass in Breaking Silence but its...still the same summer? Honestly it would have made a lot more sense if it was et a year later rather than 'a few months'. And much like the last book this one leans heavily into the 'wonderkid' trope and that gets hard to ignore. I had a difficult time accepting that the teenage main character was the only one actually taking down any monsters or that the adults followed her lead. The idea that a who knows how old elf would panic during a magical attack and need the teenage human to take charge was just nonsensical.

That all said it's still an improvement over Silence and the characters are likeable. I'd read a new book in the series if there was one.


Expanded form my Goodreads review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3229103690?fbclid=IwAR19w6qHXZgIbdZnlgYtrwMZ5qg2BqHjJWKJa1ncRJiHbHDfh_kBcEqN7LU

A Critical Look at Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries

   One of the most commonly recommended books I see in groups and on reading lists is the 1911 work 'The Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries' by W. Y. Evans-Wentz. The book is often hailed as the benchmark in fairylore and a staple of study in the field or for anyone interested in the subject. I also personally suspect its rampant popularity in modern pagan groups is due in part to it being in the public domain and easily found free online. However the book is often recommended and read by people who take everything in it equally and out of context so I think it would be helpful to discuss the text here.

To start let's be clear for what it is and when it was written 'Fairy Faith' is a very good book. It includes material from scholars who were pre-eminent in the field at the time, such as Douglas Hyde and Alexander Carmichael. It also is a treasure trove of anecdotal material of the early 20th century (found in section 1) and for that alone I recommend it. It does a wonderful job of clearly stating exactly where anecdotal material comes from which allows us to get a regionally specific look at the beliefs, something that is essential in understanding them, contextualizing them, and correlating them with current beliefs in those areas.

All of that said the book is not a perfect work (if such a thing even exists) and it is important to read it with an understanding of the flaws so that the valuable material can be found and appreciated. Let us begin by putting it in the context of the time period it was written in. Evans-Wentz began this work as a dissertation in which was first reviewed in 1907 and published the final book as we know it now in 1911. This was before the Republic of Ireland existed - Ireland was still an English colony during the entirety of the research and editing of this text. An Gorta Mór* was barely 60 years prior meaning there were people alive in Ireland who had lived through it when these interviews were done. This was, obviously, also before both world wars. The discipline of psychology was less than 40 years old and Freud had only just began corresponding with Jung, vital to remember as the book claims to incorporate ideas from that field into its approach. My point in emphasizing this is that one must read this book with an understanding that it was written in the early 20th century not the 21st century and in many ways reflects a very, very different world from our own.
Academia of this time was also different and often included personal opinions presented as if they were facts, meaning that material may be read as if it were authoritative when it is not. It wasn't uncommon for a scholar to put forth a theory with absolutely no supporting evidence beyond tenuous suppositional connections between superficially similar material, for example the idea that the visually similar words sidhe (Irish, fairy hill, pronounced shee) and siddha (Sanskrit, perfected one, pronounced sid-uh) were directly connected. The burden of proof and requirement for supporting a theory were not what we might expect of academia today.

The people who wrote and contributed to this book were not writing their own beliefs or recording their own stories. They were people of a higher social class, well educated, who may or may not speak the language of the people they were talking to, going into various areas as visitors or guests and then asking about these beliefs and stories. I often talk about discernment when it comes to reading material and I emphasize looking at who is writing the material down and this is true here. You cannot read The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries without keeping in mind who wrote that material down; as much as we might like to see it as a natural snapshot of belief at the time it is more accurately understood as a posed portrait of the beliefs, fitered through the lens of the writers.

I mentioned that not all the writers necessarily spoke the languages they were recording material from and that is an issue. There are multiple places in the book where the Celtic language material given does not align with the translation and Anglicization of that same term. For example on page 81 the author claims that suidheadchan means 'the housekeeper's little seat' while the word simply means 'seat' or 'chair'. I strongly urge readers of the book to double check all non-English terms within and never take any of it as accurate.

There is a lot of classism and bigotry that appears throughout this text, predicated largely on the fact that the people writing were often upper class educated people who considered themselves better than the 'peasants' whose stories they were recording. Evans-Wentz falls into this trap as well, describing the so-called Celts with a strong noble savage angle: "This immersion in the most striking natural and social environment of the Celtic race, gave me an insight into the mind, the religion, the mysticism, and the very heart of the Celt himself" (Evans-Wentz, 1911, page xvi). There are a multitude of references to the 'Celtic race' or the 'Irish race' (for example) because these were writers who believed that the Celtic language speaking peoples were in fact a distinctive race who was less than and more primitive than the British. This romanticism of the Celtic language speaking cultures into something simultaneously more primitive and more spiritual is something I still see in some places and it needs to be addressed and stopped.

Another major issue with this book is the outdated theories to be found in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sections. These theories are long disproven yet keep showing back up, particularly in paganism, because people are reading works like Evans-Wentz's and taking it as accurate. One glaring example is the long discarded idea that fairies represent a folk memory of a pygmy race of humans driven out by the iron age and celtic migrations. As on page 398: "...one of the many threads interwoven into the complex fabric of the Fairy-Faith round an original psychical pattern may have been bequeathed by a folk-memory of some unknown, perhaps pygmy, races, who may have inhabited underground places like those in certain tumuli.". This is put forth as a theory but many seem to read it as a fact, however this one has been disproven on multiple fronts. There is absolutely no archeological evidence of a culture of smaller humans inhabiting Ireland or the UK. The cairns and tumuli are burial mounds, many with human remains found within. And the theory of a celtic population migration has largely been disproven by genetic studies (rather the Celtic influence seems to have been a shift in culture rather than mass population movements).

In general when reading this book you have to keep in mind that it was written by people who were either outside the culture being discussed or had a very high social place within them, which distorts their perspectives. The anecdotal accounts are indeed invaluable but they too must be understood for what they are which is not any kind of definitive statement but often personal opinions and experiences. The so-called scholarly sections - 2, 3, and 4 - should be taken as opinion pieces and fact checked with modern scholarship.

There is a lot of value in The Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries, but there is also a lot that needs to be questioned or ignored. I recommend the book and encourage people to read it but with a discerning eye and an understanding of the context in which it was written. It is 109 years old now and the world it was written it is very different from the one we live in; academia then was very different from what it is today. None of this is to discount the value this book can have, but that value rests on understanding the contents for what they are and not seeing them as unassailable truth in all aspects. If you read it with an understanding of the things discussed here then the book can be very useful; if you don't, if you read it all as equally true, then you will be working from a lot of inaccuracy.

*An Gort Mór, the Great Famine, which decimated the Irish population

New Liminal God: The Queen of Apples

Earlier this year there was some talk in a Fairy Witchcraft group on Facebook about a liminal god called the Queen of Apples. Several people felt like they were connecting to her and shared their thoughts on who she was. I was asked what my impression of her was.

It's important to understand here that the particular type of Fairy witchcraft I practice gets very messy when it comes to Gods. There's the traditional ones, of course, who come in from known cultures and existing mythology. There's also beings explicitly associated with the royalty of Fairy that we may consider gods but who may or may not historically have been understood as such. And there's also the third category, the liminal Gods, who are beings that have no known or shared names but go by titles and who are seen as Kings and Queens of Fairy (or similar) and also deities but have no known established mythology or stories. These liminal Gods are diverse and individual beings and while there are some that seem to be more over-arching or shared among practitioners - for example Summer and Winter in this system have their rulers which seem universal so far to everyone who engages with them - there are also myriad individual ones. Different practitioners will connect to who they connect to. I have written about many of them in my books on fairy witchcraft and have also blogged about my own personal experiences finding new ones in 'Meeting a New Liminal God' and 'Meeting New Liminal Gods: Thallea and Thessilae'. I also talk about the 7 Queens, who are liminal Gods in my opinion, in my writing about the rituals around the Pleiades cycle. The point is that when it comes to liminal gods there are no firm lines or established limits; there are the ones that have been publicly discussed and undoubtedly many more that haven't. 

So. Initially I didn't get very much about this new Queen. This happens of course as the Powers speak to who they choose to speak to and the liminal gods in particular do what they want when they feel like doing it. Nonetheless I've tried a few times off and on over the past months to connect to her and had been getting a 'not now' feeling every time. 

Today, on the winter solstice she's speaking very loudly to me. It feels like now is also a good time to share what is coming through for her. This is what I'm getting, mostly unfiltered. Obviously this is pure gnosis and people are free to take it, leave it, add to it, or whatever. I would really love to see some discussion in the comments by those who have an interest in Her or who feel like she speaks to them as well.

The Queen of Apples 

I'm using her/she pronouns here and she appeared to me as a young woman but I felt very strongly that she can and will appear however she chooses and that she may appear as a Lord of Apples if it suits her. She is both and neither, androgynous and gendered, rather like the trees themselves to be honest. It may be more fitting to use they/them pronouns but I leave that to the individual readers discretion. I suspect she will come through to some people strongly as one gender or another, to other people as neither, and to others as both or moving fluidly between.

She is the seed of new beginnings, the sweet flesh of the apple that nourishes, and the hidden death that waits within. She can be utterly generous to those who seek a home in her groves, offering safety, shelter, and nourishment but she can also be ruthlessly mercenary to those who seek what they want rather than what they need. She offers both filling food and health as well as intoxication and madness; she is as much apple juice as hard cider. She is joy and desires met, whether those desires are wise or foolish. She is the wild grove feeding all who find it and the domestic orchard that must be worked to return any benefit. Whether your dealings with her are difficulty or easy will depend on many things and may change from one encounter to the next. 

She is the flower, and the fruit, and the withering leaf. She may appear very young or indeterminant aged or very old. She is all of these.

In the facebook group discussion Brie C Marva described her this way: "a deity of brothels, personal freedom, and rowdy celebrations... She is the goddess to honor before a first date, a party, or something more adult if you follow me. Young, dark hair, dressed as a Byzantine girl not of the higher class, she seems to be pleased with offerings of wine, various incense types, and donations made in her name.". Several people had similar experiences or feelings around this deity including feeling like she had connections to sex or brothels, that she appeared dressed in the style of the Byzantine empire and appeared in the form of a younger woman or girl. Some people felt that she had strong ties to the Byzantine empire or that area. The group also suggested she might have a holy day in the autumn. 

For myself she appeared to me as a girl of about 14 initially in a grove of snowy apple trees in flower but changed as we talked into a young woman then a very old woman and at one point a young man, so...I'm unsure how I'd describe her. I didn't get the same strong cultural feel that other people did either, so I can't confirm or discount it. I'd say let her speak to you herself on that one. 

Her colours as they were shown to me were red, green, white, and brown. Her animals are the bee, deer, and worm. These are the symbols that represent her and the language that she uses to speak. Apples in any form are also hers as is honey. 

Her special time is the winter solstice and I felt strongly that she's connected to things like wassailing the apple trees, so I gather that she enjoys singing and music especially. She is a deity of sex workers, brewers, and wild things, of the disenfranchised, marginalized, and of witches. Her magic is (particularly) protective and enchanting but she also hexes as much as she heals. She belongs to neither summer nor winter but moves in each. 

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.