fair folk – Page 2 – Serendipities

The Otherworldly Tides of the Great War

When I first saw the title of Irene Glasse’s most recent blog post (which you should go read now before continuing if you haven’t yet), I immediately thought of the Otherworldly Wars that I’ve been on the edge of, these past few years. That was not Irene’s main focus (seriously go read that first), but it’s a parallel stream of mythic awareness. While no words really convey the fullness of the conflict, I generally agree with Irene’s choice to label the two sides as “Pain” and “Hope”. They’re succinct, and cut into the importance of this struggle, at least on the human side. The Great War between these two is a story, a narrative, a Myth that we’re watching play out as a bloody struggle on a battlefield. Irene goes on to explain the ways we can help join the fight on the side of Hope, and some of those ways are things I have heard from the deities in my life – and some of the messages I’ve heard are things I have shared, like the messages from Na Morrigna or Bast and Sekhmet that I’ve been asked to pass along to my community. Irene’s suggestions are good and helpful ideas, ways to make our lives a little better, ways to perhaps make the future a little brighter, and for the most part they are solidly grounded in mundane reality. This is one of Irene’s strengths that I most admire: she’s a beacon of light and guidance in our community, a mystic and cleric who always has a good answer when people turn to her in tears and ask, “What now?” There’s not really anything I can add to that besides repetition or emphasis, so I’m just going to suggest you go read that! (For the third time, lol!)

Instead, my thoughts turned to the Otherworldly battles I’ve witnessed, so if you’d like to hear more about that, take a side step with me, pass beyond the hawthorn hedge and walk beside me down the thistle-lined path of my UPG, into Fairy. All of the following is my experience; none of the following has any claim on being The Only Truth, but I share in case there is one reading who might find it helpful. Still with me?

In the watershed I live in, the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, it is my experience that the European Fairies seem to be organized into courts or territories that follow streams and rivers, with small courts around small bodies of water existing under the domain of the larger courts from the larger streams, and the rivers seem to have their own courts in attendance to the River Divinities (who existed here long before the first humans of European descent arrived), and there is something like a territorial Monarch, though my experience with them is that there are two, who share power and change with the seasons at the equinoxes. I can (and may well) explore that in more depth later, but that’s sufficient background information to explain my own relationships, I think. My local stream court (that is, the watershed within which I reside) has a queen that I call the Rosegay Queen, as she indicated to me that the wild roses growing along the stream in a place near to my house were Hers, and she uses roses as her symbol in her dealings with me. Out of necessity, she and I have become allies, and part of our agreement is that she will ward away and warn me of any incoming forces with clear malevolent intent against me, and in return when she is under attack from other forces, I am required to help defend her territory when she asks it of me.

When we made that agreement, I did not expect it would be asked of me as often as it has. While humanity has been fighting the pandemic, and in the US (and elsewhere, but I speak only for myself) we’ve been fighting against destructive cultural forces (the forces of “Pain”) , the Otherworlds have been embroiled in their own Great War, and while I do not have a wide enough field of vision to see the whole picture (even more so than in the mundane sphere, this is a conflict on a large timescale), from what I have seen, it seems to run along similar lines, though I might perhaps name them “Extinction” and “Evolution”. I have come to understand that there are beings and forces that believe Humanity is a lost cause, or not worth preserving, or that have no interest in us at all, or dislike for our species at best. There are also beings and forces that live in something like symbiosis with us, and have done so for a long time – whether it’s because they wish to guide us or (perhaps more likely considering the folklore) because they find us to be useful pets and tasty snacks, they would prefer to assist in our preservation, and our transformation if that’s what it takes to avoid extinction as the worlds change around us. I think of it more as a cultural evolution, not a physical one, where we will hopefully learn to live in better balance with our environments before climate change and our own conflicts push us to the brink of extinction, but the two words make a poetic mirror.

I’ve been taught some battle sorcery by both Gods and Fairies, and I’ve been using it to the best of my abilities when called upon, and the beings and forces I have seen on the other side of the battles make my skin crawl with wrongness. It’s difficult to describe, but I’ve been using the term unhael, meaning “unwhole, unhealthy, unsound” but it also seems to have that same connotation of wrongness, in a Heathen context. They’re not meant to be here, wandering our world; they’re inimical to humanity but also I believe to the biomes we inhabit. Their magic feels like contagion, and I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence (though who can say whether it’s cause, effect, or correlation) that the first battles I witnessed occurred as my local area was shut down in the early stages of the pandemic. I’m no theologian or philosopher – I don’t have a well developed and concise theory about all of this. I can only describe what I’ve experienced, I have only half-developed thoughts to share.

But I think the Great War of Extinction vs Evolution is the challenge of Tower Time, the battles of the Storm that John Beckett was warned of, and the initiatory challenge Gwendolyn Reece has spoken of for about a decade. A Great War, in which not only human people are participating, and I think it’s likely that the fate of our species hangs in the balance – though the timeline here is longer than most of us are used to working with, because even sudden climate change isn’t going to destroy everything all at once. It’s how we react to it that really matters, I think – we may survive through natural disasters only to fight over resources and then escalate into a nuclear conflict, which may well mean the extinction or near-extinction of our species (and thousands if not millions of others). I’m not trying to be alarmist and there’s no call to take this idea and run straight into fascism or eugenics. I’m thinking about the conflict on a Mythic scale, with the protagonist being our species, and I hope that we survive the challenges along our Hero’s Journey without losing sight of Hope. Not every individual human will survive, but each of us should be trying to help out our communities as much as we can, because the local communities are the real crucible for cultural and societal change, and if Hope is to prevail over Pain, to continue prevailing over Pain along down the winding road of the future, things need to change.

So: figure out what you can do to help, in small ways. Not everything has to be big, and while we should not put off the work, there is no fast-approaching deadline, either. Rest when you need to. Fight when you can. Support others when they are the ones fighting. And I’ll leave you with this quote from The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien:

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’

Dryads and Wood-Wives: A Question of Categorization

February 1, 2023
by Alexandra

I got an interesting question on tumblr last week, and while I’m not going to copy the entire thing over here, nor my entire rambling response, I thought it brought up two important worldview questions that might illuminate my practice a bit for ya’ll, and may help out others who are new to walking the path of a fairy witch.

The first question was, basically: is a Germanic wood-wife the same thing as a Greek dryad? Are these just two names for the same exact thing? On the surface, it does sort of seem that way; they’re described in very similar terms. But one of the trickiest things about the realms of Fairy (and one that I think is the hardest for people to wrap their heads around) is that we can’t cleanly separate fairies into specific species. There’s a lot of evidence in the Scottish Witch Trial manuscripts that the difference between a devil and an imp and a fairy and an elf was pretty much a difference of attitude, and that the same being might be called two or more of these terms even by the same person.(1) And there’s plenty of folkloric evidence that these beings can change their appearance, or at least deceive our senses. So we just can’t quantify and identify them as we do with animals and plants, and just because they seem similar doesn’t necessarily mean they are the same.

On top of that, we have to add the complexities of culture – both ours and theirs. I think it’s reasonable to say that some of the Fair Folk seem to have a sort of symbiotic relationship with nearby humans, to the point that there’s some cultural bleed between the two groups.(2) So it would make sense to me that the dryads would have more Greek sensibilities and prefer offerings of common Greek foodstuffs, whereas wood-wives would have more Germanic sensibilities and prefer more common Germanic foodstuffs – and that seems to be born out in the folklore about what to offer and how to give it. So it doesn’t make sense to me to try and force a pattern on that – there’s no way to reduce them all, to the point where you can say “all feminine forest spirits should be offered [some kind of food]”. I think it’s better to just not worry about whether wood-wives and dryads are the same “species” and instead of highlighting the similarities, learn about the differences, so that you don’t accidentally offend anyone.(3) When I encounter new beings in the landscape, either Over Here, or Over There, as I’m going about my business, one of the things I ask is what they call themselves – not their Name or even name, but what type of a being they want me to know them as. They are usually willing to either show or tell me enough that I can at least figure out what paradigm will work best in my interactions with them, and I then move forward treating them as the folklore surrounding that being suggests that I should.(4)

That brings me to the second question: do fairy beings travel to places other than where their original folklore is from? I think they do. I think it would be strange to think that only humans travel across our world, when plants and animals have done their best to migrate (with and without our help) as well. I also think that the symbiosis I spoke about in the last section plays a roll, but this time on a more macro scale. I’ve heard stories of brownies and nisser traveling with their families on boats to the Americas, and there are stories of fairy beings being “chased out” of certain areas (often by Christian priests). I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that some of them might’ve come that way to the Americas or Australia or wherever. Personally, I’ve met a lot of fairy beings who, when I ask them what type of being they are, identify themselves as something from European folklore. Near where I live, it’s been mainly beings known from Celtic or British or Germanic cultural folklore, and I think that makes sense given the colonial history of this area. (I’ve met some indigenous otherworldly beings as well, but they’re usually fairly shy, and so far none of them are specifically symbiotic to the indigenous cultures of that side of my family, but I’m nowhere near the traditional homelands, either.) I wouldn’t be super surprised, either, to find beings from Central American or Islamic or Korean folklore nearby, either, considering the current demographics of the area, but I also can’t say that I would necessarily recognize them if I did, as I’m not as well versed in those. Generally though, I think it’s not impossible to find beings from any culture that is currently represented in your area or has ever lived there, because these beings are usually believed to be both powerful and long-lived, and it’s therefore a good idea to just learn as much as you can about anyone you might encounter.

When I ask fairy-like otherworldly beings(5) what kind of a being they are, I’m not looking to categorize them, to check them off in a field guide, or to decide what “species” they belong to – I’m trying to gain context. How they present themselves tells me a little about their expectations, their likes and dislikes, and their sensibilities. And then I’ll use that information, and offer Dryads clean water, diluted wine, and olive oil, and offer wood-wives bread or other things made of grain, and perhaps a bit of milk. I’m a witch looking to create relationships, not a scientist trying to answer questions that might just be unanswerable.

See Emma Wilby’s Cunningfolk and Familiar Spirits (Sussex Academic Press, 2005), and Seo Helrune (www.seohelrune.com) has talked about the same in the Nordic sphere, with alfe vs jotnar, in some of their classes.
“Symbiotic” here not necessarily meaning “mutualistic” (benefitting both parties) on a micro scale. I think it’s likely that it’s mutualistic on a macro scale of our two populations, but on a micro scale yeah some humans definitely get fucked over, more along the lines of commensalism or straight-up predation.
Really, learning as much as you can in order to avoid giving accidental offence is probably my #1 Fairy Witchcraft rule.
To an extent: there’s plenty of folklore that says “don’t ever fucking talk to these omg just leave quickly and pretend you didn’t see them”. That’s fairly wise for those wishing not to end up in deep water with the Fair Folk but as I’m already fully submerged, I don’t always look away – I trust that my bargains and roles and allies will keep me safe in most normal situations, and I don’t try to mess around with things above my pay grade. A lot of my discernment has been just figuring out what is and is not within my pay grade, and while I might not rush inside and barricade the door if I see a kelpie, I’m not likely to touch it or try to banish it, either. To quote Morgan Daimler, “I like my liver on the inside.”
There’s some disagreement about whether “fairy” includes non-European folkloric otherworldly beings, and more about whether it should, so just to be clear, when I use “fairy” I do mean it in the more general “folkloric otherworldly being” sense. But I try to use “fairy-like” when I’m explicitly talking about non-European folkloric otherworldly beings, out of respect for people in their source cultures who might not feel like the word “fairy” is appropriate. Some of that, I find, is because of a misunderstanding of what a “fairy” is, based on popculture, though – I had a long discussion with a Persian friend about fairies and djinn where at the end we basically decided both terms covered the same basic category, but she originally had thought all fairies were small Tinkerbell types which did not seem at all like her understanding of djinn!

Song for the Winter Rade

In September, I shared a poem/song/prayer I called “Song for the Way Opening” after getting a message from some of my allies that I should be celebrating the movements of the Pleiades more intentionally. I’d followed the outline Morgan Daimler gave in their book Living Fairy, and made Daimler’s fairy cakes, and then the prayer in the book turned into a sung prayer to the tune of Thomas the Rhymer in my head, and, well. That was the subject of the blog.

This time, I intentionally worked out the poem/song/prayer, and I made an offering of nuts and whiskey, and I’ll be giving a little bit of the secular feast tomorrow as well, so I didn’t make fairy cakes this time.

The first two stanzas of the song are the same, and the last two stanzas are as well, except for the last line.

Song for the Winter Rade

I call to all you goodly wights,
My kin and friends whoe’er shall be.
All you who’d be my allies true,
And come and walk this path with me.

I call to all the Queens and Kings,
Monarchs and Sov’reigns, all gentry near —
If you would celebrate with me
Tis time to come and join me here.

Tonight the Queens will reach their height —
At mid-night they’ll be standing still,
Poised in the center of the sky
And shining down on all they will.

Their fair blue light, it brightly burns:
A torchlight for an open gate.
The Fairy Rade will then emerge
As seven Queen-Stars culminate.

Through the gate, and between worlds,
The Queens will ride across our land —
For our two worlds are intertwined,
Like fingers lacing hand in hand.

As they ride past, may we be blessed,
With token or with smile or nod,
And may they take our offerings,
As their refreshment while they’re abroad.

A good word to the Fairy Rade,
And may you never do us ill!
Ride out along the fairy roads,
Bringing with you Winter’s chill.

This time I’ve also pulled an omen to share: one rune and one ogham, to symbolize the two groups of fairy folk with whom I work most closely. I pulled Wunjo and Onn. Wunjo is a rune of joy and satisfaction, and my personal poem for it is “Joy in wealth is found when it is shared; joy in life is found in the happiness of those around you.” Onn is an ogham associated with the ash tree and gorse, and my personal kenning for it is “Onward Momentum”. So, as we move into the coming days, try to find joy, and reasons to keep going forward! I know this is a hard time of year for many people, as the light wanes (and complex family difficulties are exacerbated by the winter holidays), but there are still good things to be found and enjoyed.

I do have a Crow Calls post to make soon, too, but I wanted to do it separately, so that will probably be here in a couple days!

Samhain Season, Spooky Season, and Spicy Spirit Weather

This morning when I woke up, there was frost on the ground – the first frost I’ve seen this year. It’s earlier than the past two years I’ve lived here; previously it was just a few days before or after October 31st. The farmer’s almanac was close though – their prediction this year was the 18th, 3 days ago, and it got down close to freezing then but not quite. I took a few photos on my walk this morning and posted them to my instagram. It was early, just about sunrise, and the neighborhood smelled like woodsmoke – a lovely start to my personal Samhain Season.

While a lot of pagans and witches consider Samhain to be the one day most often celebrated as a neopagan high day (generally November 1st), my personal observance of Samhain includes October 31st (known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna, or November Eve), November 1st through at least the 7th or 8th (the astrological halfway point) and sometimes through the 11th (the adjusted old date, before the calendar shifted), and the first frost, wherever I am. It’s a little loose for a liturgical event, but it’s more than a single day holiday for me. The end of the summer half of the year and the transition to the winter half of the year is a liminal space and I let it take up space in my practice and in my life. Samhain is the name for the whole month of November in modern Irish, and there’s evidence that some of the fire festivals went two weeks in length, and that’s sort of the feel I’m going for. This period also usually coincides with a stellar date that’s important to my practice: the heliacal rising of the star Spica. She’ll rise just after the sun on November 2nd this year, after being gone from the sky for about the last six weeks, and that observance has also become part of my Samhain Season, marking a time of personal transition towards darkness, as I prepare for the winter months.

That transition towards darkness and winter is also a big part of why fall is sometimes called “Spooky Season”, I think. Some people only use “Spooky Season” to refer to the month of October and the run-up to Halloween, but lately I’ve been hearing it about September and November as well, and I think it’s sort of fitting. Autumn is a season of harvest and death and decay, and that can be a bit spooky – in a good way, in my opinion! It’s a good time to reflect on the past and engage with our shadows as the nights become longer and colder. Death is omnipresent, and not just because of Halloween decorations. I start to feel the stirrings of the Wild Hunt on the wind in September most years, and by the first frost at the end of October, they’re running strong most nights. Oiche Shamhna has long been associated with the proximity of otherworldly forces, or the “thinning of the veil” in modern parlance, and with the Dead especially. My own practice around Samhain focuses on the Morrigna, Be Chuille, and the Dead. In my new monthly calendar, I honor the Morrigna in October and Be Chuille (and her family) in November, and my Samhain practice transitions between those two in a way more overlapping than sharply delineated.

The Dead being more present and the Wild Hunt running around both contribute to the seeming uptick in supernatural events, paranormal activity, and general spirit weather that occurs this time of year. I’ve seen more than one post on Facebook reminding fellow witches and pagans to ground and shield and make sure your wards are tight – and with good reason. Not everything riding the wind wishes us well, or is friendly or favorable to our intentions and lives. Nor are they truly evil or even baneful, however – they just Are. I don’t assign moral meaning to forces of chaos or destruction, personally; they can be for good or for ill, just as forces of order and creation can also be used for good or for ill. Wards are fences – as much as I might enjoy the presence of my Local wind riders when I’m walking around at dusk, I do prefer them to stay outside! I stay out of their way, and I hope they’ll stay out of mine, and good neighbors may we be. How much to avoid them and how thick to build wards to feel safe inside is a matter of personal preference, and I recently saw these upticks referred to as “spicy”, which struck me as a perfect analogy! Some people (like me) like their food with a bit of a kick, and while sometimes we might bite into something a little hotter than we can manage, we know how to remedy that situation and generally we can handle it with good humor. Some people, when they bite into something spicy, find only pain and no enjoyment (and sometimes shake their heads at spice lovers in disbelief). There’s no need to engage with the wilder spirit weather if you don’t want to, but it’s my jam, personally, and one of the many reasons I love the fall. Samhain and Bealtaine are probably my two favorite holidays, mostly because of the wild and carnivalesque otherworldly tides of energy surrounding those two times of year, and because of how important both transitional periods are to the Fair Folk I’m connected to. It invigorates me and my practice in ways that steadier energies don’t. So don’t mind me, I’m just gonna take my hot apple cider and be off with the Fairies…

Song for the Way Opening

For a few years now, Morgan Daimler has been celebrating a liturgical cycle based on the movements of the Pleiades, and sharing their ritual formats (which are also collected in their book Living Fairy). I’ve sort of marked the dates casually, giving offerings but that’s about it, until this year. This year, one of my local allies, who I call the Autumn King, indicated that he would like it if I’d celebrate the entire cycle more intentionally, and so after the strong energy that came through last night (during which I perceived his Rade), I decided I really needed to do something tonight for the acronychal rising, or what Daimler calls The Way Opening.

So, this afternoon I made some fairy cakes (original recipe also by Daimler and available here), but I altered the recipe slightly, doing a full cup of oat flour, and half a cup each of applesauce and honey. (Don’t use steel utensils, though — I unthinkingly picked up a stainless steel measuring cup that I used twice in the previous 24 hours without incident, and this afternoon it cut me nearly bad enough to draw blood. Message heard, whoops!) I then used an unsalted butter to grease a glass dish, and baked a single round cake (approx 40 mins at 350F).

I offered this with a glass of beer, and sat down to read out the prayers from the book, altering them slightly to fit my practice a little better.

And then… and then.

For some reason, one of the prayers reminded me of a stanza from the ballad of True Thomas/Thomas the Rhymer, the one that describes the road to Fairy:

And see not ye that bonny road,
Which winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Whe[re] you and I this night maun gae.
(Traditional Scots)

And then I started hearing the music in my head, and I went to find the song and listen to it, and about ten minutes later, I had a full ritual hymn with seven stanzas, adapted from Daimler’s own prayers but with some of my own flourish… and probably Their own inspiration.

Song for the Way Opening

I call to all you goodly wights,
My kin and friends whoe’er shall be.
All you who’d be my allies true,
And come and walk this path with me.

I call to all the Queens and Kings,
Monarchs and Sov’reigns, all gentry near —
If you would celebrate with me
Tis time to come and join me here.

Tonight the Queens rise in the East —
The Seven Sister-Queens so bright.
They’ll cross above the horizon
As daylight’s falling into night.

Their Eldritch light, it brightly glows:
A signal fire, burning blue.
The Queens will dance at twilight’s edge
As their sky gates open anew.

Between worlds, and between time,
The gates will open fully wide,
And then upon that fair broad road,
The Queens and noble hosts will ride.

As they ride past, may we be blessed,
With token or with smile or nod,
And may they take our offerings,
As their refreshment while they’re abroad.

A good word to the Fairy Rade,
And may you never do us ill!
Ride out along the fairy roads,
Bringing with you Autumn’s chill.

I do have a small thing to share from Freyja as well, from my equinox celebration, but that’s going to have to wait another day or two for me to get it worked out and typed up!

Spirit Relationships for a Defensible Home, Part One: Outside

September 7, 2022
by Alexandra

I said in my last blog that spirit relationships make up another layer of my home defensibility, and they do — both inside and outside my house. I’m working from an animistic perspective here, because that’s what I do and who I am, but I think there might be some helpful kernels even for folks who aren’t starting from that perspective. In the last blog, I mentioned greeting the spirit of the parcel of land, and the spirit of the house itself, and those are the first two spirits I build a relationship with in any new place I live. Those relationships are usually somewhat less “showy” (at least for me) that some of the others I’ll mention in this blog, but they’re the foundation for everything else. If you’re not on good terms with them and well situated in your property, it will be difficult to make your home defensible, no matter what else you do. Also, if you’re not the property owner, you can still form your own relationships with the house and land, and that will help support any wards you place around areas (like a bedroom) that are specifically yours. You can also make relationships with spirits both outside and inside the property, to support your defenses. For the purposes of this blog, I’m just going to cover spirits that are found outside the property, because I originally had started writing out both “outside” and “inside”, but it became a bit too long for one post!

*This is an image from unsplash of Great Falls on the Potomac, which is very similar to an image I took that I almost used – except this one is much higher quality!*

Land spirits, (ie spirits of the land itself, not nature spirits more generally) in my experience, seem to be some sort of nesting dolls, in that you can ask to speak to the spirit of a particular property, and one will show up, and ask to speak to the spirit of a neighborhood, and one that feels slightly different and slightly bigger will show up, and the same (slightly different, slightly bigger) for a town, a region, etc. (However, when we start to approach places the size of the state of Virginia, they get a little too big for me to really pin down borders. I find it easier at that point to attempt to contact the spirit of a particular geographic feature, like “the Appalachian Mountains”, or “the land to the east of the Chesapeake Bay”, rather than relying on my memory of a map of human-drawn borders!) For the purposes of A Defensible Home, the neighborhood or perhaps the town should do you pretty well — this is the larger land spirit that encompasses the land you call home, and it is a good idea to get to know them, and to remain on friendly terms. For me, that usually means being a good “citizen” — picking up trash when I see it, making sure my yard has plants helpful to local insect life, not disturbing local animal life, and the occasional offering of water or something biodegradable that won’t disrupt the local ecosystem (no invasive plants, no foods that will harm wildlife, don’t pour alcohol on plants, etc). When we “talk”, it’s more a mind-brush than a conversation in words, and most often I just ask about the weather! The creatures who live on the land this spirit encompasses live in symbiosis with it — and we should strive to, as well. That also means that all your plant and animal and insect “neighbors” can provide omens, should you need to seek them. I have mapped my local birds to the ogham, and that often provides my land and nature spirits with a way to get my attention. I know which birds live nearby, and which are infrequent enough visitors that their presence might be meaningful.

Spirits of your local waterways are likewise important, and also seem to function like nesting dolls, with a spirit of a stream, the creek it feeds into, the river that feeds into, and then around here — the Chesapeake Bay. I really think every animist witch ought to know what watershed they live in, down to the small streams closest to you! At the larger end, your local river spirit can be a very powerful ally, and with the vast number of witchy uses for water, especially running water, I think it makes sense to nurture that relationship. As with the large land spirits, my offerings to my local waterway spirits are mostly “being a good citizen”, and my contact with them is more mind-brush than casual conversation. Interestingly, though — and this is just my personal experience, so your mileage may vary — I do find the river spirits to be more likely to take on humanoid forms and speak to me in words. That may come from my background in Irish Polytheism, where several river names are those of goddesses, because I do tend to address rivers (and the Great Lakes, and the Chesapeake Bay) as deities in their own right.

For both of these categories of spirit, the role they play in the defense of my home is mainly that I can ask them for forewarning if danger is nearby, and for assistance if I attempt to expel something from my property. If I banish something, I don’t want it to take two steps and come right back, and sometimes the land and waterway spirits are willing to help keep it away. They can also ground out or disperse unwanted energies, though I find it best to ask them how to transmute the energies so that they will be most useful. I have even used some of my excess energy as offerings recently: I was running a little hot due to a hormonal problem, and got up early in the morning to go on a cave tour. Inside, I ended up stumbling a bit because of drowsiness and balance issues, so I stopped and greeted the spirit of the cave and asked what I could give, in exchange for sure footing. The answer I received: your heat. So I took off the jacket (which was a little warm anyhow), and let my excess heat float off of me, into the cave. And after that, I didn’t have any more trouble walking over the uneven terrain!

The other main category of Outside spirits just consists of spirits who live nearby. You have human neighbors, and animal, plant, insect, fungi neighbors, spirits of land and water and (perhaps) of constructed things, but also there are other types of spirits who just go about their business mostly unseen in this world we share. For me, the spirits of this category with whom I interact the most often are the Fair Folk. (All the rest of this paragraph is my own UPG, based on my own experiences; I make no claims that others will experience it the same way, even within my local area, and outside my local area I have no idea how things are organized. Understood? Then let’s continue.) There is a fairy court near me that has territory roughly corresponding to the local stream’s watershed, and the Queen of that court has become a close ally of mine. When I banish something, her folk will (often) chase it beyond their own borders, and when there are dangers, she (often) warns me, and when she requests my assistance in her own difficulties, I aid her with my magic as best I am able. As her stream empties into the Potomac River, her court seems to belong to a larger assembly of courts aligned with the Potomac watershed, and then above that, there seems to be a higher authority encompassing the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed. I try to nurture relationships with each of the small courts I come into contact with, and with the larger authorities, but the court whose territory I live in is the most important for my home defense. We are very frequently in contact, and I give very frequent offerings, and when there is something I need help dealing with that lies beyond my wards but not beyond her borders, it is usually to her that I first turn, even before my gods. The Fair Folk are fickle though, and so diverse it’s impossible to paint them all with the same brush — the type of relationship you’re likely to have with your local Fair Folk depends on them perhaps even more than it depends on the steps you take to nurture a relationship. It is far easier and far safer to be on pleasantly cordial terms like “you stay out of my home and I’ll not meddle in yours” than it is to be involved in a pact that amounts to mutual defense, but for those who do have Good Neighbors inclined to alliances, for prices you’re willing to pay, they can be very valuable allies.

Some of the members of the court local to me do come in the house now and again, but mostly they stay outside, hence their inclusion here. However, they are the main reason, as I said in the first blog, that I don’t use iron at my property line. That does mean I have to use a little more finesse when it comes to creating wards that will allow emissaries in, for example, but not those inclined to make trouble. I do rely on my agreement with their queen for that, in large part, but I also have some finely tuned interior wards, as I mentioned before, and House Rules, which I will explain in more depth in the next blog. In the meantime, Daniela Siminia has an excellent overview of her own approach to allowing in some-but-not-all, on her own blog, here.

And as that’s already quite a long post, we’ll call that a wrap! I’ll be back with part two next week, hopefully. I’m trying to post a new blog every Wednesday, so check back then!

Edit: Here’s the link to Part 2!

A Lunar Eclipse, The Midnight Culmination of The Pleiades, And Otherworldly Tides

It’s been a while (and a whole change of blogging platform) since I last made a “Faery Weather” post,¹ but it seems to be That Time again. For those who haven’t seen the old posts, this basically started when the Morrigan and some of my Fair Folk contacts started giving me messages to pass along about how activity in the Otherworlds was going to spill over into my local environment (which was defined somewhat broadly by Them as the Chesapeake Bay watershed region, though it is probably less applicable the farther one gets from the Bay itself). The first few blogs turned into a semi-regular series, but when Na Morrigna had me start writing out Their messages on the Dark Moon, some of the information was getting passed along that way instead. I haven’t really been sharing much of my personal involvements in various Otherworldly shenanigans recently for a couple of reasons: some of it is sort difficult to describe, some of it I can’t really talk about, and it’s all very deep in the UPG well of woo.²

But this “weather report”, though still UPG, is more general in application, and the gist of it is this: over the next few days we’ve got the waning of the Leonid meteor shower, a full moon, a lunar eclipse, and the midnight culmination of the Pleiades cluster.³ Any of those by themselves might mean a “high tide” of Otherworldly activity spilling over into our realm, but with all of them together and taking onto consideration just how much activity there’s been on “quiet” days lately,⁴ I think we need to be prepared for a higher-than-normal high tide.

The usual warnings apply: ground, center and shield. Ward your spaces. Check in with your spirit allies. Be prepared for extra wackiness even in your mundane life!

However, if you know how to ride a wave, this is an excellent time to go witchy-surfing (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor, haha). There’s extra liminality going on — the sun is transitioning from Scorpio to Sagittarius as well — and there’s a profusion of swirling energies, perfect to harness if you have a working well-suited to these conditions. I’m supposed to recommend caution, but I understand that sometimes experimentation is the best way to learn, so use your own best judgement.

If you are planning to make overtures to Otherworldly beings, just remember that even the Fair Folk most friendly to humanity are not always kind, and though the Fair Folk do not lie, they often mislead. I usually recommend starting with those closest to you if you intend to work with the Fair Folk — your own Good Neighbors — but others will be riding the winds and traveling the fairy roads as well: some neutral, some baleful, some hostile or even predatory. You don’t want to grab the attention of the Slua Sí! Being able to discern between neighbors and interlopers is very important in spiritwork in general but it’s especially important right now.

There have been conflicts these past couple of years that took place mostly in the Otherworlds but have spilled over into our realm,⁵ and I’ve been experiencing more conflicts taking place unseen in parts of our world as well, lately. It’s tense out there — though like with mundane wars, some places have been hit more heavily than others. There isn’t really a major physical dividing line that I’m aware of, but the idea of “front lines” (as humans experienced them in the trenches of the World Wars) makes a pretty good analogy to distinguish between harder hit areas and places that have been more sheltered from the conflicts. If you live in an area that’s been more like the front lines, it will be even more important to shield and ward these next few days.

Hopefully this message finds its way to those who need to hear it, but if it isn’t relevant to your path please scroll on by. I’m happy to discuss things over email if anyone has more specific concerns, and I’ll respond to any comments posted here as best I can, but I think it’s important to stress again that this is UPG, and not everyone experiences Otherworldly flows in the same manner. This message will be most helpful to those whose UPG best aligns with my own!

Notes:

Those are available here on wordpress, if you’re interested.
UPG, for those unfamiliar with the term, stands for “Unverified Personal Gnosis”, which is knowledge I have gained from my own personal experiences interacting with the Otherworlds and Otherworldly beings.
For that last one, I recommend reading Morgan Daimler’s recent book “Living Fairy”, on their experiences with Otherworldly celebrations following the cycle of the Pleiades cluster.
A lot of pagan writers have commented on this phenomenon, but John Beckett had a pretty good introductory pair of blogs in 2016 and has some more recent thoughts about it, too. Those can be found here on Patheos.
And these have been even worse, in my experience, than what Beckett mentions in the blogs linked above, and I’ve heard similar from a few of my fellow “fairy-involved” witches.

The thumbnail image on this post is a stock photo of the Pleiades cluster provided by SquareSpace.

Oracle Deck Review: Wild Wisdom of the Faery

Deck: Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle
Publisher: Blue Angel
Writer: Lucy Cavendish
Artist: Selina Fenech
Overall Rating: 5/10

image (c) Blue Angel. Cards shown are: Lift the Darkness, Acorn’s Invitation, Star Dust, and Into the Woods

Cardstock: They’re pretty flexible and smooth, but the cards are nearly too large for me to shuffle. They measure about 5.5″ tall and 3.75″ wide (or 14cm x 9.5 cm). Still, I manage to get them mixed up well with a combination of shuffling methods. The deck box is a two part hard case, which so far is holding up well.

Artwork: The artwork appears to be mostly traditional media, but the artist’s website says that she often begins with watercolor or acrylic, and then adds a little more in digital form afterwards. If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m generally a sucker for watercolors. A lot of the art is pretty “twee”, almost all the fairies have wings, and while there’s a range of sizes (from tiny to human-sized), there’s not much by way of diversity of body shape or skin tone (mostly femme, white, thin, and wearing filmy clothing). The cards also have the name and keywords written over the image, despite the rather large border, and the contrast isn’t great on a few of them.

Book: The booklet pretty large, about 170 pages, though the beginning is a bunch of New Age Fairy Nonsense that sees Them as mainly benevolent (if tricksy) nature angels, and says that all the stories of bad luck and negative encounters are a product of Church propaganda. For example, they define the Unseelie Court by saying: “not so fond of humans, as they feel we have been very harmful. Most of the Unseelie’s [sic] have ‘given up’ on us. ‘Tis up to us to prove them wrong.” Yeah okay, I guess maybe kelpies eat people because they… littered? Sure, okay, let’s just ignore several centuries of living belief and practice. [/sarcasm]
The booklet does include a few interesting spreads, though I still can’t advise invoking the Fair Folk or asking them for divinatory advice on your life situations, the way it recommends.
The descriptions of the cards themselves have a few paragraphs of description and then a few paragraphs each of divinatory meanings and reversed meanings, which is always helpful. The cards all have their number on the top border, so you can flip through the book to find them, but they aren’t in alphabetical order.

Likes: I like the general art style, though I wish it depicted a more diverse cast. I also do actually really like the amount of information the booklet gives for each card, because as I’m learning a new deck I really like to figure out what the writer and artist were both thinking, so I can better understand their symbolism, and build that into my intuitive readings. I do also like it when there are a couple of keywords on the card when it’s an oracle deck, because with those there’s no set of meanings like there is with tarot, lenormand, or runes.

Dislikes: Basically the entire introductory section in the the book. And the lack of diversity. And the borders, and how the keywords aren’t well contrasted. The size of the cards.

Overall Recommendation

TL;DR: if this one goes missing or gets water damaged, I probably won’t buy a new one. A lot of my clients seem to like the artwork, but I never use this one for my own personal readings unless I can’t use something better. I bought it a while back because it was pretty, but this one really is a bit too twee for my tastes. The Faery Forest Oracle by Lucy Cavendish again, but with artwork by Maxine Gadd, is a bit less twee, and I find that they work okay together, for better rounded answers. The Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle sugarcoats like a candy store, so if you’re looking for a very gentle deck with a sunny disposition and cute artwork, it’ll probably serve you well, but I think a fair few of my readers will be put off by the twee.

Bealtaine with the Local Fair Folk

As frequent readers of this blog might guess, my upcoming Bealtaine* plans will revolve around the Fair Folk. While most folklore tells us to ward and protect against Them on festival days, here in faery-witchcraft-land, it’s a holiday to celebrate connections with Them, instead. I plan to do a simple solitary ritual on Oíche Bealtaine (May-Eve), and give offerings to a Local Fairy Queen who is an ally of mine. I call her the Rosegay Queen, since she seems to be associated with wild roses. I’ll also be paying my respects to the royal couple she has claimed descent from, Úna and Fionnbharr. To that end, I have some mead, and I’m thinking about making some of the Fairy Cakes Morgan Daimler learned to make in a dream. Perhaps I’ll top them with hawthorn jelly (it is SO GOOD), and maybe I’ll get some rose flavored tea or floral lemonade.

I was hoping to buy a young hawthorn tree this spring, but was warned not to because of the 17 year cicadas, which are due any day now. (Apparently they can stress and kill young shrubs!) So my May Bush this year is probably the rhododendron out front again – but I suppose that’s in keeping with the rose theme, as another name for those is the rosebay!

I’m still planning the menu for the family dinner, which usually is the bulk of the household observation of holidays. I tend to stick to dishes with ingredients that are in season locally. I have in the past made a strawberry-filled salad, but I think the strawberries are going to be a little later this year. The wild violets are coming up, though, and those are edible! I may do a side salad with violets and a quiche with local eggs, goat cheese, and fresh herbs. My herbs are all regreening in the bed out front, and I should have plenty. Maybe I’ll use some of the baby green onions, too – those will need thinning soon!

After dinner we’ll probably have a fire in the pit outside, and do a short round of offerings and prayer, like my household does for most holidays. My kiddo really likes to watch the fires, and even though he’s not really clear on what’s going on yet, he’s keen to be involved! As he gets older, he’ll understand more and can decide how much he wants to participate but for the moment he likes to toss things in the fire whenever he’s allowed to!

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do my solo ritual after the rest of them go to bed, or earlier, at sunset, but I’m leaning towards earlier rather than later. None of the rest of the people in my household really interact with the Fair Folk much. Not on purpose, anyway, though sometimes They follow me home or come in to deliver a message, or some such. I try to keep “office hours” as best I can, but serving a Fairy Queen is a full-time job! Still, there are some perks, and with any luck I’ll be dreaming of celebrations in the Otherworlds on Oíche Bealtaine, as I have sometimes in the past. (And returning home in the morning, Gods willing!)

* Yes, I know this isn’t how a lot of people spell it, but I think it’s important to use the Irish spelling when I’m going to be honoring Irish Fairy Monarchs, and this is the modern Irish spelling. Living culture and all that. See Also: Úna and Fionnbharr, both of which have other Old Irish spellings.

The Best Place to Meet The Good Neighbors Might Just Be Your Neighborhood

John Beckett wrote an article recently, about how we as pagans and magical workers ought to be paying attention to changes between the worlds, and I enjoyed it, and generally agree. As I think back, more than half of what I’ve done this past year in my spiritual-magical practice was just dealing with Otherworldly situations of one type or another:

Establishing and then maintaining relationships with who I refer to as my “Locals”, after I moved in March 2020
My regularly-scheduled oracular work, much of which focused on Otherworldly goings-on
Discussing Otherworldly turbulence with other practitioners (both local and not)
Divination to gain insight into Otherworldly encounters, both mine and others’
Helping friends and acquaintances deal with their own Otherworldly encounters
Etc.

The other less-than-half consisted mainly of ongoing divination studies, maintaining relationships with my Deities and other Allies, celebrating holidays, and using magic to help problem-solve mundane issues as they cropped up — business as usual in my life. I’ve also done my fair share of gardening and baking from scratch and attempting to entertain a lonely toddler who couldn’t go to the park or the pool during the pandemic, of course! But I think Beckett’s point that we need to be doing more than just mundane prep work, that we need to be monitoring the changes between the worlds is very important.

The article gives a rhetorical question: “So, what do we need to do to pay attention to the changes that are happening in the Otherworld and between the worlds?”, and then goes on to answer that: build foundations, be places you can observe, listen to your senses (including the inner ones), explore by journeying. Anyone who is familiar with Beckett’s writing will be unsurprised to see daily practice listed under foundations, and regular practice is definitely important, but I must admit my own practice is more “every couple of days on average” than strictly “daily”! I’ve never managed to do *anything* every day for longer than three weeks, but I do 3-4 days a week just fine for months at a stretch! So don’t be too disheartened if your practice looks more like mine, but I still generally agree with this point. It’s the second one that made me pause.

The second heading is titled “Put yourself in places to see what’s happening”, and while I agree with the starting premise (“if you want to encounter an Otherworldly person, your odds are much better if you put yourself in a place where they’re more likely to be”), I can’t say the same for the second half. It emphasizes the importance of going to wild places, and ends with the phrase “the wilder the better.”

I disagree.

I don’t think wilder is always better, when it comes to seeking out Otherworldly beings. Most of the Fair Folk I’m in most frequent contact with, I met somewhere nearby, often in one of the local suburban stream valley parks. I live in Northern Virginia, and while a lot of these parks are large and fairly sprawling, my chronic illnesses sometimes make it difficult to go longer distances across more complicated terrain, so I usually stay on or near the path, almost always somewhere I can still hear traffic noise in the background. And yet, I have encounters. Numerous encounters. Most any time I go out with the intention of finding a Local to wherever I am, in my own neighborhood, or in someone else’s (back when we could gather in groups!), I find Someone. Liminal times and places can be helpful, and the paved trails around here are liminal in their own way (as most people are only passing through) but they certainly aren’t very “wild”.

I think part of the reason that I have so many suburban encounters is simply because I, and most of my nearby friends, live in suburbia. That is the environment I am in the most often. In the places I frequent the most, I begin to develop relationships with the land wights and the nature spirits, as a matter of course, and along with that comes the possibility — or perhaps the likelihood — that I will eventually encounter whatever Otherworldly Neighbors also frequent these places. So if I walk out my door with the intention of meeting my Good Neighbors, I usually do. They have already “seen me around”, we already have friends in common, and the foundations for mutual hospitality have already been laid.

If I am somewhere very new to me, like when I travelled to conferences and events (back when those were in person!), I will give offerings and introduce myself to the land and the nearby nature spirits first, before I attempt to introduce myself to the Otherworldly Locals, and while I usually manage to find Them and exchange hospitality, it is in the wilder places that I have gotten the most push-back. Things like token acceptance, but no chit-chat; a sense of knowing that my offering is accepted, but no visions; only the bare minimum politesse. They are more standoffish, and I have fewer common relationships to draw on, especially when the human hosts are unknown to me. If I were looking for a new ally to help me better understand our current turbulence, I wouldn’t do it there. Do you talk to people who live somewhere else about your local weather and local politics, or do you talk to your nearby neighbors? I would think for most of us, it’s the latter, especially if we’re trying to understand the patterns, and not just recounting anecdotes. Your internet friends three timezones away might find your story about April Fool’s Snow interesting, but they don’t have the same kind of local knowledge as someone who’s lived in your town their entire life. When it comes to climate change, I’m interested in the wisdom of local humans. When it comes to the Otherworldly turbulence of Tower Time, I turn to the wisdom of Good Neighbors who’ve been been Local since before I came to this town — and perhaps also since before I was born, or before my grandparents were born, though they probably wouldn’t tell me!

The rest of Beckett’s advice seems good. Learning to develop one’s subtle senses is usually helpful, though I haven’t read Mat Auryn’s book, so I can’t comment on that, specifically. Exploring via journeys is something I’d also recommend, though I would suggest newbies start with Lora O’Brien’s Otherworld Journeys classes over at the Irish Pagan School. The first class is free, and after that there’s a lot of material at the higher levels. It isn’t how I learned to journey, but it does work well as remote learning for practitioners at any level. Experienced folk should be able to easily adapt to her methodology — I did! And the method is also designed specifically for the Irish Otherworlds, and as such, is designed to minimize some of the associated danger. I will still echo Beckett’s next point, though — this isn’t Safe. Exploring the Otherworlds isn’t safe, trucking with spirits isn’t safe, working for Deities isn’t safe, witchcraft isn’t safe. But it’s necessary work.

Likewise, I agree that sharing our stories is vitally important. I’ve been doing more of that, mainly on social media (in FB groups or on others’ posts mostly, and a couple of Discord servers), and in the few groups I was a part of pre-pandemic that I’m still regularly attending Zoom sessions for (which at this point is only the Potomac Ondvegisulur Seidr Guild, as the Fellowship Beyond the Star is somewhat on hiatus currently, though I hope to get back involved with our local UU Pagan group, Fox and Fungi at UU Reston). It helps to compare notes, to figure out what seems to be a larger pattern, and what may be a personal fluke instead. I have put some of it on this blog, and should maybe do more of that in the future, but with how fast everything seems to be changing, and with how deep into UPG Woo Land a lot of my stories are, at the moment I’m more comfortable sharing only the broad strokes of those insights in public, or contributing some details when they align with someone else’s experience. What and when to share, and when to keep silent instead, is a line I’m still figuring out how to walk, and I tend to err on the side of silence. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling like I should share at least the general shape of my interactions with the Fair Folk, and this seemed like a good place to start.

Note: Another thing worth mentioning, though it would have interrupted the stream of my discussion above, is that what most white Americans think of as “wild” or “wilderness” is a colonial construct, especially when the adjectives “pristine” or “untouched” get thrown around. A lot of these places were carefully and gently tended by indigenous peoples for generations, possibly hundreds or thousands of years, before the settlers showed up and declared them “untamed”. For more information on this, I suggest researching the importance of fires for maintaining the Great Plains, and the nurturing of berry patches and sugar maple forests in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Lakes regions.

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