Word from the Witches - Anon talks fairies

Today, I would like to talk to you about the fairies or the fae or the others.

I mean, the terms and the labels go on.

I was first introduced to the others by my mamgu or my grandmother when I was about three or four years of age, and I've been collaborating and working with them now for over four decades.

[laughs] I'm old, man.

So this is going to be a brief introduction of my beliefs and understanding, so let's step into that magical realm and leave this world for just a moment.

Now, it's hard to pinpoint when we as humans first interacted with the fairies.

To me, they are as ancient as the elements themselves, and I would usually refer to them as the ancient ones or the immortals.

The first rough ideas of them appearing however are more nature-based spirits, and we see this in Homer's Iliad where he describes nymphs and dryads, these semi-divine beings that were connected to sacred spaces, trees, and springs.

They were also described as human in appearance and protectors.

And this goes back about 1000 BC.

Also, in Persian mythology, we see Peris being described as beautiful winged spirits, but neither good or bad.

Now I'm not saying these are the fairies that we understand today, but I was very intrigued of the description.

We also see similar imagery of human-like beings with a sense of supernatural power with images such as Eros, cherubs, and dare I even say the angels.

Not in a modern sense, but if we strip things right back, the parallels of imagery is there.

In Celtic and Germanic traditions, fairies were often seen or considered as shrunken versions of former gods.

Now fairies were described as human in appearance, sometimes tall, sometimes small, some with wings, some without.

This is a complex mix and it may be due to natural migration and/or war and conflicts, old beliefs and traditions that have been interwoven through time, and not forgetting potential language barriers and someone's personal interpretation of oral tales.

So they might say it back in a version that they would actually prefer.

And I believe we see a sense of author's interpretation of these ancient tales when monks decided to record and write them down.

We see a sense of Christian ideas being threaded through.

We see this motif where they have described fairies as fallen angels rather than their true identity, describing them not good enough for heaven and not bad enough for hell.

Despite the Christian ideas being interwoven, they did record these tales within history, and I'm going back to the 12th, 13th, and 14th century.

They understood how important these spirits were to our ancestors.

They saw how much value we held for them and knew they would not be eradicated out of our culture and belief system.

Now, I do hear this phrase a lot, the umbrella term associated with the fairies which, to be honest, isn't always helpful, is it? Some view elves and brownies or the boobachs from Wales as being part of this under that umbrella fairy term.