The Mystical Fairy Faith
In the lore of Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland, when
God cast out the arrogant angels from heaven, they became the evil
spirits that plague mankind, tormenting us and inflicting us with
harm.
The ones who fell into hell and into caves and abysses became
devils
and death-maidens. However, those who fell onto the earth became
goblins, imps, dwarfs, thumblings, alps, noon-and-evening-ghosts,
and
will-o'-the-wisps. Those who fell into the forests became the
wood-spirits who live there: the hey-men, elves, the wild-men, the
forest-men,
the wild-women, and the forest-women. Finally, those who fell into
the
water became water spirits: water-men, mermaids, and merwomen.
These
angels were condemned to remain where they were, becoming the
faeries
of seas and rivers, the earth, and the air.
In our times there is a surprising revival of sorts going on. This
revival is the post modern fairy faith. There are signs of it in
several
feature films*, festivals, art work, books, Fairy shops and
numerous web sites, if you are observant you should spot some
indications of it in the malls of America and other English
countries.
..there are all kinds of fairy things for sale: cards, calendars,
video games like Zelda,
fairy ornaments, fairy costumes, candle holders, fairy statues for
gardens etc. This last June the Third Fairy Congress was held in the
Cascade Mountains of
Wa****ngton state. Some of the speakers were from the Findhorn New
Age community of Scotland. Workshops included talks on how to
contact
nature spirits (fairies) for guidance and help. Presently there are
more and more books teaching people how to etablish communicate and
contact faeries for instance:
The Book of Faeries: A Guide to the World of Elves, Pixies, Goblins,
and Other Magic Spirits by Francis Melville
Fairy Spells: Seeing and Communicating With the Fairies
by Claire Nahmad
A Witchs Guide to Faery Folk: Reclaiming Our Working Relation****p
With
Invisible Helpers (Llewellyns New Age Series)
by Authors: Edain McCoy , Edain McCoy
Other books are listed on Amazon.com
Some casual observers
who have noticed this growing interest in faeries
consider it a fad. Is it just an innocent fad as some say or
is there a reality and a darker side to the world of fairie?
The following news clip, quotes from articles and information web
links
may answer this question.
*some films with fairy theme or fairy encounters
The National Film Board of Canada's production, The Fairy Faith
Fairy Tale a True Story
Photography Fairies
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Legend
Willow
Ladybrinth
Peter Pan -the new movie
Elf
A faerie affair
Elusive folk and their followers to alight in Sedona for all-day
festival
Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
May. 6, 2003 12:00 AM
Amy Ford sees fairies.
Some are as small as houseflies, others 18 feet tall. They're
pixielike
or feminine, sometimes androgynous, and once, she claims, she woke
up
in the woods near Cornville to find herself held captive.
"It was just like Gulliver's Travels," she says. "The fairies had
tied
me down with dried grass," while one laughed right in her face.
"It scared the crap out of me."
Ford claims she's seen fairies all her life, and though she won't
say
exactly how long that is, it looks to be 30-some years. She's a
musician and astrologer from Scottsdale, short and buxom with long,
dark hair and darker eyes. And though she seems reasonably sane,
she
acknowledges, "I'm wired way different."
Ford is part of a growing subculture of fairy folk, not all of whom
claim to see fairies - though that number is bigger than you might
expect. The concept has allure for children, folklorists and
all-purpose whimsical folk, as well. There is fairy music, much of
it
borrowing Celtic sounds and rhythms; there are T-****rts with fairy
pictures that sell big at teenage boutiques, and fairy cards and
posters in New Age bookstores. And a British artist named Brian
Froud
has sold more than 8 million large-format books of paintings of
fairies, which he, like most fairy folk, spell the old-fa****oned
way:
"faeries."
"Faeryland is like the sea," Froud says. "It's like the tide, and
sometimes the tide is out a long way and Faeryland is very
difficult
to
reach. And sometimes the tide is in. And it does seem to me that
the
tide was out for some years, but it's really come in now."
That tide has come in far enough that promoters expect more than
4,000
people to attend an all-day Faerieworlds Festival on Saturday at
Sedona
Cultural Park. The festival will include music, multimedia shows,
live
interactive performances and, especially, Froud and his artwork.
The expected attendees will be true believers like Ford, but also
Renaissance Faire fans, families with young children, masqueraders,
New
Age dabblers, Goth kids who have "discovered Faery," as one
promoter
put it, and even "folks factioning out of the old Grateful Dead
days
who don't have anywhere to go."
Fairies originated in Celtic folklore, and, more often than not,
they
were frightening, otherworldly forest beings that were blamed for
unexplainable events, such as ill children, people turned mad and
dark
thoughts.
"They're about expression of things in everyday life that we can't
express openly," says Ari Berk, a professor of folklore at Central
Michigan University. "Fairies have always spoken to the human
desire
to
have some kind of conversation with the environment around them."
They've populated art and literature for centuries, not just as
fairy
tales, but also in Shakespeare and in the poetry of William Butler
Yeats. More recently, they appear in the Lord of the Rings films,
as
the elves.
Although children are naturally drawn to fairy tales, the current
pop
phenomenon is not really about children. Froud's art, for example,
is
not only well researched but very adult.
"Fairies have been relegated to the nursery for far too long," Froud
says. "That's a 20th-century point of view really. Fairies have
always
been dangerous creatures. That's why they had to be placated.
That's
why little gifts were left out at night, little saucers of milk,
or,
otherwise, your cattle died, or, indeed, your children were stolen
or
people died. The word 'stroke' comes from 'elf stroke' because a
fairy
had touched you. So fairies have always been dangerous. And one way
that people have tried to make them safer is to turn them into
fairy
stories, something that was safe, and say, 'Oh it's just for
children,
isn't it?' "
Froud, 56, lives in Dartmoor, England, an area he says is slightly
wild
and desolate, and whose landscape influenced his palette.
"When I looked at trees and rocks and hills when I moved to the
country, I wondered what the inside of them looked like," Froud
says.
"And as I was wondering that, then I started painting fairies, and
they
were indeed at the souls of trees and landscapes."
He was inspired by illustrations of fairy tales and did a lot of
research with his collaborator, Alan Lee, for his first book,
Faeries,
which they published in 1978. It has sold more than 5 million
copies,
including more than 100,000 since last October, when a
25th-anniversary
edition was published.
Froud followed up with several other titles, including Good
Faeries/Bad
Faeries, whose paintings sometimes verge on the *****c, with
lithesome
near ****s, a merging of several tingling and anticipatory
fantasies,
and decidedly not for children. His art was the inspiration for the
Jim
Henson films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and Froud's wife,
Wendy,
was one of the puppetmakers who designed Yoda for the Star Wars
films.
Since he began painting fairies, Froud says they now present
themselves
to him as, he believes, they present themselves to others. The
paintings, he says, are like maps that allow people to safely go on
their fairy journey, as he puts it.
"A lot of people go on the journey and don't return because they
lapse
into madness," he says.
Saturday's festival in Sedona promises plenty of controlled madness.
"Right now, everything's so heavy and intense on the planet that I
think people need a fantasy to go to where they feel like they have
power, where they feel they have something to go to," says Emilio
Miller-Lopez, one of the festival's organizers. "What our events
offer
people is a chance to participate. Everybody's part of the show."
Miller-Lopez is a spritely fellow of 28 with a shaggy gnome's beard
and
a shock of hair long enough to evoke memories of the early 1970s.
His
wife, Kelly, 27, has cascading Maid Marian locks and glittery
makeup.
Both dress elfin, in earth tones and billowing sleeves. They draw
stares even in Sedona.
The couple perform in Woodland, a band with Celtic-music roots and a
rich New Age sound, which will play at the festival. Kelly says she
has
seen fairies since she was a child, and she first latched onto
Brian
Froud's work when she saw The Dark Crystal and then bought the
Faeries
books, which she eventually showed to her husband. Together, they
sought out Froud's agent, Robert Gould, who is also a fantasy
artist,
well known as the illustrator for Michael Moorcock's Elric of
Melnibone
novels.
Working with Gould's company, Imaginosis, they staged multimedia
fairy
shows in Prescott, Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Fairy fans turned out
in
droves.
"It was incredible," Gould says. "People were standing in line for
an
hour. Everyone was in costume. Families came. It was pretty wild."
The Santa Fe show took place on Halloween, and the upcoming Sedona
festival is just after May Day, which, as Kelly Miller-Lopez
explains,
are those times of the year when the veil is thinnest between the
real
world and the fairy world and human-fairy encounters are more
likely.
Gould would like to take the show on the road and maybe develop it
into
a Cirque du Soleil-style of interactive performance.
As for the people who claim to see fairies, even Froud is not sure
how
many really do.
"It took me a long time to actually work that out," he says. People
constantly ask him how they can see them, too.
"You don't use your eyes," he answers. "You see a fairy through your
heart."
Fairies have been attributed many origins, from natural causes to
the
darkest element.
They are the creatures of the wild, primitive and untouched realm of
fantasy that exists beside each society.
Fallen angels. In the lore of Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland,
when
God cast out the arrogant angels from heaven, they became the evil
spirits that plague mankind, tormenting us and inflicting us with
harm.
The ones who fell into hell and into caves and abysses became
devils
and death-maidens. However, those who fell onto the earth became
goblins, imps, dwarfs, thumblings, alps, noon-and-evening-ghosts,
and
will-o'-the-wisps. Those who fell into the forests became the
wood-spirits who live there: the hey-men, elves, the wild-men, the
forest-men,
the wild-women, and the forest-women. Finally, those who fell into
the
water became water spirits: water-men, mermaids, and merwomen.
These
angels were condemned to remain where they were, becoming the
faeries
of seas and rivers, the earth, and the air.
Nature spirits : in most pagan religions, supernatural forces are
associated with animals, the five elements and the Goddess.
Sometimes
the fairies were called Goddesses themselves. In several folk
ballads
the Fairy Queen is adressed as 'Queen of Heaven.' Welsh fairies
were
known as 'the Mother's Blessing.' Breton peasants called the
fairies
Godmothers.
The following is from the book "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries'
published in 1911/ and a quote form a web site on theories of fairy
origins.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ne
u/celt/ffcc/
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 2)
III. IN SCOTLAND
Introduction by ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Hon. LL.D. of the University
of
Edinburgh; author of Carmina Gadelica.
The belief in fairies was once common throughout Scotland --
Highland
and Lowland. It is now much less prevalent even in the Highlands
and
Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they do in the
Lowlands.
But it still lives among the old people, and is privately
entertained
here and there even among younger people; and some who hold the
belief
declare that they themselves have seen fairies.
Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of
[85]
fairies and as to the belief in them. The most concrete form in
which
the belief has been urged has been by the Rev. Robert Kirk,
minister
of
Aberfoyle, in Perth****re. (1) Another theory of the origin of
fairies
I
took down in the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and, though I
have
given it in Carmina Gadelica, it is sufficiently interesting to be
quoted here. During October 1871, Roderick Macneill, known as
'Ruaraidh
mac Dhomhuil, then ninety-two years of age, told it in Gaelic to
the
late J. F. Campbell of Islay and the writer, when they were
storm-stayed in the precipitous island of Miunghlaidh, Barra :--
'The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of heaven,
where he had been a leading light. He declared that he would go and
found a kingdom for himself. When going out at the door of heaven
the
Proud Angel brought prickly lightning and biting lightning out of
the
doorstep with his heels. Many angels followed him -- so many that
at
last the Son called out, "Father! Father! the city is being
emptied!"
whereupon the Father ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates
of
hell should be closed. This was instantly done. And those who were
in
were in, and those who were out were out; while the hosts who had
left
heaven and had not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth,
like
the stormy petrels. These are the Fairy Folk -- ever since doomed
to
live under the ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when
the
King permits. They are never allowed abroad on Thursday, that being
Columba's Day; nor on Friday, that being the Son's Day; nor on
Saturday, that being Mary's Day; nor on Sunday, that being the
Lord's
Day.
God be between me and every fairy,
Every ill wish and every druidry;
To-day is Thursday on sea and land,
I trust in the King that they do not hear me.
(1) It was the belief of the Rev. Robert Kirk, as expressed by him
in
his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, that the
fairy
tribes are a distinct order of created beings possessing human-like
intelligence and supernormal powers, who live and move about in
this
world invisible to all save men and women of the second-sight (see
this
study, pp. 89, 91 n).
[86]
On certain nights when their bruthain (bowers) are open and their
lamps
are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the fairies
may
be heard singing lightheartedly : -
Not of the seed of Adam are we,
Nor is Abraham our father;
But of the seed of the Proud Angel,
Driven forth from Heaven.'
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