Tip for living like a fae
˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊
Write as much as you can in ways that are significant to you. Journaling/diary keeping, writing poetry, or writing short stories. The fair folk are masters of language.
~Fae
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Misconceptions About Fairies
Lately I've been seeing a lot of buzz around the Good People on social media, as well as in my local witchy community. I've also seen a lot of misinformation being passed along and people being encouraged to dive in the deep end without knowing what they're getting into, so I want to address some common misconceptions and spotlight some resources I know are legit.
I've said it before and I've said it again: with the Good People, perhaps more than any other type of spirit, it's very important to know what you're doing before you start reaching out to them. They operate on rules and ethics that are very different from ours, and even the most benevolent of them may be offended or angered by ignorance or bad manners. You cannot skip the reading when it comes to working with these beings. If you're not willing to do the research and make an effort to follow the rules, this is not a crowd you should be messing with. I don't say this to scare people or to discourage people who genuinely feel called to establish a relationship with the Good People. I just want to be clear that with this crowd there are risks, and most of those risks can be addressed by making sure you're prepared.
In this post, you'll see me refer to this class or grouping of magical beings as the Good People, the Other Crowd, the Good Neighbors, or similar euphemisms. This is because the word "fairy" is widely considered offensive, and using it may anger the Good People. My advice is to use your own euphemisms in order to be polite, even in casual conversation -- avoid "the f-word" as much as possible. However, I will be using Fairy (with a capital F) as the name of the realm or plane where the Other Crowd lives.
Now, let's start by addressing those misconceptions, shall we?
1. The Good People are nature spirits.
This is one that I've been guilty of spreading in the past. This one is tricky, because some of the Other Crowd could be considered nature spirits, but not all of them. It's important to remember that "fairy" (and more polite euphemisms) is an umbrella term for many different types of beings. It's about as specific as "animal." And just like some but not all animals are mammals, some but not all of the Good People are nature spirits.
As a whole, the Good People don't seem particularly attached to nature, although some of them tend to avoid humans and end up in wild natural settings as a result. However, true nature spirits are connected to a place or natural feature the same way human spirits are attached to our bodies, and this doesn't seem to be true for the Good People.
2. The Good People are angels and/or spirit guides.
This one usually shows up in the context of New Age spirituality, but the association between angels and the Good People is actually much, much older. When the people of the British Isles converted to Christianity, they tried to reconcile their belief in the Other Crowd with Christian cosmology. Usually, this meant identifying the Good People with devils, but some people identified them as fallen angels. One version of the Christianization of the Good People describes them as angels who refused to pick sides in the war between God and Satan and are exiled from both Heaven and Hell.
I've seen New Age authors like Doreen Virtue describe the Good People as "earth angels" or say that, like angels, they are "high vibrational" beings of pure love and light. This directly contradicts folklore, which describes the Good People as beings with physical bodies with a wide range of attitudes towards humans. The Good People could be helpful allies, mischievous pranksters, or cruel predators. Even the ones who seem to like humans aren't especially pious or virtuous, and they definitely aren't interested in our spiritual development.
The idea of the Good People are spirit guides reduces these beings, who are their own people with their own personalities, goals, and agendas, to servant spirits whose only purpose is to help us grow and learn. That's a pretty self-centered approach to spirituality, and it's honestly one that I don't think many of the Good People would put up with.
3. The Good People are tiny and have wings.
I mean, some of them sort of look like this? There are folkloric accounts of beings that are between 6 and 18 inches tall, but as far as I can tell the wings are a modern development. Descriptions of tiny winged people who are small enough to take a nap inside a flower are a Victorian English invention, as popularized by the Cottingley Fairies hoax, a series of faked photographs that supposedly showed a real Otherwordly encounter:
Most older descriptions from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Britain describe the Good People as looking similar to humans or animals. They might look like normal people except for being totally green, like the Green Children of Woolpit or the Green Knight that appears in Arthurian legend. They might be dressed in green and/or red. In folklore the Good People typically wear contemporary clothing, so if you saw one today they might very well be in jeans and a T-shirt. Sometimes in folklore, the Good People are indistinguishable from humans.
Some of the Other Crowd appear as animals, but there's often some sort of tell that indicates an Otherworldly animal, like a kelpie appearing as a horse whose mane is always dripping or the púca appearing as a black horse with glowing golden eyes. Some of them don't look like humans or like animals and are clearly Otherwordly in appearance, like trows, trolls, and goblins.
4. The Good People are All Friendly to Humans
Again, some of them are. Some of the Good People, like brownies, choose to live in humans' homes and communities and actively help out around the house. Then there are others, like the Baobhan Síth, hags, and red caps that prey on humans, sometimes literally. Many of the Good People seem indifferent to humans.
The problem with this is that when you invite the Other Crowd into your home, you're inviting all of them into your home. This is why I personally prefer to work with the Good Neighbors outside my home -- we have an elder tree (a species associated with the Good Neighbors) growing on the edge of our property, and I use this as a place to leave offerings for them. This way I'm showing respect for them and offering gifts in good faith, but I'm not opening up my home.
Another option is to invite specific individuals or types of the Good People in by name. For example, there are things you can do to attract a brownie. I do want to note that even beings that are usually friendly, like brownies, can be dangerous if you piss them off, so you should only invite them into your home if you're willing and able to commit to keeping them happy.
5. You have to be psychic or have the Second Sight to interact with the Good People.
First of all, I firmly believe that all people have the potential for psychic abilities and that anyone can develop these gifts through practice. In folklore there are ways of developing the Second Sight, if that's something that is really important to you. (Just be aware that some of the Good People prefer to be unseen and can take offense to humans trying to look into Fairy.)
But you don't need the Second Sight or experience with psychic practice to interact with the Good People. Most of the people who historically worked with these beings did not have the Sight. You can still leave offerings and see evidence of their presence, and if you really want to communicate with them directly you can use a divination tool.
Further Reading/Viewing:
Fairies: A Guide to the Celtic Fair Folk by Morgan Daimler
Fairy Witchcraft by Morgan Daimler
Faery: A Guide to the Lore, Magic, & World of the Good Folk by John T. Kruse
"Faery Magick Misconceptions | Working with the Fae | Witchcraft" by HearthWitch on YouTube
"What Do We Call the Fairies in Ireland?" by Lora O'Brien on YouTube
"5 Common Misconceptions About Fairies" by Morgan Daimler on YouTube
(I've made a playlist of videos on the Good People I find helpful, which you can watch here!)
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Satyr Sculpture By Frank Lynch (1924) 🍇🤘🖤
Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺🌿🌸
Picture taken on April 24, 2016 📸✨
Wikimedia Commons
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Some animistic bone-reading tips
I've been practicing bone-reading for about five years now, and through that I've picked up on a few things that I don't regularly see people talking about, so I decided to put together a list that I would have personally found helpful at the beginning of my divination practice. Please be advised that I come at bone-reading from a very animistic perspective, so if that's not a viewpoint that you believe in, most of these tips probably won't be helpful to you.
The method of bone-reading I use is to ask a specific question and toss the bones to read. This is a common method, but there are also alternate practices, such as tossing bones in the fire and reading them based on the burns and heat cracking.
Choose your bones carefully. Pick ones that want to be worked with, and ones that you're personally able to resonate with. Bones that don't want to be read can't be used effectively from my experience.
Feed your bones. This is the practice of giving your bones offerings to maintain their willingness to work with you and to build your relationship with them. I find divinatory herbs and blood to be a great offering, though blood should not be used without experience and caution. Food the animal would have eaten while alive can also be effective (for example, if your set is made primarily of fox bones, a small offering of meat might be appreciated).
Listen to your gut. Bone-reading is an incredibly instinctual and personalized form of divination. Don't try too hard to logically assign meanings to your bones - from my experience, they will usually let you know. If you can tell a bone would like to be used for a reading but can't tell what the bone might mean, add it to your set. It will let you know once you start doing readings with it.
Use a mat. This is partially a mundane recommendation; if you throw your bones straight onto the floor, they're eventually going to break. This also makes it easier to tell when a bone breaking is significant to the reading. A mat can also serve as a center of the reading; the bones in the middle may be more significant, whereas the bones that fall off the mat may be irrelevant to the reading. This isn't a format one has to use, but it can be helpful, especially to beginners.
Just start bone-reading. Obviously you should go into it having done research, and with a cautious and respectful attitude. However, at a certain point, doing research and preparation isn't helpful. Because bone-reading is so personalized and instinctual, there is so much you can only learn once you start. During your first few readings, pay close attention to each bone, where they fall next to each other, and what they may be telling you about their meaning.
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My Ladye hath a sable coach
With horses two and four
My Ladye hath a gaunt blood-hound
That goeth on before.
My Ladye's coach hath nodding plumes
The driver hath no head.
My Ladye is an ashen white
As one that long is dead.
Songs of the West: Folk Songs of Devon & Cornwall Collected From the Myths of the People. S. Baring-Gould. 1913.
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Any spirit of pagan provenance which had escaped wholesale assimilation into the Christian pantheon was officially defined as an a "evil spirit" by most contemporary theologians. In this context, any dealings with such spirits were theoretically a betrayal, or in other words, a "renunciation" of the true faith. Such a negative equation was intensified by the fact that fairies, on their part, were often considered hostile towards Christianity. An anecdote recorded in Scotland at the beginning of the eighteenth century describes how a brownie was displeased when his master read the Bible (Martin 1970, 392). Robert Kirk describes this fairy hostility in more detail, claiming that the fairies have:
no discernible Religion, Love, or Devotione towards God the Blessed Maker of all. They disappear whenever they hear his name invocked, or the name of Jesus... nor can they act ought at that time, after hearing of that Sacred Name (Sanderson 1976, 56).
Many early modern individuals must have been aware, to a greater or lesser degree, of these mutual hostilities, and if they wished to avail themselves of fairy powers they must have circumnavigated this problem in some way. Their solutions may not have differed greatly from those used in later centuries by people who believed in fairies. In the nineteenth century, for example, when at sea, fishermen on the Moray Firth:
would never mention such words as Church or manse or minister. Any utterance suggestive of the new faith would be displeasing to the ancient god of the ocean, and might bring disaster upon the boat (McPherson 1929, 70).
By their silence the fishermen were, for the duration of their journey, making a superficial show of putting aside their Christian allegiances in return for the protection and goodwill of the ancient god of the ocean. It is not difficult to imagine how, in a different century and different context, this and other types of diplomacy towards non Christian powers could have been interpreted as a direct renunciation of Christianity.
- The Witch's Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland, Emma Wilby (2014).
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A pagan blessing for spells:
I call on Earth to bind my spell I call on air to make it well Bright as fire shall it glow Powers of water fill and flow Count the elements four fold And in the fifth the spell shall hold!
🕯🐐🕯
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37.
Why does the Huntress hunt?
No malice drives the arrow shaft
no current bids the river run
eyes that sight the target's last
a pair of hands that see it done.
Then, the killing point is what?
A pattina of steps and pottery scrawl
a mural painted on the wall
the words that lace this very page
the hunter's art not found in rage
nor found in a cage, nor found at all.
It's the response to Mother's call
I hunt to hunt, as do we all.
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Hi witches! I’ve been reading up on traditional witchcraft and am very interested in the Faerie King aspect/guise of the Witch Father (and I suppose by extension the faerie faith). I was wondering if anyone had any resources or information they would be okay with sharing to point me in the right direction 人(_ _*)
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Here's a new illustration! The Pùca is a shape-shifter and trickster from Scottish folklore
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On the Mountain of the Otherworld,
where spirits flit amongst the trees and knowledge blossoms like bluebells, you see two paths.
Both, of course, lead to the summit. One twists and turns in upon itself, a wild thing where getting your clothes dirty isn't a question of "if," but "when." The other is straight, but steep and enveloped in fog.
The first path beckons to you, and promises illumination through ecstatic ritual and wild kinship with those who walk on four legs. The catch? Of course there's a catch, this isn't an ordinary mountain. It's the simple fact that the promised illumination will forever evade you if you lose sight of yourself and why you're here.
You shudder. Perhaps the second path is better suited to you. You crane your neck as you trace an impossibly steep, but paved stone road up to the summit. At the end of this path also lies the illumination you seek, but gained through transcending the realm of beast, plant, and human. The catch here is it demands of you an iron discipline, and you must leave your bones and your flesh at some point on the way beneath a hawthorn tree.
Now of course, traveler, you may stay in this tavern at the foot of the mountain. You need not fear where your next meal may come from, and the cold of night will not bite at your skin. But if you choose to delay your ascent, or even forsake it entirely, the secrets of the vines and stones and shrubs will remain hidden to you.
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˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚
Guardians Welcome Sigil✨
˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊
A sigil I felt called to create with the intentions of inviting kind and benevolent nature spirits and fairies(fae) in a space or practice. You may do as you wish with it and I hope it calls to you.
~Fae
˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ˚✧₊⁎᷀ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚
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So I had planned on a lavender infusion for @graveyarddirt's May 2022 Hagging Out, as I've been ill recently and totally depleted my existing stash, but something happened this year that I've never seen before so things changed! I have a sweet lilac bush that lives up to the color that shares its name. For the time I've known it, it has been healthy although not overly profuse with its blooms.
Suddenly, this year, it bloomed oh so well! But it bloomed a pure white
My whole plan completely deviated upon encountering the white blossoms, so I've infused with honey. It's my first honey infusion! My friend has a hive he helps maintain so I source my honey from him. I just bring a jar and he fills it up, he's a very good man. But anyways on to the infusing! (please excuse my tomatoes in the background, they snuck in and I didn't notice them)
Gathered on Saturn's day and hour with praise and thanks, and bottled during Jupiter's hour.
I nearly didn't have enough honey, but I made it! It's been sitting for a week or so and is almost ready to share in offering to the Queen whom I have recently begun to walk with.
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle — and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
—Walt Whitman
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Becoming more and more interested in working with Saints and the Bible. Before I've only done it to honor my Catholic ancestors, and I always felt it didn't really fit in my personal praxis, but belief and gut instinct has led me this far and I continue to be pulled toward the idea of honoring Saints.
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I’m looking for new witchy and faery accounts to follow. Who do ya’ll recommend? 🥰
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//ESP//
Illusen es un hada del bosque, que representa la naturaleza… Y pertenece a un juego de mascotas virtuales que jugué de niña 😂😂
Me trae muchos recuerdos, creo que era de mis favoritas, además que una de mis primeras motivaciones para dibujar más seguido era recrear esas hadas, su ropa y accesorios todo en una hoja de papel 😆
Sin duda es un muy buen recuerdo, no estaba sola, lo hacia con mi pequeño grupo de amigas 🥰
------
//ENG//
Illusen is a wood faerie that represents nature... Also she belongs to a virtual pets game named Neopets, I played it a lot when I was little.
It brings me so much memories because it was one of my favorites, plus all those faeries give me the motivation to draw a lot with my friends. We did their clothes and accessories all on a paper.
Without a doubt those are good memories that I wanted to share.
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