Pagan Portals Your Faery Magic

Discover What It Means to be Fey and Unlock Your Natural Power

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Contents

In the Beginning ...

A Creation Story

Long before time was time, the Earth was born of stardust. She lived and breathed. Her heart beat. Her soul sang into the universe, singing in chorus with her brothers and sisters, the other planets. The stars, older than she and her siblings, watched and loved her, knowing the young planets to be kin.

The heart of the Earth beat. Each beat held a spirit and each spirit danced between the centre of the Earth and the realm of the stars. The stars, too, had hearts which beat, their heartbeats each held a spirit and these spirits danced with the heartbeats of the Earth and all were together. These beings, which arose from the heart of the Earth and the stars, were the fey ones.

The Earth began to grow. As she settled into her skin she drew the sky around her like a cloak and in the warmth between the sky and her skin, the plants grew and oceans settled. From the wombs of her oceans, animals were born, animals which grew and changed. Some grew into feathered beings, some into reptiles, some into furred ones and some, eventually, into humans.

The fae were fascinated by the beings birthed from the Earth and they watched carefully as we grew and developed. They guided us, played with us, danced with us through our early years. And we danced with the fae and all the other beings of the land and sky and sea.

But over time we humans found great power and in our rush to be great, we began to lose sight of the heart of our Mother Earth. We stopped hearing the songs of the stars. For us, their hearts had stopped beating. And when we stopped hearing the heartbeat of our mother, we stopped seeing how she was alive. It became easier for us to use her without giving back, without remembering that we are a part of her. Our power over the land grew great and in the flush of amazement, we were lost in the maze that led away from gentle wonders, we lost sight of our relationships with the other beings of this world. We went from weak to strong, but we forgot where the spirit that fed our strength lived ... We forgot that there is strength in wonder and vulnerability and we donned our armour of brittle power, forgetting the ones who had opened our eyes to the possibility of possibility.

And so the spirits of the heart of the stars and the Earth became sad. The bright ones, the dark ones, the dancing ones, they drifted back into the heart of the Earth, to roam upon the upper lands only in times of celebration or sorrow, to remind us of our kin. The distance proved so great we forgot how to see them, we forgot to listen to the heartbeat of the Faery realms.

The worlds drifted apart. We lived in one world, where all is matter, which we believe is for us to use. They lived in another, where all things are alive and related to each other. And they wept, and we grew in power while we also, bit by bit, forgot the essence of joy.

But do not despair, for there is more to the tale than this great divide between spirit and matter, magic and material; for every night and day that the Faery host roamed, there would be one who told the tale. For every moment when the worlds became close again, kissing, one with eyes to see and ears to hear might find themselves dancing to the music of the fae, the enchantment of the heartbeat of the Earth. And every time the fae from the stars descended, we were reminded of the glorious beauty of life beyond the dust of the world we had chosen to walk within. These moments were passed on as stories, stories shared over campfires, at bedtime, in songs by those with Faery Hearts, hearts that still hear the song of the Earth's heartbeat.

The stories begin to weave a web, a picture. Some stories tell of those fae beings who cause trouble, some of those who help, some of great beauty and others of great illusion. What we must remember, however, is that each of these stories contains a little truth and that while the worlds of Faery and human can sometimes misunderstand each other, always, when each approaches the other with respect, love and an open heart, there is great magic to be found ... the magic of the healing of the Earth.

Bridging the worlds of Faery and human, the light of the Earth and the land of our lives, bringing these two together, relights the fire in our lives. In letting magic kiss the mundane, we invite joy into our lives as once again we learn to hear the heartbeat of the Earth and stars, we find our Faery Hearts. Now we are strong on the land, we can choose to be strong in our vulnerable, open hearts again. Will you weave with me, with the others working and playing to build the bridges again? Will you weave with us the understanding of both worlds? Will you weave together the power on the land with the wonder of the Earth's heartbeat? Will you open to the possibility that to truly know the world, the whole world, is to know the mechanics and to understand the heart?

    To be fey is a way of being.
    Faery is the heart of life.
    The fae are the spirits of the world.
    Open, breathe, remember.
    Sing with your Faery Heart ...

A Reason to Believe in Faeries

The Rationality of Irrationality

I believe in Faeries. That might seem a bit strange in our world of scientific rationality, but before you cast me aside as a lunatic, touched by the full moon that drives men mad, know that I am not mad, unless by madness you mean inspired. My muse sits on my shoulder tying knots in my hair and she whispers in my ear, filling my spirit, filling me with spirit. I like to talk in metaphors and the reason why will be made clear, so bear with me for a little while, hear me out. As you have picked up this book I know that you hear her call too, the song of the Queen of Faery who leads us to her realm through beauty and wonder, who enchants us into delighting in our lives and crafting something wondrous out of the world we have been gifted. If you have wondered why belief in the fae is fighting its way back into our culture despite the denial of anything beyond the physical, which is rampant in society, then perhaps I can enlighten you. This belief in all things Faery is quite rational. Let me show you why ...

Some have argued that science is the highest goal of humanity, but I am hesitant to agree. Yes, science is an amazing tool. Science sheds light, brings wonders to view and generally enlightens us to the mechanics of the world. I am hesitant, however, because I do not believe that a tool should be our goal. Some have claimed that science is obviously a superior window to see the world through when compared to the holistic worldview of the Renaissance Magi who sought to attune to nature, for example. They say that, because we do not see many of these Magi anymore, while we have seen technology grow and grow, our understanding of the natural world has boomed through the practices of the sciences and we have more control over our world than ever before.

I am unsure that this is entirely true. Science is a brilliant tool for understanding the mechanics of the world; marvellous! But for understanding the whole world? When the world contains so much more than mechanics? What, you disagree? If you think the world is merely mechanical, then how can you hear my words when I am no longer speaking? Where is the sound of my voice, the sound of your thoughts? What are these thoughts that you think? These may have their roots in mechanical processes, sure, but can we really justify reducing the sphere of mental phenomena to mechanical processes when, as yet, we have not found a thought, when we cannot study emotions using science? We can look at the chemical and neurological processes that accompany thoughts and emotions, but this is not all that thought is. Take a look at a thought, what is the chemical formula for a thought of home? Which pattern in the brain is the thought? I'm not asking for what might cause the thought, but where the thought itself is. If the scientific view of the world cannot account for the realities of our mental and emotional lives, then perhaps it does not show the whole picture.

Not only has science not yet shown us what a thought and suchlike is, in its current mechanistic mode it cannot show us, for it does not know how to even begin studying thoughts. This is why we have multiple disciplines for studying the world; history studies elements of the past, psychology tries to explain our mental lives and sociology outlines and discusses movements of humans as social animals, for example. Our fascination with the tools of science has led us to try to describe these methodologies as sciences – pseudo-sciences, social sciences and so on – but while they try to reach an understanding of the parts of the world that they study, each of these disciplines is distinctly different from science and each other. To attempt to subsume them under our favourite model, science, is to deny that they do what science does not, cannot.

One might perhaps complain that I was confusing 'science' with 'natural science' and here I am using 'science' to refer to the mechanistic model of the natural sciences in order to draw out a point. When we want to show how objective, how true, our view is, we tend to try to justify our behaviour and explain the world in terms of 'science', by which we mean the natural sciences. Perhaps, however, we are mistaken in our reduction. I believe that the world is more than what can be explained by mechanistic processes and our attitude towards the world has a major impact on our understanding of it.

Science, we say ordinarily, seeks an understanding of the world. But what it really does is seek a mechanistic understanding of the world, which is fine when we are looking at the mechanics. This is not so fine when we come to live in the world.

A philosopher named Martin Heidegger draws to our attention the way in which, since technology has allowed us to, we have tended towards seeing the world as though everything that can be used as a resource is merely a resource and we lose any other understanding of it that we may have. Not treating beings in the world as the beings they are – say, not treating an oak tree as an oak tree in its own right – leads to our perspective of the world being diminished. An oak tree that is just wood ceases to have the emotional significance it may have had previously; we stop wondering what the Dryad of the tree might be thinking, what we can offer to her in return for the wood that we need and how our relationship with this particular tree sustains us. Once we stop seeing the world in terms of living beings that are interconnected, we begin to treat the world as though it is only a resource to be used for our own ends. Perhaps it is true that these are all mere resources, but look where this attitude, true or not, has gotten us.

Look at the world where our ecosystem depends on trees; trees producing oxygen and mopping up carbon dioxide, trees holding the soil together and re-fertilising it with their fruit and leaves, trees preventing the land from becoming parched desert, fit for nothing to grow. Look at the same world where we have decided to slash and burn whole forests to grow grain for beef, or where the forests are cut down for fancy furniture. Look at the world where we have designed a thing called 'the economy', which individuals are dependent upon in order to live and in many places round the world they starve to feed it.

In a world where we see everything as merely there to use, we have forgotten that everything is connected. We have forgotten that we will have to live, or die, with the consequences of killing forests to feed the economy, of putting resources above lives and of taking without much thought to what we might need to give back.

I propose an alternative. An old alternative. An alternative where we keep our understanding of the mechanics of the world, but where we also cultivate an understanding of the world that includes the notion of attuning with it and remembering that we are each a part of a living web, an ecosystem that stretches across the globe. I propose that 'understanding' cannot anymore, for practical reasons if no other, be reduced to a merely mechanistic framework. I propose that we need an understanding that includes the recognition of the world as more than mere matter, more than dead resource, more than something to be used. I propose, ultimately, that we cultivate an understanding of the world in which the world is alive.

I therefore propose that we invite the Faeries back into our lives.

The fae are spirits of nature, the essence of what it is to be a divine, living thing. Imagine if, instead of only looking at how the tree makes oxygen, we also thought about how the spirit of the tree was helping us to breathe, and how we helped it in return. We breathe with the trees. We needn't, it is true, resort to Faery tales in order to do this, it is possible to present the scientific explanation in a way that gets this idea across, but it lacks the mythological element we, as human beings, still connect to. Think of the stories, the adverts, the ways in which our societies build myths. And think of the ways we tap into them, we accept them, we take these stories and we tell them until they are true. We need only look at the magazines with their myths of 'beauty', or the stories that the media have told us of how the economy is in danger ... maybe there was trouble on the horizon, but by accepting the story, we made it even more real, we stopped spending money because we thought there was a lack and this meant that the money stopped flowing, so now there is a lack.

Stories are powerful, and stories of the magic of the world speak to us on a deep level. We can re-learn to treat the world as though there were Faeries in every tree, as though they were watching us; learn to treat each part of the world as alive and full of spirit. Learning this, perhaps, would allow us to re-establish an equilibrium with the rest of the world, of which we are a part.

But, why Faeries?

Even if we accept that coming to terms with the world in the context of a story in which everything is alive and related would be a practical move, why Faeries?!

And, on top of this, can this kind of move really be healthy? Isn't this just a return to superstition of the Dark Ages?

To begin with the latter, for starters, what is wrong with superstition in itself? Many people have charms they count as lucky or rituals they follow superstitiously, which give meaning and pattern to their lives and overall help them to cope. What could be wrong with this? So long as we can hold both the scientific, rational understanding of the world that has allowed us to develop our technology so far and the superstitious understanding that can allow us to find a deeper meaning in our lives, keeping us happier and saner, why claim any intrinsic harm in superstition at all? In fact, one might want to ponder the superstitious power that the term 'science' has in our lives.

If we can find a story that allows us to live in a healthy relationship with the world and each other, then surely this cannot be unhealthy. And, perhaps, a Faery story might be just the thing. An animistic story, where the spirits of nature will talk to us, work with us, help us, or play tricks when we're not being respectful; this kind of story might encourage us to treat the world around us with more respect. Given that disrespect of the natural world – by which I mean not treating it under its own terms and abusing it – does lead to difficulties, this story is even true.

Why, then, do I favour Faeries? In part, I've always been fascinated by them, but it runs deeper than that.

Faeries have long been held to be associated with the pure state of nature, where everything works together in relationship. The stories all talk about mutual respect (and the occasional stealing of cows, but then this theft often either results from the cows being on Faery land, the cow-owner disrespecting the land and its inhabitants or it leads to greater gifts for the 'victim' by the end of the tale) and give very specific rules for dealing with the fae, which translate very well into dealing with nature – such as not stealing, i.e., not taking what is not yours or not taking more than you need, and so on. Besides this, we have a degree of consensus on what Faeries actually are, how closely linked to the natural realm they are and what they are like. Most tales agree, for example, that they have particularly strict codes of honour, albeit often ones that seem odd to us!

If our reality is constructed through our experiences – and the relationships of things and meanings – and some individuals have experienced Faeries directly while others have experienced them through stories, and if Faeries have meaning for us, then why can't they be said to have a role within our world? Just like numbers have a role and a function in our world, or a song, constructed of nothing that looks like a song and yet is understood to be one, we have many things within our world for which we have no mechanistic explanation, which are not part of the mechanistic view. Faeries are not real under the mechanistic model, but in a mythological context, they have a definite reality; we understand what they are and, to a great extent, what role they have in human life. Throughout history, also, we have a great deal of agreement, up until recently, on the existence of the fae, our relationship to them, and the rough natures of the fae. If we are tempted to say that they cannot be real because only a few claim to experience them, then we need only glance at history to see that these people have a greater consensus than those who deny the existence of these beings.