Who the Heck are the Faeries?

By Heather Awen

First off, the lore. The big Celtic Reconstructionist book for fairy info is The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. This book has two points of view in it – the rural Irish and the urban Anglo-Irish. The rural Irish know to be scared of Fairies. They have lots of stories of horrible things done by Fairies. The urban people seem pretty New Age, and like they have read at least some occult stuff that was popular at the time of this book’s writing. Their Fairy encounters tend to be ones of helpful spirit guides of nature.

So who is right? The rural people who have had these stories passed down for generations or the New Age city folk? Then the 1980s Witch in me comes out and thinks that the rural people must have it wrong since nature is awesome and so the Christian church made the rural people fear the Fairies. But isn’t that arrogant of me, to assume I know why people believe what they do, especially a people of which due to timing and geography I am not a part?

I was invited to a Faery ritual last year, and I said no. I just haven’t read anything about Fairies being people you want to bother. Plus the invitation said I was to let my inner child dance with the Faeries. The Faeries I have read about steal children, so why my inner child would dance with them makes no sense to me.

Read the original article at: Adventures in Animism