I’ll note as I begin that I will in this article be using the terms elf and fairy synonymously, as general terms for Otherworldly beings. This reflects the generalized use of the terms in the source material I’m referencing in writing this. For those who prefer to see the terms as applying to specific beings, understand that what follows would then apply equally to both.
That fairies or elves…
Today I wanted to do a piece from the Metrical Dindshenchas and I thought I’d take on a new look at poem 38 ‘Tond Clidna I’ since I will be heading off to southwestern Ireland in a few weeks.
Tond Clidna I
Clidna chend-fhind, búan a bét,
‘con tuind-se tánic a héc;
damna d’a máthair beith marb
inní dia tarla in sen-ainm.
5] Dia ndernad in t-óenach the
ac lucht tíre tairngire,
is é thuc in…
A lot has changed for me in my spirituality in the last few years, as anyone who follows my blog knows. But I do still follow the path I – for lack of a better term – call Fairy Witchcraft. And while I now focus my worship more on a specific Fairy Queen, who I feel fits the role of a liminal Goddess, I haven’t stopped exploring who and what the liminal Gods are. And just like I had written about…
We sometimes see people referencing or discussing the idea of a person being in service to Fairy or going into Fairy for a set amount of time and then coming back to mortal earth, at least for a while. Often in folklore when this occurs it is for a very precise amount of time and what we most often see is 7 years. This pattern repeats in both folklore and ballads.
It’s said that the bean feasa…
Fairy taboos around food are complicated and layered, and each aspect tends to have its own rules and repercussions. For this blog we will break the prohibitions around food down into three categories and try to summarize each one as concisely as possible.
1 – Eating Food from Fairy.
The most well known prohibition around food and fairies is certainly the rule not to eat fairy food. The…
One particular bit of folklore that is still especially relevant today is that of fairy rings, also called fairy circles, elf rings, or elf circles. In Welsh they may be known as cylch y Tylwyth Teg [literally ‘circle of the Fair Family’]. The concept of these rings can be found throughout the different Celtic language speaking countries as well as the various diaspora and some Anglo-Saxon and…
There’s a good amount of discussion out there about honoring deities (or spirits) and about dedication to a deity. What I want to talk about today is something I don’t see being discussed much – when dedication ends.
An image of the German Woden
When I began my pagan path I really wasn’t aware of the idea of dedicating oneself to a deity, or several even, but over time I not only started to…
Recently in my wanderings through source material I ran across particularly interesting folk charm in the 1854 ‘Transactions of the Ossianic Society’. The entry was first in Irish and then translated into English, with some notable variances from the Irish, and dealt with a spoken charm used by a Catholic priest to expel a Leannan Si from a woman named Shighile Tabaois [Sheela Tavish].
This is…
This post is meant to offer a selection of the common terms I use in Irish with their English translations, to help readers of my blog who may not have any Irish or who may find the use of Irish placenames, euphemisms for the Good Neighbours, and other miscellaneous words confusing. Hopefully this will offer a bit of clarity.
Aitainmneacha / Place Names
An Cheathru Chaol – Carrowkeel
Brú na…
One thing that’s important for anyone who relies, to any degree, on sources outside themselves for spirituality – or anything else – is being able to judge a good source from a bad one. So today I want to just run down a quick list of ways to vett sources of any type to decide how much weight you should give to something. Even if a source isn’t perfect it may have value – or it may be immediately…