In 2021 I had started a series of posts examining fairy folklore found in popular movies and shows. I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from that but wanted to return to it with a look at Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (the movie, not the book). Obviously I am not trying to argue here that the author’s intention was to frame the story this way, although it may well have been, but what I want to do here is to…
Author Archives: Lairbhan
7 Things About Irish Mythology
Today I thought it would be good to cover some points about Irish mythology that are important for people interested in the subject to know. These include common confusions as well as helpful tips and I hope people will find it all interesting. Of course for some readers this won’t be new information but for others it may be the first time they’re seeing these ideas, so I’m trying to cover a…
Freya’s Cats
The subject of Freya’s cats came up recently on social media, so I wanted to share this excerpt from my forthcoming book Pagan Portals Freya. I hope this may clarify some points, as this summarizes the information we have from the older sources and may help people differentiate between new ideas and stories and the older beliefs. Cats –
Freya is said to travel in a chariot pulled by two cats,…
All of My Fairy Writing
I’ve been asked several times about what I’ve written on fairies by people looking into my writing on the subject. I finally decided it would just be easier to write a quick bit here about it. I’m including articles, presentations, and books. I am not including the range of my blog material on Living Liminally or on Patheos Agora: Irish-American Witchcraft or Witches&Pagans On the Fairy Road. (…
Bad Meme: Beltane Edition
Several years ago I had done a few posts seeking to clarify confusion around popular things on social media relating to specific pagan holidays including Yule, Samhain, and ‘Ostara’. I’ve never done one for Bealtaine mostly because I haven’t seen a huge amount of misinformation about it being shared around. That is starting to change, at least a bit, so today I thought I’d tackle a couple of…
Current List of All My Published Work
Bibliography
Articles
“Healing
Ritual for the Ocean Waters”, Circle Magazine issue 109 summer 2011
“A
Gaelic View of Samhain”, Celtic Guide, vol. 1 issue 10 Oct. 2012
“Celebrating Imbolc with the Family”, Air n-Aithesc, vol.1 issue 1, Feb.
2014
“The Witch, the Bean Feasa, and the Fairy Doctor in Irish Culture”. Air
n-Aithesc, vol. 1 issue 2, Aug. 2014
“Finding the…
Ask Me Anything – fiction
Its been a while since I did an Ask Me Anything style blog and also a while since I wrote about my fiction so I thought that would be fun to do today. I’ve collected some questions from social media and am answering them here for everyone. Feel free to add additional questions in the comments if you’d like. Nicole: What’s your favorite fictional book that you have written?My answer: That’s…
Theosophy’s Impact on the Pagan View of Fairies
Note: In this piece I’m going to be making some generalizations which may not apply to all neopagans but which do hold true for a majority that I have looked into. A main influence on the neopagan view of fairies, which is rarely acknowledged, is theosophy and more particularly the writings of Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky herself is a controversial figure, accused of rampant plagiarism by her…
2022 Recap
This year has been a challenging one for me but I kept moving forward, and I wanted to offer a quick recap here for everyone.I had four articles published in magazines this year:
“Imagining Fairyland”, Pagan Dawn, Imbolc issue, 2022 no 222
“The White Elephant in the Room: Racism and Diversity in Fairy Belief”, Witches & Pagans Magazine, issue 39, 2022
“Fairy Queens and Witches”, Pagan Dawn,…
Pre-Christian Celtic Fairylore?
I recently shared a comic by Zach Weinersmith which featured a ‘traditional Celtic folklore fairy’ who, at one point, mentioned stealing a human soul for the fairies’ tithe to Hell. I shared it because the comic is funny but unsurprisingly – because social media is what it is – received some pushback from people over the idea of the tithe to Hell which they felt was problematically Christian in…