In my last piece I established that marriage was a common feature of stories involving fairies but today I’d like to look at some patterns we can note within that wider concept particularly of the Good Folk marrying humans. I think this can help us further explore the idea of marriage with the Othercrowd and may be useful both for those with an esoteric bent as well as those writing fiction who…
Author Archives: Lairbhan
Marriage and the Otherworld
Recently the subject of fairies and marriage was brought up in a discussion, with someone suggesting that fairies would have no such concept as ‘marriage’ and that there were no accounts of marriage either of fairies or between fairies and humans. Since I’m not sure how pervasive that idea is I thought the best approach would be to address it here and discuss the layers of folklore involved -…
Morgan’s Basic Ogham Cheat Sheet
Although there’s no solid historical basis for using ogham as a divination tool its certainly popular to do so today and there is more than enough material to make it a viable system. Much like tarot, actually, there is so much that it takes a while to learn to really read ogham well. I highly recommend checking out the original source material, the Auraicept na n-Eces as well as modern books on…
Complete List of My Published Works 2022
Its been about 18 months since I last shared my complete bibliography so its time for an update.
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…
The Fairy Folklore in Pan’s Labyrinth
Continuing on with my series of fairy folklore in films and television let’s look at the 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth, or ‘El laberinto del fauno’ [the labyrinth of the Faun]. This movie, much like Henson’s Labyrinth, is full of folklore references which are worth discussing, as well as many references to classical literature and mythology which are beyond the purview of this blog. As with previous…
Are Fairies Physical?
One of the most common questions I’m asked is if fairies have physicality, if they are tangible beings. This is rooted I think in the common idea perpetuated especially in new age and post-Victorian fairy belief that these beings are entirely energy or thoughtforms, creatures that can be perceived by the mind but lack physical reality in this world. So let’s dig into this shall we?Arthur…
Baobhan Sìth in Folklore vs my Fiction
I recently gave a presentation ‘Elves After Dark 2’ in which I discussed several specific types of folkloric beings known to directly and intimately interact with humans. This included the Scottish Baobhan Sìth a being that I also include in my fiction and in the Q&A after the presentation I was asked about how the folklore differed from my interpretation in my Between the Worlds series. I…
Its Time To Talk About The Anti-Irish Issues in That Popular Series
I’ve said I would write this blog for a while, after discussing the subject in bits and pieces on social media so here we are. I want to preface this by saying though that this isn’t an indictment of the author in question personally nor am I saying she did this consciously nor intentionally. This isn’t me trying to bash the series; I’m picking it as one example out of many because its popular…
Folklore in Hilda
As part of my ongoing series on folklore found in mass media I’m going to take on the popular Netflix show Hilda. This is an animated series based on an existing comic/graphic novel that pulls heavily from Icelandic and related folklore. It is aimed at children and features a main character who is a child and so we go into this understanding that the folklore within the show has been softened…
Recommended ‘Celtic’ Resources
So I am occasionally asked for good places to start studying Celtic culture or otherwise learn about the Celts. This would seem like a pretty straightforward request but actually its a really complicated topic; what I usually suggest is that people start with a specific culture rather than going to the wider, older idea of ‘Celtic’. What many people mean when they say Celtic is a single…