This article was originally written for my Patreon in 2023 and I am making it public nowYesterday I gave a talk for the Folklore Podcast, as part of a lecture series to raise funds for the Folklore Library. My focus was tracing the history of the Scottish fairy courts across the last 500 years, from folklore to fiction. In the Q&A which followed someone asked a question about why…
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
2025 Wrap Up
It’s been a very busy year, with less blogging and more working on bigger projects. In 2025 I wrote 5 books (4 to be released next year)I had 4 books published: Paid With A Kiss, Tales of the Tuatha De Danann vol 1, Pantheon the Irish, and Dangerous MagicI had four articles published in various magazines and journalsContributed to two anthologies which came out this year: Fairies a…
Fairylore in Stranger Things season1
It’s been awhile since I did a ‘fairylore in popular media’ article, but I thought this one would be worth digging into now. Stranger Things is a cultural phenomenon which I admit I’ve previously avoided. But at the urging of my 12 year old I’ve dived in and was pleasantly surprised to see the many echos of fairylore in the show, particularly the first two seasons, although I’m focusing…
Changeling Survey
As part of a book that I am currently working on I am doing a survey of modern changeling beliefs, particularly focused on people who identify as changelings. I am hoping to gather a range of responses that will help to illustrate the diversity of modern beliefs on this topic and the value of the concept to people who identify with it.If you are interested in taking the survey you can email…
The Dance: A Ritual for the Conjunction of the Pleiades and the Moon
The Dance: The 7 Queens and the Moon
The cycle of the Pleaides is something that
I have found to be important within my spirituality across the last 7 years. I
have, in that time, shared various rituals I have designed to help nurture a
connection to the Other who are aligned with these stars. That cycle has slowly
grown across time, moving towards a fully fleshed out ritual cycle,…
Fairy Facts: Leprechauns
For this installment of fairy facts lets look at a particularly complicated topic – the Leprechaun. this one is particularly tricky (pun intended) because it exist in two distinctly different forms between mythology and folklore. But that’s also a great reason to include it here, so let’s dive in.Leprechaun, 1900, public domain Name: Leprechaun, modern Irish Leipreachán or Lucharachán,…
Book Review: Ask: Building Consent Culture
I’m stepping a bit outside my usual book review genres to tackle three books on consent, because I think its a topic that we don’t talk about enough and that there aren’t a lot of good resources for. I recently read three books written by or edited by Kitty Striker, all of which focus on teaching consent culture. I’ll give mini-reviews of each book separately below, but I want…
Respect, Fear, and Fairies
The Fair Folk are once again seeing a
surge in popularity across paganism and with this higher profile has come an
array of conversations about them and particularly the risk they may represent.
For myself I am thrilled to see many of the younger witches out there
advocating caution or even fear around the Gentry, but I have seen some people
pushing back against that, particularly in the…
The Bean Tighe, Invention of an ‘Irish’ Fairy [revised]
Usually when I write about fairies here (or elsewhere) I’m writing about fairies as they are found in existing material or anecdotal accounts. Today I would like to take a look at a fairy that can be found in multiple 21st century sources online identified as an Irish fairy yet is not to be found anywhere in Irish folklore. I want to point this example out today and talk about how this…
7 Tips To Spotting Misleading Fairy Claims
Midsummer is upon us which means the dodgy fairy memes have emerged from the aether once again.Instead of debunking them individually I thought this might be more useful: a basic guide to spotting misleading fairy claims. By ‘misleading’ I mean claims that are either entirely invented by the author, make false claims about existing beliefs, or are worded in ways that intentionally give the…