In November of 2015 I wrote a blog titled ‘The Influence of Fiction and Hollywood on Paganism’. It was mostly me discussing my own opinions on the way that I have seen media change, or at least influence, pagan beliefs over the decades. Lately different discussions on social media have gotten me thinking that I might want to do a similar blog about the effects of popculture and fiction on fairy…
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Iron as a Protection Against Fairies
Iron horse shoe above a door
Many of the old folktales – as well as the new modern day experiences – show us reasons why people feared and respected the Good People. Living side by side with the Otherworld necessitated not only the wisdom to know how to properly interact if you happened upon Themselves, but also created a wide array of methods to defend against those with malicious…
Morgan's Basic Guide to Dealing with Non-Human Spirits
There are many things about modern spirituality that perplex me but one that I may have mentioned before is the immediate trust that people give to spirits. I know I’ve mentioned it in my books and in classes so I decided it was about time to devote a blog post to the subject. The most savvy, smart people seem to throw all their critical thinking skills out the window when dealing with…
Modern Experiences with the OtherCrowd
A couple years ago I wrote a blog called "Experiencing the OtherCrowd" which aimed to share some of my personal experiences with Themselves, the idea being that often people of a more Reconstructionist bent don’t talk much about those sorts of things. I had also wanted to show some of my own interactions to give people an idea of what modern fairy experiences could be like since much of the time…
Honoring the Beginning of the Harvest
Today is Bron Trogain, better known by most pagans as Lughnasadh (Lunasa) or Lammas. Its a multifacted holiday for me, with Irish aspects as well as Fairy aspects. But I like the layers and complexity and I like that it isn’t something simple, something easy to sum up in a quick ritual and move on from.
I always know when we are approaching this holiday, simply by watching the world around me…
The Seelie and Unseelie Courts
By many accounts the beings of Fairy are divided into two courts, the Seelie and Unseelie. This is often simplified as the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fairies, or as F. Marian McNeill says the ‘gude wichts’* and the ‘wicked wichts’ and was initially a Lowland Scottish belief that later spread (McNeill, 1956). I think we lose the nuances between the two when we try to reduce them into such blunt terms as…
The Goblin Market
There is a long tradition in folklore of various fairy markets, places that humans sometimes stumble across and that can be perilous or provide opportunities for trade, depending on how the human behaves. Many stories of these markets or fairs appear in collections of folklore from the last several hundred years, when writing down such stories became fashionable, and often reflect similar themes….
Tomus tighe mec ind Ócc
Newgrange from the air. Office of Public Works (OPW), date unknown This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Tomus tighe mec ind ÓccTomus tighe mec ind Ócc,fót cen bine buidnib sét,etir dá fraigid rosícht,mó secht traigid, mó secht cét.Cethri dorais ind cen brón,bith oc ól tria bitha sir,turib ciprib, úair is caem,cóel fo tuighib d’itib én.Dabuch…
Imram – A Poem
Like a shadow, shifting, seeking
what I’ve found yet still must find,
wrapped in motion, wrapped in time,
bound yet still compelled to bind
echoes like ripples of each action
as here and there merge in my mind
spirit balanced in the eager edges
Wandering the Otherworld is chancy
though the fairy road is always near
tempting and teasing and tangling
touching this to that, and there to here
a bare…
Elfshot
In both Irish and Scottish fairylore ‘elfshot’ or ‘elf arrows’ are a type of small weapon used by the Good Folk, and in Scotland also by witches, against people and livestock. The ubiquitous weapons of the Fey, elfshot caused a variety of maladies to those struck by them.The arrows themselves when found on the ground are small, neolithic flint arrowheads but when used by the Gentry are…