Faery Origin

As we are gleaming, there are many ideas about the faery, and within Their kingdom we find remnants of a magickal race of beings not of this world, as well as diminutive fairies, flower fairies with tiny wings, garden fairies and elemental fairies, to mention only a few, each with Their own virtues and traditions.

Much of the lore surrounding the Faery creates a fantasy image. As noted above, scholarly research brought forth many theories in regards to what They are, i.e. the Naturalistic, Pygmy, Druid, Mythological, and Psychological theories, indicating that almost all the essential elements upon which the advocates of these theories brought forth was adequate evidence that the Faery-Faith was a living tradition, and that itÕs chief characters, the faery, were, on some level, in existence.

The study of human nature itself proved that "all the world over, men interpret visions pragmatically and sociologically, or hold beliefs in accord with their own personal experiences; and are forever unconsciously immersed in a sea of psychological influences which sometimes may be explainable through the methods of sociological inquiry, sometimes may be supernormal in origin and nature, and hence to be explained most adequately, if at all, through psychical research."

Therefore, the most difficult problem of all deemed by the scholar was for human nature to interpret and understand its own ultimate essence and psychological instincts regarding the fairy. Thus the most common theory accepted became the Psychological Theory, which was that the Faery were inherent, either as passively or actively, within the psyche, that they had no independent entity as actual living beings other than in human consciousness.

In this school of thought, there were many psychological themes: the Faery were sexual images, they were archetypes, such as those of the classical gods and goddesses; they were embodiments and projected images of our fear of the unknown; they were the remnants of an old nature religion; the usage of archetypes being the leading avenue of practice in the Psychological Theory.

The fact that consciousness consists of many images endlessly relating to one another around a central core is by no means a modern discovery; it has long been taught in esoteric traditions, and is a theme that many of the current writers on this subject study and present in their writings.

Not surprisingly in orthodox religion, past and present, the fairy have been regarded as evil, the host of the Devil, fallen angels, or, at best, frivolous and distracting influences. However, the mystical understanding is that They are independent beings, of both a non-organic, immaterial state, which is close to humanity, as well as a mirror to humanity. They are a kingdom that will adapt Themselves to whatever They find in our imaginations, be it positive mental images or negative ones, as W.B. Yeats educated us in his book The Celtic Twilight (1893), when he wrote:

Let us now examine Their lineage, as we know it today, which sheds light on the changes the fairy have undergone over many centuries.

From ancient Irish tales we are given the origin of the faery. Their lineage begins with an ancient race in Ireland, called the Tuatha De Danann, or the Tribe of Dana. This tribe or people of the god whose mother was Dana is a pre-Celtic, pre-Christian, race known to magically come to Ireland, on the first day of May.

They have been described as coming from the sky and covering the earth with black clouds for a period of three days and three nights.

Of course, there has been much interpretation as to how they actually arrived, i.e. in ships, the burning of which caused the black clouds, and from the stars; extra-terrestrials descending to earth, the cause of the brilliant or shining lights of which they are often attributed to being.

They have been described as gods, druids, migrating Celts prior to the classical Celtic invasion, Greeks; the descendants of Nemed, or Phoenician sailors.

The truth is, no body really knows where They came from, or for that matter who They really were. Mythologically and historically, They are supposed to be the race who inhabited Ireland after conquering the Firbolgs, and were in full possession of the land when the Sons of Mil, or the Celtic invasion swept into Ireland.

The plethora of tales associated with the De Dananns explains that They choose to become invisible and retreat into the hollow hills, the crystal castles under the sea, with the full power to reappear at any time, in human-like form, before the Celtic people. Thus, "the people of the Goddess Dana became and are the Fairy-Folk, the Sidhe of Irish mythology and romance."

In the 1st-century BCE, the faerie are seen to live as the noble warriors of the Ulster Cycle, and in the early common-era They have become woven with the prominent heroes of the fianna in the tales of the Fenian or Ossian Cycle.

Of the Fianna tales, the mortal men had much intercourse with the Tuatha De Danann; many of them had fairy mistresses and fairy brides. Throughout the tales of these two former cycles the De Dananns move in and out of Faeryland, some of Them reincarnating to live as noble warriors and prominent heroes, both male and female, with others simply making Themselves visible in human-like form.

As time moves forward and Christianity moves fully-in, during the time-period known as the Historical Cycle or Cycle of the Kings, the faerie folk, become known in myth as the Daoine Sidhe. This class of Faery are likened to Fallen Angels, too good for hell. They were usually seen as human size, with occasional sitings of Them to be more than human stature and at times smaller in size (about two feet tall); thus, we begin to see Their demotion from god-head.

Their inhabitations were generally underground or underwater, in the green raths or under the loughs or in the sea. It is during this leg of the faery evolution that the use of euphemistic names come strongly into play for safetys sake. The more popular names were the Gentry, the Good People, the People of That Town, etc. Of the Daoine Sidhe, two distinct classifications were extensively noted: the Heroic Faery and the Medieval Fairy; both greatly intercoursed with humans.

The Heroic Faery is a class of faery that appeared as the knights and ladies of the medieval romances, and those that occur in the Celtic legends were of human or more than human size and of "shining beauty."

They spent Their time in aristocratic pursuits of hunting, fighting, riding in procession, as well as dancing and music, which were beloved by all the Sidhe. A glimpse of the Fenian Hero is seen in the Heroic Faery, although of a more relaxed and gluttonous stance than of battle-worn.

The Tuatha De Danann were now dwindled gods, disappearing from memory. Most importantly, it is with this faery that They become no longer solely connected to Ireland.

Now the fairy move across the channel and become linked to the man or Celtic god, Arthur of Camelot. By the year 1113 C.E., this 6th-century warrior and king becomes known as a Heroic Faery; a king of fairy, one of the sleeping warriors whose return was confidently expected.

The theme of a sleeping champion in a cave under a hill is common through out Europe. In Britain it was most commonly King Arthur in the Matter of Britain legends, while in Ireland it was Finn Mac Cumhal, the leader of the Fianna. The tradition was that the warriors would be aroused if a champion could find his way into the vault where they lay, blow a horn that was lying near the king, and cut a garter lying beside him with a stone sword, but no one knew where among heaps of briar-covered rubble the entrance could be found. Other sleeping champions are Merlin, the Earl of Desmond (Gearoidh Iarla), and Thomas of Ercildoune or Thomas the Rhymer or True Thomas.

The Medieval Fairy is the new wave of fairy that leaps prominently into myth comes out of Matter of Britain and the Arthurian legends.

Now the fairy tales of England weave magick and sorcery, wizards and witches, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Avalon and Camelot into the Land of Faery.

The size of the fairy become variable; there are both tiny and rustic fairy as well as hideous and monstrous ones. Often they are depicted as beautiful fair maidens, with long, flowing red hair and white skin, who lure the noble knight into madness, or worse, his death. However, if the fairy is male, he is likened to the Heroic Faery in type, of human size and often amorous of mortals. All of Them are expert in enchantment and glamour, generally beautiful, but occasionally hideous.

As with the Tuatha De Danann, many of the Britonic fairy are half-forgotten gods and goddesses, euphemerized into the Good People.

Medieval romances become scattered with references to different types of fairy, and thus, the literary world of fairies are born. In the Literary Faery classification we find several types, diminutive, Elizabethan, and Jacobean.

From the variety of faerie birthed from the medieval romances, the poets of the time have many types to choose from. The literary fairy was first introduced into drama by John Lyly in his play Endimion. In this play, the diminutive fairy are brought in for a short time to do justice on the villain by pinching him, an act that now becomes traditional to the fairy. They punish not only the wrong done to Endimion, but the infringement of fairy privacy. In the tale, Corsites has been trying to move the sleeping Endimion when the fairies enter, and pinch him, as they dance and sing and kiss him as well, so that he falls asleep.

The new Diminutive Fairy are invisible and alert little things always spoken of by using a euphemistic name. Now the fairy become connected with the dead. However, it is the small, bothersome and mischievous fairy that becomes the new fairy fashion of the Elizabethan Age.

The romance and fierce warrior attitude of the faery is gone with the Elizabethan Fairy, only Edmund Spenser in his The Faerie Queene hangs on to the hold image, though such an image became slightly out of date.

The dramatists of the Elizabethan age bring into vogue two main types of fairies, the hobgoblins, with which can be compared to the Brownie and the Puck, and the small flower-loving fairies such as Shakespeare introduces in his A Midsummer Nights Dream and which became all the fashion for the Jacobean Fairy. These fairy writings came in towards the end of the century, in what might be considered the "hey-day of the drama," and among the prose writers, Nashe in his Terrors of the Night, gives us a characteristic picture of the hobgoblin type:

Shakespeare puts in all of these, except the pinching, which is being forever mentioned in the masques and poems, but he adds the fairy smallness and their love of flowers.

The small flower-loving fairies gain the addition of gossamer wings, a standard symbol of the modern fairy. The yeoman class of the 16th-century also bring in the first sense of social fairy life, although the most interesting piece of fairy-lore, containing perhaps our earliest account of the social life of the fairies, is to be found in the Itinerary through Wales, the story of Elidor and the Golden Ball, written by Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th-century.

The Jacobean fairy continued to extend the fashions in fairy lore set in Elizabethan literature, with an added emphasis on the minuteness of the small flower fairies, so that at one time people found it difficult to think of fairies at all without thinking of smallness.

However, the hobgoblin type was exactly the same in both periods, except now the extreme Puritans regarded all fairies as devils.

Towards the end of the 17th-century the fairies are no bigger than microbes, and the nadir of the fairies powers are reached.

The Flower fairy are gentle spirits of nature. Earth, lake and hill are peopled with these fantastic, beautiful, willful, capricious child-spirits. We see a good example of this type of fairy as the little ladies of Mabs court, bustling about tearing their tiny ruffs and dropping their little gloves. They pass out of vogue and do not re-enter until the Romantic revival comes, and with it the rebirth of folklore.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is the author who was the great originator of the Romantic Revival in the 19th-century English literature. As a boy he received the impulse from Percys Reliques and was ever after entranced by myths and legends and historical traditions, more particularly in his own native Border Country. The first book he published, The Minstresly of the Scottish Border, contained traditional ballads that he collected and in some cases refurbished, as well as some literary poems on traditional subjects. The published poem of 1805 entitled The Lay of the Last Minstrel, is what gave Scott his fame; a poem founded on the tricks played by Gilpin Horner, a boggart-like hobgoblin who haunted one of the Border farms.

Throughout Sir Walter Scotts poems and novels can be found snatches of folk-belief and tradition, and the interest he took in fellow authors, James Hogg, Chambers, Crofton Croker, the Grimm brothers and others, gave prestige to folklore stories everywhere.

The authors of the 18th-century, who wrote books expressly for the edification of children, brought in a new class of fairy: the fairy-godmothers play a strong role.

The Fairy godmothers that came from the tales of Charles Perrault (1628-1703), which contains Cinderella, the worlds most popular fairy tale, are already at one remove from the folk-tale fairy, and become relentless moralists, driving their proteges along the path to virtue.

The Perrault fairy-stories were retold folktales, which presupposed, however, a courtly audience who knew the custom of courts and the emphasis placed on courtly sponsors for royal and noble children.

This trend of fairies persists into the 19th-century, and it was not until a quarter of it had passed that the research of the folklorist, as initiated by Sir Walter Scott, began to have some effect on childrens literature. James Hogg, called the Ettrick Shepherd began to make verses and trained himself to write them. He submitted some poems to Sir Walter Scott, who became his steady friend and employed him to collect oral material. He wrote several prose collections of stories and among his best-known works is The Brownie of Bodsheck; his greatest poem, Kilmeny, which is a well-known theme of a visit to faeryland and the return after a supernatural passage of time, seven years in this tale; and his most touching poem, The Mermaid, which turns on the difference between human time and fairy time, the long-lived, soulless mermaid and the short-lived mortal with an immortal soul.

Thomas Crofton Croker (1798-1854) was the first field-collector of folk-tales in Ireland. The first volume of Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland appeared in 1823 when Croker was working in London, and it was an immediate and immense success; Jacob Grimm translated it into German and Scott wrote a lengthy and eulogistic letter which Croker printed in the second volume in 1828. Before Croker completed the three volumes of The Fairy Legends, he brought out a kind of guide book of his travels in Cork, Waterford and Limerick, Researches in the South of Ireland, providing additional comment on the fairy-lore which he gathered on his travels.

The folk-tale fairy trend persisted, and as the century went on writers of children's stories followed the writings of the folklorists; Jean Ingelow and J.H. Ewing are among the best.

And as the 20th century dawned, the Golden Age of Faery had truly seen its death; the folk fairies are turned into airy, tenuous, pretty creatures without meat or muscles, made up of froth and whimsy, thus becoming nothing more than fantasy.

However, a new breed of fairies was conjured up by the late 19th-century metaphysicians. In the positive doctrines of mediaeval alchemists and mystics (e.g. Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians, as well as their modern followers) the ancient metaphysical ideas of Europe, Egypt, Greece, and Rome found a new expression; the folklore of the peasantry and the subject of fairies is turned into a study of the beings of nature: the Elementals.

The elemental "fairies" have four classifications, earth, air, water, fire, as each group inhabits one of the four chief elements of nature. They procreate after the manner of humankind, have bodies of an elastic half-material essence, which is sufficiently ethereal not to be visible to the physical sight, and probably comparable to matter in the form of invisible gases.

The visible world is merely thought of as Their skin. In dreams, it is believed humans went amongst Them and played with Them, and held combat with Them. They were explained to be, perhaps, human souls in the crucible.

The realm in which the Elemental Fairies exist is no longer referred to as Faeryland but rather the Middle Kingdom. However, among Them all is one type which most completely characterizes the new term of fairy, and this is the common woods or garden fairy who figures frequently in the minds of modern people.

The garden fairy is found everywhere, and varies as much from continent to continent as nationalities vary among humankind. Perhaps, it is in this form that the Tuatha De Danann have chosen to now communicate with us, mirroring back our need to reconnect with our environment, our earth.

Now we arrive at our current time period to find that the Faery, as we have seen through Their lineage, have survived-- just as Evan-Wentz once said, and "while they have not nor can be captured, stuffed, or put on display in museums like rare animals and birds of whose existence we have no doubt even if we have not seen them before viewing their display, the Faery, these Beings of the Otherworld, the invisible world, do exist. "

I believe we all know that there is with us always] an overshadowing consciousness of an invisible world, not in some distant realm of space, but here and now, blending itself with this world. This belief is what we call "mysticism."

And what does the noun mysticism really mean? It is a noun that has been applied to anything which may seem reasonable yet wholly untranslatable in terms of individual experience -- a word used to express a knowing or a knowledge of everything which exists.