A friend sent around an ad for a “fairy workshop”, where people would learn to do meditations to get in touch with the fairies and then make a little “door” to install on their property to call fairies in.
From Ann Arbor, MI, where they have fairy doors galore
I let it go for a couple of days, but then could no longer contain myself. I wrote to the two people who expressed interest in attending that while I don't actually believe in fairies, at least not while in my right mind, or rather only WHEN in my right mind/brain, if I did I would be more cautious about interacting with them.
Fairies of the old stories are not the cute li'l miniature women (mostly) with wings and pointy ears flitting among the flowers.
1328723428.png)
Rather, they are rather sinister (speaking of things left-brained) beings, who make demands, who play (often dirty) tricks, who kidnap people... The Irish used to "respect" the "gentry" the way Sicilians "respected" the mafia. There is an interesting theory out there that the alien abduction thing popular a few years ago (does it still go on, whatever IT is, and we-all have just got bored by it?) is a modern version of the old fairy tales, and may be an up-to-date face of an old, and mysterious, phenomenon.
At any rate, if there are fairies, little (or not so little) nature spirits, why would they be favorably disposed towards humans? They're concerned with plants and insects. We and they are alien to each other. (Take note of this post by Pensive Person - do you want to mess with the Water Bug Fairy?) Nature spirits would be pre-occupied by the beings in their realm...and those beings are ravaged on a daily basis by humankind.
It's like people and their silly 'totem animals'. First of all, everyone's totem is an eagle or a cougar or a lion or a wolf. Nobody's totem is a weasel or a mouse. Second, the spirit of the wolf would be interested in YOU, wolf-killer? - not likely. Even if you like wolves, hate Sarah Palin, even send money to wildlife funds, you still are part of humankind that treats all other creatures as property or vermin.
I almost added a caveat to one of these people, who has a greenhouse, an extensive garden, an orchard, etc., and into permaculture, that perhaps the fairies would cotton a bit to her. But I didn't. I remembered the insight that came to me one summer day as I was pulling weeds: A garden is ostensibly a place of life, but in reality there's more death and destruction than life. In this little plot I was planting lettuce – and killing all non-lettuce plants, covering the ground with mulch so no other plant-creatures could live there. Beyond the fence, in the woods and (non-farmed) fields, thousands of plants lived together. In my garden, only those I chose.
And that's another thing – that peaceful beautiful landscape out there only looks that way to us, treating it as a source of refreshment and peace, something to look at to make us feel good, while in reality it's a battlefield, a vast struggle among all those plants and insects and animals to eat and avoid being eaten. Plants push against each other to get more & more light, more water, more air... (Greed is in the very nature of life.) There's some cooperation where it provides an advantage to both or all parties. That's how animals began – our bodies are a big cooperative unit of bits of life that get around and EAT MORE PLANTS (and other animals) than if they were separately stuck in the ground or swimming in a pond.
And once we were just one species of animal struggling amongst all the other forms of life, eating and being eaten. Nature, having experimented with various other survival aids, tried out brain-power on us. Bingo! Now we have (in our minds, anyway) extracted ourselves from the messy business of the wild (no more primate lunch for you, wolves), and treat the whole world as our gardens.
Perhaps some of the fairies (if they exist) would be happy. At least for a while the lettuce and tomato etc. fairies would be delighted at how their focus was being supported...but now farms and gardens are turning into vast plant labor-camps.
Excuse me while I go water the couple of plants I captured and put into little cages to hang in my window...
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Jeff J.
Mark Bieter
Kathy Gori
Donegal Descendant
Lucy Hancock
podunkmarte
Salon.com
Comments
Free those plants you've imprisoned in your house! Less lettuce, more weeds! Feed wolves with trust fund babies!
Actually, my totem is a crow, and if you ever seen a crow in its true enviroment you'll see them hanging out a lot in junkyards and dumps! Fits me like a glove! :D
I have a whole set of captured plants in my south windows. Which reminds me to check that lawsuit that Peta has against Seaworld for the enslavement of sea animals. I hope they don't start applying that to plants, too.
As for spirit animals, though, there I disagree. I always think of myself as a little yapping Jack Russell. My therapist agrees.... :-)
And that brought me to consult my totem animal. No not a weasel, and while I have a plethora of totem animals (I am a master of power animals, after all and a certified shaman, amongst my many quirky accolades) I do actually have a muskrat as well as a field mouse as totems.
I look at human nature as part of nature, no matter how unnatural we may seem and act, we're still a part of that thing called Nature. It's like that song by Love and Rockets, No New Tale to Tell:
"You cannot go against nature
Because when you do
Going against nature
It's part of nature too
Our little lives get complicated
It's a simple thing
Simple as a flower
And that's a complicated thing."
And I remain conflicted, because I have studied the fey folk, the bain sidhe, ealfs, fairies, trolls, dwarves and other such mythical creatures from Scandinavian, Germanic, Nordic, Saxon, Frankish and Celtic sources. What you get back tells you that maybe it's better to not invite them so close.
Is it because we destroyed their homes? Well maybe, but as almost all fairy tales indicate there's a land beyond the land that we experience in this here and now, perhaps it's less that and more of a intellectual grudge match between hard reality and non-ordinary reality?
It didn't hurt to augment this information for my game design either, for I am a wicked and cruelly humorously inclined world creator.
One of my first blogs is about being edible as a survival trait. It's not something that most folks would consider, but when you consider it's a eat or be eaten world out there, as per your essay, it's easy to see how being edible might be a very sneaky and successful survival trait. Maybe the fey folk aren't very edible and that makes them leery of us, for we cannot ensure their survival?
And all of that reminds me of the time I was abducted by aliens -- and they were freakin' fairies! I'm sorry, that's such a slur, they were gay aliens. I can prove it, too, because they tried to probe me and I don't think they were using any manufactured tools.
Fortunately, Muskrat to the rescue, brought skunk along and while they were busy trying to cover their nose slits, I managed to sneak out. If I weren't crazy, I never would have been able to make a soft landing. But then, I am an owl in my non human form.
I don't know if there's any such thing in this reality and I am conflicted by the fact that I love science and rational thought, while at the same time I completely understand that there's more to our worlds than simply what we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear with our physical senses. If that weren't true, we'd never dream, never have odd thoughts or hallucinations.
Of course, that could all just be faulty wiring.
One thing for sure, though, you opened a door to ideas and thoughts and that's a good thing, no matter how much of a bummer it is to believe there's no such thing -- or if there is, there's going to be nothing but bad blood between Us and Them.
That doesn't mean that you might not be right, though. Damn, and here we go again, 'round and 'round.
--R--
Your garden is beautiful. This half spring is nice, but come on Spring!