The Nature of Gnosis & the Mothers

Sorry for the lack of posts in a while its been quite busy.

Today I wanted to talk about something that maybe we don't talk about as much, and a lot of material put out into the world doesn't discuss - what happens when we get spiritual messages or insights we don't understand. I'll be lumping those concepts under the term gnosis for this discussion. 

This may just be me, but when I read other people's gnosis material it always seems to be presented as an amazing thing that the person immediately grasped. World changing information or poignant insight or deep cosmology, laid out for the person in ways that make the meaning self evident, or carefully explained. 
  Maybe the Othercrowd I deal with just don't work that way? In which case I could almost envy those who have everything presented in such clear ways. But I think that I can't be the only one who sometimes - or often - is dealing with obscurity and opaqueness. I feel that I am given puzzles to solve as often as I'm given clear answers, and usually the clear answers only come when I have repeatedly failed to get the idea otherwise*. There's a degree of impatience on Their part as I slog my way through metaphysical concepts that quite frankly break my brain. 
  I have several times been given things in Irish, which I am not fluent in, and had to struggle to translate. This is particularly difficult when its longer messages or in one case a song that I have to remember then try to write down afterwards. I've also been given messages - like being warned about the pandemic - that only made sense in hindsight in part because my own perspective was so limited and my assumptions about the concept limited me further. 

  I find that gnosis is very difficult. Its a constant process of taking what's given and then working - hard - to understand it. Very rarely do I get things that are clear and straightforward and easy. But on the other side of that coin it is worth the effort to suss things out. Every time I fit a new piece to that puzzle the picture it makes becomes clearer and I get a bit closer to feeling like I actually understand, in some small way, things that are otherwise beyond my comprehension. It can be enormously frustrating to always struggle to get each little bit, but things do come clear in the end (usually). 
   If you feel that way too then my advice is don't give up. Other people may make it seem easy and fluid but it isn't for everyone. It isn't for me. Its difficult, but its worth it. 

So in the spirit of the above I want to share a message from a recent meditation (note the colors are literal, not allusions to human skin colors):
"The Red Mother is the blood of life
The pulse and struggle and joy
The Black Mother is the fertile earth
The source of birth and rebirth
The White Mother is bone & death
The one who takes and returns
The Green Mother weaves all together
Into a single inseparable wholeness
Presence & possibility & impermanence"

No I don't entirely understand what it means.
No it isn't allusions to named goddesses.
No it's not about archetypes.
I was meditating on who the Other might or would worship and got that.
I asked in a bold follow up question if the Red Mother was the Queen of Apples, or another name for Her, and was very bluntly told I don't understand anything.
So that's fun.

I know that this information is important, but I don't yet know exactly how or why. I'll keep puzzling it out until I eventually get it, but there is a level of frustration. I want to understand it, it pulls at me, but I just don't yet. In a way its like looking at a beautiful work of art that makes you cry and not understanding why it evokes that emotion. 

No matter how easy some carefully curated and presented gnosis might seem to be, the truth in my opinion is that gnosis is messy. Its complicated and convoluted and hard to understand sometimes and that's alright. Spiritual insights and messages are personal and they speak in a language of symbols and metaphor and layers.

*I only found out the name of my fairy Queen because I pieced together context clues, arrived at a very wrong conclusion, boldly suggested it, and she was so annoyed at how wrong I was that she told me the correct answer. 

Wherein the Danger Lies

Modern fairies (by any names) are viewed in vastly different ways by different people and groups of people. To some, fairies are intrinsically dangerous and must always be avoided. To others, fairies are intrinsically good and only ever do helpful things. My own approach is very much a middle road - I don't believe that fairies are entirely any one thing or that their motives can easily be understood in most situations. They are, in short, their own people with culture and etiquette and agency and agendas. They may help or they may harm based on their own reasoning in a situation and that rarely lines up with human concepts.

I am a person who is rather deeply involved with the Shining Ones and yet I'm also someone who regularly warns other people not to jump in to interacting with these beings. Why? Because in my own experience too many people love the idea of fairies without grasping the reality of fairies. They see the beauty and the magic -the enchantment - of these beings but don't see them as actual independent life forms. And in many cases they envision themselves like the main character of a novel, clearly playing a central and vital role that insulates them from harm or even real consequences.
And none of that is good.
We can't, as people who claim to believe in these beings and seek to connect to them, treat them this way. You either believe they are real or you don't. And if you do believe they are real then you need to accept that they exist outside humanity, however overlapping they may be at times, and that they deserve to be respected as much as any living thing does. You also have to accept that they aren't just another version of humans, but a distinct thing of their own (yes even the ones who were human once).

Certainly there are a wide range of types of beings that fall under the general label of 'fairy' in English and certainly some of those beings are friendlier and more forgiving than others, some are even along the lines of the post-Victorian ideas of fairies as tiny, helpful, disembodied, et cetera. But that's only some. And while I do know people who only interact with those safer beings and have only had positive experiences I also know others who have expected the tiny helpful fairies and gotten bitten instead (in some cases literally).

They exist outside of humanity and follow different rules and we need to acknowledge that in seeking to understand them.

I have experienced enormous blessings from the Good Folk and have also been harmed by them. The first is usually coming from a specific group I'm aligned with and owe fealty to, while the second is usually (not always) coming from outside that group. Because even though I have a close connection to one group of the Gentry it doesn't mean I have carte blanche with every Otherworldly being. In fact my allegiance to one group puts me at odds with others who are against that group, because just like humans the Good Folk have their own friends and rivals, allies and enemies - and as a human when you step into that you bear the consequences of involvement and you are, always, inherently, the weakest link for them and the most expendable.
For one fairly tame example, when I was in Iceland I generally had good experiences and interactions with the local spirit beings. But when we went to Dimmuborgir, the home of Grýla and the Yule Lads, it was quickly made clear that I was not welcome there. I respected that and didn't push, because I understood that it was an issue of wider connections and animosity between the Other. Things like that happen sometimes and this is when we most need to remember that we aren't the main character in a novel, because consequences of offending some beings are very, very tangible. 

This is a story I heard once.
A man in Ireland, about 100 years ago, was walking home when he met with a group of the Daoine Maithe. They told him they were going to play a game against a rival group of Gentry and needed a referee. The game could only be played with a human present and with a human as the impartial arbiter of the rules. He agreed and went along with them to the field the game was to be played at.
The group he'd met first won, fairly, but the rival group swore they'd have their revenge on the human man for his part in their loss. Meanwhile the first group promised him luck and fortune, and took him back home celebrating.
Three years went by with the man living a good life.
And then one night when the fairies' hurling match was far from the man's mind and he was travelling the road a fairy man of the rival group passed him and gave him the fairy stroke. He fell in the road and never rose in his right mind again.
Humans forget. The Othercrowd do not. And being involved with them is both a blessing and a target on your back in these situations. 

And since the theme of this blog tends to be me sharing messages from my Other People, I suppose I 'll wrap up with this* from my main guide/cara sí: "Are we dangerous? Of course we are. Anything is if provoked to it; even mice will bite to defend themselves, thorns will draw blood, and bees will sting. Are they dangerous? Do you fear them, or do you understand that it is your action which earns the bite or prick or sting? Actions earn responses and it is the action that begins it that should be examined.
Asking if we are dangerous is the wrong question. What should be asked is why would we be dangerous? Because the real answer lies there."




*it is a fairly brief response because she seemed to find the question ridiculous, or perhaps just really obvious.

Modern Myth - How the Otherworld Came To Be

 Part 2 in my series on modern myths is looking at how the Other came to be in our reality, as it has been relayed to me. 

Let me emphasize that this is MY OWN gnosis, and should be taken as such

View from Bri Leith in Ardagh, 2018, pic by me

"After reality was made, and the song and dance of the stars was in motion, and after That Which Is All birthed Life and Decay, the sacred and the básdan, many other forms of life came to be, both grand and subtle. Worlds were born, and with them various layers were added to reality, so that the human world came to be and adjacent to it the Otherworld - or perhaps that was the other way around. Each anchored the other, and each resonated with the other, so that they were separate but joined, like the moon circling the earth.

Life flourished in the various worlds and realities and dimensions and this life was diverse and wide-ranging. But each world was divided form the other, separated by space or perception or energy or reality. Some beings which existed in more fluid realms could move between these worlds like a bird that could walk or fly or swim at its own will, but most beings were bound to the world or reality they existed within in, particularly if they had a physical, tangible form. The worlds existed and the life within them flourished and grew.

In the Otherworld those beings who had been Second in creation spun tales and molded their world and created new beings who were fashioned from primal reality and starlight and song, guided by Life without Decay's hand. They were immortal and if a physical form was lost it could be recreated or the consciousness could return unchanged in a new form. They in turn created other new beings and discovered the joys of physical bodies and birthed new generations, living in the Otherworld and learning how to read the flows of energy and life, how to shape those flows, how to make their own will manifest. But eventually they grew bored and restless.

The básdan, those created by the power of Decay also had a realm, a place that was inverse to Life, wherein all was perpetually unmade. An Unworld. Their magics were also subtle and overt, unweaving the strands of fate and time, pulling apart that which was so that they could push the fractured pieces into new forms that suited them. 

The earthly world existed between these two and included both Life and Decay, both birth of the physical and true death, wherein a consciousness that lost physical form lost cohesion. Some in the Otherworld who were bored and restless found ways to make bridges between the two worlds, as some of those who were in the Unworld found ways to pull apart the energy which separated the worlds to travel to the earthly world. Each began influencing and shaping the earthly world, and each in turn was influenced and shaped by it, all different voices in the universal chorus. 

Bridges once built can be travelled by those coming or going, and pathways between worlds ran in both directions."

Time

It is fairly well known that time moves differently between the human world and the Otherworld, although its less clear how exactly that works. Katherine Briggs suggest that the fire festivals act as a kind of anchor between the worlds, and also suggests that while humans cannot navigate the flowing tides of time the Good Folk can and regularly do. I've seen a lot of talk across the years by humans trying to sort out how this might work and trying to understand the concepts. I thought here I'd write a bit about what my Other friends have told me on the subject.
I admit its a lot to wrap your head around, and in some ways is contrary to how humans perceive things, anchored as we are in our perspectives.

I also want to add quickly that I have been previously told that while humans think in two dimensions - either/or, but/and, now/then - the Good Folk think in 5 dimensions which can roughly be described as three physical dimensions, existence, and time. Thinking in time isn't, as I understand it, as simple as thinking about the past or future but is more like constantly perceiving past/present/future and one's place within the flow. Its more encompassing than the human understanding of the concept. I'll be totally honest when this was told to me I didn't fully understand it and I still don't, but its probably worth sharing before we go further.

Hawthorn in fall, pic by author

So, having discussed a bit about the way time works differently for the Good Folk and also about how they may perceive it, and reality, I wanted to share something that was told to me in a dream several years ago. This relates to the idea of time but also to the way that the Good Folk themselves (or Themselves) view humans based on this, and the way that effects relationships they might have, of any sort, with a human. 

I was talking to my Other friend and it got into discussing them relating to humans and time and perspective. And she put it this way:
 "Imagine that for humans a year passes in an hour, while for us it is merely an hour. You may accomplish a lot in an hour if you focus on it but an hour can also slip by virtually unnoticed if your attention is elsewhere. Now imagine that you tell someone you will do a thing for them and perhaps you do right away but perhaps you dally and when you realize *hours* have passed its actually been years for them in the mortal world.
Imagine that you grow exceptionally fond of someone only to watch their life pass in what, to you, feels like 3 or 4 days. No matter how you may try to cherish each hour, still they pass quickly. Of course time flows as it does but for us a year truly does seem to pass so quickly, no matter how anchored we may seek to be in the human world. You can choose to connect to someone who only lives 3 days, or 3 months, or 3 years, but it does not change how fleetingly they pass."

So, basically, what she was saying is that humans might perceive the Other as mercurial or inconsistent when in fact they are simply operating on a different time scale and may or may not act in what humans consider a timely manner (pun intended). And that this different time scale also effects how they may or may not connect to individual humans, because generally to them humans are as fleeting as spring flowers are to us.

This isn't to say they don't follow certain tides of the human year, which they do, but the impression I got is that to them these are more like a daily routine than the yearly cycle we perceive. Its a very different perspective. And of course these are all just loose analogies to convey the wider point, not literal comparisons. 

The 'Great War': Unmaking vs Making

 I honestly thought I had written about this before because its a subject I've discussed privately for several years with friends but after reading several recent blogs I realized I'd never put this out publicly. So here we go. 

So for context you might start by reading 'The Great War Pain Hope and Turning the Tides and The Otherworldly Tides of the Great War to get caught up on the wider subject. The brief summary is that the human world, specifically but not exclusively the so-called western world, has been in the midst of upheaval for the last half dozen and more years and that this upheaval is not only visible in the human world but has also been felt or experienced in the Otherworld by people sensitive to it, and that there are Otherworldly forces at work in the midst of the human conflicts, as well as Otherworldly conflicts playing out. 

This has been a topic of discussion across several different esoteric communities since at least 2015 and publicly since 2018/2019. Some call it The Storm or Tower Time. The above linked blogs refer to it as the Great War. I don't know what exactly I'd choose to call it as I find every convenient term lacks nuance. 

My friend Seo Helrune and I have been discussing the wider theme and specifics around what's going on from the Otherworldly angle across the years and the ways that it has and is tying into human world conflicts and issues (including the pandemic). From the more Otherly perspective I would say we're seeing a conflict between forces of unmaking and making which is playing out across worlds and across a variety of fronts (so to speak). This is a lot to try to unpack and as always with this blog what I'm about to say is my own gnosis and experiences largely focused on the US, so take that as you will. I'll try to unroll it all chronologically as best I can:

Around 2015 several of us noticed that the Otherworld was becoming more persistently present and active in the human world* and started discussing why that might be. Certain trends started to crop up: of the Other recruiting people, especially witches; of the Other directly harming people; of the Other being experienced more widely by people usually unaware of it. As more time wore away these trends became more obvious and more intense. We started to notice that the usual tides of the Otherworld against the human world - the long standing pattern of increased and decreased presence - had stopped flowing and instead we were perceiving a constant slow build up; the tide would crest and then not recede as it usually had, instead creating a new constant which would then rise again. 

In 2019 this had reached a point where the Tower Time/Storm discussions were more public and where I started writing about the return of the Other and the re-enchantment of the world, in the old raw sense of enchantment - a dangerous, alluring spell that could snare people. This return wasn't without pushback, as I noted in my blog 'The Return of the Otherfolk and the Puritan Egregore' because the Other hadn't chosen to leave the human world, they had been forced out most notably by Christian dominionism. The Other pushing to return came up against the egregore of the Puritans and hardcore Christian beliefs in the US, a loosely embodied force that was opposed to anything not of itself. This situation was further complicated - again notably seen starting in 2019 - by the presence of an opposing non-human force which was the sum total of the beings who were diametrically opposed to the Othercrowd et al and which sought only chaos and death. My own Folk call these beings the 'basdán' which is a bit hard to parse in English, but effectively those who seek to unmake all things, who are without fate. Not death because death is part of nature but something deeply against the cycle of life. 

It was a conflict between life and unlife, between wholeness and unhaelness, between making and unmaking. 

And it turned into open warfare among the Other, who were actively fighting against this force and also actively fighting to regain a place in the human world. I won't get into the deeper specifics here but to say that in part it involved literal battles in the Otherworld and more subtle battles in the human world. 
I was warned about the pandemic in late 2019, although I have to admit I didn't fully understand the warning or grasp what was to come. In January 2020 I was flat out told there would be a pandemic, although again I didn't grasp what that was going to mean or how it would play out. I am not saying that the Other created the pandemic but I do think they have used it to forward their own agenda over the last several years. 

What is that agenda? To take back their place in the human world and all that was taken from them. 

But this goes beyond the Other as I said, and over the last three years things have continued to sharpen. The Other is still fighting, the puritan egregore is not only still fighting but succeeding, and the Basdán, the unhael, are continuing to gnaw away at the edges of everything. Its war on three fronts in that way and the human world is stuck in the middle as both the field of battle and the prize. 

For my own part my Other have strongly emphasized the power of solar symbols and things like gold, amber, red stones, for protection. They have repeatedly encouraged heavy duty cleansing of a spiritual nature and to stay on guard against unseen spirit dangers. They encourage a disengagement from all things Christian** and a focus on embracing the things I've previously written about here - breath and life and joy where it can be found. My human-world friends, in the articles linked above, have also encouraged things like joy and hope as weapons against what is happening and what is coming. 

We are in an energetic pivot point but we aren't helpless within it. 
We must choose life. 

*again specifically referencing western cultures here. I can't speak to other places although I suspect that this isn't limited to just so-called 'western civilizations'. 

** my lot have never been fans of that religion, to be fair

Familiar Spirits

 I know when most people hear the term 'familiar spirit' they immediately think of either an early modern demon in animal form or a witch's beloved pet. For me though its neither of those - I think of fairy familiars and of a being who has been with me since I was a child. 

First a bit of background. Fairy familiars are a concept we find in early modern witchcraft; they are Fairy beings who are connected to a witch and who act as a go-between for the witch and the Good Folk. (I discuss this in depth here). The relationship between a witch and fairy familiar is very different from what we might envision for other types of familiars - the witch is the one who is in service, for one thing, and the relationship between the two is often very intimate or personal, either as lovers or as family members. 

In Ireland we see an overlapping concept, that of the Leannán sidhe - literally fairy lover. This idea goes back at least a thousand years in Irish myth and folklore around one of the sidhe known to be the lover of a human; usually thought to protect & sometimes offer knowledge to their human lover, they could be of either gender. The term was also used to translate the Biblical 'familiar spirit' because it was understood to be a similar concept. For example in Bedell's 1642 'Leabhuir na Seintiomna', Isaiah 3 & Samuel 8, uses the term leannáin síghthe for familiar spirits.

There are multiple ways for a person to acquire a familiar, although with fairy familiars they are usually given to a person by a fairy monarch or come to the person to establish a connection between them and the Good Folk. While they fall into the general range of familiar spirits they are a specific category within that and have their own unique aspects and qualities.

I think what this all looks like in practical terms will be different for each person. I can talk about historical accounts and I can talk about my own experiences - which I will below - but I don't think there's any one template for how this goes. I'm not even sure that the different schools of thought on it or people who have these connections agree on why or how they exist, never mind the details of it all. So while I will offer a bit on my own experiences here I do want people to be clear that this is entirely my own experience 

I have mentioned in various places that I have always had the Othercrowd around me, even before I really understood what they were. I have distinct memories as a young child - perhaps 5 years old - of a woman with dark red hair coming into my bedroom at night to comfort me when I was scared; only later did I realize she was a woman of the sidhe. She has continued to be a presence for me and is one of my main connections among the Other to this day. She has told me that we are 'family' and she often acts as a guide or mentor for me now. I did nothing to invoke or call her but she seems to have her own reasons for wanting this connection.

When I was 12 I started practicing witchcraft and began to open up to and learn about magical practices. Several years later, when I was around 14, I met my fairy familiar, although due to some extreme foolishness on my part at the time I offended him in such a way that I did not see him again until I was 24. Honestly I'm lucky he came back at all, usually in similar situations the Otherworldly being goes never to be seen again. I'll often talk about the care needed around the Othercrowd because their reactions can be extreme, and this is one of the things I think of, but in this case I was very lucky that I was given a second chance. Since he returned he has become another foundational presence in my life, helping to shape my spirituality and acting as a familiar to me - a go-between for me and the Fairy Queen I serve and the Good Folk more generally - and in the older role these beings take in Irish culture. As with her I didn't call or invoke him but I believe he initially came at a time when I was first opening up to magical work, and then returned at a point where I had started to deepen my spirituality and reconnect particularly to the aos sidhe.
Both of these beings are vital to my spiritual practice but also to me personally. They have taught me many things which I incorporate into my witchcraft and more than that have been an anchor for me throughout my life. 

For me having a fairy familiar or a fairy guide, if I might call her that, is a key aspect of my practice but also of who I am as a person. 

Words and Deeds

 This is yet another case of my saying something offhanded in a visionary experience and getting a lecture for it. Which is always fun. So I thought I'd pass along the lecture, pretty much as I got it. 
Enjoy.

In the course of a conversation I happened to say, "People's words and deeds don't always match up. That's why I trust actions more than words."

 My friend stopped, her expression growing stern, and said, "That is so for humans because human words have no weight to them, no strength. Humans speak stories that are whimsy and folly as much as Truth. But it is not so for us. Our words are stories as well, as all words are, but they are stories that are True. We know that what is spoken has power, has force to shape reality, and so we are careful to speak that which we want to form. We aren't careless with our words and never so with our promises. 

Some humans call us deceptive and we are, because we know how to shape words that suit us and mean what we choose, but we never outright lie no matter how we might twist our words. A human can always trust what we say to be true, the challenge for them is to find the meaning that we intend with the words. Do we give a name that is false? No for names are like clothing, taken on and off as need dictates, and chosen to suit occasions.  Do we mislead with our words? Certainly but only because the person hearing them sees what they want to see in what is said, rather than its true intent. It is not, in truth, actually we who mislead but people who mislead themselves by allowing their desire to cloud their reason. 

We always keep our actions aligned with our words and our words aligned with our intentions and Truth. To act against one's word or to speak against one's truth is a grave matter and something that must be immediately dealt with if the person's honor is to be maintained."

She stopped for a moment, still frowning, obviously thinking about how to phrase what she wanted to say. 

"Truth and its expressions - order*, harmony, action**, speech - are essential to maintaining sacredness and remaining in alignment with Life."

*I believe the intent here was something more like orderliness
** right action, action in line with intention