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

"We Will Re-Make You"

 8 years ago this month I had a visionary experience wherein I heard the voice of the main person I'm connected to among the Other chanting. The gist of the chant had to do with the idea of me being  re-made, re-shaped and at the time I didn't understood what it meant or why it was being done. This was about three years after I had made a major commitment to my Othercrowd and two years before my initiatory experience with them in Ireland.

Hindsight being what it is, some things have become more clear since then and I wanted to write this today to share with readers here some of the ways that my life and my physical self have changed. I am not suggesting anyone else do this or follow this, but want to show that this work is powerful stuff and really does impact a person. You can take it as a bit of a warning of you want about how deeply the deep work with the Good Folk can really get. 

So, I've written before about some of the dietary stuff that's come up (you can read the long version here Reshaped Living) but the short version is that I've been guided (read: corralled) into a diet that focuses on fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, nuts & seeds, and water. It was made clear to me that they consider refined sugar to be poison* and prefer any and all foods that are fresh and still full of life energy. The fresher the better. 
I was also required to stop consuming caffeine. The coffee was a real struggle. The chocolate was worse. Those are probably my two main vices in life and I admit that they are not easy things for me to give up, even with a forceful Otherworldly assist. The explanation here, as I understand it, is that caffeine interferes with my ability to fully connect to them or otherwise blocks them in some way. 

On a similar note it was made clear that I could not smoke. Not that I ever smoked a lot but I did enjoy clove cigarettes on occasion, more so when I was stressed, and after marijuana was legalized in my state it had been suggested that I should smoke some for help with migraines. However Themselves don't allow it, again because its too grounding and blocks them out to some degree. 

(I should note that I have never been one to drink alcohol so that hasn't been an issue but I don't know where they'd stand on it) 

I have always had a sensitivity to iron but it has become a much more significant issue and moved into what I would classify as an allergy. And yes that is a real thing - you can read about it here - and its something that's noted in my medical chart and which I've dealt with since I was in my teens. It is possible that this is simply the result of my own immune system changing and becoming less tolerant of iron but it feels connected to the wider work I do. (I know, I know, correlation isn't causation). Its a huge pain in the butt, to be honest. 

I have a few personal prohibitions which were acquired after my initiation. Two of them I don't think apply here but the third does so I'll mention it: I can't cut my hair. Within a year of being told this my formerly straight hair began curling so that now, more than four years on, my hair is in loose spiral curls. That has been quite an adjustment as I really had no idea how to handle curly hair.

Some of these may seem incidental and some may seem extreme but I think its important to be clear that all of these things were instigated, I believe, by them and pivotally were enforced by them. If and when I try to deviate - and I do - it always ends badly for me one way or another. Chocolate turns to the taste and texture of chalk in my mouth. Cream curdles repeatedly in my coffee. Migraines become a blunt force weapon against my bad behaviour. 

And I must note that my consent was not needed at each step of this but only once at the very beginning. When I agreed to commit myself to them in 2011 everything that subsequently happened was because of that and my further consent for any of it wasn't required. And that is something that people very much need to be aware of.

This isn't an easy path. It has its blessings of course and its reasons to be done, but it isn't a thing that leaves a person unmarked or unchanged. The Good Folk have a heavy hand when it rests on us and a willingness to use it. 

*just a funny side note to this, I recently had run across something sugary in a cabinet and was debating eating it rather than wasting it by throwing it away and my Other people were not pleased. My main female guide asked me if I found rat poison would I eat that rather than waste it. Suffice to say it was thrown away. 

A Modern Myth - Creation

 This is going to be part of a new series I'll be working on featuring my own take on sacred stories. I'm starting, appropriately enough, with the idea of creation.

full moon on the autumn equinox over Eyjafjörður, Iceland, 2018

"No one who speaks knows how reality came to exist. Some say that it always was, is, and will be; a constant presence in which all other things find a place. But it is said among the oldest and wisest that That-Which-Was-And-Is birthed the stars, and the stars birthed the planets and all other cosmic beings. The stars also sang the First Song, the primal song, and danced the First Dance which set the pattern of all things. We understand that all things come from the stars and that they empower and fuel the cycles existence relies on to continue. 

From the First Song and First Dance came the greatest power, That Which Is All, the sentient spirit of existence, who is the song, and the dance, and all of manifest reality and the power that moves behind it. And from Her* came the two sides of all things, growth and decay, her children. They added their voices to the First Song so that a harmony and melody was achieved in the chorus and through this new song all sentient beings were created, filling the nascent worlds with depth and contrast. Each layer of new beings created and destroyed and shaped the reality around them, adding to the song with their own unique music. 

And so it has continued since, voices rising and falling as they weave into the song across time. And we in our small ways follow the guidance of the stars and sing and dance the great pattern to strengthen our connection to them and their power within us."

*I'm choosing to use she/her pronouns here because that's how the story came to me but I believe this Power is truly beyond the concept of gender.

 

Religion

 I'm asked sometimes about what religion, if any, the Good Folk have. From a folklore and historic perspective we don't really know although we have hints. Small references to fairies coming from or worshipping stars. Oblique references to fairy rituals around birth, marriage, and death. Hints of the wider system of Power to which they belong. But there's no easy public answer I can give, with citations, that answers that question. 
What I want to do here is offer my own personal understanding of the subject, with the clear caveat that this is my understanding of it. 

So, what religion do the Good Folk follow? 
I suspect that as with any other beings there is variety and ultimately no one simple answer. That said, my own experience has been that They celebrate a cycle of holy days based on stars; my own specific group time these holy days by the Pleiades, although I'm aware of other groups who use different stars. I won't get too much into that here because I've written about it extensively elsewhere, but as I understand it the idea is that the stars are seen as especially holy and important, keepers of time and of order, which reflect the vital dance of the universe itself.  There is no name for this religion it simply is the way of living in right order, of deep connection with reality manifest through this world. 

That should, I hope, lead to the question: what about in their world? In an Saol Eile? I do not think the stars are the same there, or even that there are stars or a sun and moon as we have here. There is a sense of cycles and of holiness in acknowledging certain times - but these times aren't as rigidly fixed as we have here. They ebb and flow around a fixed point like the tide but like the tide the timing isn't a perfect clock but an organic process. It is Samhain when it feels like Samhain, when the energy is right for it. Sometimes that lines up with the celebrations in our world more precisely and other times less so. 

Beyond seasonal celebrations there are of course other kinds. Again what follows is my own observations so please take this as such. Pregnancy is treated almost reverently but also surrounded by prohibitions meant to protect the mother, including not speaking overly much of the situation. Birth itself is treated as a kind of trial or test, again wreathed in prohibitions to protect mother and child. When the child reaches three months old there is a ceremony to present it to the community, and the first birthday is treated with great joy and a large party. These two events - three months and one year - seem to act as times to present and incorporate the baby into the existing community. Marriage is a more solemn affair, not without its celebration, but treated as a serious, permanent union between souls. It is a vow making ceremony without the drama or romance of the human ceremony but with a more profound and intense feeling to it. Death is solemnized with a ritual remembrance of the person and their return and renewal into the Source. 

Which perhaps naturally leads into the final subject I will touch on here - who do They worship? (We are deep diving into gnosis here, so buckle up).
Many humans see the Good Folk, especially the monarchy, as Gods and treat them as such and that's not exactly misplaced, but I have found that they also have higher Powers they acknowledge. Specifically a group of three, although not co-equal three. Rather there is one who is That Which Is All and there are two who are her children and her two sides, the Lady of Apples* who is Life and the Lord of Arrows who is Death. This is a vast oversimplification of course but the simplest way to explain them. The Lady of Apples is the active life force, the power that creates and grows and inspires. The Lord of Arrows is her opposite, the force of death and decay which balances and keeps life in check. That Which Is All is, literally, All, the sum total of both her children as well as the balance between them. If they are two forces that co-exist eternally on a field then she is the field. Or, put another way, the tree is the source of all things, the apple is the fruit of life and the arrow the product of death, both of which are sourced from the tree. 
All of the Otherfolk as far as I am aware, even the ones we'd label as 'unseelie' worship the Lady of Apples. The Lord of Arrows is antithetical to living things, and those that worship or connect to him are as well. although what they consider worship may not align with the human concept, its more a deep reverence and connection, as well as acknowledgement. 
If we imagine existence as layered then these three exist beyond the Otherworld and beyond the beings within it, and a further step from humanity than what we call Gods. 

altar to the Lady of Apples

*the Queen of Apples acknowledged in Fairy Witchcraft may be understood as a connection to or vessel of this higher Power. A filter if you will or what we might label a priestess within that context in the same way a human can be a priestess to a goddess, although she is acknowledged in Fairy Witchcraft as a goddess herself.