Comments | heartssdesire: On the dangers of Faery.

heartssdesire

On the dangers of Faery.

May 02, 2007 16:16

This Beltaine's ritual, and some stuff I was reading, got me thinking. A lot of the old stories and traditions relating to the Faery folk seem to be mainly focused on how to avoid interacting with them, or at least how to protect oneself from them if you can't avoid them. Charms to keep them away from one's house. Gifts to appease them. Places not ( Read more... )

paganism, feri, faerie, witchcraft

Comments 4

elorie May 3 2007, 01:04:27 UTC

I've done all kinds of things other people think are crazy/risky magic-wise, and yet lived to tell the tale. I'm not even particularly crazy as a result *twitch*.

But seriously...I think it's more the "by which eye" thing, or the stories where some people get rewarded by the Fey and some people get cursed. Some people are Meant To (or are sufficiently polite), and others aren't. If you aren't, it's dangerous. If you are...well, it still might be dangerous, but it's also compelling and you generally come out better off though not necessarily unscathed.

How do you tell the difference? The hard way...

heartssdesire May 3 2007, 17:38:09 UTC

Oh, good point. I wasn't thinking about it, but there are all those stories where the one sibling goes with the right courtesy or proper approach and gets rewarded when all the others get cursed...

Then also I think the same Faery gifts can be either a blessing or a curse depending on what it is you want or expect. Like the Tongue that Cannot Lie. It was both a curse and a gift of prophecy.

arethinn May 3 2007, 23:33:37 UTC

"I find myself seduced and I get these wild urges to run outside and get lost in the twilight. And it seems strange because it's counter to the prevailing tone of the lore about Faerie"

It might be counter to the *wisdom*, but it seems to me that's exactly what much of the lore is trying to protect you from... that you will feel this impulse, now here's how to protect yourself from it. I guess the difference is, as you note, that you are much more interested in yielding to it than protecting yourself from it.

"What I've been thinking is that the defensiveness of the lore doesn't necessarily mean that there is something wrong with you if you aren't inclined toward avoiding the Faery experience."

I think it's RJ Stewart who talks about some of this being conscious suppression of the "old ways" -- the prohibitions against faery lovers, eating faery food and drink, and the like are at least partly because these are initiatory, they are ways to power and spiritual understanding not got from the Church, and we can't have people having ( ... )

heartssdesire May 3 2007, 23:59:29 UTC

Right, that makes a lot of sense, especially in light of the amount of lore that was transcribed by Christians. Don't eat the food because you'll never make a good member of the flock after that... Reminds me of one of my favorite Terence McKenna quotes, along the lines of 'once you've touched the core of your soul, you can't be led into product-fetishism...' He was talking about psychedelic experience making you unfit for consumer society, but I think the effect is the same... Ecstatic experience makes you unfit for conformity.