 Fantasy: August 10, 2011 Issue [#4544] |
  Fantasy
This week: Believe in Faeries? Clap your hands. Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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Greetings, I'm honored to be your guest host this week for the WDC Fantasy Newsletter. Where we will explore a place where ...
All that I see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
E.A. Poe
You cannot lift your hand without influencing and being influenced by hordes. The visible world is merely their skin. In dreams we go amongst them, and play with them, and combat with them.
W.B. Yeats
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Greetings, I open with a somewhat familiar preface to many works of fiction, quoting here Neil Gaiman:
"This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof."
And what of the faeries, aka fairies? If, as researchers, poets and writers postulate (and as many of them believe), there are active and intelligent disembodied beings able to act psychically upon embodied men in much the same way that embodied men are known ordinarily to act psychically upon one another, then there is every logical and common-sense reason for extending this theory to include non-human sentient beings. We co-exist with beings we may not see unless they choose to allow it. Over time, we've given them a name to identify them - faeries.
Consider their history, over generations and ages, not just the Celts, but Finnish folk, Native Americans, Indians, Australians, Chinese, among others, have communicated with and shared their knowledge via first oral, then written, traditions.
I'd like to explore a class of these beings, a genre if you will, which consists of what we call today Elementals, who are earth-borne nature spirits living parallel with humans and who can manifest their shape and form and interact according to their respective elemental nature.
 Those which inhabit and thrive specifically on earth are the Gnomes. They are definitely of pygmy stature, and friendly to man, and in fairy-lore ordinarily correspond to mine-haunting fairies or goblins, to pixies, corrigans, leprechauns, and to such elves as live in rocks, caverns, or earth--an important consideration entirely overlooked by champions of the Pygmy Theory.
Those inhabiting the air are called Sylphs. These Sylphs, commonly described as little spirits like pygmies in form, correspond to most of the fairies who as a race are beautiful and graceful. Think of the faeries in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.
Those inhabiting the water are called Undines, and correspond exactly to the fairies who live in sacred fountains, lakes, or rivers.
And the fourth kind, those inhabiting the fire, are called Salamanders, and seldom appear in the Celtic Fairy-Faith, but are more visible in Eastern lore. Consider their power, the power of fire, which makes them supreme in the elementary hierarchies.
All these Elementals are said to have bodies of a mutable half-material essence, which is sufficiently ethereal not to be visible to the physical sight, unless one is open to alternate perception. Consider the writers and poets, who see and perceive between the lines. Also, consider the innocents, kids who have not yet unlearned the ability to believe what they really see and hear.
As a child, my mother, born in Hungary, told me at night that if I were good and cleaned my room the good faeries, aka "tunderek" would come to me and bring me good dreams. Now, I've read that faeries do not like messy houses and often cause mischief or mayhem in a messy place to which they are called. It doesn't hurt to keep a corner of my writing room neat and clean for the faerie folk to visit and stay a spell.
Just as mortals have different and unique cultures and social mores, so also the faeries of earth, air, water and fire each have their own methods and madness, and how they choose to interact with mortals who seek them out or, perhaps, tread on their toes/wings.
So, let's not be ethnocentric, humans don't have a monopoly on either good or mischief. Why not clean a corner, open your mind to the elements and to possibilities, and see if a faery perchance will pay a visit (remember, we writers have an altered state of perception - we can see between the lines) and guide your pen or keyboard for a spell .
Until we next meet,
write on
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Elemental encounters of the faerie kind ~ check out these stories and poems from a few members of our Community
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| |  | The Little Fairy (E)
When we were going to sleep, we didn't realize the little fairy was flying around us...
#1773160 by Popuri  |
Up for an 'elemental' encounter ~ why not share your story or verse here?{
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Thank you for sharing this exploration with me, and I hope you engage some elemental beings in verse or prose. I get to come back as your host once again at the finale of the WDC Birthday Bash Week.
As a guest host, I don't have a formal ask and answer, but in honor of Birthday Week, I invite you to write a poem or story that's elemental in nature and honors a birthday, be it your own, a relative, a historical figure, a mythical figure, a country or planet or star, or our own WDC Community. Lots of potential here for faeries, gnomes, trolls, water sprites, to engage in profound, magickal, comical interaction with mortals or other forms of life.
Send me the link in an email or by writing to this newsletter and you may see your story or verse in a newsletter, and you will definitely get a few gps from me for your exploration in faerie lore.
Until we next meet,
may your words on faery wings soar
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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