Faery Gifts

Faery Gifts

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

The Gift - The Heart of Faerie Oracle

Gifts and blessings are tricky things. As are curses and poisons. We can't always tell them apart when we get them. What seems sweet can be a poison and what is poison is really a medicine that heals us. You can't tell what it is from it's wrapper, or the mask it might wear. Something about her appearance this morning brought with her a wave of deep sadness.
Perhaps it is because she reminds me of Death in the Faeries Oracle. Which is also a gift too. Or maybe my tears are the gift themselves with their own wisdom and medicine. She says

"What did it teach you?"

Pain, loss, suffering and heartache are over. You can carry the scars and wallow in self pity or you can let it be a gift.You made it through, your are still here. It made you better, not bitter. You win. 
You are through it now. Cleanse yourself in the water of wisdom. Let it heal you. 

 The Maiden - The Faeries Oracle

The Maiden is pure joy and magick. She is bright new beginnings and hopes. She is the new after the the old. The re-birth. Spring after Winter. Yet she is fragile too. She needs nurture and gentleness. Yet there is great power in her too. She knows every day is a new beginning. Every new breath a new opportunity. Change, growth, joy are only one breath away if we allow it. She says

"Be gentle with your joy."

I think she means that all hope and happiness, dreams and wishes are as fragile as a dandelion clock, and just as pervasive. The more you wish, the more hopeful you are the more hopeful you can be. Maybe she also means that we shouldn't rush or dismiss our dreams. That we should follow our joy gently. Just allow ourselves to get out of our own way, which is definitely something  need to work on!

Faery Temptation

Faery Temptation 

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

The Temptation - The Heart of Faerie Oracle

The Temptation for me, and another person is always so different. We all carry around our own "devils". Our self destructive tendencies. From bad relationships to addiction, to our own soup of self doubt and loathing, rage and self pity. Often we only find these tempting because we are trying to fill a void, or avoid what we are really feeling. Faerie don't really understand this. They are beings of intense feeling and revel in feeling it all. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. Which doesn't mean they can't trick you, or manipulate. They are like young children, being present makes their feelings very strong and natural. I guess it is how we all were until someone told us to "stop making a fuss."
He says

"One bite wouldn't hurt? Would it?"

You will be tempted. By what ever is your poison. Your devil will raise it's head and then you get to choose. One bite? One glass? One bottle? Or one moment of honesty with yourself. What am I avoiding? What am I trying so hard to numb? If you need some help or support, ask for it. The temptation to be strong and "do it alone" can be just as poisonous as anything else.

The Laume - The Faeries Oracle

The Laume are all about giving. She is in all the random acts of kindness. She is a helping hand, a soft word, a strong shoulder and tender lap. She is kindness for kindnesses sake. She says

"Give kindness a try, especially to yourself."

The world can seem a strange cruel place. It can be hard to have hope in the goodness of humanity but there is goodness. Give something to someone that they need. Donate money or time to a charity. Give someone a flower, a sandwich, a smile. Clear some litter, wash a neighbours windows (with permission), baby sit, cat sit. Send toys or food to a food bank. Giving for it's own sake is a beautiful thing 
Remember to except the good and kindness you are given. I have been helped by random strangers a few times and it saved my life! 

Faery of Growth and Ideas

Faery of Growth and Ideas

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

The Faerie of Growth - The Heart of Faerie Oracle

This card reminds me of fresh pea-pods.There is something so fresh and vital and green about her. She is poised to move like a pod about to burst or a coiled spring. We tend to think of growth as this slow measured thing but in nature it never goes like that. It has slow quiet seasons and then it bursts forth. Be it the moment when a seed rips open it's outer casing to put out roost, or the moment when a flower bud explodes into colour, or when a seed pod twists and contorts until it pops showering seeds far and wide. She says

"It's happening, hang on!"

Faery don't really understand human idea of time. They certainly don't understand human ideas about being "ready". Things happen when the wind blows, when the light changes, when the pod is ready to pop. They worry about the details or deal with the problems that "might" come with the change when they get there. Or after. Or they don't worry at all!

Taitin The Sylph - The Faeries Oracle

This card positively glows. Taitin is so beautiful you could be forgiven for thinking she is always well behaved. Yet she is that sudden jolt of ideas. She looks tiny too, but again that would be a trick because she carries something huge inside her. She is not only dreaming but aliveness. Like a hummingbird she flies.  She says

"Wake up! Look sharp. Think!"

While she is amazing and beautiful I also feel like she is the whisperer of drunken ideas, daring dos, and down right dangerous stunts. If you are a Hitchhikers Guide fan, she is Zaphod's patronus. Thinking cap and all! She is always interesting and mostly fun (hangovers and bad choices aside) but hey it was your idea, right?

Faeries retrieving Unicorns

Faeries retrieving Unicorns

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

Ilbe the Retriever - The Faeries Oracle

You know that thing where you can find something and in the process of turning everything up-side-down you find half a dozen things you lost ages ago? You know that one shoes (you threw the other way away just last week) or that notebook, or every pen I have ever owned ever?

Ilbe is the the faery who likes you to to search for things. He likes to did deep, wipe off the dust, find the extra special thing in the thrift store or flea market. 

Faery have some very "interesting" ideas about ownership. They are sort of like siblings. What's your's is theirs and what's their's is theirs. So while Ilbe does like to "help" you find things, he is much better at finding deeper more important things you might have lost. He says

"When did you loss your sense of awe and wonder? Where is your hope?"

The Lady of Unicorns The Heart of Faerie Oracle

This card not only inspired me to write about unicorns,  but also gave me a lovely new perspective. She is the protector of unicorns, and they in turn are the protector of the young and the the wild. There is something beautiful and sacred in even the idea of unicorns. She say

"Protect the innocent, even within yourself."

We sometimes get wrapped up in our own loss and in that distraction we fail to see how we could protect others. Be it donating time or money to a children's charity or  rescuing an animal in need. Tell an inspiring story, spend time with the children in your family. Build a fort or den, give a unicorn to someone, add a little sparkle to someone else's life in what ever way you can.

Mythical Beasts

Mythical Beasts

Unicorns

In the ancient times of Greece unicorns were considered fact not fiction. They were still rare and exotic but could be found. While today they are often depicted as tall horse like creatures that are white the ancients described them as "white, red and black" and resembling goat and asses.

I think people often assume that because we don't have something now, we didn't have something back then. I have a couple of theories about these mythical beasts. 

Forest habitation steadily decreased and really is only now increasing again in certain places. The deer and wild goats that roamed these forests in antiquity would have been in numbers we would find hard to imagine. The likelihood of the genetic anomaly of a uni horn would have been far more common because the sheer numbers involved. 

It wasn't that they didn't experience it, it is that they thought it was it's own species. They understood it was rare. Being as uni horned creatures may have given them a short term advantage and there could have been pockets of deer population that were uni horned. Once the advantage was no longer there the genetic trait was no longer desirable so it lessened. It might have even meant that uni horned deer were removed from a group or that males could not compete for herds. 

This behaviour could have given rise to the "peaceful" gentle lone unicorn in the woods mythos we see creeping into the middle ages. Any horns that came from these creatures would have been "debunked" as regular deer horns without some deep genetic marker testing. 

Over time the deer/goat qualities in art become less and less as the genetic quirk and the amount of deer drastically reduce due to farming.

The idea of Unicorns 

While they obviously represent some kind of phallic symbolic nature as well as something "wild" and untamed a "pretty and virtuous maid" could "tame" a unicorn.

Lets break that down.

A virgin has some kind of magical power over the wild masculine and virile nature? This is the opposite of what we know to be true. "Wild" masculinity (untamed and unchecked) is not swayed by the "goodness" of a virgin. While the Roman idea of keeping women virgins to ensure paternity spread the Christian ideal of "women" as "pure and pretty maids" was not terribly close to the reality of early Christian Europe.

I wonder if women were draw to unicorns as their externalised anima. A strong "wild" masculine creature that would protect women who "had" to be gentle, sweet and vulnerable. They became whiter and whiter. They began to sparkle with a moon like quality in common myth and lore. 

A proto-erotic emblem of their external desires. 

Unicorns today

The magick associated with unicorns today is often of a mythical innocence. A joy and purity of spirit. It has a brush of the virgin Goddess, and a wand of a witch or faery. It is the power of hope, trust and joy. The unicorn is everything we hope for our young daughters. Protection, wonder and safety. 

While this might sound "twee" there is a power in wonder and wildness. There is a wish not for virginity but the sanctity of  childhood. 

Maybe my own childhood (though full of faery) would have benefited from unicorn magick. Alas something was robbed from me, maybe the unicorn could to help bring it back? It was the Pegasus I dreamt of, who carried me between worlds and places in my dreams at night.

Knowingly or not, it was unicorns I gave my own daughter. 

Symbols are a complex thing but they are important. As a childhood protector you can always count of this fourlegged friend.

Bright Blessings xxx 

Faeries of Change

Faeries of Change

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

Bright Spark - The Heart of Faerie Oracle

As a creative person I often feel that creative sparks drift through my mind and if not written down float right back out again. Like glowing golden thistle seeds. Sometimes there are hundreds, so many, too many too fast for me to pluck just one. Sometimes, the wind is not blowing in my direction!

Not every flash of inspiration is faery based. Yet this faery says

"Write it down! Do something with it."

Alright maybe not everyone will like your revelation, and it may not come to fruition the way you imagined but that isn't the point! The point is it will lift you from where you are, and who knows where you might end up?

Nelys the Alchemyst - The Faerie Oracle

Nelys and I have a long history. We are quite alike. Sometimes accidentally, often deliberately we like to unstick things. We wrinkle our noses at the wonky picture, the squeaky door, add a little extra dash of this and pinch of that. We like to make things better. To leave things better than we found them. From giving sugar water to a bee, or rescuing a spider, or finding a tiny soaked kitten a new home. Sometimes it is just a nudge. Sometimes is a well placed thump on the casing to stop it fart-assing about and get on with it!

She is probably already concentrating on next thing on her list but she says

"It's happening now! Keep up!"

Nelys doesn't have time to lead you by the hand step by step. She just fixes things and breezes along, like a pleasant whirlwind. Something like Mary Poppins or a great chef. If you need more salt, you will get it (sometimes tears are the best solution), or a little honey (how is being bitter working out for you?) or do you need some oil to loosen up? While she sometimes lacks in subtlety she is a great teacher and a wonderful friend. She also isn't short on humour. So spit spot, you have some work to do!

 

The Faery Blessing

The Faery Blessing 

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

The Blessing - The Heart of Faerie Oracle

Is she receiving a blessing, or about to blow one your way like a dandelion clock? She is beautiful and fragile but underneath her is a more ordinary, less perfect face, one winking in knowing. Benediction and blessings are often thought of as spiritual thunder bolts. Big and dramatic and instantly life changing. Sometimes they are. However most blessings are not like that. It is in the tiny every day miracles that allow you meet that right person, or be in that right place.
 It is in the ordinary that the extra ordinary is born.
The Faery like those tiny ones best, in my experience. Yet their blessing are as subtle as a butterfly kiss, a sweet perfume or a lovely cup of tea.
The thing about blessings is you often have to be looking for them to notice them at all.
She says

"You are blessed, and a blessing."

Transform yourself though blessing. Blessing yourself and others with gratitude and by paying attention. Find the blessings in your life, in your day and the be a blessing in someone else's.

She of the Cruach The Faerie Oracle

 She of the Cruach is a faery of deep old magick and great power. She is the sacred cup, the doorway between what might be and what is. She is creative force manifest. She is the mother or transformation, gentle and wise, nurturing and stronger than almost anything. She says

"Trust the process. Your soul knows what it is doing. Let it lead the way."

You are a sacred vessel and your journey is a sacred and ancient quest. While the process might be tough you are not alone. You are supported and nurtured. Reach out and be guided, be sung into being joyfully and fully yourself.

Where there's Faery...

Where there is Faery...

So lets start from today's reading and go on from there?
I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud and The Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth.

The Returning- The Heart of Faerie Oracle

She glances at you, over her shoulder. After you get lost in their complex mazes, after you wander, after you search high and low, after the quest, you go home.
You will never quite be the same again.
You have seen too much, tasted things, tried things, but now you need to go back and apply it to your life.
You are a little muddier. You have salt stains on your clothes and leaves in your hair. Now you carry a bag of gold. A bag of wisdom. She says

"You know who you really are, shape the change that is coming."

Profound change and new perspectives are coming. They not only give us new and deeper understanding of ourselves, but our path and choices to come.

Mickle a' Muckle The Faeries Oracle

Mickle and I have a complicated relationship. He likes to try and make me laugh by creating little problems, burning toast, hiding things, computer format glitches (oh how I didn't laugh), hiding things in plain sight, tripping me up over nothing.

I know his lessons are wise. I know he is teaching me to calm down, do less, just be and have a good laugh, but boy! Sometimes I have a real sense of humour failure.
Mickle says

"But you should have seen your face!"

You have two choices. You can scream and seethe or you can let it go and laugh. Either way there will be hiccups and bumps in the road. Carry your sense of humour with you. Play if you can. Dance and sing at every opportunity because there will be hiccups and bumps, burnt toast, hidden keys and you can either laugh or not.


Yesterday I went out and collected a load of wild herbs and flowers. I was just deciding on what books to bring when my one of my bookshelves refused to allow the book back onto the shelf. It was sudden and weird. The whole thing looked like it might fall. TK had a ferkle and what jumps out? My old Faeries Oracle. They have been "missing" for quite a while (maybe a year or so) but clearly with me doing daily readings from the new Faery deck they wanted in on the action! This deck does like to wander. No shelf, draw or box can contain them! We will see how long they want to play for!

Bright Blessing and I hope Mickle doesn't do too much of a number on you!

Faery Fire reading

Daily Draw

I am using The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian and Wendy Froud

The Green Woman is subtle. She is soft and yet powerful. This is confusing to folks who do not understand how a flower with crack concrete, yet still be soft. She brings the lessons of beauty, of creation and growth. Her wisdom is in treading softly, in sowing seeds and letting them be. In growing towards your light at your pace, in your way.

Her wisdom is in the details, in growth and fruition. In persistence and delicate spirals.

She says "heal in the green, gather, sow, sit, breathe." 

Bright Blessings xxx

Praying with your feet

Praying with your Feet

Pilgrimage

I have struggled to be still lately. Rather than fight against it I have used it as an opportunity to walk. Of course having a dog that likes walks (and is well behaved) helps. I have walked further than I have in a long time.
The pain and exhaustion in my body afterwards seems worth it some how. I love to walk and be around wild and trees, or wildish.

 This spot is a spot on the south coast near Hastings that is my teachers meditation spot. It is not and easy walk for me and I wish I had taken more pictures. At some point I was just trying to keep going instead. There is a history of pilgrimage and in the echoes I could see monks walking the path we trod. Apparently it was a pilgrimage path to Canterbury. It was so calm. So clearing. Some connecting somehow. To hear the wind, the birds and the sea. To see porpoise playing in the light. It was magickal.
Although this was the most challenging hike we did the week we were away we went to the sea every day. Stood and gazed at Her beauty.

Coming back to the city is always hard for me and I felt it very keenly. After about a week I could stand it no longer and headed to some local woods.

The rain didn't put me off, in fact I liked it as I knew less people would be out. I have a couple of spots I like to sit in where I am surrounded by "green". During my meditation I saw a kite soar over head.

I got some peace before some human intrusion (a couple come to the woods to fight and a group of boys just squealing like sows).

As I gave up and headed to meet my family further up the hill some more oddness ensued. We could hear flute music. Curious we followed deeper into the wood. We sat and listened together as the curious birds and wisps of music continued. A coppery red little bird was very curious and the sense that a faun would be around the next corner persisted. Leaves sometimes danced being drawn upwards only to fall again.

White feathers fell on me and near me twice. 

I decided I would return this week (the weather has just been too hot for me to even try yet).

It is easy to be an armchair mystic (especially when you are sick or sore) yet being there, and really being there gives me a sense of hope, healing and wonder.

I feel as though the faery found me again while I was away and they haven't been "dulled" by the city-ness yet. It is really a blessing I am unable to even try to put into words.

Next time we go I want to take a bag to pick up rubbish (who leaves beer cans and crap where animals can hurt themselves on it?) I also thought of taking my flute with me too. Sing back to the faun sitting "just around the next bend".

Bright Blessings xxx