I’m seeing the same sort of ignorance and arrogance when it comes to fairies. “Fairies just want help us.” “Fairies will be our teachers if we listen.” “Another Midsummer and I still haven’t been carried away by the fairies.” And perhaps worst of all, I’m seeing people offering to teach others “how to work with the fairies” when their advertisements make it clear they know virtually nothing about actual fairy lore.

Ignorance and arrogance around the Fair Folk can be hazardous to your health and well-being.

When we encounter a new deity one of the first things we do – or should do, anyway – is to read Their stories. How did our ancestors understand Them? More importantly, how did they relate to Them? While we don’t ever want to become the Pagan equivalent of biblical literalists, drawing on the stories our ancestors told about the Gods helps us to engage with Them respectfully and effectively.

We can do the same thing with the Fair Folk. We have more stories and far more recent stories about them than we do about most Gods. And those stories make it quite clear: fairies are not nice and kind and sweet. They are not here to be our friends or teachers. If you behave honorably toward them they may behave honorably toward you, but the slightest disrespect can undo years of cooperation.

And others have no compunction about turning you into a slave, or into a snack.

And yet we have people doing the metaphysical equivalent of taking a selfie with an elk, or lathering themselves with fish guts and going swimming in the ocean. Or worse, claiming to a be an expert on fairies and encouraging naïve people to put themselves at risk.

Some of my Irish friends find this not just dangerous but offensive. I won’t speak for them or attempt to explain their position, except to point out that the idea of fairies as “twee” (it means exactly what it sounds like) didn’t originate with Disney. It originated with the Victorians. You know, the same people who built an empire in foreign lands that’s still not completely dismantled (see Northern Ireland, as well as some of the ridiculous proposals for British – Irish relations post-Brexit), and who assumed that anything that wasn’t proper English culture was wrong and therefore in need of correction.

In their excellent book Fairies: A Guide to the Celtic Fair Folk, Morgan Daimler discusses how much of our misinformation about the Fair Folk comes from the Victorian era.

This … can rightly be viewed as a reflection of the wider culture of the time, which was one of the middle class, of repression and sanitization, one that in many ways sought to rewrite unpleasant stories into pleasant ones to create an illusion of a better world.

The stories of the Celtic lands make it very clear that the Fair Folk are anything but safe. Why would you believe imperialists and entertainment moguls over people with first-hand experiences? I’ve had the pleasure of listening to Anglesey Druid Kristoffer Hughes talk about the Tylwyth Teg in Wales. He says you don’t want to bump into them and you definitely don’t go looking for them. His stories are representative of those with first-hand experience of the Otherfolk.

Still think fairies are twee? I know, it’s what you’ve always been told. It’s what you want to be true. And it never occurred to you to seek out some more relevant sources.

And let’s be honest – some of you don’t think this is real. Or at least you don’t act like it.

The Fair Folk are real… and they aren’t all benevolent Nature spirits....

[T]here are plenty of good references on the Fair Folk. Many of them are on-line and in the public domain. If you have an interest in the topic, learn all you can.

I’m not an expert on fairies or fairy lore. I did my best to avoid them for years – I read enough about them to understand I’d prefer to pay my respects from a safe distance. For me, that’s no longer possible, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can as fast as I can.

Because I’m convinced the Fair Folk are becoming more active in our world. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the intersection of their world and our world is becoming larger and more prominent, and so interactions between humans and fae are becoming more common. And history says we will have interactions. Here’s Morgan Daimler again:

There is a dependence between the two peoples that is complex and goes back a long way indeed. This almost symbiotic relationship is more than just a matter of our worlds’ intersection, or our need to appease them to ensure good crops. For good or ill they can affect us in profound ways and we can, perhaps, affect them as well.

In the past, I’ve discussed how we occasionally have common cause with the Fair Folk. I still think that’s the case. But do not ever allow yourself to think that “common cause” means “the fairies are on our side.” Both ancient and contemporary stories make it very clear that ever and always, the fairies are on their own side.

What that common cause might be is another topic for another time. But trust me when I say it has nothing to do with making your life easier and more magical.

Themselves would be very angry with me if they thought I was comparing them to wild animals. So let me be clear – I’m not. I’m comparing people who take selfies with elk to people who make open-ended offers to the fairies and naïvely court their presence in their lives. Both sets of people are being ignorant and arrogant, for which they run the risk of paying a very high price.

Historic Precedent
While there is often a tendency to view fairies, et al., through a heavily anachronistic lens we do have some precedent for the idea of these beings interacting with or interfering with human technology. A quick look across folklore shows us that fairies have a long history of using or borrowing human technology, contemporary to the time periods of the stories. For example Briggs in her various works discusses the motif of fairy borrowing, including references to stories where fairies would borrow hand mills, a type of small hand-held grinder, which was the cutting edge technology of the time. At the least this demonstrates that the Good Folk have had an interest in new human tech, an ability to adapt to it, and desire to acquire it....

Tech Fairies
There is certainly an idea shared among many people I’ve talked with that ‘tech fairies’ are a thing, perhaps as a kind of ultra-modern ghost-in-the-machine type gremlin. This is a term that is applied to the sort of random tech weirdness people experience that can’t be easily explained and so is personified; since it is along the lines of fairy mischief, harmless and malicious, that we find across stories this personification is labelled ‘fairy’. My own experience with this ranges from tech inexplicably failing right before I could post things discussing deeper personal gnosis around fairies to an auto-fill on my phone that seems to be possessed by some sort of spirit. Are these modern aspects of fairies or something else? I don’t know but it is definitely interesting to contemplate.

Fairy Propaganda
One aspect of fairies intersecting with modern technology is something I have taken to calling fairy propaganda, that is the flood of online material aimed at presenting fairies in a particularly appealing light. This is of course violently at odds with existing folklore, folk beliefs, and older folk material which paints fairies as, at best, mercurial and ambivalent and requiring caution to approach or deal with. We can always argue that this material is purely human in origin and represents the current zeitgeist surrounding the subject, but if I were one of the more dangerous fairy beings I’d definitely be encouraging the flood of novels showing the Unseelie as the secret good guys or more widely the material depicting fairies as benevolent and wholesome because that can only help open humans up to that very danger.

Enchantment Via Technology
A more important and possibly insidious – although of course theoretical – aspect of this discussion is the idea of enchantment via technology, that is that the Good Folk are intentionally using human technology to influence people. This is rooted in the very old idea of fairies using glamour* or magical enchantment to deceive and influence human perceptions, to lead humans into specific actions, or lure humans to a specific purpose. The idea of glamour is then combined with technology, particularly social media and videos, giving us the possibility of casting magic through the medium of media....

Final Thoughts
The idea of fairies in technology and fairies using technology are nascent ideas as far as I know within the wider concept of fairylore. Yet as humans move forward and become more and more technology driven I believe that we will see an increase in stories and discussions of fairies, in various guises, associated with human innovations. As much as I advocate for a clear understanding of the difference between folklore and fiction I do think this is one area where urban fantasy can help us broaden our minds away from the rigid expectation that fairies must be primitive and even technophobic. Listening to modern anecdotal accounts from people who have experienced these beings is also very useful and shows a small but important pattern of stories that mention fairies in modern dress, in modern cities, and using or familiar with things like cell phones, computers, and cars.

If there is one thing that folklore does show us clearly it is that the fair folk have always evolved as humanity has evolved.

Chavah wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 10:00 pm Hi Alys,
thank you very much of all these threads.
what do you think of Astral faeries like Star Fae and Waif Faery and Intelligence fae?
i have a rare Star Fairy spirit bind to a rose quartz. Still coming in the post. My Waif Fae is a Spirrel@ binding to spirit. Faerie of inteligent is a gift for my son.

Is there anything i should be worried about when they are in spirit form? I am very new to spirit keeping. Mainly I keep angels, but not i have these lovely faeries.

I need to have some more info about astral faeries. They seem to be different then garden or earth faes.

Chavah wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 4:32 am I don't understand why faeries would be considered being evil type of creatures?

darkwing dook wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:08 am Because in the their myths from folklore of various cultures, faeries are depicted as trickster, ranging from simple prank like tying your shoelace to kidnapping and even causing strange illnesses and death.
And faery was not only small person with wings, but an umbrella term for various races including goblin, gremlin, leprechaun, etc.

Chavah wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 6:30 pm So is this image on faeries from the past... If this still valid to believe in todays terms?