What do you think the most important qualities are for someone who wants to seriously work with Faery?
You have to be very honest, because they sense all deception; you can’t hide anything from them. One of the early writings about the Faery realm is that you have to go there without a shadow on your heart, because if you have a shadow on your heart, they’ll tear you to pieces. But if your heart is pure, they’re already your friends, and they will love you. So that’s the old-fashioned way of saying what we would say today—that you have to have integrity, and you have to be truthful and honest, like every fairy tale! In every fairy tale it’s the person who is truthful and honest who does well, and the person who’s deceitful and selfish does very badly.
You have to have a sense of humour, because they’re very humorous and they make jokes all the time and do all sorts of strange things. And you have to be patient, because some Faery things are very instant, and others take a long, long time.
What would you say are the big things to avoid when working with Faery?
Avoid being superior, and avoid thinking of faeries as “little helpers,” and always be respectful. Respect goes a long, long way. Never, ever assume that they will do anything for you, anything at all, because even if they’ve done something for you for years, one day they’ll say, “No, we’ve never done that…we’re not going to do that for you.” So never assume anything. Always expect the unexpected!
R. J. Stewart
How important do you think place is—being rooted in a place for connecting with Faery?
I think it’s very important. There are some things to do with Faery magick that you can do anywhere—anywhere in the world, it doesn’t matter. But there are other things that you can only do when you’re tuned in to one place and tuned in to that place relatively long-term. So I think place is extremely important. And you know that’s true in human life, too. There are people who never leave their hometown and there are people who travel all over the place, and the Faery beings are just like human beings in that respect.
What would you say the difference is, then, between the kinds of beings who are able to travel with you and those who are tied to a locality?
This is where it gets interesting, and not enough is known or taught about this due to lack of practical experience in our alternative communities at this time. Especially because there’s a lot of assumptions about what Faery beings are and statements are made about them without really trying to relate to them and come into a proper understanding. Certain Faery beings can move around freely and really have a great sort of independence of energy. Others are closely tied to springs or wells or hills or forests and they can’t move around freely, even if they’re powerful. And so those are two of the quite clear distinctions that you have—the ones that can move freely anywhere and the ones that are really in a location. And really we have to try to understand both.
I’ve heard from people where they have experienced beings who are clearly deeply connected to the land but seem to take on some qualities of their appearance from the people who had moved to that place from other areas—for example, faeries of Celtic appearance have been encountered in some areas of Canada. Is it that they travelled over with the people or that the people seeing them are perceiving them through some sort of filter?
I think it’s a mixture of all of these things. Irish mystic AE (real name George William Russell) was actually interviewed by Evans-Wentz anonymously, and he also wrote in his autobiography, which is called The Candle of Vision, that when he was out in the remote parts of Western Ireland, the Faery beings would appear as lights. They looked like oval shapes made of light in the remote places. But when they got closer to human habitation they started to look more like human beings.
This is significant because they take a form, a visual presentation, from the human memory and from the human imagination. And guess what? They’re always several hundred years out of date. This is why a lot of people think of faeries as looking medieval or sometimes they appear in eighteenth-century costumes. They tend to draw, for some reason, from the collective memory but appear to be several hundred years behind the times. You don’t see them dressed up in the latest Gucci outfits!
Something that is mentioned in Evans-Wentz and also much more recently in John Matthews’s channelled work, The Sidhe, is that a time is coming when Faery beings will rise to the surface and be seen again by all. Is that something that you see coming in the future?
I think that it’s a very important idea, and if humanity is going to not destroy itself, we need to come back to this heightened awareness of the spiritual dimensions of the Faery realm. I think that if we’re going to go for something like that, it may take a while for it to happen; I don’t think it’s going to happen quickly, and it really depends on individuals and groups working at it to open it out. So it’s all down to what we do—what we actually do.
There seems to be a number of people within the modern Faery community who believe
