The Silver Elves, Zardoa and Silver Flame
How did you first become aware of your elven natures?
Zardoa, like many elves and faerie folk, or Otherkin, as we are often called, which we like to call the elfae, became aware that he was different from the normal folk around him at a very early age. However, it took some time for him to understand what exactly that difference meant and what/who he really was/is. He was a child, of course, and a boy, and he had gotten so far as being a “young man” when he realized that, try though he may, and he did for a while, he would/could never be, nor become, a “real man.” This posited the question in his mind: if he wasn’t a “real man,” what was he? He had to be a real something. Alas, it took years of searching, initiation into three different forms of meditation, and the exploration of various spiritual paths before he discovered what exactly that was.
In early 1975, he came upon two letters posted outside of an occult bookshop in Carbondale, Illinois. The letters were by the Elf Queen’s Daughters and bore an address to which he replied. They responded shortly thereafter, and after a few months of back and forth correspondence, they arranged for him to come visit with them at their home in Aurora, Illinois. Four elves lived there at the time, and in the course of the weekend he spent with them, without any urging on their part, he came to realize he was/is an elf.
This was not a simple realization, however, but a full-fledged awakening of deep psychological impact that made him realize that not only was he an elf and that he had finally found his people, but that that information had been hidden within him his whole life waiting for that moment, those events, to come and trigger this awareness. Due to this profound awakening, he has dedicated his life to awakening other elves and elfae and to the continuation and development of the elven culture.
Silver Flame’s awakening came a few years after Zardoa’s. She did not have a sense of not fitting into society as he did, however; her sense of integrity and her devotion to human beings and their welfare over the needs of institutions and their expediencies led her into conflict with the academic institutions where she was employed over and over again.
In 1978, she came to think that an academic career was not the right thing for her, and she decided to go on a vision quest, holding in her mind the vision of a Native American shaman à la Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan, whom she expected she would meet. Instead, she came upon an elfin shaman named Zardoa. She realized then that she was an elf, and it gave her a realization of why she and her sister had made faerie houses when they were children.
Now, some thirty-five years after Zardoa’s awakening in a world in which almost no one recognized their elfin being, there are elves, faeries, and others all over the globe. That we have had some small part in this awakening through our books and other writings, and through the giving of elf names (we have given over 5,000 elf names to elves all over the world), is greatly pleasing to us, and we feel privileged and delighted to be participating in this great dharma, the awakening of the elven people, and thus the re-emergence of Faery.
Why is connection to the elves and the world of Faery so important in our modern world?
Asking why the connection to elves and the world of Faery is so important in the modern world is like asking why love, beauty, creativity, honor, fairness, joy, happiness, friendship, play, vision, hope, delight, and wonder are important to the world. And the answer is that these things, these values, these virtues are at the heart of what it means to be elfin. They are also the ultimate goals of humanity, what we live for, and, perhaps more importantly in this time, the means by which we may truly move beyond the mysterious puzzle, the malady of spirit that plagues humanity and threatens to destroy it.
There is not a call to Faery that goes unheeded, there is not a person who steps toward it that it withdraws from. It is equally true that while Elfin/Faery exists all around us in potential, it also exists within us, and curiously it is usually only by finding it within us that we can see it about us. Or to put it another way, if we can’t see it within us, we will only see it apart from and without us.
This is where elfin magic comes in, for magic is a combination of action, will, and intention, and when we will to be elves and live our lives as elves with intention, we become, by magic, ever more elfin—that is to say, ever more in touch with our elfin natures, our true s’elves, and in this way increasingly in tune to the power that is Elfin/Faery.
So why is our connection to the modern world so important? Because we represent an opportunity for a better, more loving, fulfilling, and exciting life for all who wish to embrace it. And why is the modern world so important to the elves? Because this is where we are now. This is where our dharma and duty lives at the moment, where evolution and destiny have brought us, and we intend to do our best, as we ever do, to make the most of it.
We have been told numerous times, and often by quite educated folk, without the slightest shred of scientific evidence, that there will always be war because it is part of human nature to go to war. This is the most amazing nonsense, and while we
