I have been trying to think through the question Are There Elves and Fairies Down by River? I hold in mind Eleanor Robbins’, who urges us to see that the challenges of the present time call for ‘our deepest weirdness and our highest intellectual rigour’.
I love this...it so perfectly articulates a feeling I've been struggling to articulate. Thank you.
However...I often find myself torn in these conversations. I'm of Irish Traveller heritage, and so have family members that still very literally believe in fairies. The Fairy Faith is a still living tradition and one completely at odds with these new understandings. There is a tendency, among cultural elites, to take these traditions and make something different out of them, something more sophisticated and palatable, that conforms to a Western academic idea of Animism, that often doesn't reflect the reality.
The Fairy Faith would wholly caution against trying to see or experience these 'beings.' They are often malign, or at least wholly unimpressed with humans. They represent indifferent, even predatory other-than-human forces or intelligences. They bring disease (an early intuition of bacteria and viruses perhaps) they warn against disturbing the land. A literal belief in them has led to all sorts of atrocities, most notably around changeling belief, something I've written about before. This idea of seeking to experience them comes from the Celtic Revival, which was wholly elitist and condescending towards the rural classes whose folklore it appropriated and repurposed.
Thank you, Kelle, for these observations and cautions. I take your warnings about cultural appropriate and the dangers of fairies seriously.
I am humbled to note that while I paid due respect to Australian Indigenous cultures in my post, I failed to do so with respect to Traveller’s culture. My apologies. But for me, as a member of the ‘cultural elite’, to take fairies ‘literally’ would I think be an even more gross cultural appropriation (and it would be plain silly). I think my point about the koan is to wonder how we can take both the ‘literal’ believe in fairy you point to and the metamodern 'many worlds' ontology seriously. This moves us away from a reductionist realist modernism which is not good for humans or any other beings. We don’t do this by reductionist thinking but by some other (deeper maybe) intelligence.
Animist scholar Graham Harvey, admittedly another paid-up member of the ‘cultural elite’, writes thus about the danger of fairy land: ‘According to traditional folktales–taken seriously by some pagans – fairies or elves are dangerous to encounter. They visit from ‘the other world’ not to grace us with romantic beauty or natural wisdom but to take away human babies and poets, among others.... They do not necessarily do so to be nasty; they do it almost casually or even imagine they benefit their abductees. In a similar way, when we drive vehicles to celebrate seasonal festivals we are likely to endanger hedgehogs. While this might help us understand the ambivalence of folklore knowledges, it can also encourage us to pay more attention to the unintended consequences of living ordinary human lives.’
Freya Mathews and I, in a recent exchange, noted that we both have difficulty with the word ‘spirit’ as pointing to some non-material realm – which is one reason we both embrace a panpsychist perspective. However, Freya noted that Indigenous Australian ontology does include a place for ‘spirit’ – but if this is the same meaning of ‘spirit’ as in Western common speak, I do not know although I doubt.
In many ways, I agree with all this. And in my personal experience literal belief is not just ‘silly’ but can be downright harmful. So I'm not seeking to ‘challenge’ you really, just have a conversation as I can't not see different sides and concerns to these questions and I have no real idea of the best way to navigate through them…
For example, the labelling of literal belief as ‘silly’ while in my personal opinion holds some truth, is nevertheless really condescending when it comes from those outside of the - marginalised -communities who hold them. Many of these beliefs grow up in response to hardship, poverty and sheer survival, so of course they are not easily let go of. There's also wisdom in some of them (foraging guidelines and herbal remedies for example) and resistance (fairy fort belief has helped fight against enclosure, for example)My feeling is we need to centre Indigenous/Traveller/working-class rural/etc voices now, who are seeking to redefine these stories and beliefs. We've heard plenty from Harvey and his ilk, and for a long time. I’d urge you to check out the work of Oein de Bhairduin, as a starting point. Traveller tales of the griwogs (fairies) often hold different viewpoints to those you will encounter anywhere else.
Because I am a rationally educated member of the cultural elite and to adopt a literal view of elves and fairies would be to appropriate them into my worldview. Because it is important for members of the cultural elite to see that they can be silly. Because I am beginning to understand ontological pluralims, many worlds, and fairies, particularly as ‘griwogs’ dont belong to my world. Because I don’t want to be an uncritical new agey kind of person. Because I just as I refrain from adopting the Indigenous Australian word rinyi so too with the Travellers’ words and grammar. Because until I have been shaken to my core by an experiences I think it is silly, unwise, inappropriate, foolish to speak of them. I speak from a view of living cosmos panpsychism which I understand intellectually and have experienced in many ways on different occasions. But for Indigenous people guided and informed within their cultures, most of those ‘because’s’ do not apply (although I am sure they will be capable of being silly in their own ways!)
I am curious about your reference to ‘Harvey and his ilk’. would you like to expand?
Eleanor and I were together at the Kairos Spring Residency, and I appreciate being brought back together here in your work!
I like where you’re taking this. Elves tend to be tricksters, and tricksters are ontologically important . I absolutely see a similar role there to a koan.
In that sense, I doubt they’ll ever prove themselves to you in a cut and dry way. Instead, I expect this inquiry will take you on a very nonlinear journey far beyond what you might have expected. Just a hunch ;) prepare to get a little lost!
I appreciate this exploration and all its nuances thanks Peter - and others. Good to hear from my old friends Freya and Sandra in hear too. For me, just keeping consciousness alive to all that may appear allows any manner of possible other beings. As a Zen animist, I also like to keep listening to the critical intellect, when I discern from among the various possible voices I seem to hear. Yet also, to practice “thank you, but not now,” when the mere ego voice pops up, as it so often does.
It makes sense once you take awareness practices out to more-than-human nature as well as awakening to the results within.
Also, i just realised i should have cited you as an inspiration for one of my earlier pieces here Peter. The title gives it away: Letting the Light tell its story; and sometimes having to wait for the river to translate. Published on June 3rd (Substack won’t let me link it here, sorry).
Well, if we listen to so many of the creation myths, which suggest that the universe comes into being both as consciousness and matter, sentient and physical at the same time, then celestial light would be the neurons firing as great mind. Or the vehicles for an interstellar framework of sentience, which shines down upon us as both a giver of physical life and an awakening force.
Regardless, having carried out my own experiments in this context, i would say that listening to sunlight itself as if it were a conveyer of consciousness has certainly garnered some suggestive results.
Our troubled paths, a life, but well short of personal disaster... yet we move well beyond the Shire... My low hills tell me of exhaustion, northern upland soils ruined, though the old canny stories still linger, of waiting for a now fraught ocean, a spirit wind...
"Pseudo Shakespeare", retired magic? Real enough I think? I'm remembering Kipling retrieving Sussex and Surrey... he could be uncanny in his fiction, more perhaps when he retraced ancient journeys in his adult 'time-slip' stories. And as for the young Tolkien, Kipling's fascination was re-drawn in Flanders, which seems to have ended it for him with the death of his son. Among the poetic writers who came through I am interested in Yeats and his younger friend Ezra Pound. Pound took his Odyssey on a lifetime journey, including the classic ancient spirit worlds with him.
I love this...it so perfectly articulates a feeling I've been struggling to articulate. Thank you.
However...I often find myself torn in these conversations. I'm of Irish Traveller heritage, and so have family members that still very literally believe in fairies. The Fairy Faith is a still living tradition and one completely at odds with these new understandings. There is a tendency, among cultural elites, to take these traditions and make something different out of them, something more sophisticated and palatable, that conforms to a Western academic idea of Animism, that often doesn't reflect the reality.
The Fairy Faith would wholly caution against trying to see or experience these 'beings.' They are often malign, or at least wholly unimpressed with humans. They represent indifferent, even predatory other-than-human forces or intelligences. They bring disease (an early intuition of bacteria and viruses perhaps) they warn against disturbing the land. A literal belief in them has led to all sorts of atrocities, most notably around changeling belief, something I've written about before. This idea of seeking to experience them comes from the Celtic Revival, which was wholly elitist and condescending towards the rural classes whose folklore it appropriated and repurposed.
So...I'm torn. I wonder if we need new names.
Thank you, Kelle, for these observations and cautions. I take your warnings about cultural appropriate and the dangers of fairies seriously.
I am humbled to note that while I paid due respect to Australian Indigenous cultures in my post, I failed to do so with respect to Traveller’s culture. My apologies. But for me, as a member of the ‘cultural elite’, to take fairies ‘literally’ would I think be an even more gross cultural appropriation (and it would be plain silly). I think my point about the koan is to wonder how we can take both the ‘literal’ believe in fairy you point to and the metamodern 'many worlds' ontology seriously. This moves us away from a reductionist realist modernism which is not good for humans or any other beings. We don’t do this by reductionist thinking but by some other (deeper maybe) intelligence.
Animist scholar Graham Harvey, admittedly another paid-up member of the ‘cultural elite’, writes thus about the danger of fairy land: ‘According to traditional folktales–taken seriously by some pagans – fairies or elves are dangerous to encounter. They visit from ‘the other world’ not to grace us with romantic beauty or natural wisdom but to take away human babies and poets, among others.... They do not necessarily do so to be nasty; they do it almost casually or even imagine they benefit their abductees. In a similar way, when we drive vehicles to celebrate seasonal festivals we are likely to endanger hedgehogs. While this might help us understand the ambivalence of folklore knowledges, it can also encourage us to pay more attention to the unintended consequences of living ordinary human lives.’
Freya Mathews and I, in a recent exchange, noted that we both have difficulty with the word ‘spirit’ as pointing to some non-material realm – which is one reason we both embrace a panpsychist perspective. However, Freya noted that Indigenous Australian ontology does include a place for ‘spirit’ – but if this is the same meaning of ‘spirit’ as in Western common speak, I do not know although I doubt.
Thank you again for these challenges.
In many ways, I agree with all this. And in my personal experience literal belief is not just ‘silly’ but can be downright harmful. So I'm not seeking to ‘challenge’ you really, just have a conversation as I can't not see different sides and concerns to these questions and I have no real idea of the best way to navigate through them…
For example, the labelling of literal belief as ‘silly’ while in my personal opinion holds some truth, is nevertheless really condescending when it comes from those outside of the - marginalised -communities who hold them. Many of these beliefs grow up in response to hardship, poverty and sheer survival, so of course they are not easily let go of. There's also wisdom in some of them (foraging guidelines and herbal remedies for example) and resistance (fairy fort belief has helped fight against enclosure, for example)My feeling is we need to centre Indigenous/Traveller/working-class rural/etc voices now, who are seeking to redefine these stories and beliefs. We've heard plenty from Harvey and his ilk, and for a long time. I’d urge you to check out the work of Oein de Bhairduin, as a starting point. Traveller tales of the griwogs (fairies) often hold different viewpoints to those you will encounter anywhere else.
To clarify my point was if I held such beliefs literally it would be silly, not for the communities you refer to
That's interesting
Why for you and not them?
Because I am a rationally educated member of the cultural elite and to adopt a literal view of elves and fairies would be to appropriate them into my worldview. Because it is important for members of the cultural elite to see that they can be silly. Because I am beginning to understand ontological pluralims, many worlds, and fairies, particularly as ‘griwogs’ dont belong to my world. Because I don’t want to be an uncritical new agey kind of person. Because I just as I refrain from adopting the Indigenous Australian word rinyi so too with the Travellers’ words and grammar. Because until I have been shaken to my core by an experiences I think it is silly, unwise, inappropriate, foolish to speak of them. I speak from a view of living cosmos panpsychism which I understand intellectually and have experienced in many ways on different occasions. But for Indigenous people guided and informed within their cultures, most of those ‘because’s’ do not apply (although I am sure they will be capable of being silly in their own ways!)
I am curious about your reference to ‘Harvey and his ilk’. would you like to expand?
Appreciate and enjoy this engagement with you
This was a really insightful and encouraging response, thank you. This essay and conversation has given me much to chew on 😊
Eleanor and I were together at the Kairos Spring Residency, and I appreciate being brought back together here in your work!
I like where you’re taking this. Elves tend to be tricksters, and tricksters are ontologically important . I absolutely see a similar role there to a koan.
In that sense, I doubt they’ll ever prove themselves to you in a cut and dry way. Instead, I expect this inquiry will take you on a very nonlinear journey far beyond what you might have expected. Just a hunch ;) prepare to get a little lost!
Sadie, see Kelle's comment below. Be interested in what you make of this challenge!
I appreciate this exploration and all its nuances thanks Peter - and others. Good to hear from my old friends Freya and Sandra in hear too. For me, just keeping consciousness alive to all that may appear allows any manner of possible other beings. As a Zen animist, I also like to keep listening to the critical intellect, when I discern from among the various possible voices I seem to hear. Yet also, to practice “thank you, but not now,” when the mere ego voice pops up, as it so often does.
I like the image of a Zen animist!
It makes sense once you take awareness practices out to more-than-human nature as well as awakening to the results within.
Also, i just realised i should have cited you as an inspiration for one of my earlier pieces here Peter. The title gives it away: Letting the Light tell its story; and sometimes having to wait for the river to translate. Published on June 3rd (Substack won’t let me link it here, sorry).
I just realised that i wrote an article here inspired by your work on rivers Peter … and funnily enough, it was a river that helped me to understand what the dawn sun had intimated earlier that day. https://substack.com/@naturecalling/note/c-269796867?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1s0sr0
Thank you! Rupert Sheldrake asks, ‘is the sun conscious?’
Well, if we listen to so many of the creation myths, which suggest that the universe comes into being both as consciousness and matter, sentient and physical at the same time, then celestial light would be the neurons firing as great mind. Or the vehicles for an interstellar framework of sentience, which shines down upon us as both a giver of physical life and an awakening force.
Regardless, having carried out my own experiments in this context, i would say that listening to sunlight itself as if it were a conveyer of consciousness has certainly garnered some suggestive results.
Our troubled paths, a life, but well short of personal disaster... yet we move well beyond the Shire... My low hills tell me of exhaustion, northern upland soils ruined, though the old canny stories still linger, of waiting for a now fraught ocean, a spirit wind...
"Pseudo Shakespeare", retired magic? Real enough I think? I'm remembering Kipling retrieving Sussex and Surrey... he could be uncanny in his fiction, more perhaps when he retraced ancient journeys in his adult 'time-slip' stories. And as for the young Tolkien, Kipling's fascination was re-drawn in Flanders, which seems to have ended it for him with the death of his son. Among the poetic writers who came through I am interested in Yeats and his younger friend Ezra Pound. Pound took his Odyssey on a lifetime journey, including the classic ancient spirit worlds with him.