Faery Magick: Spells, Potions, and Lore from the Earth Spirits

The faeries are the sacred spirit or presence that animates and enlivens all of Nature. Their knowledge, wisdom, and supernatural powers can be called upon when doing magick. Faeries create a field of resonance or vibration just beyond the spectrum of our ordinary awareness. They are one step away from our reality, normally just out of our range of perception.

The faery realm mirrors the mortal realm. Faery land is the home of our emotive primordial links with our origins, the home of universal wisdom and truth. To fully comprehend the concept of faeryland, the Otherworld of the faery, you need to view reality as layered (realm upon realm), rather than linear. In this sense, faeryland is everywhere—within and around you. It is ever-present.

Celebrated throughout history in several forms, faeries are among the most well-known magickal beings of all time. With the advent of the New Age, faeries have become even more popular and noteworthy. There are scores of faery books, movies, cartoons, television programs, and faery music. There are faery mouse pads for computers, faery e-cards, and faery screensavers. Faery artwork can be seen on posters, prints, wall calendars, magnets, and Yule tree ornaments. They appear on coffee mugs, jewelry, and even wedding cake toppers. You can purchase faery garden figurines, faery musical water fountains, faery garden balls, switchcover plates with faery designs, as well as faery toys, games, dolls, puppets, cookbooks, and chess sets. There are selkie bath salts, pixie dust powder, and faery apparel for children with flower faeries and whimsical frog and butterfly faeries.

Rather than being a primer on the faery tradition itself, this book is more a hands-on guide on how to see, attract, and communicate with the helpful faeries themselves. Working with the faeries is a creative and productive way for balancing a world precariously out of balance by caring and communing with Nature spirits. For the purposes of this book, I use the term faery as it is the traditional name of the bright people. I do not use terms such as the Little People, as most of the faeries I have encountered are not small or tiny, but human size or larger.

You can befriend faeries even if you cannot see them. They are one with all plant life as each and every living plant has a faery or fae within it. By communicating with your plants, you are communicating with the fae. The faeries will tell you what the plant needs and what the plant can be used for. Your intentions, expectations, desires, and depth of your merge with the helpful faery energies will determine the depth of your communication. If you respectfully ask the faeries, they will be overjoyed to co-create and play with you as is so magnificently exemplified in famous faery gardens of Findhorn and Perelandra.

Whether you live in the forest, suburbs, or the inner city, the faeries will greet and help you. The reason children hear and see the faeries more often than adults may be that they are more open-minded, pure of heart, honest, and steadfast of will. You know you have faery sight when you feel as if someone is watching you, but no one can be seen. Or you may feel as though butterfly or bird wings flutter next to you without touching you. Or you may suddenly smell a heady flower fragrance, see plants and trees glowing and shimmering with a fine light, or hear hushed giggling or soft laughter. Because the faeries are always near us and usually listen and watch us without being seen, it is always wise to speak well of them.

For the purposes of this book, I recommend that you plant a Faery Magick garden in spring during the month of May. If you plant the following flowers and herbs, you will have most of the fresh ingredients you will need to do the spells in this book:

Basil.

Chamomile.

Daisies.

Hollyhocks.

Honeysuckle.

Jasmine.

Lavender.

Marigolds.

Mint.

Nettle.

Pansies.

Red verbena.

Rosemary.

Sage.

Strawberries.

Thyme.

Vervain.

White, yellow, and red roses.

When working with the faeries, it's important to remember that all things are one, whatever they might be. Everything, including faeries and mortals, is made of the same stellar stuff—from star seed. Your physical body is halfway between the mortal and faery worlds, somewhere between instinct and spirit. Parts of you exist within the very body of the planet, in the trees, plants, and flowers. To be a complete being, you need to integrate your mortal and faery aspects. Working the spells in this book will bring you closer to that realization.

When the first baby laughed for the very first time, The laugh broke into a thousand pieces, And they all went skipping about, And that was the beginning of faeries.

—Sir James M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Journey: The Enchanting Voice

From outside my window in the early morning hour, I hear a voice that calls out in a beautiful, melodious voice. I slowly rise from my soft, warm bed, and step toward the window. As I do, I step beyond the bounds of my physical reality. I step beyond myself, stretching my awareness into another realm and reaching out to my full potential.

As my mind moves from a light sleep to full consciousness, I am suddenly aware of the enchanting quality of the voice I hear. I stare out the window for a few minutes, mesmerized by its cadence, before getting on my clothes and going out to explore the origins of the enchanting voice.

As I walk outside, the crisp morning air caresses my face, and my skin tingles. I walk down a gravel driveway that winds toward the general direction of the inviting voice. As I walk, the voice seems to envelop and surround me, making it difficult to determine where it is coming from. The dawning light of the sun is just becoming visible, and the pine and oak trees loom like giant shadows all around me. Rather than feeling menacing, they seem like giant protectors, standing guard along the way.

Upon reaching the end of the gravel driveway, I see the dark outline of a small path that leads downward into the vegetation that grows quite thickly together, making traveling impossible except on already traversed pathways. As I move down the path, I am greeted by the musty smell of the forest floor. I take a deep breath, and as I exhale, I become increasingly aware that the enchanting voice is louder and calls me ever closer, like a beacon of another world.

Further down the pathway, I smell water. I hear the tinkling of a creek. The sound of the water seems to provide background accompaniment to the enchanting voice. Although there is a path, I still have to make my way through the dense undergrowth that grows under the thick canopy of trees.

As I continue through the undergrowth, I can sense Nature all around me in her inherent splendor and divinity. The farther I walk, the more I become one with the Natural beauty around me. I pause to say a short prayer of thanks to the sacred land. As I walk on, the voice is clearer and closer.

Finally, I reach a shallow creek with a small waterfall that flows over white blocks of milky quartz crystal. I stop to rest and to get my bearings. In the still shadowy world of the early morning, I see a small greenish-blue creature stir within the waterfall. At first I think I am seeing things, but contining to watch, I instinctively know that what I am seeing is Nature faery, in particular a Water sprite.

For the flicker of an instant, time seems irrelevant and out of focus and the moment becomes an hour. Looking into the eyes and listening to the enchanting voice of the waterfall faery, I realize that the faery is the underlying spirit of Nature, in all its many aspects. The faery element in everything is that which gives spiritual life and beauty.

Sitting next to the waterfall, I look into the faery's eyes and I see my reflection. I see my ideal self, my beautiful and compassionate self. I also glimpse past and future lifetimes, flowing from the same spiritual well. The world I enter seems familiar, but there is something very different. Like looking in a mirror, I feel I am seeing everything reversed. My perception and awareness seem altered.

As I stand hearing the enchanting voice in all its splendor with Nature, the greenish-blue faery eyes meet mine and I can suddenly imagine living my life to its fullest potential. I imagine miraculous things like world peace, cures for all disease and illness, and a kinder, gentler world, where life seems more fluid and exciting and people are more tolerant. I feel a peaceful, easy energy washing over my body like the waterfall. This feeling empowers me and I feel at one with myself, with the water faery, and with the world around me.

In my life, the enchanting voice represents a calling that leads me back home. Like a salmon moving back up stream to spawn, I feel propelled to seek out my roots, and get a feeling for who I really am. While growing closer to the land around me, I realize my roots have something to do with the energy of the fae, who traditionally were the animate symbols of Nature and Spirit. As our energies connect, I am aware of the completion of a circle that is as ancient as recorded time. Now, the enchanting voice resonates within my being, and we become one.

Shakespeare's Faeries

Mystical creatures that abound and come in many forms, faeries have titillated our imaginations for generations. Faeryland, that realm one step removed from our mortal world, has provided fodder for numerous stories through the ages. This not only includes the faeries in the children's tales, such as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, the dwarfs in Sleeping Beauty, and the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, but also the faeries in the works of the premier bard himself, William Shakespeare.

In her book, The SuperNatural in Shakespeare, Helen Hinton Stewart says that if we considered faeries to be extraordinarily beautiful or grotesque little beings of human form, or if we think they dance on the Faery Rings and reside in the flowers and woods, as well as fly through the air on errands, either benevolent or mischievous, then we are thinking of Shakespeare creations. These are the faeries the bard made famous, or infamous, as the case may be. They play important roles in his works, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In fact, almost every play Shakespeare wrote has some mention of magick. A number of them are totally devoted to the subject. In particular, A Midsummer Night's Dream contains one of the most creative realizations of the faery realm.

Through his plays, Shakespeare was able to preserve much of the English faery lore, such as keeping the identities of Robin Goodfellow and Puck separate from one another. The confusion often occurred because both are hobgoblins and offspring of Oberon, who is the King of the faeries.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare tells the story of Puck, who was raised by his mother with no mention of his faery origins. When he was six years old, Puck ran away from home. Alone in the woods, he fell asleep and had a dream of the faeries. When he awoke, Puck found a scroll from Oberon that gave him the magickal powers of granting wishes and shapeshifting. But Oberon placed a condition on the powers: They were only to be used to help the good and thwart the bad. If Puck followed this condition, he would be allowed into faeryland. So, Puck set out, in true hobgoblin fashion, to play out his pranks, which were usually meant to be a lesson for the mortals he engaged.

Faery Origins

The belief in the faeries continues because, for several thousands of years, plenty of people have seen them, and continue to do so. Some say the faeries are the surviving members of an ancient race of beings who have been around since 6000 B.C.E.

Because of the lack of historical documentation, the true origin of the faeries may never be known. What is known is that the concept of the faeries is widespread. In all parts of the world, there are stories about beings that possess supernatural or magickal abilities and take human form.

These faery tales are part of an ancient oral storytelling tradition that predates writing. Even though they have continually undergone interpretive and social transformations while being passed on for so many years, the tales remain very much the same and represent some of the earliest stories as evidenced by myth. Even in these original tales, faeries are magickal beings who both help and hinder humankind.

Each culture has it's own name for these magickal creatures who still seem to stir the embers of our imaginations. Some of these names include: elves, sprites, mermaids, trolls, and gnomes. Beautiful, ugly, helpful, benevolent, mischievous, and sometimes dangerous, faeries and magickal creatures continue to enchant us.

The modern definition of faeries describes them as mythical beings of folklore and romance with human form and magickal powers. In Middle English, faery refers to three things:

Enchantment.

A land where enchanted beings live.

The group of inhabitants of such a place.

The word faery is Middle French. It is derived from the Old French fée or feie, which stems from the Late Latin fata (the goddess of fate), and from fatum, meaning fate.

The Fates in Roman Mythology are three goddesses who determine the fate of every person. They perform their duties at each child's birth, which is when they write the destiny of the child.

In Norse Mythology, fate lays in the hands of the three sisters called the Three Norns, or The Maidens. Urd spins the thread of existence. She passes the spun thread to Verdandi, who weaves it into existence. Each day Urd and Verdandi weave the fate of the world, and by the end of the day, Skuld unravels it, tossing it back into the abyss. Similar to the Roman Fates, a Norn is present at each person's birth to declare that individual's fate.

The faery connection with fate is congruent with their spiritual Nature. It is this spiritual Nature that makes it possible for faeries to affect mortals. Faeries and mortals share a spiritual Nature, and it is this spiritual affinity that acts as the connecting thread. At times, the faery and mortal worlds come together. They meet at a kind of magickal crossroad. When this happens, it creates an energetic doorway through which mortals can enter the realm of the faery and the faeries can enter the mortal world. Most often, when the faeries enter the mortal world, they become visible.

By seeing the faeries, and by occasionally entering the energetic doorway to the realm of the faeries, mortals discovered that there was a world that exists just beyond the mortal vantage point. When the time is right, mortals, like you and me, can deliberately interact with this world and the faeries that inhabit it.

Faery Mythology, Folklore, and History

The realm of the faeries is strongly interwoven with the concept of Earth and ancestral spirits, powerful energies that permeate both the faery and mortal worlds. These energies are addressed in Celtic Mythology, specifically in the myths and legends of the Tuatha De Danann.

In the history of Ireland, five consecutive waves of invaders took control of the island. When the last wave, called the sons of Mil, came, they drove the Tuatha De Danann, who were