Elemental Spirits and The Mystical Fairy Faith
Noah's Dove
Elemental Spirits and The Mystical Fairy Faith
Elemental Spirits
Elemental spirits are believed to be spirits of things that inhabit
nature. In the era of ancient religions where the belief of animism
was
common in many societies the belief in the existence of elemental
spirits was almost universal. Animism is the belief that trees,
mountains, rivers and other natural formations possess a spirit that
can bring them to animation.
Today in most occultists and Neo-pagan witches the belief that all
things possess life is prevalent. The elemental spirits are thought to
possess supernatural powers that render them invisible to humans
except
if the human has psychic ability.
Along with the nature spirits are the elves who live in the woods and
household spirits such as goblins and brownies are included in the
classification of elementals. Sometimes fairies and mannikins are
included in this classification. Mannikins are male fairies that have
the same characteristics as gnomes and elves. There is a controversy
among many different writers on the subject of whether elementals are
friendly nice little creatures of nature or whether they are evil or
mischievous little creatures that cause confusion and pain to humans.
Some have classified them as between angel and man and can come in
animal or human form.
There are many beliefs as to exactly where the elemental spirit
originated. Some believe that the elemental spirit such as elves and
the like resulted from Lilith?s conception. Lilith was believed to be
the original succubi and was the personification of female lust. Some
believe that she mated with Adam before Eve. Some say she seduced Adam
while others believe that she conceived from his nocturnal emissions.
These elementals that resulted from Lilith?s conception are believed
to
inhabit secret parts of the earth. The writers that believe the
elementals to be benevolent creatures and they are believed to
maintain
the natural harmony. These writers also believe that these spirits are
ruled or governed over by a higher spirit such as archangels.
Some groups of people believe that elementals lack a soul and that
they roam the world seeking to have a sexual union with humans in
order
for this to happen. This is done through means of an incubus or a
succubus as the case may be. Since these spirits are capable of having
sex and bearing children so their offspring would carry the elemental
stigma to show that they are not truly human.
Many folklore stories contain tales of such offspring of a human and
an elemental such as Hercules, Alexander the great, Julius Caesar and
more. Some believe that many of these human-elemental unions existed
in
the royal houses of France and England also.
While some elementals are deceitful and hateful and love to cause
problems and tragedies to humans, these entities are associated with a
ritual black magic and are sent on their attacks by the practitioners.
These spirits are summoned up during the ritual and attach themselves
to the victim?s aura. In this way they can drain energy from their
victim through the aura. This can cause a whole gambit of problems for
the intended victim unless the elemental is properly removed.
Thought-forms are elemental spirits that are created artificially.
Since they are considered a non-physical entity they only exist in a
mental plane, but they can be seen and felt by intuitive people such
as
psychics. Many folklore and religions from around the world believe in
elementals. In Japan the Shinto religion worship nature and its forces
and spirits. While the Romans and Greeks believed that spirits inhabit
every thing in nature including the air. The Native North American
Tribes believed in water babies that inhabited every bodies of water.
To the Native American these spirits were not malicious but at times
they could be play tricks on humans so they feared them.
Still other areas of the world believe that these little people had in
fact special powers and could bestow these on humans.
Japanese Magical Creatures in Shinto Beliefs
A recent survey discovered that 72% of Japanese believe in ghosts,
possibly this will be a surprise to those who have not explored the
shadowy world of Japanese supernatural beliefs. This belief in ghosts
is also mixed up with a belief in ?monsters? due to an interesting
language twist. The word for ?bad ghost? is Obake in Japanese and this
also happens to be the same word for "monster." In other words, we
have
a large number of sophisticated, highly cultured people walking around
in this country that believe in ?things that go bump in the night.?
But, aside from the better-known ghosts, what other creatures haunt
the
night in Japan?
Obake - Ghosts and monsters
outside a fun house.
People almost never go swimming in lakes in this country, a
surprising fact considering how many beautiful and clear ones there
are. When questioned about this, most Japanese just point to tradition
as the reason, but a few remember the fear that lies behind that
tradition: Kaapa.
Kaapa are little green critters, about knee-high, that haunt lakes
and streams. They have beaks, webbed fingers and toes, large
turtle-like shells on their backs and depressions on their heads
filled
with water. One would think they were kind of cute, except that they
are said to enjoy dragging children and animals under water where they
drown them and turn their bowels inside-out. Though prone to murderous
tendencies, kaapa can also help those who are their friends or those
who manage to trick them into it.
Shi Shi - Lion Spirit.
In Tokyo, there is an area of town called Kaapabashi and a
festival is held there every year called, you guessed it, Kaapa
Matsuri. The reason is that during the Edo period there was a man who
lived on the river there who sold rain gear and made much money doing
so. At one point there was a flood that washed away the local bridge
across the river, and this was a major financial tragedy to the
merchants of the area. The rain-gear seller offered to rebuild the
bridge for free, and legend says that the kaapa of the river (who were
his friends) helped him to build the bridge in just one night.
Usually kappa aren?t so sweet though, and if you want them to help
you, you usually have to trick them into it. If you meet a kaapa, bow
to it, it will then (out of politeness) bow to you and the water in
the
saucer-shaped dent on the top of it?s head will spill out. If this
occurs, the kappa will become powerless! It is then that you can
demand
a wish, because if he can?t get back to his lake or stream soon, he
will die. Long ago, in Tochigi prefecture, a man caught a kaapa that
was trying to drag his horse into the nearby lake. The rope had
wrapped
around the kaapa?s arm and the water had spilled from his head
depression so he was easy to catch. The man was going to kill him out
of anger, but the kappa pleaded for his life, offering to teach him
the
secret of bone-setting. The man agreed to the trade, and from then on
he was never bothered by kaapa again and he went on to become a famous
healer and founded a family line of famous doctors.
Kappa are not seen so often nowadays, but their pictures are; on
signs, posters, products, in comics and in animation. Also, you can
still order kaapa sushi, the famous cucumber roll. It has this name
for
two reasons, because kaapa are said to love cucumbers and, because the
cut sushi resembles the water-filled head of a kappa!
Another monstrous reason for avoiding lakes is that spirits said
to resemble large white serpents live there. The origins of these
beings are easy to find in the form of small shrines dedicated to the
Shinto water kami (god/spirit).
Belief in these ?giant water serpents? has led to many legends,
like the one about the Shinto priest in Miyazaki prefecture who
battled
a giant supernatural lake serpent.
One that is very famous concerns the serpent Goddess Amo-Ga-Ike
who lived in a pond in Niigata prefecture. People used to pray to her
for rain, but they had to avoid putting any metal in the pond because
the goddess disliked it. A samurai dove into the pond and encountered
her as a beautiful maiden. Because of this, she had to leave the pond
and, during a huge supernatural storm, visited one of the men in the
village in the form of a woman. They were married and it is said that
all his descendents have some scales on there bodies.
There are a number of other ?were-animals? in Japanese legend,
many of which are still taken quite seriously. Some of the beasts that
are said to take human form are foxes, cats, badgers, tanuki
(racoon-dogs), storks, snakes and frogs. This, again, probably has
roots in ancient Shinto animal-spirit worship, but some of these tales
are still often repeated.
Inari
Foxes are especially prone to this treatment and there are said
to
be two types of fox spirit, those which are the servants or aspect of
the rice Goddess Inari, and those fox spirits which are at the very
least mischievous, if not downright bad.
Fox People
In Japan there are millions of shrines to the goddess Inari which
are easy to spot due to their distinctive orange torii or gates.
Flanking these torii are almost always statues of her sacred white
foxes. Very often the shrine will have a small cave near the
sanctuary,
this is where the ?spirit fox? is supposed to live and it is from here
that this spirit carries the blessings of the goddess to the
worshippers who pray to her. There are thousands of stories about how
the white fox of Inari has brought food, money or supernatural
salvation to various people in need. Sometimes the fox is said to have
nine tails and is then a kind of heavenly omen. Many shrines were
built
upon a site where these fox spirits were seen to congregate, such as
the famous Inari shrine in Oji, or where people dreamed about them,
such as the Inari shrine in Akasaka.
But the ?bad? fox spirits are as just as feared as Inari?s
servants are welcomed. These spirits are said to steal food, lead
travellers astray, play unwelcome tricks on hapless farmers and even
cause injury to people they dislike. In this they are much like
badger-spirits or tanuki-spirits, and the stories told about them are
so similar that a couple will suffice.
A farmer, returning home from a party in the country, decided to
take a short-cut through an over-grown cemetery in the middle of a
bamboo grove, despite his hosts objections. In the grove, he was
confronted by a large man who challenged him to a wrestling match.
Being drunk, he readily agreed, and soon they were at it. The match
was
a draw, but as he rested from the bout, he noticed that his partner
had
vanished along with the present of food he had been carrying from the
party! The next day everyone agreed that it had been a were-fox that
had tricked him.
In Shimane prefecture, A man was travelling at night when he was
set upon by strange wolves. He climbed a tree to escape and thought
himself safe until the wolves started to stand on each others backs to
reach him. The last one said, ?bring Koike?s mother? and soon a large
cat appeared that tried to kill him. He hit it in the head and all the
beasts fled. The next day he notified his lord, Koike, what had
happened. It turned out that Koike?s mother had sustained an injury to
the head the night before! When confronted, the creature transformed,
attacked, and was slain by Koike. The bones of his real mother were
found under the bed.
There are hundreds of stories like these and they still seem to
crop-up in the more rural areas of the country. As mentioned in an
earlier tale, animal-spirits not only assume human form to help or
trick humans, they can also marry them! It is still said that certain
families have traits that have been passed down from these original
supernatural marriages. Those descended from some of these unions are
said to be psychics and even today a person with ESP is referred to as
a descendant of a fox-spirit.
Young Tengu Mask at Shrine.
There are many other monsters and spirits said to haunt the hills
and valleys of Japan, such as giants, elves, and tree-creatures. One
of
the most commonly found, and still believed in, is the tengu.
Tengu are actually mountain kami who lost something of their
divinity over the centuries and were commonly considered amoral
spirits
that could hurt you or help you, depending on their mood. The earliest
Tengu were depicted as human-like creatures with beaks and wings who
lived in sacred trees in the mountain and swooped about the lonely
woods laughing and cutting trees. Later tengu were shown with red
faces
and large phallic noses, but still keeping the general human form and
the wings. Stories of tengu abound.
The tale of Takegoro, from Shimane prefecture, is often told to
illustrate how irascible Tengu can be. Takegoro was a humble woodsman
who disappeared for three days. His family and village searched
everywhere with out luck, but on the third day he returned with his
cloths in tatters. He had been kidnapped by Tengu and transformed into
one, but it didn?t end there. Every day thereafter he had to join the
Tengu in their games and flying as a kind of servant. This daily
transformation began to wear on him, but he related that his presence
kept the Tengu from following through with some of their more
destructive pranks, like burning down houses. The Tengu eventually
released Takegoro from their spell and from then on rewarded him with
odd discoveries of gold!
There are many tales from all over Japan of Tengu playing tricks,
making objects fly about, stealing objects and making strange sounds.
Often these apparitions would vanish when the spirit was respectfully
addressed and an offering made, usually of sake, which tengu
apparently
like!
Traditional Tengu Mask - Magical Creature.
Tengu are different from many of the other supernatural beings
we've discussed in that in some places, like Takao-san mountain in the
Tama area near Tokyo, Tengu are revered as guardian gods of great
importance. They are especially worshipped by yamabushi or mountain
priests who follow a tradition which mixes Shinto and Buddhism. On
Takao-san there are many large trees said to be inhabited by Tengu.
One
in particular, the ?octopus tree,? was slated to be cut-down when a
road was being built up the mountain. The next day, it had
mysteriously
moved itself to the side!
Those who see Japan as simply a high-tech modern culture, solely
concerned with business and efficiency, should take a closer look at
the ?hidden Japan.? On almost any street you can find a picture of a
kappa on a sign, a tengu face on a restaurant price-list or a ceramic
tanuki beconing customers into a bar. These just modern symbols of a
shadow-world of myths and magic thousands of years old, lying just
below the surface of this ultramodern country. In just this way, if
you chat with Japanese about things unseen, you may be surprised at
some of the beliefs and tales you will hear.
The Mystical Fairy Faith -fad or deceptive reality?
In our times there is a surprising revival of sorts going on. This
revival is the post modern fairy faith. There are signs of it in
several
feature films*, festivals, art work, books, Fairy shops and
numerous web sites, if you are observant you should spot some
indications of it in the malls of America and other English
countries.
..there are all kinds of fairy things for sale: cards, calendars,
video games like Zelda,
fairy ornaments, fairy costumes, candle holders, fairy statues for
gardens etc. This last June the Third Fairy Congress was held in the
Cascade Mountains of
Washington state. Some of the speakers were from the Findhorn New
Age community of Scotland. Workshops included talks on how to contact
nature spirits (fairies) for guidance and help. Presently there are
more and more books teaching people how to etablish communicate and
contact faeries for instance:
The Book of Faeries: A Guide to the World of Elves, Pixies, Goblins,
and Other Magic Spirits by Francis Melville
Fairy Spells: Seeing and Communicating With the Fairies
by Claire Nahmad
A Witchs Guide to Faery Folk: Reclaiming Our Working Relationship With
Invisible Helpers (Llewellyns New Age Series)
by Authors: Edain McCoy , Edain McCoy
Other books are listed on Amazon.com
Some casual observers
who have noticed this growing interest in faeries
consider it a fad. Is it just an innocent fad as some say or
is there a reality and a darker side to the world of fairie?
The following news clip, quotes from articles and information web
links
may answer this question.
*some films with fairy theme or fairy encounters
The National Film Board of Canada's production, The Fairy Faith
Fairy Tale a True Story
Photography Fairies
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Legend
Willow
Ladybrinth
Peter Pan -the new movie
Elf
A faerie affair
Elusive folk and their followers to alight in Sedona for all-day
festival
Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
May. 6, 2003 12:00 AM
Amy Ford sees fairies.
Some are as small as houseflies, others 18 feet tall. They're
pixielike
or feminine, sometimes androgynous, and once, she claims, she woke up
in the woods near Cornville to find herself held captive.
"It was just like Gulliver's Travels," she says. "The fairies had tied
me down with dried grass," while one laughed right in her face.
"It scared the crap out of me."
Ford claims she's seen fairies all her life, and though she won't say
exactly how long that is, it looks to be 30-some years. She's a
musician and astrologer from Scottsdale, short and buxom with long,
dark hair and darker eyes. And though she seems reasonably sane, she
acknowledges, "I'm wired way different."
Ford is part of a growing subculture of fairy folk, not all of whom
claim to see fairies - though that number is bigger than you might
expect. The concept has allure for children, folklorists and
all-purpose whimsical folk, as well. There is fairy music, much of it
borrowing Celtic sounds and rhythms; there are T-shirts with fairy
pictures that sell big at teenage boutiques, and fairy cards and
posters in New Age bookstores. And a British artist named Brian Froud
has sold more than 8 million large-format books of paintings of
fairies, which he, like most fairy folk, spell the old-fashioned way:
"faeries."
"Faeryland is like the sea," Froud says. "It's like the tide, and
sometimes the tide is out a long way and Faeryland is very difficult
to
reach. And sometimes the tide is in. And it does seem to me that the
tide was out for some years, but it's really come in now."
That tide has come in far enough that promoters expect more than 4,000
people to attend an all-day Faerieworlds Festival on Saturday at
Sedona
Cultural Park. The festival will include music, multimedia shows,
live
interactive performances and, especially, Froud and his artwork.
The expected attendees will be true believers like Ford, but also
Renaissance Faire fans, families with young children, masqueraders,
New
Age dabblers, Goth kids who have "discovered Faery," as one promoter
put it, and even "folks factioning out of the old Grateful Dead days
who don't have anywhere to go."
Fairies originated in Celtic folklore, and, more often than not, they
were frightening, otherworldly forest beings that were blamed for
unexplainable events, such as ill children, people turned mad and
dark
thoughts.
"They're about expression of things in everyday life that we can't
express openly," says Ari Berk, a professor of folklore at Central
Michigan University. "Fairies have always spoken to the human desire
to
have some kind of conversation with the environment around them."
They've populated art and literature for centuries, not just as fairy
tales, but also in Shakespeare and in the poetry of William Butler
Yeats. More recently, they appear in the Lord of the Rings films, as
the elves.
Although children are naturally drawn to fairy tales, the current pop
phenomenon is not really about children. Froud's art, for example, is
not only well researched but very adult.
"Fairies have been relegated to the nursery for far too long," Froud
says. "That's a 20th-century point of view really. Fairies have
always
been dangerous creatures. That's why they had to be placated. That's
why little gifts were left out at night, little saucers of milk, or,
otherwise, your cattle died, or, indeed, your children were stolen or
people died. The word 'stroke' comes from 'elf stroke' because a
fairy
had touched you. So fairies have always been dangerous. And one way
that people have tried to make them safer is to turn them into fairy
stories, something that was safe, and say, 'Oh it's just for
children,
isn't it?' "
Froud, 56, lives in Dartmoor, England, an area he says is slightly
wild
and desolate, and whose landscape influenced his palette.
"When I looked at trees and rocks and hills when I moved to the
country, I wondered what the inside of them looked like," Froud says.
"And as I was wondering that, then I started painting fairies, and
they
were indeed at the souls of trees and landscapes."
He was inspired by illustrations of fairy tales and did a lot of
research with his collaborator, Alan Lee, for his first book,
Faeries,
which they published in 1978. It has sold more than 5 million copies,
including more than 100,000 since last October, when a
25th-anniversary
edition was published.
Froud followed up with several other titles, including Good
Faeries/Bad
Faeries, whose paintings sometimes verge on the erotic, with
lithesome
near nudes, a merging of several tingling and anticipatory fantasies,
and decidedly not for children. His art was the inspiration for the
Jim
Henson films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and Froud's wife, Wendy,
was one of the puppetmakers who designed Yoda for the Star Wars
films.
Since he began painting fairies, Froud says they now present
themselves
to him as, he believes, they present themselves to others. The
paintings, he says, are like maps that allow people to safely go on
their fairy journey, as he puts it.
"A lot of people go on the journey and don't return because they lapse
into madness," he says.
Saturday's festival in Sedona promises plenty of controlled madness.
"Right now, everything's so heavy and intense on the planet that I
think people need a fantasy to go to where they feel like they have
power, where they feel they have something to go to," says Emilio
Miller-Lopez, one of the festival's organizers. "What our events
offer
people is a chance to participate. Everybody's part of the show."
Miller-Lopez is a spritely fellow of 28 with a shaggy gnome's beard
and
a shock of hair long enough to evoke memories of the early 1970s. His
wife, Kelly, 27, has cascading Maid Marian locks and glittery makeup.
Both dress elfin, in earth tones and billowing sleeves. They draw
stares even in Sedona.
The couple perform in Woodland, a band with Celtic-music roots and a
rich New Age sound, which will play at the festival. Kelly says she
has
seen fairies since she was a child, and she first latched onto Brian
Froud's work when she saw The Dark Crystal and then bought the
Faeries
books, which she eventually showed to her husband. Together, they
sought out Froud's agent, Robert Gould, who is also a fantasy artist,
well known as the illustrator for Michael Moorcock's Elric of
Melnibone
novels.
Working with Gould's company, Imaginosis, they staged multimedia fairy
shows in Prescott, Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Fairy fans turned out in
droves.
"It was incredible," Gould says. "People were standing in line for an
hour. Everyone was in costume. Families came. It was pretty wild."
The Santa Fe show took place on Halloween, and the upcoming Sedona
festival is just after May Day, which, as Kelly Miller-Lopez
explains,
are those times of the year when the veil is thinnest between the
real
world and the fairy world and human-fairy encounters are more likely.
Gould would like to take the show on the road and maybe develop it
into
a Cirque du Soleil-style of interactive performance.
As for the people who claim to see fairies, even Froud is not sure how
many really do.
"It took me a long time to actually work that out," he says. People
constantly ask him how they can see them, too.
"You don't use your eyes," he answers. "You see a fairy through your
heart."
Fairies have been attributed many origins, from natural causes to the
darkest element.
They are the creatures of the wild, primitive and untouched realm of
fantasy that exists beside each society.
Fallen angels. In the lore of Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland, when
God cast out the arrogant angels from heaven, they became the evil
spirits that plague mankind, tormenting us and inflicting us with
harm.
The ones who fell into hell and into caves and abysses became devils
and death-maidens. However, those who fell onto the earth became
goblins, imps, dwarfs, thumblings, alps, noon-and-evening-ghosts, and
will-o'-the-wisps. Those who fell into the forests became the
wood-spirits who live there: the hey-men, elves, the wild-men, the
forest-men,
the wild-women, and the forest-women. Finally, those who fell into
the
water became water spirits: water-men, mermaids, and merwomen. These
angels were condemned to remain where they were, becoming the faeries
of seas and rivers, the earth, and the air.
Nature spirits : in most pagan religions, supernatural forces are
associated with animals, the five elements and the Goddess. Sometimes
the fairies were called Goddesses themselves. In several folk ballads
the Fairy Queen is adressed as 'Queen of Heaven.' Welsh fairies were
known as 'the Mother's Blessing.' Breton peasants called the fairies
Godmothers.
The following is from the book "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries'
published in 1911/ and a quote form a web site on theories of fairy
origins.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ne u/celt/ffcc/
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 2)
III. IN SCOTLAND
Introduction by ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Hon. LL.D. of the University of
Edinburgh; author of Carmina Gadelica.
The belief in fairies was once common throughout Scotland -- Highland
and Lowland. It is now much less prevalent even in the Highlands and
Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they do in the
Lowlands.
But it still lives among the old people, and is privately entertained
here and there even among younger people; and some who hold the
belief
declare that they themselves have seen fairies.
Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of
[85]
fairies and as to the belief in them. The most concrete form in which
the belief has been urged has been by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister
of
Aberfoyle, in Perthshire. (1) Another theory of the origin of fairies
I
took down in the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and, though I have
given it in Carmina Gadelica, it is sufficiently interesting to be
quoted here. During October 1871, Roderick Macneill, known as
'Ruaraidh
mac Dhomhuil, then ninety-two years of age, told it in Gaelic to the
late J. F. Campbell of Islay and the writer, when they were
storm-stayed in the precipitous island of Miunghlaidh, Barra :--
'The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of heaven,
where he had been a leading light. He declared that he would go and
found a kingdom for himself. When going out at the door of heaven the
Proud Angel brought prickly lightning and biting lightning out of the
doorstep with his heels. Many angels followed him -- so many that at
last the Son called out, "Father! Father! the city is being emptied!"
whereupon the Father ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates
of
hell should be closed. This was instantly done. And those who were in
were in, and those who were out were out; while the hosts who had
left
heaven and had not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth,
like
the stormy petrels. These are the Fairy Folk -- ever since doomed to
live under the ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when the
King permits. They are never allowed abroad on Thursday, that being
Columba's Day; nor on Friday, that being the Son's Day; nor on
Saturday, that being Mary's Day; nor on Sunday, that being the Lord's
Day.
God be between me and every fairy,
Every ill wish and every druidry;
To-day is Thursday on sea and land,
I trust in the King that they do not hear me.
(1) It was the belief of the Rev. Robert Kirk, as expressed by him in
his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, that the fairy
tribes are a distinct order of created beings possessing human-like
intelligence and supernormal powers, who live and move about in this
world invisible to all save men and women of the second-sight (see
this
study, pp. 89, 91 n).
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On certain nights when their bruthain (bowers) are open and their
lamps
are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the fairies
may
be heard singing lightheartedly : -
Not of the seed of Adam are we,
Nor is Abraham our father;
But of the seed of the Proud Angel,
Driven forth from Heaven.'