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Magick with traditional faeries, faery courts, and faery godmothers

Traditional sparkling faeries, miniature versions of humans but far more beautiful, ethereal, and with wings, are those most usually associated with faery magic. The sparkle detected around the bodies of faeries is like the halos around the heads of saints, a reflection of their spirit form that is made of the same white-gold shimmer around the outermost layer of the human aura where it joins the cosmos.

As they swiftly move, their shining aura appears to leave a trail of golden dust; this is also why the traditional faery godmother wand is seen as having light all around it.

The Recording of Traditional Faery Lore

Through the ages, more has been recorded by myth collectors about traditional faeries and their faery courts than any other nature spirits. Celtic-rooted countries have become a major source of first-person accounts of opalescent shining faeries and a fertile ground for researchers, especially among the Victorians who were avid collectors and investigators in the field of the paranormal.

An unbroken faery tradition has continued from ancient Greece to present-day faery sightings. Greek philosopher Homer wrote in around 800 BCE in his Iliad an epic about the Trojan Wars, “Where ’round the bed where Achelous springs, the watery faeries dance in mazy rings.” Mazy means “labyrinthine”; Achelous was a Grecian river rising in Epirus and emptying in the Ionian Sea.1

Faery Courts

The faery court and courtier tradition are centred around a faery king and queen. These traditions existed from medieval times when it was associated with the Holy Grail quests, when the historical late fifth- and early sixth-century King Arthur became in literature a courtly king with many fey connections.2 Indeed, Sir Lancelot was of faery blood.

Faery courts came to the forefront in the sixteenth century, partly because of the epic poem “The Faery Queen,” written by the contemporary English poet Edmund Spenser in honour of Queen Elizabeth I who was identified with the faery Queen Gloriana.

William Shakespeare also described more beautiful human-sized faeries like Titania and Oberon and the malevolent Puck in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was first performed in 1590.3 Oberon and Titania, the faery king and queen, were both noble and spiteful. Titania was the powerful downgraded Themis, the ancient Greek Titan Goddess of justice and order, and the mother of the Fates and the Seasons; Oberon was the fey, a somewhat cleaned up descendant of the pre-Christian Horned God of animals, the hunt, and winter.

But the most detailed information of the faery courts and specifically of the Irish faery race (the Tuatha de Dannan, who were also called the Daoine Sidh, the people of the Mother Goddess Danu) comes from the accounts of the nineteenth-century Irish folklorist and poet, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1821 to 1896), in her book Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland .4

She described the faery queen Oonagh who was the wife of Finvarra, King of the fey of the west of Ireland. “Her golden hair sweeps the ground, and she is robed in silver gossamer all glittering as if with diamonds, but they are dew-drops that sparkle over it. The queen is more beautiful than any woman of earth, yet Finvarra loves the mortal women best.”

Finvarra, according to Lady Wilde, lured mortal women down to his faery palace by irresistible faery music where they remained as faeries. Though their friends and families mourned them, they led happy lives within the hill in a faery palace with silver columns and crystal walls. Of course, we have no way of knowing how many of these fey-kidnapped women were in reality abducted and killed, even by family members if they became pregnant outside wedlock or failed to produce children if married. Faeries remained a useful scapegoat. In the west of Ireland, it was said that young women were unable to resist the music of Finvarra and they might find themselves back in their beds in the morning but had been given the power of love potions and spells to seduce any man or to do ill.

Faery Gifts

Faery gifts could be double-edged swords. While those who slept on faery hills were said to become skilled musicians, for others, the gift and memory of faery music was so beautiful yet beyond the abilities of mortals to reproduce, and could haunt a human musician to death. Turlough O’Carolan was one of the lucky ones. The famous blind Irish harpist bard from County Meath (1670 to 1738), was said to acquire his amazing melodies by sleeping out all night on the faery hillocks, according to another fey researcher, the Anglo-Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865 to 1939), in his Faery and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry.5

The Sidhe were considered to envy humans. In spite of their fabulous gold and crystal palaces, they lacked immortality though they had power over nature and humans. They lived caught between mortality and immortality; and possessing neither, they abducted young women at the height of fertility (when the young women were just married) to produce half-human children so they might attain a soul.

Faery Music

The Sounds of the Fey

Ralph Harvey, an English researcher and author of folklore whom I met at a festival, described to me how he was staying with friends in Enniscorthy, Ireland and he and his wife heard faery music. One afternoon, he and his wife Audrey stopped for a picnic in a glade by a stream. Immediately they heard the sound of a small but quite-clear orchestra. They decided to investigate, but realised the music was following them and would stop when they stopped and continue as they walked on.

The music continued to play until they stepped out of the glade. Though they searched, the area was deserted. That night at dinner, their hostess asked where they had been exploring and, when they told her, she asked if anything unusual had happened there. When Ralph mentioned the music, she said, “Oh, you were very lucky. You heard the faery musicians.”6

A Magical Ritual with Traditional Faeries

You have already learned several fey rituals. The following one is very powerful when you want a special or more formal ritual either for yourself or to carry out with others. It brings in a number of traditional faery kings and queens and their powers to act as guardians of the four elemental quarters of your magick circle. If you are working with other people, you can divide the ritual so you all play a part.

This format can be used for calling love, beauty, harmony, fertility, prosperity, and the increase of natural talents. Each of the fey kings and queens I name will offer particular strengths and gifts. You can choose four for each ritual, one for earth, air, fire, and water. Think of these as representing four blessings you can receive.

We will work only with the most positive aspects of the faery royalty, though of course their challenging powers can bring impetus for change.

Bringing the Fey Kings and Queens into Your Life

The Regal Fey Guardians and Their Powers

Earth

Suitable Offerings: Flowers, herbs, tiny crystals, pure-white stones, petals (especially rose or dried lavender heads).

Geb

An elemental fey king whose throne is covered with silver and gold crystals. He is guardian of miners and others who work within the earth.

Element: earth

Powers he can endow: prosperity, skill in all practical crafts, renovations, moneymaking by slow but sure means, success in property matters, animals, older people, and finding and restoring what is lost.

Galadriel

Elven queen of the earth faeries, made famous in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, a beautiful, wise shimmering faerie, with special powers of healing.

Element: earth and also sometimes air

Powers she can endow: Healing, uncovering talents, bringing out the best in self and others, love, fidelity, gifts in music and the arts, all that is long lasting, reconciliation.

Oonagh

Golden-haired Faery Queen of the west of Ireland. Wearing silver gossamer with sparkling, diamondlike dewdrops. Wife of Finvarra who, despite his wife’s beauty, still seduces mortal women.

Element: earth and air.

Powers she can endow: Maintaining faith during difficult periods in a relationship, beauty and radiance, women’s spiritual powers, reclaiming personal power and confidence when others try to take it away, wishes.

Mab/Maeve

Warrior Queen of faeries and fey midwife. Seen variously as a tiny, motherly figure or in her alter ego as the powerful faery queen of the land, granting sovereignty, prosperity, and mastery over the changing life cycles of the woman as she can transform herself from old woman to battle mother to lovely maiden at will.

Element: earth and air

Powers she can endow: fertility, good pregnancy, safe childbirth, mothers, babies, and children, wishes, uncovering secrets, secret love, all small but significant matters, passion, transformation, and prosperity.

Titania

Queen of the faeries and wife of Oberon with power over the harvests. According to Shakespeare, like Oberon, Titania had many lovers including mortals. In Greek mythology, she was daughter of Gaia, the Earth Goddess, and is linked with Diana, goddess of the moon and love.

Element: earth and air

Powers she can endow: beauty, radiance, romance, sexual magnetism, abundance, justice, restoring order out of chaos, love in middle and later life, and good luck.

Air

Suitable Offerings: Feathers, granular incense, feathery grasses, seeds, ribbons.

Paralda

A mysterious, misty being who lives on the highest mountain on earth, who shimmers in early-morning sunlight and breaks through the mist as occasional radiance.

Element: air

Power she can endow: the expression of hidden talents, higher spiritual powers, returning to life after sorrow or grief, recalling ancient wisdom and past worlds, and keeping a low profile in confrontational times or difficult situations.

Puck

The trickster of the fey world, woodland green or black, boyish, fast moving, eloquent, brilliant at challenging the status quo and cutting through restrictions, ingenuity, inventiveness, happy travel, and image changing.

Element: air

Powers he endows: travel opportunities, overcoming obstacles with ingenuity, starting again, creating new opportunities and business, successful speculation, relocation, turning a challenge into an opportunity, surprises, and adventures.

Fire

Suitable offerings: Tiny candles; a small, clear, crystal sphere; anything gold; a small mirror, golden fruit; and golden flowers.

Aine and Grainne

Two Celtic sister faery sun queens who in pre-Christian times were solar goddesses. In very old legends, Grainne was the mother and Aine the daughter.

Aine was linked with fertility, healing, the flourishing of cattle and grain, and the cycles of the solar and lunar year, for she was also lady of the moon. In Christian times, Aine became the faery queen of Munster.

Greine or Grainne was the crone or wise woman sun goddess and was a patroness of herbalism. She awoke the fertility of the earth in the springtime. Her priestesses lived in round Griannon or sun houses. Like Aine she was downsized as the faery queen of Leinster, Ireland where her sacred hill Cnoc Greine is still a centre for folk and fey magic.

Element: fire and earth

Power they can endow: fertility, harmony with life cycles, herbal healing powers, bringing matters to satisfactory fruition, getting what is rightfully owed to you whether credit for work, recognition, promotion or money owed, inheritances and abundance, and prosperity.

Oberon

King of the faeries and husband of Titania. He is sometimes considered the father of Puck by a mortal woman. Oberon and Titania his Queen represent the ultimate fey divine couple who control the abundance or otherwise of the land. Oberon is regal and powerful, a demigod, but can also be spiteful. However he uses Puck to do his nasty tricks rather than getting his own royal hands dirty.

Element: fire

Powers he can endow: authority, leadership, finding a powerful partner, knowledge, fulfilment of ambitions, lasting success and prosperity, and justice.

Finvarra or Finbarr

King of the faeries of the west of Ireland. A shining being skilled at music and chess and with a fondness for human women, he also gave good harvests and strong horses to those he favoured. But he can use his music to make the unwary dance till they dropped.

Element: fire

Powers he can endow: musical abilities and all forms of performing arts, writing, poetry, and ability in speculation, learning new skills, competitions and competitiveness, and good luck.

Djinn

A fiery elemental spirit who, being made of pure fire, is a glorious flamelike creature with flashing ruby eyes. He is never still and lives in the mystical Emerald Mountains, ruling all fire spirits.

Element: fire

Powers he can endow: inspiration, creativity, small miracles, granting wishes, travel, any swift-moving matters, change, and courage.

Water

Suitable offerings: Anything made of silver or copper; dark and misty mirrors; a small container of milk which faeries love; sea shells; silver bells; oils or flower waters in a small bowl; water in which three pinches of salt have been added and swirled around with a small silver (not steel) knife.

Necksa

Queen of the deep oceans who rides a chariot of pearl. Necksa is pulled by pure-white sea horses dressed in all the colours of the sea and has shells braiding her hair.

Element: water

Powers she can endow: good luck, travel, the answering of wishes, psychic powers, love, fertility, marriage, reconciliation, peace, peaceful endings, and new beginnings.

Cloinda

Of the golden hair, Cloinda is the daughter of Manannan mac Lir who ruled over the sea and who had magical rainbow-healing birds. Cloinda took mortal lovers to faeryland, never to return. Once, however, she loved the young mortal Ciabhan so much she left the otherworld to live with him. But while Ciabhan was hunting, her father sent a faery minstrel to enchant her and carried her back in a magical sleep. She is seen on seashores either as a huge wave or a seabird seeking her lost love. So she is said to help parted mortal lovers reunite.

Element: water

Powers she can endow: reconciliation in love, calling lovers from overseas and from the past, wishes, healing, finding what is lost or has been taken away, lasting love and fidelity, psychic dreams, flowing with the cycles of life, and moving away with a partner from a familiar area.

Manannan mac Lir

Lord of the Otherworld Isles of the Blest as well as the Isle of Man and the Isle of Arran on which the magical cauldron of Annwn was kept. As a faery king, he caused mists to surround the Isle of Man, so keeping away enemies but also luring unwary boats on to the rocks.

Manannan was a guardian of the grail treasures and was a master magician. It was Manannan who decreed that the world of faeries and the world of humans should forever remain separate.

Element: water

Powers he can endow: protection, abundance, successful sea rituals, transformation, and happiness after partings and especially for shape-shifting and for youthfulness.

Ran

Golden-haired sea queen of the Norse world who was married to Aegir the sea god and it is said loved gold above all else. Her nine daughters were the waves and in both the Celtic and Norse worlds the ninth wave was believed to be the transition between the known and unknown worlds. She was very fierce and would drag sailors down to her watery palace.

Element: water

Powers she can endow: prosperity and the granting of wishes; protection of loved ones; reconciliation with those who are far away or who are estranged; and the return of missing people, pets, and items.

A Traditional Wish-Granting Ritual

As this ritual has a number of stages, I will number them and you may like to practice the stages one at a time. If you do not want to carry out the whole ritual, just combine the stages that feel right.

Stage 1: Preparing for the Ritual

Stage 2: Casting a Faery Circle

Stage 3: Assigning the Elements

Stage 4: Greeting the Fey Guardians

Stage 5: Making Offerings

Stage 6: Closing the Ritual

Traditional Faery Sightings in the Modern World

Sparkling, winged faeries are much smaller than faery kings and queens, and belong to the court of the nobler faeries. They may also live together in troops, and these are the faeries most often seen by children. They are also natural guides and messengers to the magical otherworld and can lead you on mystical journeys during meditation or when you are sitting quietly in a beautiful place. You may have already met yours when you did the first meditation in chapter 1 from the faery who gave you your fey name.

Other faeries can appear at any time, often when totally unexpected, and may pop through a dimension door when you are relaxed and receptive. Karen is a businesswoman and healer in her forties living in an urbanised part of the Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England. She described an experience she and her partner Sue shared where a traditional faery appeared to them as they were driving companionably in silence:

Sue and I were driving over Brading Down, enjoying the drive and not talking. I was changing from second to third gear when it seemed there was no speed; everything stopped, like being in another dimension or time warp. I saw out of the corner of my eye a shimmer, a twinkling light. Then, in front of my windscreen floated in so close I thought she would hit the windscreen, a tiny, perfect faery with golden ringlets, two- or three-inches high. She was like gossamer with a tiny pointed nose, shimmering wings, and tiny perfect legs. Her wings were translucent and rainbow-coloured like petrol on the road. She floated there for two or three minutes, but it seemed forever. She smiled at me as she floated down the windscreen. Then she was like a twinkling light again, gone out of sight. I asked Sue if she had seen anything and she said yes. I would not let her say more, but when we got home I made her write everything down and it was exactly the same description.

Urban Faeries

In the modern world, faeries are also frequently reported in urban backyards or homes. As town has replaced countryside in industrialised countries, so the faeries adapted to urban living. Some can be immensely comforting to a lonely child; accounts of adults who are still convinced they saw faeries as a child are particularly fascinating to me as a researcher of childhood psychic experiences.8

Libby, who lives in Liverpool in North West England, and now is in her forties, told me how she played with faeries when she was about five years old in her terraced home in the middle of the city. For one particular faery, Libby made a bed every night in her chest of drawers. Libby says the faeries were very tiny and very pretty and fun. Once at school in the playground some children would not let Libby join in their game. She felt very left out, so she lay down so her face was in the grass at the side of the playground. She could see her faeries in the blades of grass, but only, she said, if you put your face right down.

Urban faeries can be equally malevolent as rural ones, and they can take mischievous delight in bullying terrified children, taking on all kinds of shapes and forms to torment a sensitive child. Nicky, who lives on the Isle of Wight, England, and is now in her late thirties, told me, “As a child I quite frequently saw cartoonlike figures giving off their own light in my bedroom at night. They were not living creatures, but animated. There were sparks and then they appeared. They would fly away and come back. There were little men with big eyes pulling horrible faces.”

Nicky was absolutely terrified and her mother, though she could not see the creatures, helped Nicky to drive them away, though they returned several times.

Traditional Fey Folks Who Have
Become National Institutions

The leprechaun has become a national emblem of Ireland and the leprechaun doll is one of the most popular souvenirs for tourists, said to transfer the good fortune of the actual spirit by a magical process.

The Irish leprechaun is a solitary creature. Leprechauns are described as small, old men dressed in green, sometimes with a leather apron, with buckled shoes and three-sided hats, a symbol of the ancient Irish triple god of whom the leprechaun is another downgrade.

Each leprechaun is said to possess a crock of gold. If a mortal, alerted by the sound of the leprechaun’s hammer (the leprechaun is also a shoemaker), catches the leprechaun and holds him fast, he will promise to reveal the location of the gold.

However, the leprechaun is an expert trickster, and if the human takes his eye off him, even to blink, the leprechaun is gone. Should this fail, the leprechaun has two leather pouches. The first contains a magical silver coin that always returns to the purse no matter how many times it is given in payment. The second contains a gold coin which the leprechaun will give to the mortal to buy his freedom. But this coin will turn into leaves or ashes. So while the greedy human is admiring his newfound wealth, the leprechaun disappears and the crock remains undetected. However, they can be sociable with humans and will play the tin whistle.

Faery Godmothers

The original faery godmothers were the Fate Goddesses, usually three sisters who were weavers or spinners of the web of destiny and controlled the fate not only of mortals but the deities. Once they were downgraded as faerie, they were separated into the good faery godmother, protectress and granter of wishes who endows the hero or heroine with a blueprint of future destiny, and the wicked faerie or witch. The earlier tradition and the faery legends merged quite naturally in many lands. For example, in Scandinavia where there was a huge overlap in the Norns, the Sisters of Fate who guarded the Well of Destiny or Wyrd (“fate”), and the later faery godmother stories of the Norn godmothers endowing infants with gifts at birth. For this reason, I have used the Norns as an example.

The Well of Urd or Wyrd was sited beneath one of the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse and Germanic myth. Yggdrasil, the World Tree, was fed by the Well of Urd in whose waters the three Norns, the Sisters of Fate, gazed each morning to give guidance to the deities. This well contained cosmic knowledge from when the world began and the potential for the future of individuals and deities. The three sisters wove the web, both of the world and the fate of individual beings—mortals and gods. They visited each newborn infant to allot their blueprint, which they etched on wooden rune staves, magical symbols from the World Tree, and cast into the waters.9

The first Norn, Urdhr, the oldest of the sisters whose name means “fate” or “that which has become,” always looked backward and talked of the past; in Viking tradition, the past influenced not only a person’s own present and future but that of his or her descendants, both genetically and in the values transmitted from ancestors. The second Norn, Verdandi, whose name translates as “necessity” or “that which is becoming,” was a young, vibrant woman. She looked straight ahead and talked of present deeds, which also influenced the future. Skuld, the third Norn, whose name is “being” or “that which will become,” tore up the web as the other two created it. She was closely veiled and her head was turned in the opposite direction from Urdhr. She held a scroll which had not been unrolled; it told of what would pass, given the intricate connection of past and present interaction.

The Transformation from Fate Goddess to Faery Godmother

In Norse legend that passed seamlessly into faery stories, the Norns once visited Denmark and went to the house of a nobleman whose wife had just given birth to their first child, a boy whom they named Nornagesta.

The first Norn promised that Nornagesta would grow to be brave and strong, the second that he would become rich and a great poet. But the third Norn was accidentally pushed out of the way by neighbours and angrily declared the child would live only until the taper at the bedside was burned through.

Seeing the mother’s distress, the second Norn blew out the taper and gave it to the weeping woman, saying it should never be lit until her son wearied of life. The other predictions came true for Nornagesta. After his parents’ deaths, Nornagesta kept the taper in the frame of his harp and for three hundred years fought bravely and sang great songs, never getting older. At last, he went to the court of King Olaf Tryggvesson who insisted the poet was baptised. As a sign of his new faith, Nornagesta lit the taper. When it burned through he died.

In Slavic folklore, Rodenica or Rozhenica was once the Lady and Creating Mother of the universe. When Christianity came, Rodenica was downsized to an ethereal white faery who, according to folklore, with her daughter visited newborn children to determine their future destiny.

Faery Wells

The Norns predicted the future of gods and mortals in their magical well. A number of traditions of faery wells do date directly from these faery godmother or fate goddess connections, and the well faeries were consulted not only to give visions of future loves in dreams, but to bring the happy ever after (true faery-godmother style).

The most famous documented faery well is located at the top of a hill at Brayton Barf to the south of Selby in Yorkshire in the UK, but can no longer be accessed by the public. At some indeterminate date, the local abbot rededicated the well to the Virgin Mary but young women continued to visit it for insights into love.

One recorded case is that of a nineteenth-century servant girl in Yorkshire, England who visited this well, called the Faerie’s Pin Well. It was so named after the custom of dropping silver pins in the water as offering to the particular faery godmother or wish granter who lived in the well.

The girl drank from the well, asking the faery of the well to bring her a dream of the man she would marry and that the event would thereafter be hastened. As tradition demanded, she fell asleep by the well whereupon her would-be lover dressed in wedding finery, brought her a wedding ring in her dream and the girl was taken to elf-land for feasting and revelry.

Faery Godmother Well Magick

The following spell will identify a lover if one is around you or the identity of a yet-unknown one. As a bonus, the spell will telepathically call the lover into your life with the help of a faery godmother or two if the lover is slow coming; they might also help to increase commitment if it is right for you.

You will need:

Timings:

The spell:

Cast your gift into the water to the spirit of the water (sometimes regarded as nine female spirits at sacred wells) saying six times:

“In my dreams come to me,
My lover true that I may see.
Lover true, do not tarry,
Reveal the place where we shall marry.”

Close your eyes for ten minutes. If an evening ritual, go straight to sleep, whispering the words nine times, “Come, true love, come to me, over land and over sea, to where I wait in love for thee.”

In your daydream or dream, you may recognise the place where the wedding takes place and maybe the identity of the bride or groom. If you do not dream, be patient as the dream may come on subsequent nights. You might also get clear signs about your future lover in the days ahead. All will be revealed over the coming months.

When you wake from your reverie, hold the wand or stick in your dominant hand, extending your arm straight ahead waist high and move it clockwise, continuously and smoothly, and move your other hand counterclockwise, arm extended at the same height and palm downwards, again rhythmically. Face the well and repeat nine times, “Come, true love, come to me, over land and over sea, to where I wait in love for thee.”

Move your hand and the wand faster and faster and say the words faster until you can go no faster. Then, raise the wand and bring it straight down in a curve behind you and forward again on a final word: Soon. This will release the power into the cosmos.

In the next chapter, we will work with the spirits of the earth.

Chapter 4 Sources

  1. Pope, Alexander. Homer’s Iliad. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/homer/h8ip/book24.html
  2. http://www.arthurian-legend.com/
  3. Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html
  4. Wilde, Jane Francesca. Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland. Barber Press, 2010.
  5. Yeats, William Butler. Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2011.
  6. Harvey, Ralph. The Last Bastion. Zambezi Publishing, 2004.
  7. Eason, Cassandra. Cassandra Eason’s Complete Guide to Natural Magick. Slough: Quantum/Foulsham, Kindle version, 2011.
  8. Eason, Cassandra. Psychic Power of Children. Slough: Quantum/Foulsham, 2005. (Libby, who lives in Liverpool in North West England and now is in her forties, told me how she played with faeries when she was about five years old, in her terraced home in the middle of the city.)
  9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norns

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