f a e   n a t u r e

by Arethinn
post to KinFrontiers, January 2006

First let me throw out a disclaimer that although I have been walking this path for a number of years, I don't have the clairvoyant or other energy-sense skill necessary to really say anything with anywhere near as much certainty as I could, say, tell you about my car's "automobile nature". Also I am not an authoritative elder on this subject. So, salt shaker handy.

> If you had to tell a complete newbie what it means to you to have
> a "fae nature", what would you tell them?

To me this means being a creature of magic (or "majik", if I am feeling like being all grand and pompous, and wanting to specify this kind of endless-chaos-wonder thing vs. regular manipulation of energies). I do not mean that we are created by the dreams of humans as in the Changeling game, but I do feel that to be without glamour is to die, in some way. Faeries have a kind of dynamic nature that lends itself to "making beautiful things from magic" sort of activity and thus there is often a need to create something (a characteristic which, granted, is shared with a lot of otherkin), although this is not necessarily accompanied by skill (much to my own chagrin).

There is commonly, but definitely not always, a strong connection to nature and the Green World. In fact, increasingly there seems to be a new breed of what can be called "city fae" popping up, as weeds between the cracks as it were. IMO this is a survival mutation of the energy into a new form - it refuses to be kept down, it is a part of Earth's energetic matrix, so Faery adapts from wildlands to city, bringing that element of Wild *into* overgrown city-places. (The Wild thread seems to be shared by a number of therians, but there it would not really be accompanied by the magic/glamour thread.)

"Faery" has the unusual distiction among kin-types of being not only a type of critter, but also a place, and a big one at that with lots of sub-realms. (Although there are a lot of elven lands there is no place called "Elven", for example.) Thus a number of things which are not specifically *faeries* can nevertheless sometimes be said to be "Faery" (to confuse things further, including elves!).

Faery, like anything else has its own peculiar, characteristic resonance or set of resonances, but to describe it in colours, sounds etc. is chancy at best as you might not have the same internal symbol set (just as people use different colours to symbolize the same things in candle magic - A may think health is red, B may think it is green). But to me Faery energy "looks" dominantly green with multicoloured iridescence (or "orbiting" threads of white/rainbow) and some gold, "feels" warm and neither particularly moist nor dry, "sounds" like harp/hammered dulcimer/chimes kind of sound. Of course an individual has their own personal energy which confuses the issue but if they are "faery" they would have to have "the faery thread", however that's perceived, inside them somewhere.

Faery energy tends to have a hard time being static for any length of time. It can be held in place by a suitably strong intent (there are sidhe lands held in certain "forms" out of the general blobubble of Faery), but otherwise tends to just flux in ways that may or may not seem random. "Faery essence" and "glamour", though IMO inextricably intertwined, are not the same thing, although I can't help you with information for telling them apart as I can't reliably do that myself.

There is a considerable amount of confusion between faeries and sidhe and sometimes faeries and elves (partly because some people using "elf" also use "sidhe"; also partly because there is general confusion between sidhe, elves, and Tuatha de Danann); somewhat less between faeries and angels (although I do think the idea of primal faery beings as "fallen angels", that is, originally celestial beings who became embodied in the Earth, holds some water) and faeries and demons.

Curiously most folks claiming to be fae are pretty "generic", rarely using speific folklorical terms for their type. I have run across some pookas, which are tricky shapeshifting types (generally to horses, IIRC) from Irish legend, and one gwragedd annwn, which is a Welsh lake or water fairy, but most of us (myself included) seem to at least visually resemble a kind of mishmash of New Age and pop-culture conceptions, with certain amounts of folklore thrown in here or there, especially for people not specifically calling themselves "sidhe".

Not all fae are "shining ones" but IME sidhe pretty much universally are.

> Have you become any more or less fae over the course of your life?

Hrm. A little hard to evaluate. I feel I am "less fae" at the moment than at my peak which was a number of years ago, but I hope to recapture that now that moving out into my own space once again is in my not-too-distant future. I do not have enough memory of my internal concept of self as a child to really compare my adult concept to it. I continually work towards being "more fae" so I hope I am achieving that, but I tend to judge myself too harshly in this regard and am probably not the best person to ask.

> What brought about these changes?

Personal work. Contact with others of at least vaguely similar energies.

> So contact with other people can change one's energetic nature?

Well, I don't mean like a contagious disease caught from a doorknob. (Don't go near her, she's got ELF DISEASE!) I mean that I have purposely immersed myself in this way as often as possible with the intent of "attuning" myself better. Although I would not say the general case is categorically impossible.

 

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