Abstract
This chapter examines the influence of literary and folkloric notions of fairies, elves, and related spiritual beings on the folklore of modern Pagan religions. It presents the argument that although modern Pagan conceptions of these beings are deeply rooted in both literature and folklore, the fairies have undergone a significant shift in perception in modern Paganisms, becoming friendlier, less dangerous, and altogether tamer. While this is in part due to their transformation in Victorian children’s literature and twentieth-century animated films, it is also a consequence of the unique Pagan ethos that identifies with alien others. The transformation of the fae from dangerous spirits to companions, protectors, and allies allows many Pagans to cultivate relationships with them through a variety of practices, some traditional, others innovative. Nonetheless, it argues, the phenomenological nature of fairy experiences keeps the fae from becoming too tame: they remain in a liminal category.
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Notes
- 1.
Ronald Hutton, “The Making of Early Modern British Fairy Tradition,” The Historical Journal 57 (2014): 161–178.
- 2.
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- 3.
Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: A History of the Druids (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
- 4.
Ronald Hutton, “Afterword,” in Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits: ‘Small Gods’ at the Margins of Christendom, ed. Michael Ostling (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 352.
- 5.
See Richard Dorson, The British Folklorists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) and Carole G. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 117–147.
- 6.
Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973 [1954]), 56–57.
- 7.
Ibid., 59.
- 8.
For a full discussion of witches and fairies in British witch trials, see Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 231–242.
- 9.
Gardner, Witchcraft Today, 62.
- 10.
Victor Anderson and Cora Anderson, The Heart of the Initiate (Portland, OR: Acorn Guild Press, 2012).
- 11.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 4.
- 12.
Morgan Daimler, Pagan Portals: Fairy Witchcraft (Moon Books, 2014; electronic resource) and Fairycraft: Following the Path of Fairy Witchcraft (Moon Books, 2016; electronic resource); John Matthews, The Sidhe: Wisdom from the Celtic Otherworld (Traverse City, MI: Lorian Press; electronic resource); Orion Foxwood, The Faery Teachings (Arcata, CA: R. J. Stewart Books, 2007); R. J. Stewart, The Well of Light: From Faery Healing to Earth Healing (Arcata, CA: R. J. Stewart Books, 2007); R. J. Stewart, The Living World of Faery (Toxaway, NC: Mercury Publishing, 1999).
- 13.
Sabina Magliocco, “‘Reconnecting to Everything’: Fairies in Contemporary Paganism,” in Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits: ‘Small Gods’ at the Margins of Christendom, ed. Michael Ostling (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 239.
- 14.
See Dennis Gaffin’s similar findings based on his research in Ireland in Running with the Fairies (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 105–111; his interlocutors argued that there are no bad fairies and that any fear or unease felt as a result of contact with fairies is due to human projection of negative thoughts and emotions.
- 15.
See Conrad Arensberg, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1988; originally published 1937) and Barbara Rieti, Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland (St. Johns, NL: ISER, 1991).
- 16.
Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (New York: Dover, 1965; [1882–98]), #37C.
- 17.
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965 [1911]); Walt Disney, “Peter Pan” (RKO Radio Pictures, 1953); Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio (Firenze: Felice Paggi, 1883); Walt Disney, “Pinocchio” (Walt Disney Pictures, 1940); Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon, 1944 [1812]); Walt Disney, “Cinderella” (RKO Radio Pictures, 1950); Walt Disney, “Sleeping Beauty” (Buena Vista Distribution, 1959).
- 18.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 5; Diane Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 224.
- 19.
Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden, 222.
- 20.
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1958 [1871]), 8–19, 80–86, 444–447.
- 21.
Dorson, British Folklorists; Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 5.
- 22.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 186.
- 23.
Ibid., 188.
- 24.
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (1902), 160, in Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 188.
- 25.
Jane Laing, Cicely Mary Barker and Her Art (London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1995), 11.
- 26.
For a study of children’s experiences with fairies, see Simon Young, “Children Who See Fairies,” Journal for the Study of Religious Experience 4 (2018): 81–98.
- 27.
Matthews, The Sidhe.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Foxwood, Faery Teachings, 37.
- 30.
Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr, 1923).
- 31.
Hutton, “Making of Early Modern British Fairy Tradition.”
- 32.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 202.
- 33.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 188–189.
- 34.
William Besant and James Rice, “Titania’s Farewell,” in The Case of Mr Lucraft and Other Tales (London: Sampson & Low, 1876), 115, quoted in Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 201.
- 35.
Andrew Lang and May Kendall, “That Very Mab” (London: Longmans Green, 1885), quoted in Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 201.
- 36.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 207.
- 37.
Marshall Dowding, The Dark Star (London: Museum Press, 1951), 36–37, in Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 207.
- 38.
Paul Hawken, The Magic of Findhorn (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
- 39.
Dora van Gelder, The Real World of Fairies (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977), 118.
- 40.
Van Gelder, Real World of Fairies, 112–117.
- 41.
Ibid., 117.
- 42.
See Magliocco, “Reconnecting to Everything.”
- 43.
Michael Ostling, “Introduction: Where’ve All the Good People Gone?” in Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits: ‘Small Gods’ at the Margins of Christendom, ed. Michael Ostling (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 11–15; Rieti, Strange Terrain, 51, 181.
- 44.
Gaffin, Running with the Fairies; Simon Young’s “Fairy Census 2014–2017” is discussed in various chapters of Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies 500 AD to the Present, ed. Simon Young and Ceri Houlbrook (London: Gibson Square Books, Ltd., 2018).
- 45.
David Hufford, “Beings Without Bodies: An Experience-Centered Theory of Belief in Spirits,” in Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural, ed. Barbara Walker (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1995), 11–45.
- 46.
See Thomas E. Bullard, “UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Narrative Returns in Technological Guise,” Journal of American Folklore 102 (1989): xx–xx; Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 211; Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden, 317–322.
- 47.
Holly Black and Tony di Terlizzi, The Spiderwick Chronicles (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003–2009); The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount Pictures, 2008).
- 48.
William Joyce, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996); Chris Wedge, Epic (Blue Sky Studios, 2013).
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Magliocco, S. (2019). The Taming of the Fae: Literary and Folkloric Fairies in Modern Paganisms. In: Feraro, S., Doyle White, E. (eds) Magic and Witchery in the Modern West. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15549-0_6
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