Inside The Secret World of Fairies

Don’t miss this opportunity to explore the many exquisite ways you can help heal the earth and your own bruised spirit.

Fairies appear in our lives in a multitude of ways. ‘Many traditional cultures have sensed the presence of spirits in nature,’ tells British healer and researcher David Furlong. ‘Japan’s Shinto religion specifically worships the spirits of place, the Kami, which reside in rocks and caves. The beings inhabiting these realms are just as conscious as you and I, though they have a different way of connecting to the physical world.’

In 1985 Tanis Helliwell rented a cottage in Ireland hoping for a retreat as she was experiencing a lot of shifts in her personal life. What Tanis hadn’t reckoned on was finding the cottage already inhabited by a little man and woman and their two children, who briskly informed her they had lived here for hundreds of years. They went on to say they were willing to share the cottage as long as she observed their rules, while warning her of less-than-friendly elementals down the lane.

‘Even as a very small child I had a connection to the weather. I loved being outdoors. I’ve always felt safe and protected there, and need to be in Nature at least part of every day, even if only for ten minutes. This helps me unwind, feel cleansed and balanced. I’ve never felt afraid if I was alone in the woods as I feel a presence there, walking with me, protecting me.

It’s only now we’re beginning to recapture ancient understandings around the wisdom and healing of trees. ‘I was led into the yew mystery almost 25 years ago by a solitary and ancient female yew tree in Scotland that renewed my dying body, and gave me the living template of a spiritual teaching I have named as the Yew Mysteries,’ tells Scottish shaman Michael Dunning.

‘The yew reunites us with the consciousness and sensory language of our origin in Spirit where we can be ‘touched by eternity’ and through that realize unlimited possibilities for transformation and healing.’

When we ache to see fairies we’re aching for the numinous. Aching to move out of our sense of separation. To come home. To feel peaceful and expansive. To be at one with all living things. So how to make a conscious connection with fairies, or have you made it already without even realising it? Have you inadvertently tiptoed around the fringes of the healing world of fairies?

As we delve deeper into the world of fairies, we come to appreciate what fairies and their over-lighting devas have always known – how astonishingly intricate our world is, that in essence we’re living in a sea or miracles. Some time ago I met druid Ivan McBeth, who until he passed away last month, devoted his time to building standing stones, some of which are up to twenty tonnes in weight. Ivan describes standing stones as ancient technology, designed to create a profoundly sacred space.

As the fairy kingdom is a realm of all possibilities, what can we learn from this world of enchantments? How do our encounters with fairies help us experience life in new ways? What do these encounters teach us about time and space? Should you or I be blessed to meet a fairy, why would we not share this moment with others of like mind, with our precious children? Why wouldn’t we infuse their lives with delight? Who would have thought that an Uncle relating his fairy experiences would awaken a world of undreamt-of possibilities in his great-neice, as Canadian deb svanefelt tells.

Wherever mushrooms are, fairies aren’t far away, playing and dancing and weaving their own special kind of magic. But why are our tiny caretakers of creation drawn to work with mushrooms? What are they working with here?

Mushrooms are the fruits of mycelium an astonishing mass of cells, which are essential to the health and healing of the planet. It’s no surprise that scientists now suggest mushrooms hold powerful answers to some of humankind’s most acute environmental problems.

Iceland’s Hellisgerði Park, known to locals as elf city, has many different fairy beings.
 Centuries old lore tells of whole clans of fairy beings residing in the astonishing lava rocks in the middle of the town of Hafnarfjördur. Visible to those with second sight, the elves are respected by many Icelanders, who have witnessed strange happenings when the balance with Nature has been disturbed by road works and other projects.

Few are able to capture the exquisite intricacy of life, that enchanted realm of existence so familiar to fairies, as Chief Seathl, when he said: ‘Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished.