Nature Hates You and So Does The Unseelie Court

 I know its been a while since I posted last, your pardon for that its been quite the eventful year.
Also yes this headline is entirely hyperbole - nature doesn't hate you it just doesn't care absolutely at all that you exist. 

Which segues into what we can talk about today. Something that is becoming more and more common, it would seem, is the idea that all fairies are kind and gentle and wish humans only well. We've talked about that before, its true, but the iterations that are running around recently seem to hinge on the idea that fairies are all nature spirits (not true) and that because of that they must all be friendly and helpful. 

Dear reader, there is such a thing as taking romanticization too far and we have certainly reached that point here. Not only the romanticization of fairies but also of the natural world. 

To argue that fairies are all benevolent because they are connected to nature which is in turn also benevolent - the ever loving arms of some personified earth - is frankly untrue. The natural world was very rightly called "red in tooth and claw"  by Lord Tennyson because it is. It is a place where every life feeds on other life and each day is a game of survival. If you are too slow, too old, too unlucky then you are food for something whether that's a predator or the earth itself. Nature doesn't care about any single life's survival. Nature isn't kind or gentle or caring. Nature is a vicious game.

To argue that fairies are benevolent because they care for the green world is not any better. Plants are not just some pretty colours and decoration. Many plants will also kill you with a quickness if you make even a small mistake with them, because they are just as eager to survive as any other living thing. They have developed weapons to fight for their own survival, including poisons and thorns. If you think fairies must be wonderfully good because your garden flowers are so very pretty then you need to remember that garden flowers are but a tiny minority in the plant world. And maybe look up how agonizing it is to die from hemlock poisoning. Here, I'll help with this link.

The idea that nature is kind or gentle is one fashioned by people who have very little experience with nature outside limited, controlled situations. It is a romantic view of an idealized reality that  doesn't actually exist.  The forest isn't your friend - if you want to survive in it for more than a few hours or days you better be prepared to fight for yourself.  Predators will try to kill you. Weather will try to kill you. Even bacteria in unfiltered water will try to kill you. Its an illusion that humans are masters of the natural world, an illusion created by carefully controlled circumstances. And trust me that illusion humans have of control is easily disproven by a hurricane, tornado, or the obvious signs of global warming, never mind getting caught out by an apex predator. 

It isn't a lie to compare the fairies to the natural world - in fact its a deep truth. But its a truth that is so twisted and misunderstood that it may as well be a lie now. Fairies are exactly like the natural world - merciless, and cruel, and uncaring about your individual survival. 
Well, the Unseelie are at any rate.

I'm no fan of the Victorians (who is really?) because they were the start of such horrid modern ideas about fairies but even they knew that fairies could be dangerous if only on the reduced scale permitted them - as shown by art depicting fairies hunting or killing small animals and insects. Have we actually arrived at a point where the Victorian fairy artists with their twee winged figures are closer to the truth than people who claim to believe in fairies as real? Now that is tragic. 

Fairy Hordes Attacking a Bat by John Fitzgerald (1819 – 1906)

The Seelie court has done great public relations work to convince people that fairies are wonderful and majestic and friendly. We see their hands in so much of what's out there now. 
But remember dear readers, there's more to Fairyland than just the lot that think humans are good. 
There's the Unseelie as well, and we can confirm that the kindest opinion there is fairly aligned with the actual natural world.

Unseelie - Not Just Cheeky Troublemakers

 I know I haven't posted much in the last several months, please forgive me its been quite busy for your friendly local unseelie messenger. I'm popping around today though to address something I am seeing more and more of, which is this idea that the Unseelie are just naughty or antisocial beings who may be mischievous but aren't really dangerous. I've seen it in books claiming that the unseelie just need a friend or a hug to be brought round to the side of goodness and light and from people claiming to speak to unseelie fairies who act as their personal unpaid therapist spirit guides. 

Seriously, people? If I see one more human claiming to channel an unseelie guide who is just the sweetest, sassiest ball of chaos or a dark brooding emo bro with a heart of gold I will scream. Not a small scream or a muffled scream but a full bodied, window cracking, scare-the-birds-from-the-trees scream. 

Whatever you all are channeling it isn't unseelie. Which is fine. Great even. Channel whatever you want to talk to and revel in their cheerful inspiring messages - just stop calling what you are talking to Unseelie. Unseelie isn't whatever you personally feel like it should be and it isn't whatever your favourite young adult novel says it is. Unseelie is a Scots word and it means, among other things: ungodly, evil doing, unfortunate, and dangerous. That is the core of the term and the core of the beings it describes. 

I see that makes many people uncomfortable. 
Too bad. 

The unseelie are what they are, and that is generally malicious and opposed to humanity. Of course there are exceptions - most kelpies trick, kill, and eat humans but the odd one every now and then does fall in love with a human. The exception doesn't make the rule though and the bulk of beings within the unseelie ranks are more likely to have humans on the menu than anything else. There are countless stories over centuries of these beings and the harm they can and do cause - the very reason they were labelled 'unseelie' is precisely because of the harm they cause humans. Its a descriptive term, and an apt one. 

And all that lip flapping about the bad rep the unseelie have just being Christian propaganda or anti-fae prejudice? That's nonsense of course. There are always spirits that help humans and spirits who harm them, spirits who guide and spirits who consume. The seelie and the unseelie. Its essential to have both, to maintain balance. This is true for the Good Folk as much as it is for any spirits in any culture around the world, and any culture you look at will have both the so-called good spirits and the so-called bad spirits. Nature abhors imbalance and there is nothing more imbalanced than an ecosystem without predators. Predators are necessary and healthy for any population, even humans. Maybe especially humans and maybe especially spiritually and definitely especially at a time like now where anthropocentricism is so rampant. 

Kelpies drown and eat humans
Hags drown and eat children
Will'o'the'wisps lead travellers astray, sometimes to their deaths
Baobhan Sìthe drain men of blood and rip their hearts out
Keats' La Bell Dame sans Merci drains the life from men the way Yeats' Ganconagh does for women. 
This is their nature. This is how they survive and what they do, like wolves taking down deer. 

Not naughty. Not cheeky. Not mischievous.
Dangerous. Malevolent. 

Respect that, because they deserve respect. They don't deserve to be infantilized and turned into some sort of  discount Edge Lord guide who dresses in vegan leather and dispenses wisdom about living your genuine life. 

La Belle Dame sans Merci by Frank Cadogan Cowper