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.
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| La Belle Dame sans Merci by Frank Cadogan Cowper |
