So, let's jump right in shall we?
There's a lot of misery percolating in Western Europe and the US right now, driven by some ugly cultural forces. And, to be blunt, some humans who are fighting against totalitarianism, fascism, and Christian dominionism are doing themselves no favours. Let me explain.
Stories have power, sometimes enough power to create. There are beings that have been born from stories, told over and over and believed in. Beings who exist today as individual sentient creatures but started out as a whisper of an idea.
Let's take the example of Christian dominionism. One one hand you have these groups fervently praying and throwing energy into their ideas of their flavour of religion dominating everything. They create a strong sense of us and them, and literally demonize what exists outside their 'us'. They pour energy into their narrative, their story; they create a spirit that is the culmination of that energy. And they feed that spirit with every prayer, every strong emotion, tied to the symbols they use.
In modern parlance you might call this spirit an egregore - a group thought form that takes on a life of its own. An Evangelical egregore with millions of humans feeding and empowering it, intent on their goals of placing themselves as rulers over everyone else, in deed if not in name. A spirit that is full of the hate and ill will which created it and just as zealous in its intentions. Something that can and does affect the human world.
Its has a lot of energy to play around with after all.
And we are seeing the effects of it now, eating through different cultures and bringing with it misery for everyone who isn't aligned with it.
So why is this being discussed here, when its the antithesis of this blog? Because humans have forgotten this power, and those who would fight against this spirit - or who are actively trying to - are unintentionally feeding it more energy by using the same symbols that the egregore uses. Imagery from a popular book and television show that was meant as a warning but acts as a roadmap to this energy. Imagery of the world these humans want to build. The fear and anger and anxiety that these things cause feed that egregore just as effectively as the prayers of those who want to fashion the world that way.
Don't feed your enemy and expect them not to make use of what you give.
This impacts the world of the Unseelie too - once depicted as dangerous, spoken of in whispers, appeased with euphemisms, feared and fearsome, the Folk of the Unseelie court are increasingly reduced to powerless things, or worse beings that need human help, human affection. A popular witchcraft book suggest making friends with the Unseelie and suggests the worst of the Court is just tired of human overreach. As if humans haven't been on the menu for millennia. endless novels paint the Unseelie as misunderstood and easily swayed by just the right human with the right offer of love and acceptance.
Did you ever wonder why the Unseelie are shown as dangerous? Beyond the fact that there's real danger lurking in the lonely, shadowed places? Fear is power. Fear feeds the monsters that lurk just beyond the waking edge of your nightmares. Taking that fear away weakens that which relies on it, erodes their power in the human world. Yes it can also have its advantages by making it easier to lure in the unwary but the damage of those stories changing and becoming gentler and kinder outweighs that advantage.
Humans today are feeding the wrong monsters.
Starve the evangelical egregore with images that weaken it, images of hope and unity. Save the fear and despair for the Unseelie court and stories that make fairy folk fearsome again.
