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

Consent - Not Just For Humans

 Let's talk about consent. Its quite a big deal for humans, as it should be. You don't force your will on another unless they've agreed to it, its an emergency, or I suppose if we are discussing children who need medicine. Consent matters and its usually agreed that to force a person to do something without consent is a bad thing. 

And yet. 
And yet so much of the magic that's out there to do with the Fair Folk completely ignores the idea of consent. Books on witchcraft that teach a human how to 'make' their own fairy, how to charge a fairy with a task like guarding a home, or a pet. Spells to summon fairies, to force them against their own will to appear. To take the magician as a lover. Expected from the old grimoire material to be honest because that was written at a time when consent among humans wasn't a thing either and many humans were forced against their will too. But today, in a world that speaks of bodily autonomy and sovereignty of will, to see witches and magicians treating fairies as if they had no independence and no ability to choose for themselves...is disappointing. You would be a witch who engages with the Good Folk yet you approach the Other as something to be ordered and forced with sorcerous names and bindings. 

Now I admit that the fairy concept of consent is a bit different from the human one. Once consent is given it can't be withdrawn which is unlike human consent which changes and can be withdrawn. And consent in Fairy isn't always freely given because all's fair in magic and mayhem. But still consent is a necessary thing, a prerequisite to what follows. Even the each uisce waits until the human consents to ride it before rushing off and devouring them after all. 

Are fairies not beings with their own will and agency? Do fairies not deserve to be treated as well as one would treat a fellow human? Perhaps it is time for humans that seek the Good Folk out to reflect on this, and to consider whether a being forced against its will into a relationship can ever be any kind of ally or friend to the one forcing them.
Obviously the answer is no, and the Fair Folk have very long memories indeed and a great deal of time to wait and plan. 
Brush up on some selkie folklore if you don't believe me that fairy/human relationships born from lack of consent never end well, and you will see that as soon as the one being forced is freed she flees, not even love of her own half-human children can hold her. Perhaps think of how you would feel if the positions were reversed. 

So much focus on the superiority of humans out there, so many who would treat fairies as pets or clever animals rather than beings equal to or superior to humans. If your worldview is predicated on the Fair Folk as twee little sprites, even then, do they not deserve to have their will respected? Why are they treated like toys, or inferior things that must be protected or controlled? And if you do believe in the more powerful, dangerous fairies then why would you believe humans are better than they are, or more powerful?

Where does fairy consent fit in to your witchcraft? These are important questions.

If you seek fairy amity, seek it with an understanding that the Othercrowd are independent, sentient beings who owe humans nothing. Seek those that would willingly aid you and respect those that want no part of you or your magic. 

* Obviously if something is trying to kill you or eat you do what you must to defend yourself, just as you would against another human. Consent ends were mortal harm or threat thereof begins. 

Rackham's 'Goblin Market'
Even the goblins couldn't work their wasting magic unless the girl consented to eat the fruit

Fairy Rings and Wishful Things

 The current new hobby here on the Unseelie Side is to get a drink and a bag of crisps and watch humans fruitlessly hurling themselves into fairy rings, walking away disappointed when nothing happens. 

Did you really think it worked that way? That you could just find some hapless mycelium, jump, and poof! you're in Fairy?
Mmmmmm. We think not. 
As with all things Fairy its both more complicated and less straightforward than that. 

It is true, of course, that fairy rings have a long association with the fae folk through the history of several cultures. Step into a fairy ring and be caught up in the dancing for a night, only to walk away in the morning and find that a hundred years have passed. Sit outside and watch fairies dancing in a fairy ring and it might cost you a few years too. What can I say? Even the so-called good fairies guard their privacy. Offend the dancers in a ring and you might find yourself forced to dance to exhaustion or death. So many fun possibilities really. But you may perhaps have noticed that in every case the key is that the circle is in use when you stumble into it. An empty fairy ring is a sign of fairy activity but not necessarily of current fairy presence. Which means 99% of the time when you jump in, its to an empty abandoned space. 
Luckily for you.

What really amuses the fairies who have taken up this pass time, this new hobby, though is the sheer hubris of it. Humans believing that all they have to do is find a mushroom ring and leap in and that for some unknown, unknowable, reason the fairies would have to take the human back to Fairy, to a life that is better than the one they have now. As if all the power and control was with the human.
Hahahahahaha.
No.
The power is and always was with the fair folk, to choose who is taken for sundry uses and who is ignored.
The best outcome in many stories is being pulled out of your mortal life for a night of fun only to wake in the morning to find that everyone you knew and loved has died in the hundred years you've been gone. then crumbling to dust and ash after a few minutes to contemplate how truly alone you are. The worst case, as mentioned, is dancing yourself to death. Although perhaps best and worst here are a matter of perspective.
You know the real irony of this? If what you want most is to be taken away to Fairy than the cruelest thing that can be done is leave you standing cold on mortal ground. 

Oh yes, we've heard the excuses and explanations, the humans loudly declaring life as a chamber pot scrubber in Fairy is better than what they have now, while secretly believing they'd wed a Queen or King or Elfin Knight. So many humans saying they don't care about terrible fates because their world is already terrible - as if being hunted through a tangled nightmare wood, your shape twisted to a deer, by hunters without mercy or pity who will kill you, eat you, and raise you up the next day to do it all over again, forever, is worse than angst and ennui and a pervasive sense of impending Doom. 
Of course the human world in many places is terrible and bleak and dangerous right now. But - gentle suggestion - there are much worse things than living in a world that needs major improvements. Even one confronting generational racism, political corruption, and a plague. 

If you find your world so unbearable then perhaps study some history and current events in other parts of the human world and see what unbearable can be.  See what 'worse' in a human context can be. Syria for example. Then do what you can to change things where you are. Make it better instead of wishing for rescue from beings that do not mean you well anyway. Not a one-size-fits all solution but fit in whatever bits you can apply to yourself. Vote. Sign petitions. Speak out against injustices (if you can safely). Don't tolerate hate. Do tolerate humans who are different. Teach love. Buy local, support local businesses. Be kind. Reduce your impact on earth's environment in Every. Single. Little. way you can. Make art. Make beauty - and try to see beauty wherever you can find it. Fight for the world you want to live in by doing whatever wholesome thing you can to create it. 
Also, we've heard self-care is nice. 

We'd like to say we stole this image off the wilds of the internet, because it seems more on brand, but it was made by a friend of a friend who released it into the public domain. 

Interesting Times and Safety

I see a lot of talk right now and concern about increases in the activity of the more dangerous beings, the night mares, the boggles, the goblins, the nameless terrors, the battlefield fey. The Unseelie, to be blunt. Out and about and causing human misery, or amplifying it, as they do. Because, all urban fantasy plotlines aside, that is what they do; its their nature.

So let's talk about that.

On the one hand the human world is consumed by a pandemic right now, a truly global plague, and there is political unrest and chaos in some places. Communities are torn by uncertainty, fear, and violence. It is inevitable that these circumstances will cause or increase human stress and trauma and that those things will in turn potentially cause psychological effects. Nightmares, anxiety attacks, depression - all perfectly normal when your community is under such stress.

On the other hand this, my dear readers, is the bread and butter of the malicious fairies who create, amplify, and feed on such things. The purely rational psychological explanations can be argued but for the spiritually or folklore inclined there is also the other layer, the dangerous fairy beings who are drawn to these energies and these times like moths to a bright light. It doesn't have to be one or the other it can most definitely be both and it is worth considering the unseelie side of this coin. This increase in activity is happening and is being observed in many places, whether an individual likes the idea or not.

Contrary to the more 'white light' line of thought making friends with these beings or trying to empathize with their situation will not help you. These are not beings who just need a hug and a cookie to sooth them into standing down. No. You can't feed a cat a vegan diet and expect it to survive and you can't 'friendship' a night mare into feeding off of anything except terror. All things are true to their own nature and the nature of these beings is to feed on and encourage human suffering and pain - and death. In this situation you need to understand what and who you are dealing with and why they are the way they are. And accept that some beings in wider reality are hostile to humans by nature or adapted to feeding on painful emotions or death.

The malicious beings have always existed, and exist across the world in many forms, and some are indeed antithetical to human health by nature. They are always around, of course, and are not limited to these particularly interesting times but like sharks responding to chum in the water they appear more frequently and in greater numbers when there is more for them to feed on. We may also suggest that there is a pattern of these malicious beings showing up a few years before events start to shift, perhaps anticipating the coming trauma or perhaps perceiving slight energy shifts that humans are blind to. Perhaps even helping the changes along.

So then what to do? You can't make friends with them, and you can't make them go away by ignoring them. We might encourage apathy but then again we aren't on your side, are we? We do strongly encourage bribery and paying off these beings to leave you in peace, but that is a commitment that can't be turned away from once you agree to it. Outside that your options ultimately are simple: defend yourself or fight back. If you want to defend yourself then look into traditional protections against fairies and dangerous spirits - just be aware that different kinds of beings require different defenses. Know your enemy. If you want to fight back you need to know what traditionally has worked to drive out or banish these beings, and again that varies. It also means a fight which will not be easily won, especially now.

In these interesting times the dangerous beings are more numerous and more free ranging. Before you have a problem it may be best to start beefing up your wards and protections - cleanse regularly, shield yourself, ward your space, and make sure you don't get lazy with any of it. This is one problem that's much easier to deal with by preventing it than by removing it.

Let's Talk About Fairies and Sex

If you've read the handful of previous blogs here you might think that this one is going to be a rant about humans sexualizing fairies and turning them into nothing but male-gaze oriented nonsense.
You may be surprised.
Yes, humans have turned fairies into the stuff of pin-up posters and softcore porn, sometimes in deeply offensive ways, and modern fiction has reduced the fey folk, too often, into love interests that could play the role of Prince Charming. But the hard truth, which many people reading this may not like, is that many fairies (not all) have always been deeply sexual beings and it was only the last hundred or so years that infantilized and desexualized them.
Prior to the Victorians and their festive re-writing of fairy folklore into sanitized children's stories fairies were understood to be highly sexual beings that might seduce - and often ultimately kill or kidnap - the unwary. Chaucer mentions the old belief of elves lurking in wilder places waiting for women to father children on, and in Irish belief there is a spirit called the Gean Canach that is found in the wilder places and which seduces lone women and steals their life force. The Anglo-Saxon aelfe - all originally male by the way - were fond of trysting with human women and were equated to incubi. In Iceland there were people historically who had 'alf' as part of their name to reflect what was believed to be partially fairy parentage. The Leannán sidhe found in several different Celtic language speaking countries would take human lovers, sometimes to the humans' ultimate doom. Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a poem about a fairy woman who seduces and ultimately passively destroys human men. King Arthur's knight Lanval is the human lover of a fairy lady, eventually repudiated by her for breaking a taboo before she returns to save him and bring him with her to Fairy. And of course stories of humans stolen away into Fairyland to provide children for the fairy folk abound. There are tales - even songs - about a kelpie taking a human wife and producing a child with her - usually until she finds out his true nature and flees.
If we are going with the Scottish courts then we could say that a seelie fairy might take a human lover for the entertainment while an unseelie one wouldn't involve as much sentiment.
The older view of fairies definitely didn't see them as idealized partners or even as beings generally capable of love as humans understand it, but rather as beings existing outside the human social norms that could and would use sex as both a weapon and a means to an end. In some rare cases love may have been involved - certainly some of the kelpie tales hint at such - but generally sex is more of a game, entertainment, or even a way to feed off a partners' life force. So while its been distorted in modern understandings the idea of fairies as sexual beings and as sex partners is as old as the stories of fairies themselves.

Just remember that previous post about agency and power. And give some thought to who is truly in control in these situations. Because unless you are a ceremonial magician conjuring a fairy lover through a complex ritual and binding them to your will, the odds are the one in control isn't you.

Be Careful what You Wish For...

Speaking of disempowerment and lack of agency...so many humans out there joking about jumping into fairy rings or eating fairy food or wandering the woods waiting to be taken away. As if Fairy was a vacation park and the Good Folk existed purely for human enjoyment.
Oh no, I think not.
This is how much of the older wisdom has been forgotten by some. The idea that you should not even speak the word "fairy" lest the invisible folk passing by hear you and take offense has been replaced by the twee belief that fairies are nothing but sweet little things, harmless, fun, gentle and the word should be repeated to invoke their blessings. The idea that you should never go alone at night and should always carry iron to protect yourself from being taken has been replaced in the minds of some by the notion that being taken would be a good thing.
Why?
Oh I think its clear why. Because to some people now the fey have truly been neutered and domesticated, reduced to nothing more than a some glitter and a pleasant dream. These are people who joke that they don't fear being taken because its the fairies who would regret the situation and send the human back or be stuck catering to their selfish whims.
These people need to read some folklore or talk to people in cultures that still hold fairies in respect and fear. Listen to stories of humans forced to dance until they die of exhaustion because they stepped into a fairy ring that was in use. Listen to stories of humans blinded for seeing the Fair Folk when they did not wish to be seen. Listen to stories of humans driven mad after getting a taste of Fairy and being cast out, back into mortal earth. Remember that when fairies take humans into their world there is always a reason for it and the reason always favours the Good Neighbours not the humans: breeding stock, servants, entertainment, food. Yes there are examples of brief takings that do no harm to the human - musicians and midwives are borrowed briefly and returned safely, provided they follow the rules. But those are people of skill whose skill is needed or wanted for a time. Humans without these skills have nothing to offer but their bodies, and those will be used as the fairies desire to serve their needs.
The Good Folk do not exist to please humans and make human lives pleasurable - even the pleasure that is to be found among the fairy throng has a price to it and a pain. Those who find fairy lovers often die for longing of them, or go mad if their fairy lover abandons them. Those who experience Fairy never stop wanting more of it until it consumes them.
And humans who are rude to fairies pay a steep price for their hubris.
Fairies are utterly inhuman, foreign beings who operate on a very different moral and social system. Even those who know how to deal with them, who are canny in their ways, sometimes bear scars from missteps.

Hurl yourself into a fairy ring and almost certainly nothing will happen because you lack the knowledge to see if it is in use or old and abandoned. The fairies take only what they want anyway. But perhaps consider first who has the real power in the situation, and if you are not utterly foolish realize it isn't you. Realize there are worse fates than death.


As the saying goes - be careful what you wish for; you just may get it.

Agency and Power

Food for thought today.

If you believe that the Fair Folk exist, by whatever name and through whatever cultural lens, it is a good idea to stop and sit and really think about how much agency - how much of a capacity for independent action and power - you believe they have.

Fairies as shown in a lot of mainstream media do not have much agency. They are often either shown only responding to human actions or requiring humans to act for them. These fairies are effectively impotent and rely on humans to do what they cannot, which in some stories is nearly everything. We see this in tales of environmentally concerned fairies who are powerless to save their endangered homes but instead must get some human champion to fight for them. We see this in stories of fairies who are dependant on human kindness to save them from destruction. Even the infamous Tinkerbell could not act against Wendy directly in the Disney movie but needed to manipulate others into acting for her. This deeply ingrained idea that fairies are reliant on humans often seems to shape how humans in modern western culture are forming their understandings of fairies, to the great detriment of the fairies involved.
How mortifying to go from a nearly divine being given propitiatory offerings to ensure a good harvest to an insignificant pretty thing that needs humans to accomplish any simple task!

Magical practitioners are not exempt from this, and perhaps more than others should stop and reflect on their own assumptions. Sloppy or nonexistent training have led to those who should know better suggesting that fairies are simply thought forms created by humans, and therefore at the whim of humans. A pox on that occult book which suggests a witch may create a fairy and task it to their bidding; what you create is certainly not a fairy.
Witches today need to reflect on who and what fairies are and how much independence the witch believes they have. I see so much entitlement out there based in assumptions that fairies exist to serve humans and that all any witch needs do is ask for a thing and some fairy will rush to do it. As if fairies were the metaphysical equivalent of Siri or Alexa, existing to aid humans however they need it.
How insulting a thought for beings that were once so feared and respected that humans considered the places of the Shining Ones sacred!

It is true that there is a history of fairies being commanded through ceremonial magic, but that is based on an understanding that they do have power and agency and must therefore be properly compelled or bound to do what the mage wishes.
It is true that fairies have a long history with witches, but that is based on a very different power dynamic in which the fairy has power over the witch, or the witch owes fealty to a fairy Queen.
If humans had such firm power over the Good Folk and if fairies were indeed so powerless there would not, I don't think, be so very many stories about humans dying at the hands of the fairies or being stolen away or blinded or driven mad.

A millennia of human belief tells you that fairies are powerful beings who can bring madness, illness, death...or luck, health, and fortune. But these gifts and curses are born of the fairies' agency and their will not of human compulsion. Offend the Good Folk and they may punish you very harshly for it. Please them, even unwittingly, and they may reward you greatly for it. And as much as humans often dislike hearing this, sometimes the consequences that befall them from the Otherfolk have nothing at all to do with what the human has or hasn't done and is simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Slua Sí is random in its maliciousness as often as not, and offerings to the People of Peace do not guarantee a good harvest only reduce the chances of a bad one. Look to cultures that still have this respect and still understand who and what the fairies are and you will begin to understand.

There has been a long and deep campaign to reduce and disempower the fey folk. Some of the names that we see fairies being called - wee ones, little folk - reinforce this idea. Even the way that modern urban fantasy depicts the Unseelie court shows this, with dangerous beings who in folklore would be the death of a rude human instead being shown as misunderstood creatures seeking love and understanding; poor Unseelie prince just needs the right human to love him and he'll change, as if that has ever worked for a human relationship. It is these powerless fairies that some humans think of now and imagine interacting with, and that truly is a shame.

Humans like to believe they control their world and are the apex of all things. The modern western world raises the individual above all others and tells them that everything should revolve around them, and so we see anthropocentrism melded with the idea that any non-human being should and does exist not only for humanity but for the individual's benefit. Those that deal with the Shining Ones should reflect on this idea and how it can intersect with and warp their dealings with spirit beings.
I imagine the gods would agree with the Fair Folk on this one.

Do you believe that fairies have their own agency and power to affect you?
Or do you not believe this?
Think on that and look deeply into your own reasoning.

La Belle Dame sans Merci did not get the memo about humans being in charge