Fairy Faith & The Plant Spirit Path
What we call The Fairy Faith is a mytho-poetic name for the ancient, primordial, animistic spiritual pathway of folks across the Celtic lands. This faith centers acknowledging, honoring, nourishing, and exploring relationships with the inhabitants of otherness- the good and peaceful folk who are denizens of the otherworld.
Working a Fairy-led path is one that brings the seeker into direct experience with non-human, other-than-human, and more-than-human persons such as the blessed dead, our deepest ancestors, gods and goddesses, cultural heroes, animals, and the indwelling spirits of place such as rivers, lakes, mountains, hillocks, and storms. This name, Fairy, is ultimately a respectful and folkloric umbrella term for what we might now call spirits.
Why Fairy and not Spirits? That’s a great question! It’s due to the fact that we have a long and beautiful folkloric tradition of doing this kind of spiritual sorcery which exists in the tales of Fairyland and its mighty inhabitants. We call them Fairy because this is how they are addressed in the extant ancestral lore. You will find that many people are hesitant to refer to these kindred spirits as Fairy in concern for offending them or invoking them into a space where their presence cannot be rightfully honored. We use circumlocution to talk about them in ways that respect them and invoke their kindest natures. When we look at the lore, however, it is not the name Fairy that can cause the perceived trouble, rather another name entirely. That being said, when you see titles such as The Good Folk, The Fair Folk, The Neighbors, The Gentry, The People of Peace, and so on, we’re talking about Fairy Folk.
What I’m really excited to share about in this post is the fundamental overlap between the ancient Fairy Faith and the ways of Plant Spirit work. This is a topic that only gets bigger as we talk about it, so consider this something of the iceberg’s tip rather than the whole story- and more than that, consider this small bit of text a signpost pointing at the path rather than a defined map of it.
As mentioned above, the Good Folk are a spiritual race of beings who inhabit the otherworld. Notice that I say the otherworld and not the under or over world. The otherworld is not below (either literally or metaphorically) our own- rather, it runs parallel to the world you and I live in and engage with every day. This otherworld is the world of spirit- but it is also the home of the roots of our own world. It exists as the fountainhead, substrate, and matrix of our human consensus reality. It is the gravity that holds our world in place, the ocean upon which our world floats, the light in which our world is bathed, and the metabolism which causes warmth in our ways.
If you’ve been around here for long, you know that I talk (constantly!) about the spiritual identity of plants. One of the things that comes up most is that the plants are rooted in otherness and fruited in our world. Only those who are wise to the Fae ways might see this simple statement for what it really means- that the plant spirits draw their being from the same realm as our Good Neighbors! They, like many aspects of land, exist in both places at the same time. When we see a tree, we can know that the People of Peace also have the ability to perceive and ‘see’ that same tree. We know this because the ancestral Fairy lore is lush with stories of plants at the center of story. In fact, it is most often under the canopy of trees or at burial mounds where the Fairy and their world are encountered by we human folk.
The plants are not only inhabitants of the otherworld and fully participating in all of its wild ways, they’re equally present and participating in our world. This is why I say (so, so often!) that the plants are liminal beings at whose crowns we can access anywhere, anywhen, and anyone. They are living, arcane bridges that pierce the membrane between the human experience and the wholeness of the spirit world.
Plants convey their virtues of magic and medicine into our world from the otherworld, and they do the same from our world to the realms of radical otherness. As citizens of both parallel realities, they are ally to all begins who call this place home.
When we work with plants on a deep level- meaning that we approach them as persons seeking to engage with them as persons themselves, we are practicing a Fae Arte. We’re in the territory of the Fairy and the mighty spirits within their ranks who act as guardians, stewards, protectors, wisdom keepers, and initiators for the plants. You’ll see that in the lore of all Fairy-led traditions, there is at least one deity or hero who is ‘of the plants’… the Fairy being who has a vested interest in the ways of the green artes.
So, when we work with plants and honor the ancient Fairy ways at the same time, we’re honoring the wholeness of things. We’re acknowledging that the plants exist in a special way between the worlds and that when we respect them and nourish our connections to them while doing the same for the many non-human persons who share this land with us, we are brought in quite powerfully to the whole of the verdant mysteries. The Fairy, unlike any other beings, understand the multifaceted nature of plants and can act as guides and initiators as we wander these wild paths.
This connection between plants, the Fairy, and the Fairy realm is so ancient and profound that a great deal of the lore around how the Fairy are as beings and how we can work with them is hung on tree or plant symbolism. We often talk around the mysteries of the otherworld in terms of a tree- the otherworld being the roots of reality from which all expressions we know as humans are nourished.
Opening our hearts to the ways in which working with the many non-human spirits of place and the sacredness of the land we’re on now will bring us further into deep and sorcerous connection with the magic of plants is a crucial step in embodying the ancestral ways which gave rise to our ancient plant lore.
As you get further into the Fairy lore, you’ll also find that specific plants stand out as woven into the ways of the Good Folk- at least as they relate to humans. Hawthorne, Linden, Wormwood, and Ragweed- the plant lore that is specific to the Fair Folk is endless and brings a depth of magic to our work with the plants that is unparalleled.
I am excited to continue talking about this aspect of my work. I hope you’ll join me for the journey!
