Writer's Guide to Spirit Journeys, Fairies, and Witches - Preview

 Writer's Guide to Spirit Journeys, Fairies, and Witches

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Into the Spirit World

A dark storm bears down on the Hungarian village, rumbling with hail. There are dragons in that storm, and with it comes the people's greatest enemy – hunger. Should the storm hit their fields, the people will have another starving winter of stuffing their bellies with inedible leaves to keep the hunger away, another winter where they'll have to decide who has enough to eat and who dies. One young man still recalls the whimpers of his little sister during the last starving winter, when she lay so motionless, he'd thought she'd died. He also recalls the constant funerals and the wails of those so hungry they thought they would be next. He will not allow his village to starve like that again. He lays down as if asleep, and in his trance, his soul flies from his body in the form of a wolf to do battle with the witches, serpents, and dragons of the storm. Victory means that his village will eat this winter, but should he lose, people will starve, and many will die.

Three hundred miles to the southwest, in Italy, armies of shaman-warriors known as benandanti ride animal spirits such as hares to battle against witches who are trying to steal the life of the land. To the north, people send their souls from their bodies in the form of wolves to attack the devil at the gates of hell, before he can escape with the crop seed he has stolen from their village. Further north men send their soul from their body in the form of giant bears to assist their comrades in arms, and to the east, a man's soul battles a giant in order to rescue the spirits who bring the fish up the river or to return rain to the dry fields.

 

Shamanism is a life and death struggle for the survival of communities which takes place in a world of spirits, for human villages couldn't survive without battling, negotiating with, or seeking aid from powers which most people will never see. Among the most dramatic stories of European shaman's are the shaman-witch battles between different lands or against dark spirits, in which witches known by many different names in many different countries would raid each other's villages for the life of the land, for milk from the cattle, and to stop or cause storms. These same witches would protect their own villages from other witches, and the dark forces which were always seeking to steal life and destroy crops. Equally as dramatic, although less attested to in Europe, are the tales of people entering the other world to rescue a soul in order to bring the dead and dying back to life and health. But, perhaps the most common reason to enter the other world was to take part in the witches Sabbath, which Pocs states was likely a remnant of the witches of old communicating with the spirits of the dead and otherworld. A way to learn magic and negotiate for their village's success. Regardless of the shaman's purpose for entering the spirit world, once there, they had to deal with its strange denizens and navigate its extensive lands. Doing so created many of the epic stories we now call myths and fairy tales.

Witches were Shamans

Europe obviously had many magical traditions, and not all of them were shamanistic in nature. That said, shamanistic traditions at least somewhat inspired the most interesting witches in Europe. Wilby states that;

Scholars in this field unanimously acknowledge that descriptions of encounters between cunning folk or witches and individual spirit-helpers or familiar spirits are also, like descriptions of Sabbath experiences, likely to have derived from pre-Christian shamanistic visionary traditions. 

Shamanism is the use of some form of trance to commune with the other world in one of three ways. The first way of communicating was via spirit journeys in which the shaman’s soul leaves their body, the second was via familiar spirits in which the shaman communicates with spirit entities which assist them, and the third was via possession in which spirits possess the shaman in order to speak for them or commune with them. Almost no witches used all three of these methods for communicating with the spirit world, and in Central and Eastern Europe, most only used one.

There were many other magical and magico-religious traditions within Europe of course, such as Necromancers who summoned spirits to them, and prophets which communicated with otherworldly powers without using one of the shamanistic methods, and magicians who would mix herbs and magical formulas. But the shamanistic traditions were perhaps the most common. Such shaman's went by many names; such as cunning, witches, benandanti, talos, etc. I choose the term witch in this book to describe European shamans (despite the fact that it usually only referred to evil shamans in the past with words like cunning folk referring to good users of magic) because it has become the most common term for practitioners of magic using otherworldly power within our culture.

From “A Writer’s Guide to Spirit Journeys”

Culture the Key to Understanding Fairies

The fact that people believed fairies were their neighbors, means that people often believed that fairies shared a similar culture and political structure to their own. Perhaps more importantly fairies are an important part of our cultural heritage and central to many folk religions. This is why understanding a particular fairy requires an understanding of the culture that that believed in it. This is a circular notion, however, for to understand a culture one needs to also understand the fairies they believed in. After all, folk religion is an important part of any cultural identity. Consider Joan of Arc’s village, Domremy, a fairly typical village in Medieval France. Like most villages in France, it was near a tree and spring of water where the fairy women were believed to gather.

“Sometimes she (Joan of Arc) went to take a walk with the other girls and she made near the tree crowns of flowers for the image of Our Lade of Domremy… She saw young girls put garlands on the branches of the tree.” (Sullivan, 1999)

These children then danced and sang round this tree for fun. During her witch trial, Joan of Arc claimed that she didn’t associate these activities with fairies; however, many other people did. Even the mayor’s wife, Aubery, had seen the fairy ladies gathering around the tree where the children played. Thus, the holidays which Joan celebrated as well as the games she played as a child were related to the people’s beliefs in the fairies. While the Clerics at Joan of Arcs witch trial made a big deal about her visiting the fairy tree and the activities around it, it wasn’t really. Nearly every town and village had similar places. Trees and springs of water which were considered to be a focal point for the fairies dotted the landscape and acted as one of the centers of people’s lives. (Sullivan)

While reading mythology, keep in mind that the most important use of mythology was to reinforce morality and social norms. For example, in Medieval England, people were often generous to the poor partially because the fairies and god demanded it. Another example can be found in every hunting culture I’ve studied, where there were spirits who would punish people who bragged about their success while hunting. This belief in spirits made people humble, which helped to create stronger social cohesion that lead to a better chance of survival for the community as a whole. 

The importance of this belief in fairies/spirits to people’s cultural survival meant that such beliefs permeated and affected nearly every aspect of people’s lives. Often times, fairies were a reflection of people’s hopes and fears. So, because of this, one shouldn’t simply look at what fairies did in fairy tales; one also has to look at how people acted in response to their belief in fairies. For while many fairy tales take on a darker edge and are even considered horror stories, people didn’t necessarily act like they were constantly afraid of fairies. Just like in Joan of Arc’s village, people might tell horror stories about fairies, but then seek them out for blessings and healing, for while everyone likely heard fairy tales, such stories were secondary to most people’s experience. For most people, fairies were a constant presence. It’s not only telling that people celebrated under and around fairy trees, but they would often go to drink from the fairy waters to be cured of illnesses. This tells us that despite many of the horror stories about “wicked” fairies, people perceived their relationship with at least some of them as mostly positive. 

What we see from the fairy tree and waters near Joan of Arc’s village, the English who would pantomime helpful fairies, and the hunters who would leave gifts for fairies is that there was a separation between the stories people told and the way they believed fairies interacted with them in their daily lives. This is true in the modern day as well. We tell horror stories about, and are afraid of serial killers, but most of us will never encounter one, and will have neighbors who are friendly or at the very least aren’t murderers. 

Joan of Arc would later express a wish that she could continue to spin wool with her mother, a common activity for girls in France at this time. Based on this, one has to wonder if there were any Holda figures roaming the countryside near her. Holda was a fairy/goddess from the nearby Alps who would reward girls for working hard at their spinning by giving them gifts, much like Santa, while brutally punishing messy and lazy people. It’s likely that the people of Joan’s village believed that there were fairies similar to the lutins living in barns and houses within her community. These fairies brought luck and punished those who broke social conventions, possibly even those they heard swear. Such fairies also had a huge impact on the way people lived their daily lives. Although it doesn’t necessarily relate to fairies, it’s also interesting to remember that the idyllic scene of village life that Joan painted was contrasted with the fact that her village was subject to numerous raids by bandits and enemies during the Hundred Years’ War. Once, the village of Domrémy-la-Pucelle was even burnt to the ground. With that, we see that people still lived and celebrated their lives even though they were in the midst of one of the most brutal wars of the medieval era.

During Joan of Arc’s time and before, people even chose where their villages, homes, and fields would be located based on their belief in fairies. In fact, in the past, people would often look for signs that the fairies who already lived in a particular place would accept them before they moved to a new place or built a new home. Signs that the magical owners of the land approved of them varied from region to region. For example, in some places, people looked for ant mounds while others would camp in a desired location to see if they would be disturbed by spirits during the night. If they didn’t sleep well, it was a sign that the spirits didn’t want them there. Other times, people would ride horses or bring animals through an area to see how the animals responded to it. What’s important to understand is that each place had spirits already living there when people moved in, and people wouldn’t build in places where the fairies didn’t want them. Ireland, Mari-El, and other places are filled with patches of wilderness in the middle of farms where people believed the fairies didn’t want them to plough. Furthermore, the professions people took were often related to their belief in fairies and similar beings. For example, people in far Northeast Asia would sometimes refuse to begin reindeer herding because the spirits there would be offended if they domesticated something which was meant to be wild. To a certain extent, the Irish believed that milk and bread was practically sacred; thus, their farming efforts focused on these until the English killed most of their cattle and forced many of them to shift to farming potatoes. This method of food production had a huge impact on the way the Irish lived.

The population was scanty and shifting, and settlements were scattered and largely impermanent. The economy was predominantly a pastoral one, with great herds of cattle... wandering over tracts of waste... frequent raids, and petty warfare placed a premium on mobility, and the indifferent quality of much of the land also encouraged Transhumance... the movement of cattle to summer pastures on mountain slopes (Ellis).

While the Irish likely believed in milk-obsessed fairies because of how important cows were to them, rather than choosing to raise cows because of a belief in milk-obsessed fairies, in a fantasy world, fairies very well could have dictated the type of food people would grow/raise. Furthermore, it’s possible that their belief system caused them to resist changing the way they lived. 

In parts of Japan, the women would tell stories and make jokes while planting rice because it would lure the kami out of the mountains whose presence would help the rice to grow. In the stories of some places, these kami enjoyed raunchy humor, while in others, the kami were often easily embarrassed. So, the type of jokes developed and told in each region was partially based on different peoples’ ideas about their local kami. Similarly, the people along the Amur River told stories when the men went out to hunt in order to lure woodland spirits into their huts to listen to them so that they wouldn’t stop the hunters from being successful.

Dmitrii Zelenin suggests that folktales were originally a kind of magic, told to entertain and distract forest spirits, so that hunters would be rewarded with game. In certain parts of Russia and Ukraine, telling tales or riddles is prohibited in summer, when sheep bear their young, which Zelinin interprets as the desire to keep potentially harmful spirits away from domesticated animals (Johns, 2010).

There are numerous other examples about how songs, stories, and holidays were important to the relationship between people and fairies. For example, in Ireland, fairies would kill the cattle that stepped onto their hills; however, one man played such beautiful music for the fairies that he earned the right to herd his cattle on the hills (Wentz). Within a fantasy world, we can see how the personality and tastes of local magical creatures would have a huge impact on nearly every aspect of a people’s lives. 

Nearly every activity that fairies engaged in was viewed through various cultural social lenses. For example, before the invention of matches, it was extremely difficult to light fires under certain circumstances, and because of this, sharing fire was a very common activity. Thus, it was common for fairies to want to sit by and share fires with humans, just as humans did with each other. Fairies would even sneak into people’s homes in many countries including Germany, France, Ireland, England, and Russia to sit by the fire. Even in Japan, there are tales of fairies asking to enter peoples’ homes to sit by the fires. Elle women from Denmark were typically nervous around people, yet in one tale:

There was a man burning charcoal in the forest when an elle woman came along and pulled up her dress to warm herself by his fire. He thought he should stoke the fire a bit for her and started poking it with a stick.

The sharing of fires with magical creatures is a common theme in colder climates - so common, in fact, that it sometimes seems like fairies couldn’t light fires. Although this is a stretch, given how often mythology indicates that fire was a gift given to humanity, it’s possible that people once believed that some fairies didn’t have this gift and thus couldn’t start fires of their own. Regardless, what’s important to understand is that because fire was an important part of people’s social lives, it was also an important part of the fairies’ interactions with humans, for fairy and human lives were a reflection of each other. 

In mythology, human culture often came directly from the fairies. For example, in Greek mythology, it was the nymphs who took humans in and taught us about morals and the difference between right and wrong. Similarly, in British and Irish folk lore, it was the fairies who punished people for being greedy, and in Russia, it was the domovoi (house fairies) who punished people for acting immoral. In all these cases, human morality and cultural protocols were all believed to be based on the desires of fairies. Fairies also taught humans how to make cheese, how to smith, metalwork, and more. Kropej stated that in Slovenia:

It was believed that fairies gathered at dusk and at nighttime and danced, sang, or strolled through the fields. Wherever they lingered they brought fertility and prosperity. According to some tales, it was the fairies who taught people to sing and dance; this role was assumed also by the Fates. In the vicinity of Varaždin, Matija Valjavec recorded the following story: The Fates were three beautiful, tall, slender, and very strong women. They only seldom appeared at childbirth. Most frequently, they let themselves be seen by girls they had taught to spin and sing, but when the girls started to whistle, the Fates hid from them as well.

Mankind learned to sing from the mermaids. All the beautiful hymns that are sung in our churches are the work of mermaids who are also responsible for other pretty songs. 

The divja žena (wild lady) taught people how to tie the vine during plowing. Under the rocky mass live the wild women. When they see people are having a hard time they willingly offer their help, and according to some tales, the blacksmiths had learned how to forge from Šembilja. 

The belief that fairies possess special knowledge about the healing powers of plants and objects, in addition to the ability to heal people and animals, is not only widespread in Slovenia, but throughout Europe. (Kropej)

In addition to all the things that fairies have taught us, notice that fairies would also flee from whistling. This could explain why whistling indoors has come to be considered unlucky in many Slavic countries. In any event, if you wish to understand the motivation of a fairy from fairy tales, you should try to understand the culture the story came from.