This has been in my mind lately after seeing some of the rejection it has within witch communities (discord servers, amino, etc). I'm making this thread to speak about my personal experience with the Fae and my own research in hopes you come to your own conclusions. #witchtwt
If you ever approach any subject with a preformed and distorted image of it, feeling fear that : "if you do this, or mess with this, you will be fucked up," chances are you might turn that fear into a self fulfilling prophecy. What you want to have is precaution, not fear.
I see people scaring others instead of explaining clearly that you must take logical precautions when starting to practice anything you have never tried before. You want to research, study and discover for yourself what resonates with you and what doesn't. Trust your intuition.
Are the Fae exclusively Irish? Let's start by the origin of the word. What we currently know is that the word Faerie derived from three words : Fata, meaning Fate, Fatare, meaning to enchant, and the Fatuae, which is are a type of nymph known as a race of immortals damsels.
By the Middle Ages the word Faerie was already an augment meaning to describe these mystical beings who belonged to an 'ephemeral' realm. The Gaelic word for Faerie, which is Sith or SĂ­dhe, was similar in this, meaning hill or mound, divine, supernatural, peace, and so on.
There are correspondences between the more Irish faeries we typically know in western culture and the Dakini (sky-goer) of Tibetan culture. They are described as the nymphs, appearing in dreams and visions, and are primarily wisdom-energy connected to the light and the elements.
Like faeries they appear often at twilight and are strongly associated with that time of the day. They are like faeries too when it comes to appearing and dissappearing between realms or worlds. They share too being a representation of the natural flow of the world's energy.
If you disrupt, or attempt to destroy what they represent, this energy flowing within the world and nature, they become angry, same way Faeries gets angry or hostile if you destroy the area they are protecting like a forest or a spring.
If we start looking into the Tuatha DĂ© Dannan, who are known to be the modern Faerie, and whose name means : "the People of the Goddess Danu," we can track down their origins to different areas of the world. Originally they are said to come from a placed called Achaia.
There is a region in what is now Syria called Achaiyah. It has been called home of the Annage or the "shining ones," who were the sumerian deities. The people then believed that these deities were the natural and cosmic energies of the world made gods and goddess.
I could go on, but different cultures have seen or experienced very similar things that were connected to the natural energies of the world and seemed shiny to them. They have named and interpretated differently these visions according to their circumstances, place and time.
So to the question "are the Fae only Irish?" I think we can clearly say the answer is no. They are everywhere around the world. They aren't physical beings like us, they aren't even bond to the same rules of time and space as us. They are energy beings who belong to no one.
Now then, are the Fae evil? First of, speaking from my experience, nothing is white and black, and nothing is entirely good or evil. The Fae aren't evil, they are like us in the sense that they have things that might upset them and things that might please them.
The Fae don't like human greediness and selfishness in my experience with them. What they seem to like is being truthful to yourself. If you say something to them, you need to feel those words and connect with them within you. Don't say anything you don't really feel.
With the Fae we have to embrace our inner shadow : "A true initiate of the Faerie way accepts both darkness and light, the totality of existence as it is. Disguised as a hideous hag (the goddess) she guides them to embrace their own darkness and transform it through love."
There is also a strong connection between interacting with the fae and ancient shamanism, the word shamanism used to refer to all those common practices in human traditions dating back to even our hunter gatherer times, before agriculture and cities, when we were nomads.
I've found a striking similarity between traveling to the main four cities of the Fae and traveling to the lower and upper world during shamanic journeys. When you look back, it makes sense to find these connections. It's something that has been with humans for thousand of years.
The Fae, attuned to the world energies, are also cyclic beings like the seasons, or night and day :

"For it is one of their tenets than nothing perishes, but, as the sun and year, everything goes in a circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed, and refreshed in its revolutions."
"The dim goddess who is under the brown earth, in a vast cavern, where she weaves at two looms. With one hand she weaves life upward through the grass; with the other she weaves death downward through the mould."
"And the sound of weaving is Eternity, and the name of it in the green world is Time. And, through all, Orchil weaves the weft of Eternal Beauty, that passeth not, though her soul is Change." — The Silence of Amor by Fiona Macleod.
You need to be self aware of all these concepts with the Fae, all these cycles, the full spectrum of life, growth, death and rebirth, embracing the darkness within the Goddess of the Fae without flinching when she comes, for you accept your own darkness too, your shadow.
This thread is meant to say that if someone tells you "Don't interact ever with the Fae! It's dangerous!" you shouldn't feel restricted to never ever interacting with them. Normal precautions, research and instrospection like with most things, but not irrational fear.
You can follow @ErrantStarlight.
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