Morgan Daimler, a practicing witch for almost three decades, focuses primarily on the Celtic Fairy Faith. They are considered by many to be the foremost expert on the Fair Folk in neopaganism today.
I just finished reading their recent book, Fairies: A Guide to the Celtic Fair Folk about a month ago. If you know much about me, you know that, while very little in the Craft scares me, I’ve always been wary when contemplating the Fair Folk and related concepts.
I suppose you could say that everyone, witch or otherwise, has some odd fear here or there, and for me, it’s the Gentry.
Still, with anxiety comes fascination. I was lucky enough to snag a short interview with Morgan, who answered some of my pressing questions about the Fair Folk, their own beliefs, and their work with the Gentry
Eliza: “Do you think that the Fae remain as they were in ancient times, despite legends about them changing? Or, do you believe they, too, have evolved and changed?”
Morgan: “I think it’s a bit of both to be honest. I think that much like humans and animals are a lot like they were 3000 or 2000 years ago in the sense of physical appearances and abilities and such the Fey are as well. I don’t think they’ve evolved to become something entirely different from what they were in stories and anecdotal accounts from a few hundred years ago either.
If we look at the folklore and the anecdotes we see that they are pretty consistent across time; while its true that the Good People do seem to follow and mimic human society they also stay true to who and what they themselves are.
We only start to see stories of radically different fairies very recently, comparatively speaking, and those are coming from fiction and authors who generally didn’t believe in the actual reality of fairies.
On the same hand, yes I do think we see that the fairies do adapt and evolve like any other beings do with time and change. Their clothing changes, their speech and language changes, they modernize with the humans around them albeit at a slightly delayed rate.”
Eliza: “What’s the best bit of advice would you give witches who would like to begin working with the Fae within the context of modern life?”
Morgan: “The single best bit of advice I can give is to really dig into the living cultures that still believe in these beings as real or have a deep cultural folklore related to them.
There’s such a pervasive idea around fairies from modern pop culture but if you look past that to what we can still find in places like Ireland, Scotland, and Iceland you can get a much more accurate idea of what exactly you’re dealing with.
And knowing what you’re dealing with, I think, is the single most important thing.”
Eliza: “You’ve spoken often about some of the downright dangerous misinformation out there about the Fae. What would be the worst piece of recent advice you’ve heard? Why?”
Morgan: “I don’t want to give an actual example because it wouldn’t be fair to have anyone read this and think I was calling them out, but I think to paraphrase the worst advice I’ve heard recently was the suggestion for people with little or no experience with these beings to invoke fairies known in folklore to be homicidally dangerous.
I think that entire concept comes down to people who don’t believe these types of fairies actually exist as independent beings with power and agency, like the humans are just reading a book or playing a game. The thing is as much as I’m sure people think I overdo the warnings I have seen people get really hurt by some of these things - and I mean like nearly dying, going mad, being physically injured.
So when I talk about the dangerous misinformation it’s usually connected to things like that example, invoking the ones that are known to kill people, or treating them all to lightly, or doing anything that folklore makes clear can have severe consequences.
Obviously Fairy being what it is sometimes any action can bring a blessing that would normally be dangerous or bring a blow that would normally be safe. It has a lot of uncertainty to it. But for people with no practical knowledge or experience to go straight into dealing with the most dangerous beings, that always makes me cringe.”
Eliza: “In recent years, we’ve seen new and modernized legends about the Fae develop, such as the idea of Fae becoming human. What’re your thoughts on otherkins and related concepts?”
Morgan: “I think modern legends built from genuine experiences and lore are vital. There’s some really great work being done in some corners by people working on this like Aine Llewellyn’s Otherfaith on the more spiritual end or Sam Dow’s Elsewhere University on the more fictional.
Otherkin is a very complicated subject and I have mixed views on it. Certainly there is a ton of folklore supporting the idea that the Fey and humans have sometimes interbred; we see that with the Irish aos sidhe, Scottish Selkies, and the Norse Hiddenfolk just to give a few cultural examples.
The idea of people having some kind of non-human or Otherworldly ancestry or connection is something I fully believe is possible. I’m more skeptical though of the idea of a non-human soul in a human body in this world, because I usually don’t see what the purpose of that would be or how it would happen and also because so far the lists I’ve seen for identifying if you have such-and-such a type of soul tend to be based more on common stereotypes of a particular kind of fairy than actual folklore.
Which isn’t to say I disbelieve, just that of all the people I’ve encountered claiming to be non-human souled I’ve very rarely - like only 2 or 3 times ever - believed it was true.
In a much wider sense there is folklore of both humans being taken into Fairy and becoming fairies as well as fairies taken out of Fairy who were turned into humans (but entirely into humans) so that’s definitely a thing.”
Eliza: “What’s your thoughts on commonalities between older legends about the Fae, and modern, science-inspired stories about alien abductions?”
Morgan: “My personal opinion is that modern alien abduction stories are actually how we now interpret fairy abductions. speaking of fairies adapting and evolving I think that as humans have moved into the sci-fi era the fairies have adapted to using that paradigm to give us what we expect with their glamour.
So instead of seeing fairies people see aliens.
It’s certainly worth noting that the first alien abduction happened well after literary and cinematic aliens became a cultural trope. So now we have fewer fairy encounters but we have alien abductions in their place.
Given how powerful fairy illusion is it would be simple enough for them to make a human think they are seeing a spaceship and aliens instead of whatever is actually going on, and it’s very clever on their part given how much folklore has taught humans about fighting back against fairies - where aliens seem like a force a captured person can’t resist or fight back against.”
Much thanks to Morgan for providing this interview! You can visit their author page on Amazon here, and I highly recommend picking up Fairies: A Guide to the Celtic Fair Folk as introductory material on the matter.
Overall, I found the idea of the Gentry adapting to our own cultural landscape (see: the comments regarding aliens) most fascinating. This has sparked my further curiosity about the Gentry, and I’ll likely do some more research.
I hope you enjoyed this short discussion of the Fair Folk. Yes, I still feel a bit intimidated by the Gentry, but c’mon!
Everyone, even witches, ultimately get spooked sometimes… it’s not that weird to be afraid of fairies, is it?
