I didn’t know how to express into words the following since the premise is an embodied felt-sense but here’s an attempt. Not so long ago I started to notice that looking at images of faerie elicited a strong reaction of wanting to throw up. I’m specifically referring to those Victorian-inspired fae, i.e. the winged ones that hide in flower beds. This is not something that stems from my childhood as I’m sure faerie imagery was quite enchanting to little me (rather, I was terrified of dolls). But these days, it makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Up until recently, I did not like to look at faerie decks and I always walked a little faster past those garden fairies in the garden centre. (Gnomes are also creepy, though perhaps for a different reason.) And because this felt new and strange, I went right in. What else is there to do than to excavate new layers of trauma in Anh’s psyche?
Since I wasn’t sure how to go about it or where to start, I began by assembling a small collection of fae decks. I realised pretty quickly however that not all of them are equal; I didn’t have a bodily reaction to all of them. Now, a little FYI: I consider that all faeries are fae, but not all fae are faeries. (To me, in the same way that there is the the plant kingdom, the fungi kingdom, etc., there also is the fae kingdom.) Faerie is not necessarily more tame. In Vietnamese folklore, for instance, fairies are akin to lesser divine beings and often come down to the human realm for this and that. They are shapeshifters with magical powers and so they can take on many various forms. Sometimes they are generous and kind, other times wrathful and vindictive. In general though they’re rarely portrayed with wings and definitely don’t hang out on mushrooms. In the end, maybe it’s all just semantics. But I digress.
Back to my story: I didn’t buy all the fae decks because.. well, there is quite a lot of them. And I obviously don’t enjoy this theme to the extent of having more than a handful. The only two from my list (see below) that I would consider very “faerie” are the Mystic Faerie Tarot and the Faerie Guidance Oracle. And you know what? I’m rather okay with Paulina’s oracle deck. Maybe it’s a question of art style? The Mystic Faerie Tarot, on the other hand, can be challenging at times. I can glance at most cards really quickly, or I’d need to be in the right state of mind to dive into them. That said, there was a specific reading I wanted to try with the Mystic Faerie Tarot and the Tarot of the Hidden Realm, a sort of light vs. dark reading. But alas, one card went missing and I just cannot find it.
In the meantime, I found myself playing with two different variations on the fae theme. I started painting & colouring again, a sort of return to innocence perhaps as it was a beloved pastime of my younger years. Coincidentally, Leslie Shepard who wrote the foreword to Evans-Wentz’s book suggested that “stories of fairies embody all that is romantic, wistful and melancholy—the sudden fear and aching longing for lost worlds, strange countries, dreams of beauty beyond the mundane imperfections of here and now.” I think children live in this world and lose the magic upon growing old. A Peter Pan syndrome, if you will. And for me, becoming interested in faeries meant returning to this lost world of childhood wonders. A lot of my days are now consumed in watercolour & gouache, reading Beatrix Potter, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Frances Hodgson Burnett.
(Fun fact: Aside from Anne of Green Gables, I actually never read any of those authors. I used to love reading whatever my older sibling was reading for school, and because of our age difference, I would often read books way beyond my years. Molière, Voltaire, Rostand, Ionesco… too much French theatre at 12 years old. Maybe I’m just playing catch-up with my youth.)
And then I built a faerie altar. The one time I managed to use the Mystic Faerie Tarot (back when my deck was still complete), I did a reading to help with the design of the altar: What is the one card that would best represent what I’m trying to do, i.e. that is the focus of this work? I ended up with two cards rather than one, which was a good thing. It gave me a lot more to work with: The Devil & the Three of Wands. What inspires me? English ivy, white pebbles, moss, mushrooms, fiery wands, and splashes of red here and there inspired by the Devil’s wings. (Read about it here.) But in a nutshell, I haven’t really managed to dig up anything surprising so far (no new trauma on the horizon), but I’m only really at the beginning of this work. It’s a very slow process of mostly creating & playing and a little bit of studying the fae. I’ll share more later on if anything interesting comes up and we’ll see if my little bodily issue resolves itself.
🌒 ♌
References:
Faerie Guidance Oracle, French edition (Paulina Cassidy/Fae)
Mystic Faerie Tarot (Barbara Moore, Linda Ravenscroft)
Tarot of the Hidden Realm (Julia Jeffrey, Barbara Moore)
Stolen Child Tarot (Monica Knighton)
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (W.Y. Evans-Wentz)
Woodland Watercolor: A Coloring Workbook (Clare Therese Gray) *my favourite thing at the moment*