The Seven Roads to Faery

Part One
Introduction

Some people believe in the Fae. I have to, because otherwise I would not believe in myself. It hasn’t always been easy, but at least I’m pretty sure that I won’t pop out of existence or die even if I stop believing completely.

To make things a bit more clear for those who have stumbled upon this out of the blue, I am one of an uncounted minority who feel down to their souls that they are not fully human, if they are human at all. We are Otherkin, and we cover a lot of territory from animals (of the non homo sapiens kind) in human bodies, to incarnated elves, to visitors from other planets, to lifeforms from alternate universes or other dimensions. I’m not expecting anyone to believe that straight off the bat; as I said, it’s still sometimes hard for me to believe. I do have a degree in engineering and a decent start into another one in psychology, after all, and I believe in objective reality (which doesn’t have near enough of a liberal bias to make this easy to swallow!). Quite conveniently, though, the upcoming sections will at least explain to you all of the soul-searching that can be involved in our beliefs at the same time that they are imploring fellow ‘kin to put the appropriate amount of soul-searching into their self discovery.

For the new ‘kin out there whose heads are still spinning, this text may turn you around a few more times but it’s with good intentions. The following section on methods of discovery gets deep into the guts of knowing yourself and I would like to encourage you to try it all…even if you don’t stick with some parts of it.

For those who’ve been around…hopefully I won’t bore or outrage you!
This collection of files, or “book” if you want to be generous, contains a thorough overview of what has been useful to me and what I’ve learned.

In terms of kinship, I’m half Leanan Sidhe and half Fomor, Unseelie, Fae. It has only been a little over three years since my first Awakening, so I don’t have much experience at this – but I do know what it is like to be what I am, a mixture with similarities to various other Sidhe, Fae, and elves as well as vampires, and I have the unorthodox mindbending associated with my mundane life and education.

Before addressing anything in depth, I would like to return to Otherkin 101, so to speak, and discuss Awakening. This term gets thrown around a lot, generally in reference to the time of first discovery when one realizes that there is something different…and, at least in some detail, what it is. I don’t like to refer to just that one incident as “Awakening.”

We don’t all come to the realization of exactly what we are. I didn’t; I only identified myself as Sidhe, and as a member of the Sluagh, but not as Fomor or as a type of vampiric Sidhe. Other ‘kin types are frequently “misdiagnosed” because it’s easy to look at one feature and guess that a person belongs to a well-known ‘kin type – a vampire if she drains energy, an angel if he has feathered wings, and so forth – without taking into consideration that they could be features of a less-publicized type or less common features sometimes found in another type.

We also don’t get the entire ‘kin transmission in one burst and then go merrily about our new lives with full knowledge that yup, that’s how we are. Multiple kinships or new aspects of a kinship may pop up sequentially rather than simultaneously – we’re ready for one revelation at first, but not for another, perhaps…as it was with my Awakening into the vampiric aspect of my Sidhe heritage. Knowledge of our former existence comes in drabbles and spurts. And we learn to grow into it as we go. All of those things can be a lot more eye-opening than the first Awakening. I prefer to call all of the major spurts of self-revelation Awakenings, but of course it’s up to you whether you do the same or speak of them in different terms. There will be more on Awakenings and how to get the most out of them, in a later section.

Another important basic is what we’re learning and how. That’s going to be covered in depth that may well put you to sleep. Perhaps more important than the learning, though, is another question: Are we learning?

It may sound silly. I’ve spent enough time poring over books to almost want to insist that yes, I’m learning something! Whether book learning is worth much, is debated…you can prove it’s worth something in the hard sciences, of course, but otherwise, are you really sure you’re learning something other than what the authors believe? Even in the hard sciences, you could turn skeptic and say that it might only work because you have accepted that paradigm and of course it all works within the paradigm.

Personally, I believe that there is an objective reality and that science does a reasonably good job of describing it. That’s the assumption I’ll be making from here on out. Thus, the question of, “Are we learning?” becomes one of whether what we’ve uncovered has any basis in that objective reality. Science doesn’t have anything to say about Otherkin because we have no proof that many of the relevant creatures exist or that souls exist – let alone that souls from one thing can be transplanted into another. (We’d be doing good just to get universal consensus on what the soul is like!)

All of the methods I’m about to describe are testable in some way, even if it’s not a formal experiment with all proper protocols. I consider that testing to be a part of respecting myself – it is a commitment to approaching the truth, rather than wandering down any path that will make me content for the moment. In addition to the tests I describe in each method’s section, cross-checking different methods and ending up with the same results is one way to cut to the truth.

If multiple paths contain markers that allegedly lead to a particular destination, and following the markers on those paths really does lead you to the same destination, you can be pretty sure that you’ve reached the place you were looking for. If each path’s marker sends you in a different direction and the destinations all look somewhat similar, how do you tell whether you’ve arrived in Faery as planned or wandered down a road to confusion?

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Part Two
Section One
Memory

The definition of memory that I will be using is probably a little different from the one you use every day. Part of this is a nitpicky, scholarly type of expansion. We remember events and people, but we do not often think of words as memories even though our knowledge of them is also part of the contents of memory. Another part is bringing in the visceral – I often have what I call “gut memories,” the sudden intrusion of an awareness about how things are or were, that aren’t connected to any particular memory of time and place, event, or person.

A memory is a piece of knowledge that comes from your personal experiences of your past. It can be any kind of knowledge – vocabulary, technical knowledge, recall of a time and place, and many other kinds.
Memory, like any other way of knowing things, isn’t perfect. There are mulple explanation for why we might not retain memories of past lives, if we had past lives: natural forgetting, trauma, a protective veil keeping us from learning things we would not be able to handle. Whatever the reason, I have yet to meet a person who remembers a past life as freshly as he remembers this one and even our present life recall sucks.
Memory research published in peer reviewed journals and replicated over multiple trials has shown that our memory is malleable, even when it comes to things that we just saw a few moments ago. We mistakenly “remember” seeing a particular word in a list that contained many related words, because our brains are fooled into carrying the association too far. Witnesses give higher numbers as answers when they’re asked how fast two cars were going when they “smashed together,” rather than a question with less emotionally loaded language. Even full memories of events, like getting separated from family and lost in a mall, can be inserted convincingly…and fMRI images of the brain during false memory tasks indicate that we feel the same things, in the same parts of the brain, whether a memory is real or not.

If you accept that modern neuroscience and cognitive psychology are on the right track, it’s hard to swallow past-life memories after hearing about that. If you believe that those past-life memories are stored in the soul, and a perfect copy was always kept there…maybe not so hard to swallow. But it’s still a sobering thought, and enough to sow plenty of seeds of doubt for me. That’s why I’m hung up on “verifying” my memories through consistency with other sources I didn’t have before I remembered. How likely is it for two, or five, or even a dozen, people to separately come up with the same details to their hallucination? Many of the same details? It’s a hurdle I haven’t managed to leap yet, but I hold out hope that one day the Internet will cough up one or two like me…even though I haven’t met many claiming to also be Leanan Sidhe or Fomor to begin with.

Teasing these memories out is a massive no-no from the perspective of rigorous psychological science. It’s too easy to bias yourself toward particular things you want to see, and sew together bits of unrelated thought in order to make up a consistent story where no consistency actually exists. (And hypnotic regression is great for both of those!) Admittedly, I do still do it; it’s hard not to even try to remember more. However, I treat those “recovered” memories with far more suspicion than I do the memories that just popped into my head one day while I was thinking of something totally different. Gut memories are often comforting like that; I’ll be in the middle of something else and then the feeling of familiarity, perhaps with an edge of difference as in “this is how we did it ages ago,” creeps up on me without a warning. And I “know.” But even with these, finding confirmatory details in external sources to back up my memories is even more comforting.

Part Two
Section Two
Scholarship

The next sources I would like to address are of a type that does not always get a lot of respect. It is argued that written sources are not useful; they were written by humans who often did not understand what they were seeing or wrote down fabrications to advance their own opinions instead of the truth. That’s absolutely right, but it’s also a line of thought that would throw out an entire bushel of apples upon finding that a few of them are bruised! And if you’re really hungry, aren’t you going to cut out the bruised parts and eat the rest of the fruit as long as part is good? (I can understand just tossing the one that turns out to have a worm inside, but those are few.)

I will start with historical records: written accounts and anthropological findings regarding the way that people approached various supernatural entities, plus the supplementary texts that tell us what the authors’ culture was like. What do we have to look out for in these sources?

First, there is recorder bias, the insertion of false data for the author’s own reasons. Outsiders recording information about the beliefs of another culture might do this in order to paint that culture as backward, savage, or otherwise unattractive in comparison to the author’s own culture. Human outsiders might also do this because the nonhumans are frightening or have purposes that are contrary to the humans’ best interests. The labeling of the Seelie and Unseelie courts of Fae is an example of this kind of bias, calling “unblessed” the Fae who behave in a hostile manner to humans. (I do believe that the courts exist and are useful divisions to keep in mind, but at the same time, it doesn’t excuse the name-calling.) This kind of bias can also be used to paint allies in a more positive light; the Icelandic Sagas were definitely embellished to make the heroes look better. Why? The texts were written by their own descendants. Consider the author’s position and agenda at all times.
Second, there is bias in perception. The actions of one group may be incomprehensible to an observer from another group. The behavior may be explained away with insanity, sadism, hatred of the observer’s core values, inability to understand what is right (which the observer of course knows in the form of universal truth), disregard for the human rights of the observer, or other accusations that may or may not be true. Trusted authority figures are taken at their word even though they too may have a bias. Consider what the author is thinking and what he or she is capable of thinking. How does the subject’s behavior compare to the behavioral norms of the author’s culture? (This is why you should also be studying that culture – so that you can guess what they are thinking and expecting.) What other explanations might there be?

Third, and related to perception, there is the question of whether the recorded information has any basis in reality at all. Could a trusted source, a divine source even, have lied to the people who believe this, or otherwise deceived them? Or what if the divine message was completely misunderstood? It is for this reason that historical sources cannot be used without personal gnosis as a balancing method of inquiry. Every thinking being I’ve run across yet has the capacity for deception and I’m not ready to believe that my people or my gods are so virtuous that they won’t fudge the truth under any circumstances. Not to mention the fact that history is written by the victors, leaving us with tales of the thorougly evil Fomorians and hideous Jotnar – both of whom, incidentally, occupied similar roles in the history of the peoples who worshipped their enemies. Don’t stop thinking about who is saying this and why it’s being said.
Fourth, there are shifts over time. Sometimes they don’t obscure the truth – no matter how small the “Little People” generally got in public perception, there were always accompanying stories of the stately Fae maiden who is at least as tall as a comparable human. The competing belief in the beauty of the Sidhe demanded that they not be shrunk. On the other hand, angels in Biblical times were described as terrifying creatures, so much so that their first words to a human were often along the lines of, “It’s okay! I’m not going to kill you!” Nowadays, angels appear as beautiful humans with feathered wings. How to reconcile the two? Freyja didn’t appear to exist in Germanic belief until the Norse had their say, and Njord and Skadhi may have originally been of the opposite sex. Does that mean Freyja either isn’t real or was fabricated to demand by the belief of the Norse? Should we view Njord and Skadhi as transsexual deities? These conflicts may be resolved through the agreement of personal gnosis among many people, and also applying logical criticism to the various sources. Previously found errors in the same text are a red flag that casts doubt on the entire text, which may result in one of the conflicting sources being more credible than the other.
In all cases, historical documents and archeological data are at very least a window into the perceptions and beliefs of the source. They tell us a great deal about the interactions between the subject of the descriptions and the other parties involved in the capturing of those descriptions. Even when they’re untrue, asking why can give us insights about what the concealed truth might have been.

Use the texts we have, and modern commentary by scholars who actually know the original languages in which those texts were written, as clues rather than facts…like the competing testimonies of different people involved in a civil lawsuit or similar dispute. Watching for consistency and inconsistency in the testmonies will tell you a great deal, even in the absence of other evidence.

Part Two
Section Three
Discourse

Under the category of discourse, I include all modern writers who are not merely providing commentary on older writings. I also include discussions with other people who are of your kind or have had dealings with your kind, which is where the name “discourse” came from. As to the question of why I separate “historical” and “non-historical” sources, the reason is simple. Certain sources look back to the mindset of a past time, when the human race was certainly different and the Fae might have been as well. As I have already said, it is necessary to look at any source through the lens of its time, place, and culture. Classic sources referring to the days of solid belief in the Fae are rooted in a different culture than sources referring to modern times. You might rename history and discourse, to studies of the believing times and studies of the disbelieving times. But those are unwieldy to say or type, so please bear with me if the terms I’ve chosen are a bit inaccurate.

The same caveats apply to modern sources as to historical ones, of course. Looking for continuity between the two is interesting, but not necessarily useful as a bullshit filter; things change!

In this category, you may also want to consider things that are clearly labeled as works of fiction. The author may have a nonfiction intent; I’ve certainly put enough work into a novel-in-progress that only paints a thin coating of fiction over my memories of what being Sidhe is like! On the other hand, it may merely be an inspired glimpse into the species in question…but again, if multiple sources converge, isn’t that at least a little bit of good old confirmation? Fiction is good for what-ifs and reminding you of things you might not otherwise have thought about.

Part Two
Section Four
Dream

Going in the totally opposite direction, there is also direct interaction with the non-physical world. I have chosen to give this the category label of “dream” because it so often happens in an altered state of consciousness. Rather than remembering something from the past, you go to those who are currently in spirit for knowledge and advice.
Even if you believe unconditionally in the ability to do this, and have the ability yourself, it is not necessarily any more reliable than a written source or secondhand account. Spirit contacts are very much like humans; they run the gamut with respect to honesty and motives. I don’t think I need to go into all of the potential arguments against the reality of these exercises!

So how is it done? There are many techniques, and quite possibly infinite variations once you start adjusting them to make them work better for you. Here are a few of the ones I use:

Record your actual dreams. Most of mine have nothing to do with being ‘kin, but occasionally there’s an exception. And what you learn from them will tell you more about yourself in general – what you worry about, what you think about – if you learn how to puzzle out what particular things symbolize for you personally.

Scrying has always been tough for me using the well-known methods, so I do something different. Get an object that reflects light to create a shining point, line, or spot of any color light. The edge of a blade is one example, used in traditional Norse magic. Crystals with internal cracks that reflect light are great; I often use elestial quartz. Crystals with color patterns inside, like the kind of quartz that has colored splotches on one side creating something that looks like a panorama, also work; the light is substituted with color. Whatever you use, concentrate on that one point, line, spot, or splotch that you picked. Focus on it while your eyes gradually distort the image. It’s a bit like looking at those magic eye pictures that were popular some years ago, except that there is no hidden stereovision image. The physical image of the object becomes a blur. Look for shapes in the patterns of light and shadow. Sometimes they’ll even move. Sometimes they’ll change suddenly into other images. When the images fade or your eyes get tired, look away and record what you saw. Keep track of the images and try to figure out what they symbolize. Knowledge of what symbols mean what to you, something you’ll learn through tracking your dreams as well, will help you refine your interpretations.

Divination through other methods, like Tarot cards, runes, or oghamfews, is helpful if you ask the right questions. Tarot cards or any other symbolic cards can also be used in journey work, as I describe below.

Shamanistic methods were used in many different cultures and take a variety of forms. I typically just refer to what I do as “journeying” because it’s not traditional shamanism and it’s not the seið associated with the cultures that traditionally worshipped the same gods I do. I like to use music with a heavy but irregular drum beat – Disturbed is a good example of the type of beat I’m talking about – and preferably with no lyrics in any language I even partially understand. The words are a potential distraction. I use headphones out of habit, because I started doing this in shared housing and didn’t want to make too much of a ruckus, but if you do the same make sure that you have a wide range of free movement without knocking them off or getting restrained by the cords. Sometimes I blindfold myself; if you’re not using any cards or images, that or closing your eyes will cut down on distractions. It’s considerably harder to watch both the spirit world and the physical world at the same time! Also, minimize or remove your clothing and make sure anything you still have on is light and breathable; you will be moving around a lot.

Get all of your supplies together and decide whether it would be better to sit or stand. I usually sit on the bed with my legs tucked under me; it gives me plenty of room to place any image cards I want to use and most of my movement tends to come from the waist so I don’t feel I’m missing out much by constraining my legs. Start the music, cover your eyes if you plan to, and start moving in whatever way feels comfortable. Swaying a little is a good way to ease into it. I find that once I get comfortable, rolling my waist and hips around is much more smooth and relaxed than usual; my bad back stops bothering me. (Of course, especially if you have a bad back or any other physical impairments, don’t push yourself. Do only what feels comfortable and take it easy. Vigorous movement is not necessary.) Relax, maybe try imagining that you are in the physical form of your type of ‘kin.

When it takes no effort to keep your body moving comfortably, start to visualize a place that is safe and calming. You can create one from scratch or think of someplace that exists in the physical world, like your favorite place in the park. This will be your starting place for all of your journeying. You can change the place itself if you find it doesn’t work quite right for you, but you should try to stick with the same place for as long as it works. The familiarity helps you ease into the exercise. (Details can be changed; go ahead and spend time changing the decorations or tools inside your home point whenever it’s appropriate…maybe different colors for the seasons, for example. But it should be always recognizable as the same place, unless you’re going to just start over in building it.) Once this place is firmly in your mind, step through a door, walk into a body of water, or leap into a hole in a tree. My home point has a pool of water in the center; I walk into it and the water becomes breathable, a spiral staircase around the edge becoming visible, and walk down to a door at the bottom.

You could perhaps have a room full of doors on the other side, or some other place with many portals. Or the portals can be built into your home point itself. Having many choices helps you to focus your mind on choosing an aspect of what place you want to enter, if you are trying to direct the exercise. If not, just step through and see what your mind gives you. If you are familiar with a particular model of the astral landscape, such as the “three worlds” model used in traditional shamanism or the nine worlds of Germanic cosmogony, you can use those worlds and their symbols as a guide.

Any image cards you plan to use can be tapped at this point to direct you, either just choosing the destination or providing points along the way. A shuffled deck (perhaps one deck of cards, perhaps only part of it, perhaps cards from multiple decks that all speak to you) can let you introduce some extra unpredictability even as you dictate part of what will happen.

Start simple and try more complex ways of guiding yourself as you feel comfortable; practice makes perfect.

Part Two
Section Five
Trial

My initial Awakening happened during a time so unpleasant that I have made comparisons between it and the plot of At the Mountains of Madness. I was pushed physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Not all times like that have to do with being ‘kin directly, but they always show something about who we are.

Understanding yourself as ‘kin is a subset of understanding yourself in general and there’s nothing like stress to give opportunities for revelation. That’s not to say you should deliberately get yourself into a difficult situation, although you may want to if it’s sufficiently rewarding and won’t hurt you too badly if you fail. Go (back to) school for a degree, try taking on new responsibilities at your job, move to a new place, but only if it suits you to begin with – I’m not advocating seeking out misery.

Perhaps it’s time to try overcoming an old weakness that you don’t want anymore, or adding a new skill that you’ve found hard to tackle. If so, I suggest reading Behavior Modification: What It Is and How to Do It, by Martin and Pear. It was written specifically for people with no background in psychology so it’s quite easy to understand and does a much better job of explaining how to achieve a long-lasting change in behavior than I ever could in this small space.

Whether you chose to try enduring something difficult or not, get all the constructive support you can and, if possible, find someone you can discuss it all with. You may not realize all of the things that your reactions say about you, but your confidante can provide a different perspective. I’ve also made critical realizations about myself by thinking deeply about the people around me and reaching insights about them first. In observing a friend who plays the role of the healer and what I believe is a case in which that role overrode my friend’s other personality traits, I came to see a new side of my own role as a defender of the people I consider my family. Seeing just how powerful such a vocation could be, I realized how to find the core of my own vocation.

Stress of any kind pushes you to the edge. Sex has also been helpful for me, on some occasions. The use of the word “fairy” as a slur on gays can be traced back to an earlier usage in which it meant that the person was promiscuous. While Fae are not necessarily promiscuous, we are sex-positive by nature and consider the only “wrong” kind of affectionate act (whether it’s sexual or not) to be the kind where someone is harmed as a result. (Discomfort, emotional harm, and getting someone in trouble with other loved ones are all forms of harm, for the record, although physical hurt may not be if it’s consensual and only temporary.) On top of that, I’m Leanan Sidhe; we in particular tend to form personal bonds with mortal artists of various types in order to get our energy fix. And, with my memories of having been part of a hive mind of sorts, the loss of self (which I’d characterize as a sort of loss of mind) during orgasm feels a bit like being home.

Remember that not all stress is unpleasant; some good sex (as long as it’s ethical), creating a work of art, or staying up all night to watch a marathon of some spiritually significant series (Star Wars, perhaps, or something ‘kin related) may work nicely. And on that note of staying up, sleep deprivation can put you into some interesting states of mind. I would not recommend it as a regular tool – you don’t want to expand your mind at the expense of truly wearing out your body – but I pull an all-nighter for spiritual reasons about once or twice a year. High-protein foods will keep you sharp when you’re combating fatigue towards the end. High-carb foods will give you a burst of energy, but it wears off more quickly.
A gaming marathon, or pushing yourself by turning up the difficulty on a long game, can also be useful. Also think about what types of characters you play, and why. My main character on City of Villains is a Stalker, and my main job on Final Fantasy XI is White Mage. The two seem to be complete opposites – quick death and the giver of life – yet I’ve found strong parallels between the playing styles, and the core underlying both of them says a lot about how I think. Which NPC’s do you like taking in your party on RPG’s and why? What kind of games do you play?
And related to that, what do you run to when there’s too much bad stress, and you retreat rather than trying to deal with it directly? My answer, as you might guess, is MMORPG’s. And the reasons why I do that also say a lot about how I think. A person has many facets and can wear many different faces, but a common thread runs beneath them all. And what you do when you’ve started sweating is an unfiltered expression of part of that thread.

Part Two
Section Six
Gifts

Special abilities and phantom body parts are only part of what it is to be ‘kin, and not all ‘kin have even one. Ordinary humans also have gifts, so having one is not proof that you’re ‘kin. However, anything that comes to you as if it’s second nature may be an indicator of what exactly you are.

Thirst for energy or blood is the defining characteristic of a vampire, but not everyone who has that characteristic is simply a vampire – as my existence proves. Those with vampiric thirst may not realize that they are something other than a plain and simple vampire, and fail to understand their nature. Other characteristics sometimes associated with modern-day Sidhe are contact with the dead, seeming to go invisible or passing unnoticed, and of course the connection with Sovereignty. My bouts of “invisibility,” which are triggered by something out of my control, alternate with periods of being too noticed and even attracting an inordinate amount of attention from members of the opposite sex. (While I’m bisexual, I have never noticed this effect taking hold over other women. Either they don’t think it’s acceptable to approach me, or a heterosexual pairing is required for it to work. Given that the Fae are also associated with fertility, the latter would not surprise me.)

Phantom body parts are a remnant of the shape your energy body had previously. They, and glimpses at your true form gained through memory or looking at yourself on the astral, will also give some hints as to what you might be…but remember that not everything looks the same as a stereotypical member of your species, and you may not be aware of all of the things that do look like this. Do your research before you let yourself be convinced!

If your ‘kinship runs in the family, seeing ‘kin-related gifts in other family members is yet more proof. There is a line of hereditary Fae in my family, and the previous generation’s member of the line is an un-Awakened psi-vamp. It was quite unsettling the first time I felt this relative automatically go for the back of the heart chakra and drain me during a hug.

Section Two
Chapter Seven
Kinship

There is also your other family – the kind you’re not related to genetically. Shamanistic work, other magical inquiries, and ordinary dreams may introduce you to others of your kind, who imply or outright state that you are one of their own.

My single experience with this was a highly unpleasant one. I have met one of my Fae family, and the time we spent in contact with each other was extremely awkward. She seemed determined to make me uncomfortable, yet I was drawn to her as family and didn’t understand it until afterwards. It was definitely a reminder not to automatically trust even another of my own kind.

Observe everything about your family that you can – not just what they tell you and what they do, but the way they carry themselves, their appearance, whether there are things you try to observe but cannot. Both my relative and the spirit-double I work with in my journeying have eyes that repeatedly change color. I’ve found that this indicates the being I’m observing is some sort of Fae, and the rest of the appearance may or may not be deliberately altered.

With respect to appearance in particular, it’s my observation that things often appear in a form that you are expecting to see, rather than what is necessarily their true form. Sometimes it’s my mind just inserting an image I can understand where there might not have been anything comprehensible otherwise; sometimes it’s the form that they use as a “trademark” of sorts to identify themselves to outsiders.

I don’t know of any foolproof ways of telling that you are related, rather than just having a strong affinity for a particular spirit type. Being accepted is not enough to prove that you are ‘kin, but it is yet another way of confirming what you learn.

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Part Three
Section One
What We Are

Sidhe and Fomor are both usually characterized as “Fae,” whatever that may mean to the person doing the characterizing. Leanan Sidhe are, as noted, vampiric Sidhe. What does all this mean for one of us, and where do we fit in with respect to related ‘kin types?

A round of definitions is necessary, and these definitions may not meet with your full agreement. In particular, it’s hard to pin down what exactly Fae are. Different species have been known to interbreed, creating hybrids. In other words, with respect to the precision I’m using here, “your mileage may vary.” I am speaking in terms of stereotypes, not the full reality of each type of being.

The Fomor are a race created to serve the Fomorian gods, who were revered in the British Isles before the Milesians – that is, the Celts – arrived. The Sidhe are a race created to serve the Tuatha De Danaan, the gods of the Milesians/Celts. In going about their purposes, they do not necessary have the kind of face-to-face interaction or direct orders that first come to mind when one thinks of serving a superior. I get the impression that, living among the Unseelie Sidhe, the Tuatha De Danaan were often far from our thoughts. Nevertheless, we served our purpose instinctively and I still do so now.

When the Celts arrived, the conflict between them and the prior inhabitants gave rise to stories of a war between the Tuatha De Danaan and the Fomorians. That war occurred after a period of cohabitation and conflict. When the Tuatha De Danaan and their mortal proxies won, the Fomorians were mostly driven away. I’ve heard talk of some small amount of Fomorian worship among the Celts after that period, but haven’t found enough confirmation to be confident of that yet. Either way, the victors wrote the history and the Fomorians are described as cruel and ugly when the cruelty was not confined to one side in the conflict and the descriptions of the Fomorians’ appearance are at least partially symbolic.

This bears a bit of resemblance to the story of some other northern European gods and their followers. The Jotnar existed first among the Norse pantheons, and the first swartalfar (dark elves), also called dwarves, were born from their bodily fluids. Later dwarves arose from the earth itself, which symbolically speaking is the corpse of a Jotun named Ymir. Dwarves are identified by their crippled or monstrous feet, and Jotnar are frequently described as hideous even though the god Frey was said to have been overcome with passion at the sight of one female Jotun. They could not have all been ugly! And yes, modern fantasy has separated the swartalfar into two different races – crafty, stout, honest dwarves versus tall, regal, corrupt dark elves…and they are often enemies. I can’t say how true to life this is, as I don’t remember dealing with either in the old times. I do know one dwarf in this lifetime, though, and he is definitely capable of being underhanded and vindictive when he wants to be.

At some undisclosed point afterwards, the Vanir deities appeared and the lightalfar, what would generally be considered the traditional image of the elf, were the servants of one of their prominent members: again, Frey. The Aesir, said to be the creators of mortals, who are descended from the Jotnar, are in continual conflict with the Jotnar and once warred against the Vanir, but later made a truce with the Vanir. Some of the Vanir were adopted into the worship of the Norse as a result. It’s speculated that the Vanir are a relic of the nature worship that existed in the lands that were later occupied by the Germanic tribes and the war between Aesir and Vanir is a proxy for the war that occurred when the tribes moved in. Sound a bit familiar?

Traditionally, the dwarves were depicted as being master craftsmen, but somewhat greedy and vindictive when crossed – much like the Unseelie, although the crafting aspect is not really touched upon in the Unseelie descriptions I’ve seen or in the times I remember. The light elves loved illusion, making them possibly dangerous to mortals, but were generally benevolent at heart – like the Seelie. The Jotnar too have their underlings, or so my gut remembers, and they are like the Fomor in ways. Therefore, I believe that these races and their parent deities are cousins of a sort. They are not the same, but similar enough to be friendly…and friendly enough that I can work agreeably with the Aesir on a regular basis and have vague memories of having been loaned from the Sluagh to Oðinn’s Wild Hunt.

Other types of elves, such as the Elenari, are also different but similar. Reading the Elenari.net site, I keep feeling twinges of familiarity…but at the same time, their histories don’t sound familiar to me at all. I remember other lands, but they were of the Otherworld, not another physical world. One of their tribes even interbred with at least one tribe of Sidhe. Neither Sidhe nor Fomor are elves of any kind, but I feel we are closer to it than to being stereotypically Fae.

Fae are a bit harder to pin down, even in traditional terms. They are spirits of nature and of the Earth. The Sidhe are tied to the concept of Sovereignty, the spirit power of the land itself, along with the Fae…so technically, I consider them to also be Fae. However, my relationship to Sovereignty is not quite what I’d expect it to be for stereotypical Fae.

The land takes notice of us as we travel, sometimes reacting more strongly than it would to others. I have been targeted by an unhappy spirit after moving into a newly constructed apartment building, come home to flooding in a building that had never been known to do that before, and (more happily) been metaphysically “grabbed” by trees that want my attention. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a “natural” environment or an urban one, at least in my case; the road salt spirits drop by to say hello too. From what little observation I’ve been allowed so far, moving is only disruptive for a few days and then I connect fully with the new environment. We are the land; it follows us wherever we go.

Yet we are so much more elf-like than most Fae, and our human-perceived appearance always tall and regal despite the changes in belief that led mortals to begin viewing Fae mostly as little winged sprites. Some say that we are the product of interbreeding between Fae and elves; my memories don’t agree with this, but I can see how such an impression could be gotten! I suppose you could say we’re half-Fae, but not in that way.

Both Sidhe and Fomor have internal divisions, and there are many different types. I don’t know what my Fomor tribe was called; it could be that I was a mutt of sorts. I do know that I’m Leanan Sidhe, and that makes a big difference. Leanan Sidhe are energy-deficient, which makes them a type of psychic vampire. Unlike many psychic vampires, however, I frequently find it easier to feed on natural energies than human energies. Picking up the ambient energy that’s emanated by creative people engaged in an act of creation is also quite easy, and probably the most filling. Leanan Sidhe were traditionally described as exploiting artists and draining their energy while inspiring them to greater hights of creativity, so this is not surprising at all.

Techniques to assist vampiric entities are readily available online or in book form (see resources section), so I won’t go into detail there. However, if you’re Leanan Sidhe or Baobhan Sidhe, keep in mind that you may have to experiment with energy sources in order to find ones that work rather than taking the advice of the vampires plain and simple. We have different needs, and I’ll say more about them in a following section on living the ‘kin life.