John Kruse - Faery: A Guide to the Lore, Magic & World of the Good Folk

About the Author

John Kruse is a writer and blogger on faery themes. His professional interests are law and legal history, but in recent years he has brought his research skills to a subject that has fascinated him since his late teens. In 2016 he began to write the British Fairies blog on WordPress. In 2017 he published British Fairies with Green Magic Publishing and he has several other books on faery and faery beasts forthcoming.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Faery: A Guide to the Lore, Magic & World of the Good Folk 2020 by John Kruse.

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Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition 2020

E-book ISBN: 9780738761978

Book design by Samantha Penn

Cover design by Kevin Brown

Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle

Interior illustrations by Wen Hsu

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending)

ISBN: 978-0-7387-6189-3

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Sue, for her love and support, Rhiannon,

Fliss, and the Lady of the Elder Tree.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Finding Faeries

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Faery Life

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Contact with the Fae

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 12:

Chapter 13:

Modern Times

Chapter 14:

Foreword
by Morgan Daimler

Fairies are a subject that has intrigued people across the world and across time. They appear in the earliest written Irish mythologies and fill the pages of modern urban fantasy; they once captivated Shakespeares audiences and today fascinate contemporary moviegoers. Fairies cavort in early modern artwork and across the greeting cards and posters of the twenty-first century. Songs have been written about them and there are even several songs supposedly passed on from them by people who have heard fairy music firsthand. Fairies have been found in every form of human art and expression, perhaps because they are intrinsically linked to us. As foreign as they often seem to be in their actions and moods, they nonetheless are intimately tied to humanity. Yet in our fast paced and technologically modern Western world they remain shrouded in mystery.

Perhaps some of that can be put down to the slow erosion and loss of the older folklore and folk beliefs that have formed the backbone of fairy beliefs. It has been said that, since at least Chaucers time, fairies were in retreat. While it never appeared be true, every generation claimed that fairy belief was waning and had been stronger in their grandparents time. Yet in the twenty-first century there may be for the first time some bite in this claim. This is not because the fairies are actually leaving, but because they have been radically re-envisioned in popular culture with mainstream belief replacing the boggart of folklore with that of Harry Potter, and the human-size, ambivalent fairy folk with Disneys tiny Tinker Bell and friends. Paganism is not exempt from these newly remodeled fairies either, with many books aimed at a Pagan audience gleefully adopting the twee fairies or looking to the New Age and Victorian understandings of fairies to shape their own.

One might be tempted to think that these reimagined fairies are the sum of what fairies today have become, but this is not so; rather, they are the illusion that fairies have taken on, which obscures the older, often grimmer, culturally based folklore. However, the genuine folklore and belief does persist, but it is not as easily accessible to a wider audience, and therein lies a considerable problem for those fairy-seekers who arent embedded in a living culture that still includes fairy belief. Certainly many older works of folklore can now be found in the public domain. But those must be taken in their context and read with an understanding of the biases with which they were written; that task can be complicated if the reader isnt aware of what the problems with the works are. It is also possible to connect to the living cultures on an individual scale, but that is also often complicated, and sometimes very difficult. And individual connections are ultimately only a short-term solution to reviving and revitalizing the fairy beliefs. The only way to bring the folklore outward to a wider audience, and for the beliefs and ideas surrounding them as they exist today to be preserved, is for them to be written about, ideally in a thoughtful manner that acknowledges their sources. I am delighted to see John Kruse taking on that effort.

To really understand who and what fairies are, we have to look beyond the current faade that has sprung up around them, the modern glamour that cloaks them in forms both friendly and harmless. To find the still-beating heart of Faery we have to dig deeper into the folklore and the living cultures that preserve the beliefs. This is a uniquely challenging quest in a world that is as full of false leads as it is of true information, but there are good resources out there to be found. This book, Kruses Faery: A G uide to the Lore, Magic, and World of the Good Folk , is one of the rare few that delivers on its promises to give readers a glimpse into the otherworld and an understanding of the beings who dwell within it. It touches on the folklore but doesnt neglect the living modern beliefs either, and includes a balance of theory that is nicely delineated from established folk belief.