{"id":2756,"date":"2009-11-01T01:10:28","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T06:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=2814"},"modified":"2009-10-29T17:20:15","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T22:20:15","slug":"faeries-elves-other-kin-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2009\/11\/01\/faeries-elves-other-kin-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Faeries, Elves, & Other Kin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Do You Take Your Faeries With or Without Wings?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not very long ago, a new reader of my blog wrote me the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

I have to say that whenever I come across a word that is new to me, such as “Faerie”, I immediately “iconoclast” the current definition I have for it out of respect (which would be in my mind a faerie is “a feminine sprite of metaphysical quality, mischievious [sic] and clad somewhat in pink” with alternate spelling)\u2026<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cClad somewhat in pink.\u201d\u00a0 That description gave me a good giggle, but he left out wings.\u00a0 What do you think about faeries with wings?\u00a0 Are faeries with wings a valid archetype?\u00a0 If you read book reviews, you\u2019ll find quite a few people think faeries with wings are just so much fluff and aren\u2019t to be taken seriously.\u00a0 We\u2019ve all heard the derogatory term \u201cfluffy bunnies.\u201d Must we now deal with \u201cfluffy faeries,\u201d too?<\/span><\/p>\n

People all over the world, since time immemorial, have experienced the fae.\u00a0 What these beings looked like and how they acted may have varied from culture to culture, but one thing was consistent until the Victorian era:\u00a0 None possessed wings.\u00a0 Angels had bird-like wings and demons had bat-like wings, but there were no beings with petal-, leaf-, bee-, moth-, butterfly- or dragonfly-like wings.<\/span><\/p>\n

So how and why did faeries with wings pop into existence?\u00a0 Moreover, why are they still flitting about?<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to answer these questions, let us look back into history and examine the origins of the fae. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some hypothesize faeries were originally pagan deities (such as the Tuatha De Danann, who were human in appearance and had no wings).\u00a0 Another theory is that faeries were the souls of the dead (who were, naturally, thus human in appearance and had no wings).\u00a0 Still others think faeries arose from folk memories of aboriginal races (who were thus also human in appearance and had no wings).\u00a0 Another speculation is that faeries developed from the ancestral belief in an underworld (and why would creatures that lived underground have the need for flight or wings?).\u00a0 The best theory, in my opinion, is that faeries originated as spirits of nature (and thus explained unexplainable natural phenomena and could take on any characteristic out of necessity, which includes wings, but didn\u2019t until something required them). <\/span><\/p>\n

What humans fear or do not understand, they strive to explain as best they can.\u00a0 Just as the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had gods, goddesses, heroes and monsters to explain everything from lightning and ocean tempests to why spring always follows winter and how the sun returns each morning; all civilizations have to deal with these same problems and questions.\u00a0 Why should faeries not be responsible for or play a role in some of life\u2019s difficulties and wonders?\u00a0 In pre-Victorian ages, European peasantry blamed the fae for many natural \u201cdisasters\u201d or else sought them out for their magical powers or abilities. <\/span><\/p>\n