The Wee Folk

Deep in the woods and under the leaf, behind the rock, or in the hollow of the tree, live the Wee Folk. Small little opaque creatures called the Divas, Wee Folk, Faeries, Sprites, and Elves. They are quick of mind and swift of heart, and they find it very easy to elude and exclude their human co-inhabitants. They come in all variety, they speak in all tongues, they dance to all music, they protect, care and guide. They shimmer, twinkle, sparkle and dance. They are shy little creatures, but are very real, indeed.

They have been the source of many adventures of authors and writers like William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), they have been painted and drawn by artist like, John Anster Fitzgerald (The Chase of the White Mice), William Blake and Edward Robert Hughes. They have been the source of complete works and research (The Finhorn Community), and have been depicted in childrens stories and films such as Peter Pan, The Borrowers, Labyrinth, and, Fairy Tale, A True Story.

Although called by different names, they are found in just about every country and culture in the world through fables, tales and art of all kinds. The Jews call them Shedim, Egyptians call them Afries, Afticans call them Yowahoos and the Persians call them Devs.

They exist in the ethereal world which penetrates our own from time to time. Dorothy Maclean, of the Finhorn Community, defined them as ‘archetypal formative forces of light or energy that underlie all forms in nature - plants, trees, rivers, animals, etc. They have also been described as ‘elementals’.

Our imaginations, sensory perceptions, and willingness to see and learn are most active and unencumbered during childhood, however, there are moments, afternoons, and times of emotional awareness when all of us have glimpses of anomalistic realities. It is during these times, that preternatural knowledge and adventures are viewed and accepted (at least, for the moment), with wonder, by even the most armored individual.

These moments present themselves while journeying down a path during a solitary Sunday afternoon stroll, a silent meander in the woods at twilight on a summer evening or, possibly, a moment on cross country skis when the rest of the group has left you to re-tie your shoe laces. It is a sharp softness, a gentle feeling of trespassing on beloved land, it is the sudden awareness that someone or something might be privy to private moments, that cozy feeling of not really being alone or a glow within that says you quite possibly could be psychic after all. It is that sudden tinge of awareness when you look up from the garden swing, expecting to see some one there and are a bit shocked to find the scene as you left it before you closed your eyes. It borders on a spiritual feeling, a reverent kind of semi knowingness that saturates your being, if only for a moment. That second, while planting the spring bulbs in the garden that you sensed (or did you actually see) a sparkle or twinkle slip by, almost undetected.

These moments, and there are many of them, come when you are not looking for them, not seeking them, not paying much attention and usually concentrating on something else. Tis when the Divas are about, tis their domain, their home, their beloved space.

They live in all medium, from large city parking lots to deep wooded forest, small gardens, and in grand or primitive park lands. They are about all the time, everywhere. They are the essence of nature herself. The keepers, protectors, and ego, so to speak, of flora and fauna. They are delightful creatures, who are responsible for knowledge, manifested as instincts.

Few of us take the time to squelch the ego’s demand that there is nothing there, most of us buy into the assumption that our imagination is on the prowl producing fanciful illusions. But throughout history, there have been many that ‘go with the experience’ and come away with ideas and knowledge that somehow make sense and make a difference in the quality of life.

When these experiences are related, they seem far fetched, dreamlike, and even preposterous, but we deal daily with unseen things. There are a multitude of unseen things that we ‘think’ we see. The wind, for instance, we have never seen. We see what it does, we feel it, we sense it, but we never do actually see it. Same as love, we feel it, we experience it, but we never actually see it. The reason is because they are energies - an electricity, so to speak. They are powerful energies that affect our life, affect how we feel and what we do with our day, our afternoon, even things as mundane as our laundry. Radios are merely amplifiers to what is in the atmosphere. We can’t see radio waves, but we can listen to them because they are ’amplified’. So, how can one argue that unseen things don’t count, don’t exist, don’t affect us? If everyone bought into that way of thinking, germs wouldn’t have been looked for and found, microwaves would not be in our kitchens, and so forth.

We don’t think about these ‘mundane’ unseens because we have normalized their existence. We take electricity, microwaves, radio waves, cyberwaves, the wind, emotions, and microscopic things for granted these days. Yet, with each new ‘discovery’ we often deem the ‘inventor or founder’ crazy, eccentric, neurotic. What we often fail to realize is that discoveries are merely ‘findings’ - it is the way (method) we view them that is new - but the actual thing that we are ‘finding’ has been there all along - right under our noses - in our daily lives for eons.

And so, with this in mind, I'll bring a few stories from the Wee Folk, a kind and gentle group who have a great deal of power on our earth. If you have trouble with the source, then only listen to the message, the knowledge. Pick through the parts that ‘ring truth’ for you and leave the rest alone, without judgment, for rather like a book given to us at Christmas one year, makes no sense at the time, but three years later, you find yourself reading and appreciating it, saying that it is just ‘what the doctor ordered’. You never know when you might want some information, in order to piece something together, in your heart and in your mind.

- Prissy Hamilton