From: noahdove7@lighspeed.ca   
      
    The Mystical Fairy Faith -fad or deceptive reality?   
      
    In our times there is a surprising revival of sorts going on. This   
    revival is the post modern fairy faith. There are signs of it in   
   several   
    feature films*, festivals, art work, books, Fairy shops and   
    numerous web sites, if you are observant you should spot some   
    indications of it in the malls of America and other English countries.   
    ..there are all kinds of fairy things for sale: cards, calendars,   
   fairy ornaments, fairy costumes, candle holders,  fairy statues for   
   gardens etc. This last June the Third Fairy Congress was held in the   
   Cascade Mountains of   
    Washington state. Some of the speakers were from the Findhorn New   
    Age community of Scotland. Workshops included talks on how to contact   
    nature spirits (fairies) for guidance and help. Presently there are   
   more and more books teaching people how to etablish communicate and   
   contact  faeries for instance:   
      
      
   The Book of Faeries: A Guide to the World of Elves, Pixies, Goblins,   
   and Other Magic Spirits  by  Francis Melville   
      
    Fairy Spells: Seeing and Communicating With the Fairies   
    by  Claire Nahmad   
      
    A Witchs Guide to Faery Folk: Reclaiming Our Working Relationship With   
   Invisible Helpers (Llewellyns New Age Series)   
    by Authors:  Edain McCoy , Edain McCoy   
      
   Other books are listed on Amazon.com   
      
    Some casual observers   
    who have noticed this growing interest in faeries   
    consider it a fad. Is it just an innocent fad as some say or   
    is there a reality and a darker side to the world of fairie?   
      
    The following news clip, quotes from articles and information web links   
    may answer this question.   
      
      
    *some films with fairy theme or fairy encounters   
      
    The National Film Board of Canada's production, The Fairy Faith   
   Fairy Tale a True Story   
    Photography Fairies   
    The Lord of the Rings Trilogy   
    Legend   
    Willow   
    Ladybrinth   
    Peter Pan -the new movie   
      
      
    A faerie affair   
    Elusive folk and their followers to alight in Sedona for all-day   
    festival   
      
    Michael Kiefer   
    The Arizona Republic   
    May. 6, 2003 12:00 AM   
      
    Amy Ford sees fairies.   
      
    Some are as small as houseflies, others 18 feet tall. They're pixielike   
    or feminine, sometimes androgynous, and once, she claims, she woke up   
    in the woods near Cornville to find herself held captive.   
      
    "It was just like Gulliver's Travels," she says. "The fairies had tied   
    me down with dried grass," while one laughed right in her face.   
      
    "It scared the crap out of me."   
      
    Ford claims she's seen fairies all her life, and though she won't say   
    exactly how long that is, it looks to be 30-some years. She's a   
    musician and astrologer from Scottsdale, short and buxom with long,   
    dark hair and darker eyes. And though she seems reasonably sane, she   
    acknowledges, "I'm wired way different."   
      
    Ford is part of a growing subculture of fairy folk, not all of whom   
    claim to see fairies - though that number is bigger than you might   
    expect. The concept has allure for children, folklorists and   
    all-purpose whimsical folk, as well. There is fairy music, much of it   
    borrowing Celtic sounds and rhythms; there are T-shirts with fairy   
    pictures that sell big at teenage boutiques, and fairy cards and   
    posters in New Age bookstores. And a British artist named Brian Froud   
    has sold more than 8 million large-format books of paintings of   
    fairies, which he, like most fairy folk, spell the old-fashioned way:   
    "faeries."   
      
    "Faeryland is like the sea," Froud says. "It's like the tide, and   
    sometimes the tide is out a long way and Faeryland is very difficult to   
    reach. And sometimes the tide is in. And it does seem to me that the   
    tide was out for some years, but it's really come in now."   
      
    That tide has come in far enough that promoters expect more than 4,000   
    people to attend an all-day Faerieworlds Festival on Saturday at Sedona   
    Cultural Park. The festival will include music, multimedia shows, live   
    interactive performances and, especially, Froud and his artwork.   
      
    The expected attendees will be true believers like Ford, but also   
    Renaissance Faire fans, families with young children, masqueraders, New   
    Age dabblers, Goth kids who have "discovered Faery," as one promoter   
    put it, and even "folks factioning out of the old Grateful Dead days   
    who don't have anywhere to go."   
      
    Fairies originated in Celtic folklore, and, more often than not, they   
    were frightening, otherworldly forest beings that were blamed for   
    unexplainable events, such as ill children, people turned mad and dark   
    thoughts.   
      
    "They're about expression of things in everyday life that we can't   
    express openly," says Ari Berk, a professor of folklore at Central   
    Michigan University. "Fairies have always spoken to the human desire to   
    have some kind of conversation with the environment around them."   
      
    They've populated art and literature for centuries, not just as fairy   
    tales, but also in Shakespeare and in the poetry of William Butler   
    Yeats. More recently, they appear in the Lord of the Rings films, as   
    the elves.   
      
    Although children are naturally drawn to fairy tales, the current pop   
    phenomenon is not really about children. Froud's art, for example, is   
    not only well researched but very adult.   
      
    "Fairies have been relegated to the nursery for far too long," Froud   
    says. "That's a 20th-century point of view really. Fairies have always   
    been dangerous creatures. That's why they had to be placated. That's   
    why little gifts were left out at night, little saucers of milk, or,   
    otherwise, your cattle died, or, indeed, your children were stolen or   
    people died. The word 'stroke' comes from 'elf stroke' because a fairy   
    had touched you. So fairies have always been dangerous. And one way   
    that people have tried to make them safer is to turn them into fairy   
    stories, something that was safe, and say, 'Oh it's just for children,   
    isn't it?' "   
      
    Froud, 56, lives in Dartmoor, England, an area he says is slightly wild   
    and desolate, and whose landscape influenced his palette.   
      
    "When I looked at trees and rocks and hills when I moved to the   
    country, I wondered what the inside of them looked like," Froud says.   
    "And as I was wondering that, then I started painting fairies, and they   
    were indeed at the souls of trees and landscapes."   
      
    He was inspired by illustrations of fairy tales and did a lot of   
    research with his collaborator, Alan Lee, for his first book, Faeries,   
    which they published in 1978. It has sold more than 5 million copies,   
    including more than 100,000 since last October, when a 25th-anniversary   
    edition was published.   
      
    Froud followed up with several other titles, including Good Faeries/Bad   
    Faeries, whose paintings sometimes verge on the erotic, with lithesome   
    near nudes, a merging of several tingling and anticipatory fantasies,   
    and decidedly not for children. His art was the inspiration for the Jim   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)