Fairycraft

I read Morgan Daimler’s Fairy Witchcraft some time last year, and very much enjoyed it, although if I reviewed it here I’ve managed to hide it from myself. Fairycraft is the recently released and much longer and deeper look at fairy orientated magic. There isn’t much overlap between the two books so if you’re keen on the subject it is worth reading both, start with Fairy Witchcraft.

Over the course of the book, Morgan explores the folklore and mythology of faeries – her main focus is faeries in British folklore (especially Irish, quite a lot of Scottish) but she does encourage people to find out what’s traditional for their part of the world. As an American she’s faced with the complexities of ancestral ideas about the Otherworld, and ideas associated with the land, and has some interesting things to say on the subject.

There’s a fair amount of the history of fairy witchcraft , and the very revealing linguistics of it. Morgan Daimler does a lot of translating from Irish, and in the nuances of language use, all kinds of things emerge.

Alongside this, Morgan talks in detail about personal practice and experience, and what happens when you take the things from the folklore and start trying to do them. This is really fascinating stuff, and is presented with a balance of reverence and questioning rather than any kind of desire to impress. It’s made very clear that fairy work is all about relationship, so what happens for one person is a very limited indicator of what another person might experience while doing the same things. The personal qualities required to work in this way are flagged up and explored.

I suspect that what Morgan says about fairy magic is true of pretty everything to some degree – that relationship is key. Who we are, how we think and act and feel informs what we take into any situation. How that relates to whoever or whatever we’re working with will also have an impact. Care, respect and knowing where the boundaries are, will be important in all things. What this book offers is an explicitly co-operative approach to magic. The Fairy Witch needs a very strong will and great clarity of intention, but isn’t generally forcing that will onto the world, but working with Others. As an animist, I’m always more drawn to ways of being that are co-operative and consenting rather than about forcing will.

I’ve always been fascinated with faerie, it probably started with childhood exposure to the myths of Tam Lyn and Thomas the Rhymer. At the moment my personal practice is very quiet, and in an incubating stage, so I didn’t read this with an eye to acting on it. I think it’s worth noting that even if you aren’t planning to *be* a fairy witch, this is a great read. The wealth of folklore is wonderful, and the content around practice is really engaging to read anyway. There’s some genuinely innovative material about seasonal celebration (I say this as someone who is otherwise bored sick of wheel of the year sections in books). If you do want to take up this path, these two books are well worth a look.