Faeries aka Fairies Are Real

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," safe harbor for faeries since 2005! My name is Anne Johnson. I believe in faeries. I do. I do.

Sunday morning I was dozing in the peace and repose of my bedroom when, promptly at 9:00, the overpowering drone of heavy machinery commenced in the street.

A developer has bought the property directly across the street from my house. There was one home on it when he bought it. Now there's one finished one and another, larger one, planned. When the whole fiasco is finished, I will post photos.

But this is about faeries, right?

Turns out the workers across the street were intent upon slaughtering three fully mature maple trees on this sleepy Sunday morning. The noise of the shredder was deafening. The sight of the shapely limbs falling to the ground was heart-wrenching. A cluster of neighbors gathered in the street, including the new neighbors from the brand-new dwelling. Their three-year-old, blonde son was captivated by the tree slaughter.

All of this is an affront to the faeries, of course. Big time.

It's also an affront to a hard-working and proficient school teacher who has to go to work tomorrow and teach Act 3 of Romeo and Juliet. So while I petitioned the faeries to put a stop to the mayhem, Mr. J more reasonably called the Snobville constabulary. It only took 45 minutes for an officer to arrive -- his appearance brought great consternation to the work crew, who scurried for their trucks. A few more limbs were hacked down and then work ceased. It's against the law to run heavy machinery in Snobville on Sunday.

Quiet descended, and the sun came out. It had been raining for four days.

I had been planning to freshen my outdoor shrine if the weather was good, so I went out to do it. My shrine is dedicated to the ancient deities who no longer have praise and worship teams, to my ancestors, and to the faeries. It is loaded with crystals, marbles, stones, sea glass, and other shiny objects that honor the tastes of the fae.

I was so upset about all the big trees being cut down. I have a hard time pulling out seedlings in my own yard. (Now I have little trees everywhere and coppiced trees too.) My heart was heavy as I commenced to spruce up the shrine.

When I first built my shrine, I put three dozen or so quartz crystal points in the very center of it. None of them remained. Or so I thought. As I began to sift through the pebbles and the sea glass and the trinkets, I began finding quartz crystals. And more of them. And more of them. And even more of them. More, I promise you, than I ever put out there. When I assembled all the shiny stuff to wash it, the pile was just brimming with quartz crystals!

Quartz crystals don't mate and multiply. But it's my experience that, if you give the faeries what they like, they reward you.

I needed to spend time at my shrine today. I needed to clean and beautify it. I needed to be reminded that I have a faerie portal in my own yard, that I made it, and that they are using it.

So you say, "What do faeries look like?" And I answer, "What have you got?" There are as many varieties of faerie as there are of biological life in the apparent world. Some faeries are human shaped and sized, some are tiny, some look like animals, some like birds, and some are just beams of light. Be careful if you make eye contact, because they like to distract. And whatever you do, show them respect. Even the "critter" ones. Call them "Ladies and Gentlemen," or "your majesties."

It was tempting to ask the faeries to wreak revenge on the tree-killers and the developer across the street, and even the rich young families who buy the houses. But with faeries, they will tell you they are fulfilling your wishes, whether they plan to or not. So my advice is, don't petition the faeries. Just be respectful, give them trinkets, and keep their portals fresh and lively.

If you want to attract faeries to your yard, set out a little pile of polished stones, beads, marbles, crystals, pins, and anything that looks like a trinket. Keep it all clean, and bow politely as you pass it. Before you know it, the stuff in the pile will start to re-arrange itself. This either means you have faeries or there's been a stampede of buffalo that you somehow missed.

Now it's Sunday night. The tree-killers will be back tomorrow, I'm sure, to complete the sap-bath. (It's only a bloodbath if you have blood. Trees have sap.) I'll be at work, but the faeries will be watching. From their spruced-up portal, all bright and shiny.