Picture this: You're lying in your bed. It's dark, and you have been sleeping. Suddenly, though, you wake up. It's dark and you try to sit up - but you can't. You feel numb, sedated even! You look around with your eyes and see blurry humanoid - but not quite human, they're off somehow - figures staring down at you. You try to struggle, but you can't move. Something is very very wrong. You black out. It's only later when you wake up in your bed and wonder if it was just a strange nightmare - until you look down and notice marks on your body as if you had been operated on or probed!
Now what does this sound like?
Now, I tried to make that introduction sound as generic as possible. I think I succeeded - it truly does sound like just another one of the hundreds of UFO abduction stories we've all heard. But guess what?
I took the details from a fairy abduction story from the 15th century.
Yes, you read me right. Fairies.
Actually, though people tend to think now about fairies looking, well, like Tinker Bell, and being usually quite sweet and at worse a bit sassy (like Tinker Bell), it wasn't until the Victorian era that people thought of them like that. Rather than adorable little imps, for hundreds - maybe thousands - of years, fairies could be any size, but at any size they were they were definitely a force to be reckoned with. In fact, believe it or not, the movie "Labyrinth" had a nice piece of dialogue that explains this rather well, in my opinion:
Sarah: "Ow! It bit me! ...I thought fairies did nice things, like granting wishes."
Hoggle: "Ha! Shows what you know, don't it?"
Rather than just being a silly piece of dialogue that shows what a weird place The Underground is, I see it more as a sly piece of commentary - after all, Brian Froud was one of those who worked on this movie, and he's very knowledgable on fairy lore, as is another collaborator, the main writer Terry Jones. I would see it at least partially as a commentary on the difference between the modern perception of the Fair Folk and what fairy lore really says.
There is even a theory that fairies, like aliens, are beings from another world - not as in extraterrestrial, but as in a parallel world/universe, which the Irish called the Otherworld.
Yessirree, as you're all about to see, really the only difference between fairy lore of old and alien lore today is the perception of such phenomenon as being extraterrestrial.
I took the details from a fairy abduction story from the 15th century.
Yes, you read me right. Fairies.
Actually, though people tend to think now about fairies looking, well, like Tinker Bell, and being usually quite sweet and at worse a bit sassy (like Tinker Bell), it wasn't until the Victorian era that people thought of them like that. Rather than adorable little imps, for hundreds - maybe thousands - of years, fairies could be any size, but at any size they were they were definitely a force to be reckoned with. In fact, believe it or not, the movie "Labyrinth" had a nice piece of dialogue that explains this rather well, in my opinion:
Sarah: "Ow! It bit me! ...I thought fairies did nice things, like granting wishes."
Hoggle: "Ha! Shows what you know, don't it?"
Rather than just being a silly piece of dialogue that shows what a weird place The Underground is, I see it more as a sly piece of commentary - after all, Brian Froud was one of those who worked on this movie, and he's very knowledgable on fairy lore, as is another collaborator, the main writer Terry Jones. I would see it at least partially as a commentary on the difference between the modern perception of the Fair Folk and what fairy lore really says.
There is even a theory that fairies, like aliens, are beings from another world - not as in extraterrestrial, but as in a parallel world/universe, which the Irish called the Otherworld.
Yessirree, as you're all about to see, really the only difference between fairy lore of old and alien lore today is the perception of such phenomenon as being extraterrestrial.
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| Supernatural even did a whole episode about it. IIRC they even thought it was aliens at first. |
Tales of fairy abductions used to be as common as tales of alien abductions today, and in fact a hell of a lot more socially acceptable at the time. There were different views of what fairies were at the time - spirits of the dead? Demons? Or non-human creatures from another world? Whatever they were, they liked to abduct humans. Sometimes they abducted handsome and beautiful youths - even sometimes impregnating young women - and sometimes they took human children and left "changelings" instead - sickly fairy doubles of the stolen child who would wither away and die.
This is the very same idea as has been put forward to explain why UFO entities have sometimes shown a sexual interest in humans, and it is intriguing that fairy lore and UFO lore should touch at this point.
Fairies, like modern aliens, tend to be diminutive creatures with large magical eyes. Many reports of alien abduction even include "power rods" used to paralyze abductees, just as fairies wield "magic wands". And those abducted by the fae often would report they had only been gone a few minutes at most - only to find out they'd been gone hours, or even days.
Most reports of alien abduction start with the first encounter. People claim to have been abducted from a variety of places - forests, while driving, even their own homes - but there is an element in the way they are captured that unites almost all cases, a change in their state of consciousness. The abductee experiences an intense blue or white light, a buzzing or humming sound, anxiety and the sense of an unexplained presence. They are then transported or ‘floated’ into a craft, just like how in renaissance times “witches supposedly were taken into the air for meetings with the devil.” The abductee then either loses their memory, or remembers moving in a trance-like state; the environment is often surrounded with blinding lights and/or mist.
Many of the fairy abduction tales are somewhat sexual as well, whether or not they involve intercourse - and they often do. European folklore tells stories about such relations between fairies and humans, of human wives stolen by fairy husbands (and vice versa), like the story of a bride desired by a fairy husband and carried off into Fairy land - the Irish Legend of Mifhir and Etain. Deviating from Eurocentric folklore, the same concept can be found in Native American myths, such as the apache story of “The girl, and the water sprit” where a girl is abducted, and taken as a wife, by a water fairy. Another example comes from Chinese mythology, which depicts fairies (or animal spirits) usually taking same-sex partners, such as the tale of the "Old Farmer and a Dragon", in which a sixty-year old farmer is forcibly sodomised by a passing dragon, because of course he is. Researcher Dr. Richard L. Thompson explains that:
So perhaps you should be portraying fairies less like this:
And more like this:
Be safe from abductions of any kind, kiddies!
This is the very same idea as has been put forward to explain why UFO entities have sometimes shown a sexual interest in humans, and it is intriguing that fairy lore and UFO lore should touch at this point.
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| Picture by Brian Froud |
Most reports of alien abduction start with the first encounter. People claim to have been abducted from a variety of places - forests, while driving, even their own homes - but there is an element in the way they are captured that unites almost all cases, a change in their state of consciousness. The abductee experiences an intense blue or white light, a buzzing or humming sound, anxiety and the sense of an unexplained presence. They are then transported or ‘floated’ into a craft, just like how in renaissance times “witches supposedly were taken into the air for meetings with the devil.” The abductee then either loses their memory, or remembers moving in a trance-like state; the environment is often surrounded with blinding lights and/or mist.
Many of the fairy abduction tales are somewhat sexual as well, whether or not they involve intercourse - and they often do. European folklore tells stories about such relations between fairies and humans, of human wives stolen by fairy husbands (and vice versa), like the story of a bride desired by a fairy husband and carried off into Fairy land - the Irish Legend of Mifhir and Etain. Deviating from Eurocentric folklore, the same concept can be found in Native American myths, such as the apache story of “The girl, and the water sprit” where a girl is abducted, and taken as a wife, by a water fairy. Another example comes from Chinese mythology, which depicts fairies (or animal spirits) usually taking same-sex partners, such as the tale of the "Old Farmer and a Dragon", in which a sixty-year old farmer is forcibly sodomised by a passing dragon, because of course he is. Researcher Dr. Richard L. Thompson explains that:
“Just as we find in UFO cases, it seems that sex desire and genetic considerations are involved in these abductions. In support of this, Vallee [UFO researcher] cited Edwin Hartland, a scholar of fairy traditions, as to the reasons people in Northern European countries gave for this abduction of children: ‘ The motive usually assigned to fairies in Northern stories is that of preserving and improving their race, on the one hand by carrying off human children to be brought up among the elves and to become united with them, and on the other hand by obtaining the milk and fostering care of human mothers for their own offspring.’”
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| Suddenly this movie makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? |
I could get a lot more scholarly on all the various links between fairies and extraterrestrial beings, but I don't think anyone wants to read a whole big essay on it, nor do I really want to write one. I'll make it quick, and break it down. Quick and dirty, just the way Mama likes it:
- The phenomenon of "fairy circles" could be interpreted in modern times as crop circles or UFO landing spots.
- Fairies have been known to fly in lighted globes or auras, just as aliens ride UFOs.
- Fairies snatch human babies or impregnate human women. Aliens experiment with human DNA to create hybrids or false pregnancies.
- Both can cause temporary paralysis, either with magic or science.
- Fairies can cause time loss or time warps or even the forgetting of the whole experience until something brings back the memories. Alien abductees make the same claims about their experiences.
So perhaps you should be portraying fairies less like this:
And more like this:
Be safe from abductions of any kind, kiddies!
Sleep well,
Nym
What about fairy godmothers? As a fairy godmother, myself, I need to know... Am I an alien?
ReplyDeleteAlso, talk to Erik about this, you'll make his day
That's a good question - ARE you an alien? I think you would be the best person to judge that, not me ;)
DeleteI would absolutely love to discuss this with Erik if he doesn't mind me getting overly excited and infodumping because, well... I think aliens are neat...