I'm doing a lot of research on the Fey at the moment,
though mainly from more of a practical magic /
experiential context than a scholarly one, but from
the scholarship I have read on the subject I would put
forward the following observations:
1) The Dead and Faerie, there does indeed seem to be a
strong link between the Dead and the Fey, both in
terms of ancestral connections (and not just the
Plantagenets!) and in terms of known dead people
returning as or with the Fey. There are also
phenomenal parallels, but these may be just that,
general similarities between 'non physical' entities.
On the other hand there are also dissimilarities and
even stipulation that the dead, the ancestors and the
Fey are quite distinct.
What this indicates to me is that the Dead > Fey
transformation is an untypical one, that is it was
believed that *some* dead people became Fey, and
*some* ancestors were Fey, but by no means all. Just
as the Fey > Living transformation was not universal
either, that is some babies (Changelings) were of Fey
origin, but by no means all.
The kinds of humans who became Fey tended to be those
who
had close contact with them or with nature in some
way.
Emphasising that the universalisation of the post
mortem fate is a recent invention, perhaps Christian
in origin.
With tongue partly in cheek, I might also want to
refer to the appearance of a 'Ufonaut' called
'Adamski' shortly after the death of contactee George
Adamski.
2) Storms and Faerie, I've read of storms being
summoned by various 'witches' through the manipulation
of 'elemental' Fey. There is even the claim that some
Cornish Wreckers evoked, or predicted the activity of,
storm sprites under the general Fey term Bucca, to
sink ships. And why not they didn't have reality TV
then :)
And surely the concept of 'Demons' largely arises from
such stormy, 'elemental spirits', particularly in
ascetic, anti natural, religions? After all Asmodeus
probably comes from a stormy Persian sprite whose name
meant 'fury', and in tales of church bells, they are
said to be to ward off the demons of storm and prevent
lightning strike. Then we have the 'demonic' aerial
spirits and the likes of Shemyaza etc etc.
Apologies if I repeated anything already said, as its
been hard keeping track of all these messages. :)
Steve
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