| Continuing from The Fairy Faith: “Patrick Water gives this description of a ‘fairy man’: ‘A crowd of boys out in the field one day saw a fairy-man with a red cap. Except for his height he was like any other man. He was about three and a half feet tall. The boys surrounded him, but he made such a sputtering talk they let him go. And he disappeared as he walked away in the direction of the old fort’.” (112) Cases like this, we may assume, they are talking about mushrooms and not really fairies that were seen. This appears to me to be propagation of the mythology, for current and future readers as its unlikely that mushroom people actually wear red caps. Though, what our minds imagine tends to be what we already believe. And as such, reality can work itself in reverse. Maybe someone took mushrooms and actually saw little people with red caps because they previously read a story which outlined this idea. It’s highly doubtful though. Here’s another story collected by Wentz and published in his book: “When I was a young man, I often used to go out in the mountains over there to fish for trout or to hunt. And it was in January on a cold, dry day while carrying my gun that I and a friend with me as we were walking around Ben Bulben saw one of the Gentry for the first time. This one was dressed in blue with a head-dress adorned with what seemed to be frills. When he came upon us, he said to me in a sweet and silvery voice, “The seldom you come to this mountain the better, Mister, a young lady here wants to take you away. Then he told us not to fire off our guns, because the gentry dislike being disturbed by the noise. And he seemed to be like a soldier of the gentry on guard. As we were leaving the mountains, he told us not to look back, and we didn't.” (113) Based on the account we just read, we may conclude that this story was not real, but instead one made up to perpetuate the “mystery” of the fairies. Would a gnome actually warn a mortal that fairies or nymphs wanted to take him away? It makes far more sense that the story was created in order to keep the mystery alive. The “mystery” is where you go when you take the mushrooms, of course. The journey into that world is a “mystery” and there needs to be continued a culture to perpetuate it and keep it alive. The Rosicrucians appear to have refined it considerably from the time of the Greeks and the modern fairy tale is the latest version of this mythology. When people take psychedelics, do they all see the same thing and is this vision real and just not visible to the naked eye? Or do they hallucinate something similar which can be commonly described by all? Were Wentz’s fairy stories real stories or were they a metaphor for the mushroom? Were the stories he was collecting truly believed by real people whom he collected them from? These stories may have been believed by these people and these may have been real people, since we still have fairy stories to this day in parts of England and Ireland. But is there any evidence for actual fairies and elves or are these just descriptions for the various types of mental images and |
hallucinatory projections of the inner psyche or are these just perpetuations of ancient mythology of the mushroom? Wentz claimed to have asked for a description of the Gentry and was told the following: “The folk are the grandest I have ever seen. They are far superior to us, and that is why they are called the gentry. They are not a working class, but a military-aristocratic class, tall and noble-appearing. They are a distinct race between our own and that of spirits, as they have told me. Their qualifications are tremendous. ‘We could cut off half the human race, but would not,’ they said, ‘for we are expecting salvation.’ And I knew a man three or four years ago whom they struck down with paralysis. Their sight is so penetrating that I think they could see through the earth. They have a silvery voice, quick and sweet. The music they play is most beautiful. They take the whole body and soul of young and intellectual people who are interesting, transmuting the body to a body like their own. I asked them once if they ever died, and they said, ‘No, we are always kept young.’ Once they take you and you taste food in their palace you cannot come back. You are changed to one of them and live with them forever. They are able to appear in different forms. One once appeared to me, and seemed only four feet high, and stoutly built. He said, ‘I am bigger than I appear to you now. We can make the old young, the big small, the small big’.” In an interview with another woman in Wentz’s book, she reveals her belief in fairies, and her theories of them: “Our Pembrokeshire witness is a maiden Welshwoman, sixty years old: ‘I think there must be an intermediate state between life on earth and heavenly life, and it may be in this that spirits and fairies live. There are two distinct types of spirits: one is good, and the other is bad. I have heard of people going to the fairies and finding that years passed as days, but I do not believe in changelings, though there are stories enough about them. That there are fairies and other spirits like them, both good and bad, I firmly believe. My mother used to tell about seeing the ‘fair-folk’ dancing in the fields near Cardigan; and other people have seen them round the cromlech up there on the hill (the Pentre Evan Cromlech). They appeared as little children in clothes like soldiers’ clothes, and with red caps, according to some accounts’.” (114) (112) ibid, p. 38 (113) ibid, p. 45 (114) Fairy Faith, p. 154 |