I went to bed at about three last night, but I could not get to sleep until around four as I had so many exciting thoughts wisping through my mind about the faerie ring. Everyone has woken up late and the two girls have slept very deeply and have had interesting dreams. We discuss their dreams over breakfast and as soon as Daisy and Alcina are dressed they begin to write up their experiences of last night in their Books of Elfin. Last night seems to have almost evaporated, dissolved, and vanished into a ‘poof’ of faerie dust as magical experiences always do the day after. This is why I have in suggested that the girls write up their encounters as soon as possible so that they can remember with the greatest clarity.
So…last night, where I did I leave it? Oh yes, we had all been beautifying ourselves for the magical night ahead. Daisy and Alcina had gone to great lengths to look their best for the rite. They had spent many hours during last week altering a dress of Daisy’s that would become her special garment to be worn only for magic. It was black with lots of embroidered silver flowers on it. Then Daisy had cleverly taken some of the silver flowers from the unwanted material and fashioned her own one-of-a-kind faerie wings to match her dress exactly. They were in the same black material and she had sewn the silver embroidered flowers onto the back where the two wings met in the middle. If she had tried to buy those wings anywhere, she couldn’t have found any others more perfect.
Alcina was wearing a layered, fey-tattered dress together with sparkly, darkly purple and black wings. They both looked perfect and utterly pixie-touched. Now glittered, powdered, preened and bewitching we went about creating our sacred space ready to meet the faeries.
I have often observed that whenever I have students they end up teaching me more than I taught them. I have also learnt that there are no exceptions to this rule. I never fail to notice also that every student who comes to me, however much magical knowledge I have gained so far, always comes to me as my magical equal in spiritual terms. I remember how green I was at the age of seventeen when I first stepped into the Spiritualist Developing Circle alone with my first teacher (who is now 83) and embarked upon the introductory training of becoming a Medium and learning how to develop and use my psychic abilities. At that point I had so much to learn and have since encountered a rich inner life of psychic experiences. Even after twenty four years of training, study, magical partnerships where I have astral travelled beyond my wildest dreams and have wonderful spiritual happenings; I still enter into every teaching experience knowing that my student has eclipsed all those years and stands before me as my spiritual equal. They have the spirituality that I have to learn and study for, innate in them. I know that although I will teach them how to practise their magical art safely and with all the advantages of my experience to help them, I am always humbled to be standing before them, as I know that secretly; I am the student. How clever the faeries are…in all ways… and infinitely wise.
Back to our magical night. I am showing Daisy how to light the self-igniting charcoal to sprinkle my homemade Queen Mab’s Kiss incense upon. The instant the charcoal rests on the thurible it releases pungent wafts of rituals and magic long past. It takes me back to all my years of rituals with my coven in England and my previous faerie ring which disbanded a year ago. As we use the same thurible burner for each ritual, a little incense, ash and magic is deposited and every time the charcoal burns it brings back those scents to immediately remind me and it never fails to transport me from the mundane to the magical. Daisy was watching me intently with her green eyes as I had told her that it was going to be her job to light the charcoal when we have our next evening of faerie magic. We busied ourselves preparing our little faerie altar which was an old suitcase (only the best) covered with some pretty muslin. On it we had daffodils, a wooden goblet of apple juice, a wooden plate of Daisy’s best vegan chocolate cake, a teeny weeny faerie offering bowl of cake for our fey guests, our wands, a candle, wooden bowls of salt and water and a wooden disc with a pyrographed septagram upon it. Every so often we would get poked in the eye with faerie wings as we dashed about, determined to get started before the witching hour was upon us.
In the run up to this magical moment we had had the most peculiar day. Things had just had a haphazardness about them from the very start. If there was an opportunity to trip over something, it had happened, milk had been spilt in a spectacular fashion on the floor, we had bumped into one another what felt like a dozen times, Daisy kept losing things, there had been a gas leak, by teatime we had already cooked for nine people (don’t ask), Daisy had sore knees, I had a tummy ache and Alcina needed food – now.
The minute we switched off the lights in the living room and I asked the girls for us all to hold hands in the centre of the room, our muddled, fuddled, bizarre day slipped away from us as if it had been a cloak made of silken material, slipping effortlessly off our shoulders. We had made it. We had arrived. The Land of Elf was just in touch. Oh the bliss, bliss of bliss-ness.
