When Faeries are On Faeries On Faeries

You know the cards.
The Master Maker is one.

Epona's Wild Daughter another.

The Laume and the Journeyman.

And then in the Bright Mother Fae on Fae on Fae...see the Mother's hand? A little Fae stands on her hand and the Mother rests her hand on the head of a Fae.....

When Fae stand on Fae stand on Fae.

Why is it that they are shown this way.
I'm looking for your intuitive responses to these pairings or depictions.

What sense of synergy and community is evoked...is it symbolic of a greater bond or parasitic.

Do you think that they are concious of it??? Do they welcome the company or is it almost mulitdimensional in some way???

I'll respond with some of my own feelings later in the thread, but have been pondering this issue for some time.

Please weigh in on this using specific examples.

I know that someone here on AT once said that in the Green Woman the other Fae was her son...and that really blew my mind!

So I'm looking for your insights on cards where there are synergistic relationships between Fae like in the Friends (46) or as in Gloominus Doom (56). And you know, I've always wondered what it was that guy did to be the one under Gloominus Doom's feet anyways. Somehow I don't know if he is the one always there...it seems like the face under Gloominus' feet could change....

Ok.
Thanks

This is taking off like wildfire isn't it??

Ok.

I"ll start! The potential for having a conversation with myself has never stopped me before!

Honestly, I haven't read the whole book that accompanies the Fairies' Oracle. But I do spot read it now and again, and I saw a quote by Froud saying to the effect that we don't see the Fairies with our eyes but rather with our hearts. (I'm sure there are many out there who have seen all manner of Fae...I'm not sure I have, but I keep looking. I would dearly love to see them.)

When I look at the cards I get the sense that these cards are almost like snapshots. Like pictures, but painted with out the camera. Because really, I don't think that the same group of Fae always surround the Bright Mother...but of course, with the Fae, anything is possible. Now holding to this premise, that the Fae are moving and sashaying around us or around their realm, what about Fae like Indi (63).

Would Indi always be standing on that goofy guy's head?
Is the face of that Fae another outer projection of how Indi is feeling?

Because when we read the card, well, that guy is there and is open season for using as a symbol or image to read.

So my puzzlement comes around whether or not we are supposed to assume some kind of partnership between Indi and Goofy-gills. The more I look at Goofy-gills and see him sweating the less he looks like he is being silly and the more he looks like he is having a hard time holding Indi there, so steadily.

I don't mean this to be a discussion about Indi, but about the relationship between him and the head he has chosen to stand upon.

In Indi's case the supporting Fae looks burdened...but in other cards the supporting head looks free, happy and sometimes ambivalent about being under another Fae....

Like in The Journeyman (15).

The Master looks quite pleased...proud but also as if his attention is now captured elsewhere.

See this is why I think these cards look like photos more than cards, because the Fairies seem to be posing for Froud!!

The other thing I was thinking about was that there seems to be an element of multidimensionality to the cards. So that I can almost imagine the Fae winking in and out of existence, just as the "camera" went off. Which is another theory I have about why there are layers of Fae in some pictures and a just a few in others.

I dunno. The name of the thread might be wrong, and this may be more of a general discussion about the Fae, but I remain interested in the Fae who stand on other Fae.

Here are a few other ideas that have been with me for a long time.

Ilbe the Retriever:
I think part of his work is Soul Retrieval. He is a bit shamanistic to me.

I see the Singers as masks we can wear when we need their strength. So I put the face of a Singer over my own face at times when I need some shoreing up or help. Or I might wear a Singer as a head dress. They don't seem to mind.

I have created pet names for some of the Fae. It seems to help me connect when I call them by my nicknames, like Goofy-gills.

Honesty does not seem like he was a Faery all the time.
It seems to me he was another lifeform and he was adopted into this Faery tribe. I have never read about him in the book. But to me, he is not of the Fae....and he tends to elude me in readings. I've had this deck for years, and never not once has he popped up in a reading.

G Hobyab is not very trustworthy. But for whatever reason, when he comes up I trust that he is telling me to really check something out. Focus in on it...He has always been there for me and so I feel bad that I don't trust him, but he also does not seem to want me to trust him completely. Weird.

I sometimes wonder if a Faery from the tribe has ever sat on my head...other than Singers of course.

I secretly desire a crown like Nelys's. Shhh.

I love Solus.

I would love to take a walk inside the robes of the Faery Godmother. No, I'd like to sit there inside while she walks around doing her work...

Arval Parrot is so very kind and lovely. I would like to see him all the time, everywhere.

Who's head is Laiste laying on??? Is it her husband???

And lastly, I love Soul Shrinker and I pray to see him beautiful once more.
I loved him even before I read about him, somehow, in my fear of him, I found a way to love him. And now I don't fear him at all.

Hi Elf-
I guess the best I can come up with is an unconscious love of sorts. My dog is a perfect example of always needing to touch us. It could just be a safety measure for her, and maybe I'm just romanticizing a bit.
On the other hand in the faerie realm, I'm sure personal space could also be an issue. They show up and under the most obscure places-flowers, leaves and so on-so why not on top of each other?
Of course, I do also see your point of energies feeding off from each other, but that too I also see as an unconscious act. I somehow don't think faeries are so parasitic in that sense.
So I guess I just see it as comfort manuver on their part.

Hi DD,
Well, I know I threw the word parasitic out there, but I don't necessarily see the Fae as parasitic.

I see interconnections and perhaps a sense of being conjoined at times, but not parasitic in a negative sense.

I think that the groupings and pairings were obviously somewhat purposeful...I'm just considering some of the whys of that. Perhaps it is an exercise in futility, but already useful info is coming up in the considering.

You touched on the idea of personal space, and that is another concept that I have been thinking about.

See part of the multidimensional piece I was talking about, the layers of Fae, was that in the pictures we see them all tangled together....in one time and space.

I am starting to think that they may actually be more fluid, and that we are seeing them all together in the picture, but that they are not actually all together in one time and one space, but layerd across a kind of continuum...I think Chronata might actually understand what I'm trying to say here and might be able to say it better....

So that the Faerie realm is always talked about as existing in parallel to our own. I think in the pictures we see multitudes of realms, with the Fae accessing them at will.

I do think that energetically some of the pairs are there for a reason. that there are troupes or pairs or groups that have chosen to be together, and it seems that in these groups there exist hierarchies. And the hierarchies are probably beyond my own understanding...

If you look at the picture Himself, he is alone. He is pretty intense. Powerful. Some of the Fae who are paired or grouped don't exude the same kind of strength. So that makes me wonder, maybe gives me a clue about the Fae who are grouped/paired.

I've sometimes thought of it as one fairy uses the energy of another to assist in their efforts. I grabbed my deck to pull out some examples, like you've mentioned elf.

For me, the pose of the "top" fairy tells us a lot of how they are interacting with the supporting energies around them. Epona's wild daughter is in a pose of forward recline, it could be a crouch or not. At rest, the fairy beneath her is supporting her in these efforts.

And if in a crouch, such as Lauthas the Wild, I imagine the top fairy is pushing off the energy of the bottom fairy. A crouch is a position of power about to be unleashed. This is my dance training, but I've been taught for dozens of years the only way to have a really great jump is to really REALLY bend your knees, ie get as close to the floor (bottom) before you reach for the top (height of your jump). In fairies, they are using the supporting energy like a dancer uses the floor - a sense of resistance in one fairy allows them to propel (and therefore interact) with the world.

The pose of the Friends card is esp. telling. That contented round little fairy is supported by his pixie friend. It becomes a balancing act, as good friends balance us out, calm us down when we're angry, console us when we're sad.

I love your ideas elf, thank you for sharing!

Alissa said:

I've sometimes thought of it as one fairy uses the energy of another to assist in their efforts. I grabbed my deck to pull out some examples, like you've mentioned elf.

For me, the pose of the "top" fairy tells us a lot of how they are interacting with the supporting energies around them. Epona's wild daughter is in a pose of forward recline, it could be a crouch or not. At rest, the fairy beneath her is supporting her in these efforts.

And if in a crouch, such as Lauthas the Wild, I imagine the top fairy is pushing off the energy of the bottom fairy. A crouch is a position of power about to be unleashed. This is my dance training, but I've been taught for dozens of years the only way to have a really great jump is to really REALLY bend your knees, ie get as close to the floor (bottom) before you reach for the top (height of your jump). In fairies, they are using the supporting energy like a dancer uses the floor - a sense of resistance in one fairy allows them to propel (and therefore interact) with the world.

The pose of the Friends card is esp. telling. That contented round little fairy is supported by his pixie friend. It becomes a balancing act, as good friends balance us out, calm us down when we're angry, console us when we're sad.

I love your ideas elf, thank you for sharing!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the post Alissa.

I think that for me, when I approach this deck it is pretty much an intuitive approach, not reading the book except if I'm not tuning into anything much. Sometimes the book definition is hard to forget, and other times it just doesn't make sense to me at all.

I like what you have said about the latent energy. That sense of a spring waiting to be sprung. I think you are onto something with that...and you definitely see it in Himself, the Sage and Dark Lady...the sense of a power barely contained, and they of course, are alone.

I do love the Friends as well, and I agree with what you've written.

I think this is one of the delights of this pack.

Having been away from it for a while I come back to it now with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective and new delights and visions await.

You know if you apply what you are saying about the background Fae being a sort of energetic supporting cast then think about Tobaira, I see her troupe as being so very essential.

I think Helvetica talked about Tobaira helping her out with healing, and I have always thought of Tobaira that way since. Her troupe looke so different when see from the perspective of supporting her. Look at the Fae under her arms and hands...They certainly seem like they are supporting her work.

I think they are visible to us as she lifts and blesses water, but perhaps they are the glowing stardust that we would consider auric under other circumstances. When we look at the cards we are sort of blessed with Faery vision or the Sight, thanks to Froud. So all manner of things are visible to us.

In Tobaira's card I love the Brown Men, the faces that make up the very background, the sweet face in the center; the Thinker in the right lower corner and then the Goblin on the left. Notice they form a triangle around Tobi's upper body.

I think that the Goblin is the nasty part of healing, so maybe he takes on the gore, the pain and the disgust we feel when faced with illness, weakness or decay. And the others are there for patience and understanding and for accessing the knowledge of healing we might need...

Perhaps the Fae in the picture are past recipients of Tobi's work. Ans as such light near her when she is about to offer healing....

I just love thinking of the stories in the cards I guess....

Thanks for helping me with it. You've really offered a gem.

Although I usually am a very intuitive reader and this is a very intuitive deck, I tend to follow Brian's advice on this one. He says of this in his book Good Faeries/Bad Faeries (which features many of the faeries that are in the deck:

"When faeries appear they are often seen in relationship to or in partnership with other faeries. A faery crouched on another faery's head indicates a particularly close connection, and the supporting head may symbolize an emotion or represent an outcome. Heads are important faery forms, appearing between the roots of trees or emerging from the midnight shadows and linking us to the mythic resonances that give them such power."

Bar

elf said:

I think they are visible to us as she lifts and blesses water, but perhaps they are the glowing stardust that we would consider auric under other circumstances. When we look at the cards we are sort of blessed with Faery vision or the Sight, thanks to Froud. So all manner of things are visible to us.

Click to expand...

This is just lovely, thank you for sharing it with us. I've been away from this deck for well over a year, but I still love it very much. Your relationship to them is wonderful, elf.

"When faeries appear they are often seen in relationship to or in partnership with other faeries. A faery crouched on another faery's head indicates a particularly close connection, and the supporting head may symbolize an emotion or represent an outcome. Heads are important faery forms, appearing between the roots of trees or emerging from the midnight shadows and linking us to the mythic resonances that give them such power."

Click to expand...

"A particularly close connection" = (or can also equal) stepping on someone else.

I tend to see some of them this way; they are 'stepping' on someone/thing/thought/essence.

Master Maker comes to mind. Are they together or ... one superior to another, or is the lower one assisting the upper? Contributing to the enlightenment process?

I find these cards to bring forward intuitive reading abilities, but I'm not as good with these as I am with, for example, the Fey! Now those little guys totally talk to me!

But - seeing faces in nature - oh yeah! I like totally relate!!! (also in chipped paint)

S

Hi Bar,
Thanks for the quote from 'Good Faeries, Bad Faeries'. I would love to pick that book up!!!
I actually think we are talking about the same thing as Froud, only in specific details here!

And, really, even if Froud's take is different we can still party on with our own thoughts. For me the beauty of the deck is the fact that I feel so unencumbered by the book. It is the gift that both Froud and Jessica have given us....permission to consider what the Faery folk say to us as individuals.