Traveling Between the Worlds The Fair Folk are like gypsies. They like to travel. They travel between worlds, and they also travel within worlds. In the worlds of Lir, they travel on white horses with golden hooves, and emerald manes and tails. They sometimes have coaches that go behind them. They also have winged phoenixes, great white swans, and falcons, which they ride. For the more enterprising, they ride the winds, breathing deeply, and filling their souls with light and energy. To travel, they listen for the sound of the lyre being strummed, or a harp chord ascending or descending in pitch and ride on the musical vibrations. When they travel between worlds, they may keep their forms or change them. If they maintain a non-physical form, then it is their images and perceptions that enter the new world - but not their essences. These remain in their own world far-away. This may be the basis for the stories of supernatural creatures who cannot be killed on earth, for their souls remain hidden far away. If they actually choose to live fully in the physical world, then they would enter a vortex of sound and light. It is similar to the tunnels which souls move through at the time of birth and death. They hear thunder and see flashes of lightning of all colors. Their souls are thickened, and become slow and heavy. Their perceptions are dulled, and the bright colors of their worlds are lost. As they become physical, they gain instincts, to eat, to survive, to procreate, to keep warm, and to fight and conquer. The question arises as to why the Fair Folk would want to become physical. It is true that their worlds are more beautiful. Yet the physical world has much to offer, in terms of raw beauty, and in terms of potential for creativity. There is such complexity in the physical world, and such passion and idealism, yet such ferocity. When the Fair Folk want to live deeply, they sometime incarnate there for a vacation. They are not born into human bodies but generate similar ones in the Vortex of Flesh and Spirit. It makes them appear as flesh, and they take on the qualities of those with natural bodies. When they have tired of physical forms, they call down the Vortex again. They all unite and meditate upon the sounds of harp and lyre. The Vortex rises up from the ocean, emerald and sapphire and crackling with lightning. They enter it, and their flesh is stripped away. Again they are spirit in the land of beauty and dreams. The tunnels between the worlds are hidden by clouds. This is why we do not hear of them in myth and history. The process is very difficult to explain to an outsider. As the link is created between the world of flesh and spirit, the two spin together, striped like a barber pole spinning in rainbows. Around the Vortex are clouds, the colors are pastel towards the spirit, and dark storm clouds towards the earth. The winds rise and people rush for shelter. In a few cases shelter was not found, and people who witnessed the Vortex thought they were seeing water spouts, but this is rare. The Fair Folk travel in a band, and their traveling clothes may be gypsy shawls or medieval veils and cloaks, or Arab burnooses. They adopt the form of the cultures they visit. Normally, they stay in European cultures, but occasionally also visit Arab lands. These visits were out of curiosity. As water beings, there is nothing more incomprehensible to our Fair Folk than cultures which exist in deserts. They take on nomad disguise, but some human eyes were not deceived, and they were called djinns, the angels made of smokeless fire, who yet never enter into heaven. The Fair Folk did not mourn their lack of entrance into the Arab heaven as they were not attracted to the qualities of the Arab god. But such travel illustrates their curiosity about extremes. They ask questions like: what is best and worst, oldest or youngest, most beautiful and most ugly, most true and most false. The Fair Folk travel in order to learn these things, and to add these experiences to their palettes for future creative activities. The link of the Fair Folk to the Celtic countries occurred by accident. Some of the mages saw a particularly beautiful cliff, full of rushing waters and windy skies, with the waters blue like a lake of sapphire. They chose to visit and found hills of beauty and power. Some of the Fair Folk made houses and families, and other created mind-made castles and lived part way on the earth. They stayed for a long time, until the human population multiplied and was threatened by them, and the missionaries came to evict them, and the invaders came to steal from them. Some of the Fair Folk developed an attachment to the place and can still be contacted there. Queen Anya is one who mourned the loss of her beautiful land, and later the loss of some of her young people who did not wish to follow her band in traveling, and went off on their own. They became known as the travelers and there are many who follow in their footsteps. Introduction | History | Manannan Mac Lir | Merlin | Taliesin | Building the Realms of the Fair Folk | Lir and Danu | Lugh and the Morrigan | Anya, Daughter of Manannan | Manannan's Ocean Kingdom | Aengus, The Poet God of Love and Romance | The Ancient Roads to the Fair Folk | Manannan's Horses | The Society of the Fair Folk | The Place of Transformation | Traveling Between the Worlds | Research Methodology | Conclusion Home Copyright © 2005,   J. Denosky,   All Rights Reserved