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January 23 through January 29, 2023

With all the upheaval of last week’s planetary shifts, this week starts out on a calmer note under the Pisces Moon. We’ll embrace a harmonious and free-flowing vibration until Wednesday when the Aries Moon spurs us back into action. Dancing through this creative sign until Friday, this is a great time for brainstorming, putting new ideas into action (or at least down on paper!), and negotiation. Venus will move into Pisces on Thursday, turning our focus to magic, fantasy, and all things metaphysical. Our intuitions will be on high alert, and following those random hunches could pay off handsomely over the next four weeks! The weekend unfolds under a Taurus Moon, where we can choose to tackle the clutter surrounding us or simply drop on the couch and catch up on all those shows we’ve recorded or have been meaning to stream. Or perhaps a mixture of both. Either way, the weekend is for regrouping, restoring, and relaxing!

Faeries and Love, by Cassandra Eason

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

The lore of the faery realm has, like the world of humans, traditionally focused on love—both tales of faery lovers and of fey beings who have fallen in love with mortals and sometimes tried to keep them forever in their faery kingdoms. These stories, whether perceived as pure lore or used as a way of explaining past mortal occurrences, tell the tales of true love, of faery temptresses, of lover's quarrels, and more.

Perhaps the most tragic fey love story is that of the Celtic Cliodna of the Golden Hair. The daughter of Manannan mac Lir, who ruled over the sea, Cliodna was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world in mortal form. She loved the young mortal Ciabhan so much she left faeryland to live with him. However, while Ciabhan was hunting, Cliodna's father sent a faery minstrel to enchant her; she was carried back to fairyland in a magical sleep. She is still seen on seashores, either as a huge wave or a seabird, seeking her lost love; she is said to help parted mortal lovers to be reunited.

Below are two methods of invoking Cliodna if you are longing to be reunited with a parted love.

• Name your lost love as you hold matching shells, found on the shore or by a lake, tied together with seaweed or dried grasses. Cast your shells on the ninth wave as it moves into shore. Call your lost love's name nine times.
• If you are landlocked, improvise with matching aquamarine crystals cast into any body of flowing water. Count nine before throwing the crystals into the water together. Call your lost love's name nine times.

Faery Marriages
Some tales of faery brides who married mortals seem to have earthly verification.

The Gwragedd Annwn are beautiful, Welsh, fair-haired faery women, the same size as humans, living in underwater palaces in lakes close to the Black Mountains. These lake maidens have, on occasion—according to folk lore of the area—taken human husbands, though they rarely stayed with them. Some local families still claim fey heritage.

One Lady of the Lake in Llyn y Fan Fach is, however, said to actually be the fairy ancestor of an unbroken line of Welsh healers and physicians. Even more unusual, this faery legend can be dated. Around 1230, records tell that a young farmer saw three beautiful women dancing on the shore. The most beautiful agreed to be his wife and her father, the king of the lake faeries, came from under the lake to bestow a dowry of fairy cattle. However, the faery king imposed a number of conditions on his daughter staying with her mortal husband. One condition was that she should never be touched with iron, another that she should not be made to go to church, and a third that if her husband struck her three times she and her dowry would return to the lake.

The couple had three sons, but the farmer broke his bargain by striking his faery wife three times (though according to less enlightened male folk tellers, the poor husband only tapped the faery lightly and for good reason). A faery bargain being a faery bargain, off went the cattle and faery maiden, though she did return to teach her sons knowledge of herbs and healing. They became the Physicians of Myddfai, healers to the Welsh kings. When they died, they left a medical treatise, copies of which exist today. I believe there is one in Cardiff Castle Museum.

Brides in Faeryland
Mortal women who married to or were abducted by faeries seem to have had an even less than happy fate.

A woman on her wedding day or night was, according to Celtic myth, considered a great prize by the faeries as she was still a virgin but at peak fertility. For this reason, until medieval times, a woman would be accompanied to the church by identically dressed bridesmaids, so that watching faeries could not identify the true bride.

Some of these faery abductions may have had a less ethereal explanation. In parts of Europe during the Middle Ages, the local lord of the manor was unofficially allowed the use of his serfs' brides on their wedding night. Rape by wealthy landowners and their sons was a real threat for country women even in Victorian times, especially among servants in big houses. It could be that the story of a traditional return of the abducted bride from the faeries after a year and a day bearing a babe several months old was an acceptable way for a peasant husband not to appear cuckolded by the squire, if the unfortunate bride became pregnant during this abduction. A despoiled bride might have been placed in a distant workhouse during the pregnancy, with the collusion of the husband or a father in the case of an unmarried girl.

A typical bride abduction story made into a ballad was of Colin, a Scot, whose wife was taken by the faeries. His wife, it was said, returned invisibly each day to milk to cows and do the chores; only her singing could be heard. In other versions she returns after a year and a day with a baby. Was Colin keeping his bride locked away because he discovered on the wedding night she was pregnant by someone else, albeit by rape? Or was she truly a bride of the faeries?

Some faery abductions had more serious consequences. A wife who consistently produced sickly boys who did not survive or female offspring for a man who desperately needed an heir, might suddenly disappear; the official and often unquestioned explanation of her disappearance was that she was spirited away forever by the faeries. There are still parts of the world where the value of a woman except as a bearer of sons is low; this is a reminder that it has not that long been otherwise in Westernized society also.

Bridget Cleary
Records from centuries past are obviously sparse, and faery abduction as an excuse for wife murder or beating may sound to be pure speculation. That said, we do know that in Tipperary in Ireland as recently as 1895 Bridget Cleary was tortured and burned to death by her husband Michael. He claimed that his wife had been stolen by the faeries and a changeling substituted. Michael insisted that by destroying the enchanted form of his wife, the true Bridget herself would return on a white horse at midnight. Seven of her neighbors and relatives, including Bridget's father and aunt, were involved and later convicted of the crime. A hundred years later, Angela Bourke, a professor at University College, Dublin and author of The Burning of Bridget Cleary, stated that the case demonstrated the clash between two different world views, two ways of dealing with troublesome people, two ways of accounting for the irrational, at a time of profound social, economic, and cultural change.

Bridget Cleary's crime was that she was economically and socially independent by her own efforts, rather than by birth. Presumably, had the case gone unpunished, her death would have been very profitable for her husband and family, who would have inherited her money.

Fairy Queen Temptresses
As the goddesses were downgraded into faeries, some acquired the role of temptresses and abductors of innocent males. In Scotland, myths tell of the Bean chaol a chot uaine's na gruaige buidhe, "The slender woman with green kirtle and yellow hair"—a fairy queen who had the ability to turn water into red wine and spin the threads of the spiders into tartan. The fairy temptress would, by playing her magical reed pipe, lure young men into her faery hill. Unless they left a piece of iron over the lintel of the entrance, they would be forced to dance and serve the pleasure of the faery queen until she tired of them and sent them home. It is said these young men would find that though it only seemed one night had passed in faeryland, decades might have gone by in the mortal world and the fresh-faced milkmaid sweetheart to whom he had sworn his eternal fidelity was now an aging grandmother.

The most famous young male abductee who seems to have actually gained from his visit to faeryland was Thomas the Rhymer, whose ballad is still performed in folk clubs with Celtic connections. The true Thomas was Thomas of Earlston (Erceldoune), a thirteenth century poet who claimed to have met the Queen of Elfland under a magical elder tree. In return for a kiss he tells how he was forced to go to faeryland with her, though other versions suggest Thomas was more than willing to be seduced. In a few accounts the Queen becomes an ugly hag and the ritual mating of youth with the ancient crone goddess occurred to maintain the cycle of the seasons and ensure the fertility of the land. Thomas remained in faeryland for seven years, though they were only three days in fairy time. He was rewarded with the gifts of poetry, prophecy, and a magical harp.

It has been argued in recent years that Thomas was in fact initiated into a local witch cult and that his visions of faeryland were shamanic.

An Escape from the Faeries
Not all captives were as willing as Thomas, nor the faery queen as willing to part with her mortal lover. One of the most famous tales, recorded by the Scottish poet Robert Burns as well as several other poets, is that of Tam Lin, a Scottish knight who fell from his horse and was captured by the Queen of the Faeries. She bound him with magic and posted him to guard one of the entrances to the world of humans at the well of Carteraugh, close to the borders of Scotland.

Young maidens were warned not to drink at the well, for every time they did and picked one of the roses that overhung it, Tam Lin would appear and demand that either the girl gave him a green mantle or offered up her virginity.

One bold young woman, Janet, decided to see whether the myth was true, and plucked a rose from the well. She and Tam Lin fell in love, and he wanted to escape from the Faery Kingdom to wed Janet.

The next night was Halloween, and Tam Lin explained that there was an opportunity that only occurred every seven years for him to escape. The Faery Ride would take place, when then the faeries moved to their winter quarters (in some versions seen as hell). The faery troop had to ride on horseback along the road. Tam Lin told Janet to wait for him at the crossroads at midnight and to hold on to him, whatever form he took.

As Tam Lin rode by in the faery procession, Janet pulled him from his horse and held tight. Just as he had warned Janet, the Faery Queen turned Tam Lin first into a newt, then a snake, a tiger, a bear, and finally into red hot metal. Janet held fast, and as he became molten metal, she plunged him into the magical well.

The spell was broken. Tam Lin emerged from the water in human form, and he and Janet were soon married.

Faery Marital Quarrels
Faery marriages were frequently as turbulent as earthly ones.

Titania is most famous in literature as the wife of Oberon, King of the faeries, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In this play she is depicted as petulant, willing to let the seasons go to rack and ruin while she pursues her vendetta against Oberon, who retaliated by making her fall in love with a peasant with a donkey's head.

Titania was, before she was Christianized and downgraded (like many Pagan goddesses) to faery status, known as Themis the Ancient Greek Titan Goddess of Justice and Order, and the mother of the Fates and the Seasons.

Finvarra or Fin Bheara, who ruled the faeries of the west Of Ireland, was the apparently devoted husband of Queen Oonagh. Oonagh has been described in true Victorian style by Lady Wilde, who collected accounts of faery folk lore in Ireland, as having golden hair sweeping to the ground, clad in silver gossamer glittering as if with diamonds, which were actually dew drops.

In spite of his wife's ethereal beauty, Finvarra was obsessed with mortal women who, overpowered by the music of faeryland, were spirited away to live there with him forever. He was also said to have a second Queen, Nuala. Oonagh was unsurprisingly not welcoming to mortal maidens to the fairy court.

Other maidens seduced by Finvarra's music danced all night with him and in the morning, found themselves on a faery hill, possessing knowledge of love potions and of magic—and sometimes a faery pregnancy.

A Fairy Love Wishes Spell

1. Find a faery tree: a hawthorn, elder, ash, willow, or oak, or in the southern hemisphere, a eucalyptus, tea tree, golden wattle, or the bushy manuka.
2. Sit beneath or close to its branches on a bright moonlit night during the week of the full moon.
3. Best of all is the night of the full moon. Look upwards at the moon and feel the positive energies of the cosmos and the moon mother, associated with faithful love and fertility, flowing into you.
4. Watch the moonlight filter through the leaves and make patterns, and you may be aware of living, moving energies within the branches and leaves.
5. Touch the trunk of the tree with your hands, and let the life force of the tree spirit flow into you, so that you can feel the pulsating energies of its essence like mild electricity.
6. Standing and still touching the tree, press your feet down towards the roots, allowing the Earth mother to offer you her fertility and the power so you will find or live with the right mate forever.
7. Now extend your arms upwards, and draw inwards strength and healing from the moon-dappled leaves.
8. Move away from the tree and, keeping the moon in view, spiral the tree nine times clockwise (widdershins) in ever decreasing circles, letting your feet guide you. The nine circles of power are an ancient magical device, and if you now stand within the innermost ring, reaching out with just your fingertips to the trunk, you may momentarily make contact with the spirit of the tree.
9. Ask the essence within the tree, the earth, and the moon mother to bless your love or to bring to you the person who will make you happy. You can also ask for fertility if you are trying to conceive a child.
10. Spend a little longer watching the moonlight filter through the leaves and amplifying the tree energies.
11. Bury a silver earring or nine silver-colored coins, the metal of the moon mother, beneath the roots as a token of thanks; whisper your love's name or call out on the air the one who will make you happy to find you.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2013. All rights reserved.

My question is concerning my son Stephen. Lately he has been coming in at all hours and saying we "wouldn't understand" what he is going through. We think it's a girl thing. My husband and I try to listen, but he says so little. Is there hope for him to come back to be as close to us as he used to be? We miss the days when he was younger, as he is now in this "cocoon" of his own making. He seems a thousand miles away. I have a hard time believing he's even the same person anymore. We know he smokes some marijuana, but I honestly do not have a problem with that as long as it's under control. Do you have any suggestions on how to bring him back to us? Our older son is 22, and he is so much more loving and forthcoming. He tries to help us too. He says he also has some trouble communicating with Steve. He seems to be going through a time of isolation from his family, but he is still very active with his many friends. Is there a spiritual approach/answer?

Dreamchaser:

There are a few things going on here, the first being his typical teenage behavior. He is at an age when nothing is more important than his life, his friends and his activities. He does not want to stay home, and he does not want to socialize with his family. It is pretty normal. I know your other son was much more sociable with you and your husband, but you gave birth to two very different individuals, so you must expect very different behavior.

Another thing happening here is his obvious drug use. You are aware of and apparently condone his marijuana use. He has not stopped at marijuana. He is drinking and doing other drugs as well. His behaviors are "symptoms" of deeper drug use. I want you to start vigilantly keeping a log of his schedule, behavior and appearance, Marcie. You will start to see patterns. I want you to compare those patterns to known drug use symptoms. You have to prove this to yourself to believe it. I am concerned about him. Please do not brush this off. This needs your immediate attention.

Now, before I tell you the following, I want you to understand that how someone feels is valid. It does not have to be realistic. If I FEEL like I have ants crawling on me, I will act like I have ants crawling on me. It does not matter if I really do. Having said that, you should know that Steve feels like he is in his big brother's shadow. His big brother is this and that and does this and that and Steve NEVER has accomplished the things that his brother has been able to accomplish. I know you and your husband do not dote on the oldest son any more than Steve, but this is Steve's perception. That is one reason why his brother is having a hard time reaching him. Find something Steve excels at in his own right and emphasize that. It may be slow going, but over time it will make a difference.

The spiritual approach to this is to pray. Pray for guidance and wisdom. Pray for Steve and his soul. Most of all, Marcie, pray for the ability to let go so that he can learn his own lessons. That could very well be the hardest thing about being a parent. He is searching for himself and his own way. He will find himself. It will take a little time, but he most definitely will find himself.

I wish you and yours true contentment.

*****

Astrea:

I'm glad you have an open attitude about the pot smoking, but keep a weathered eye, okay? Aries youngsters can become excessively involved in things. Aries is the FIRST Sign, and often wants to "do it until it is all gone." Compulsive behavior is common in Aries boys his age.

Usually with a young Aries boy, I would be somewhat more concerned with GAMBLING being the problem "you wouldn't understand." Coming and going at all hours would tip me off to that. Check his pockets, Mama. (You're still the Mom here!) Is he working? Where is that money going? Heck, just ASK HIM if it's gambling! He'll tell you the truth. I know you guys want to be gentle and spiritual with him, but he might be in a little money trouble.

Mostly, however, it's this older girl. Yes, she's OLDER - at least 22. If he's WORKING, that is probably where he met her. She's a nice girl: pretty, cute figure, and immature for her age. She is probably a SCORPIO or a GEMINI, and she's been hurt but never married. She has nice parents who would just DIE if they knew she was seeing your 17-year-old son! You'll like her if this lasts long enough for you two to meet.

Your son is becoming sexually active with this girl. As I see it, it's only this ONE girl, so that's probably as safe as anything like that can be. She's older but she doesn't have any children yet, and she probably wants to keep it that way for now. She has just finished college, and may start teaching grade school (probably third or fourth grade) next fall.

He thinks he loves her. He IS taking care that he doesn't do anything to hurt you and the rest of the family. He's cautious, careful. He gets that from YOU. Aries are terrified of messing up their lives with unwanted kids, and they fear deadly illnesses more than any other sign, so you can be confident that he's taking every precaution against pregnancy and STDs too. He's a good boy, and knows what's what. He's a lot more mature than other boys his age. All these things are blessings for which to be grateful.

You son is keeping his own counsel right now because he doesn't want to WORRY the two of you. Aries people have "secrets." They just DO. There isn't a whole heck of a lot you can do about that birthday and that attitude. He will come back to you as soon as he gets his big head thinking again. At the moment he's one big ball of Fire Sign Hormones! You'll reconnect, don't worry. Give him his space now to grow.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.