Today I jumped the gun and rewrote my story.

The ideas themselves are not new, but the telling, I hope, is fresh 🙂

My plan is to use the story for the first suit of the deck of Faery oracle cards I’m making (see here for information, and here for the bigger project).

And then the deck will expand…

Enjoy…

A Faery Tale of Division and Remembrance

Long before time was time, the world was born of stardust. The earth, she lived and breathed. Her heart beat. Her soul sang into the universe, singing in chorus with her brothers and sisters, the other planets. The stars, older than she and her siblings, watched and smiled fondly, knowing the young planets to be kin.

The heart of the Earth beat. Each beat held a spirit, and each spirit danced between the centre of the Earth, and the realm of the stars. The stars, too, had hearts which beat, and their heartbeats each held a spirit, and these spirits danced with the heartbeats of the Earth, and all were together. These beings, which arose from the heart of the earth and the stars, are the Fey ones.

The Earth began to grow. As she settled into her skin she drew the sky around her like a cloak, and in the warmth between the sky and her skin, the plants grew and oceans settled. From the wombs of her oceans, animals were born, animals which grew and changed. Some grew into feathered beings, some into reptiles, some into furred ones, and some, eventually, into humans.

The Fey were fascinated by the beings birthed from the Earth and they watched carefully as we grew and developed. They guided us, played with us, danced with us through our early years.

But over time we found great power, and in our rush to be great, we began to see our Mother Earth without her heart and we stopped hearing the songs of the Stars. For us, their hearts had stopped beating. And when we stopped hearing the heartbeat of our mother, we stopped seeing how she was alive. And so it became easier for us to use her without giving back, without remembering that we are a part of her. Our power over the land grew great, and in the flush of amazement, we were lost in the maze that led away from gentle wonders. We went from weak to strong, but we forgot where the spirit that fed our strength lived… we forgot that there is strength in wonder and vulnerability, and we donned our armour of brittle power, and we forgot the ones who had opened our eyes to the possibility of possibility.

And so the spirits of the heart of the stars and the earth became sad. The bright ones, the darks ones, the dancing ones, they drifted back into the heart of the earth, to roam upon the upper lands in times of celebration or sorrow, to remind us of our kin. But the distance proved too great, and we forgot how to see them, we forgot to listen to the heartbeat of the Faery realms.

The worlds drifted apart. We lived in one world, where all is matter and for us to use. They lived in another, where all is alive and related to each other. And they wept, and we grew in power, but bit by bit forgot the essence of joy.

But, do not despair, for there is more to the tale than this great divide between spirit and matter, magic and material, for every night and day that the Faery host roamed, there would be one who told the tale. For every moment where the worlds became close again, kissing, one with eyes to see and ears to hear might find themselves seeing and hearing the music of the Fey, the enchantment of the heartbeat of the earth. And every time the Fey from the stars descended, we were reminded of the glorious beauty of life beyond the dust of the world we had chosen to walk within. These moments were passed on as stories, stories shared over campfires, at bedtime, in songs.

And the stories begin to weave a web, a picture. Some stories tell of those Fey beings who cause trouble, some of those who help, some of great beauty, and others of great illusion. What we must remember, however, is that each of these stories contains a little truth, and that while the worlds of Fey and Human can sometimes misunderstand each other, always, when each approaches the other with respect, love and an open heart, there is great magic to be found… the magic of the healing of the Earth.

Bridging the worlds of Faery and Human, the light of the Earth and the land of our lives, bringing these two together, relights the fire in our lives. In letting magic kiss the mundane, we invite joy into our lives as once again we learn to hear the heartbeat of the earth and stars. Now we are strong on the land, we can choose to be strong in our vulnerable, open hearts again. Will you weave with me, with the others working and playing to build the bridges again? Will you weave with us the understanding of both worlds? Will you weave together the power on the land with the wonder of the earth’s heartbeat, and open to the possibility that to truly know the world, the whole world, is to know the mechanics, and to understand the heart?