Reading · Earth and Verse

The concept of a thinning veil during Beltane is central to its celebration. This idea signifies a closer proximity to the mystical and magical aspects of the world. Beltane is a time for heightened spiritual awareness and interaction with the faerie realm. This period is seen as an opportunity for deeper understanding and connection with the mystical forces of nature. - Wicca Magazine

Every year, as we move through the turning points of the seasons, I find myself returning to the idea of the veil, that thin place where one world touches another. I’ve come to think it matters very much which world we’re speaking about.

At Samhain (Halloween), the thinning veil is oriented toward the past. The boundary softens between this world and the world of the ancestors. Memory deepens, grief surfaces, and there is a natural turning inward. We become attuned toward what has been carried forward: lineage, loss, death, inheritance, and the long arc of those who came before us.

Beltane carries a different vibe entirely.

Here, the veil thins between our world and that of the fairy folk. I like to think of the fae as representations of the animate, untamed intelligence of the natural world. As we enter late spring, our attention shifts outward and growth quickens. The streets fill with pink blossoms and the land itself seems to lean toward us. We are drawn into a more immediate relationship with what is alive, unpredictable, and not entirely knowable. Beltane asks us to respond to the fields, the forests, the edges of things, where something (or someone) might be watching, just out of sight.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

The woods call to me,
filled with the glowing eyes
of wolves and foxes.
They wait for me patiently,
wondering exactly when
I will run with them,
hair down and feet black
with the soil of freedom -
the call of wild winds.
Pushing back my apron
and throwing it on the floor:
the pie can wait,
and the laundry will dry
on its own,
and I, I must run
to the dark trees,
to the pack that waits
silently at the edge
of everything
I think is real life.
(an excerpt from my first book)

Brian Froud's "Faeries" and Stephanich's "Faery Wicca"

When I was young, the world felt permeable in a way that I have never been able to fully explain. I lived in a big yellow house on a tree-lined street in central Illinois. I would walk down the block and play with the neighborhood kids, and leap over stones in a stream, and make up ridiculous stories. Sometimes, when I was alone, I would see things - fairies or ghosts. I saw them every time I jumped rope - and it scared me so much that I stopped doing it (was the rhythm a kind of trance state?)

It’s not an easy thing to admit to being a seer, and saying it out loud feels too declarative for the amorphous quality of the actual events. What I experienced was closer to an atmosphere, a presence that gathered at the edges of perception and occasionally stepped forward.

Ghosts or fairies, perhaps. Or a mind not yet trained to dismiss what it could not categorize. What remains undeniable, is the sense that something was there, whether or not I could name it.

After years of brushing the sensation aside, I have spent a great deal of my recent life moving toward that feeling again. As a poet, I feel deeply connected to the unseen world in a way that feels both unencumbered and safe. I can hold both the imagination and the feeling of reality at the same time without a lot of difficulty; I enjoy the experience of paradoxical thinking.

What is your relationship with the fairy world? I’m so genuinely curious. Did you go through a fairy phase? Have you never gotten over it?

I Used to See Fairies

Comments