Fairy Gate On A Spring Morning

MORE FAIRY GATES:      
           

MORE FAIRY WORLDS
      
Fairy Gate on a Spring Morning.  One of a series of photos this trellis i took with my G12 set to “nostalgia.”  The nostalgia function has several settings, from grainy black and white, to the muted color of an old Kodak, and three gradations in-between.  I took several photos of this old gate, using different settings, so every time i went thru a series of manipulations, they came out very different, but they all came out very magical.  Like, the deprivation of color at the beginning of the series, led to very interesting and different outcomes then i’d ever seen before.    

This totally looks like a fairy gate to me - like, there’s a fairy world that extends well beyond the gate, where the sprites play and dance.  You can only see it with a certain sorta vision, and you can only get there if you open up deep parts of yourself that most modern humans have forgotten they have.  Even still, the fairies have to give you permission.  My camera caught a bit of this fairy world, that’s tangental to our own. While it seems, in this photo, that the land extends for miles and miles, to some misty mountain realm, in our human reality, it’s only a few feet, just a paltry, overgrown yard. Behind it, more overgrown yards, and then a main street of strip malls, then tidy suburban neighborhoods, and finally the ocean.  But in this photo, none of that is “real.”  That stuff is the fantasy - the reality is the magical world that extends beyond our paltry perception, a land of flowers and misty mountains.  A land full of nymphs and sprites and fairies playing in their own world - but who have the ability, when it amuses them, to play in our world.  They can cross back and forth, and sometimes they will help us, if we ask nicely - I don’t know why, coz i’m not that smart - well, let’s say i’m smart enough not to pretend i know why.  But i am smart enough to be appreciative.

I love the fairies, and i make artwork like this to show my appreciation for all their magical gifts.  The gifts we can see, and the gifts we can’t see.  I love their spirit.  I love that they take care of the Earth Mother’s children - the flowers, the trees, the fruit, us.  It makes me wanna help others too.  It makes me wanna shout - “you can’t see them, but they will help you, if you ask.”  But you have to ask.  And that’s humbling. You have to be humble to ask for help.  Men often claim that women are vain - but if you aren’t humble enough to admit you need to ask for directions, or look at the instructions, then you are vain in you belief that you simply just know everything.  The fairy world isn’t about knowing it’s about believing.  Yes, it’s about faith - faith in our Earth Mother, The Goddess, who gave birth to the universe, to the earth, and to us.  Sorry to get so religious, but these are spiritual works of art.  They are about the power of the Earth Mother, the power of growth.  The power of the fairies is also the power to heal.

This broken down trellis, in a run down neighborhood, can look magical, it can look like a great, green, fantastic world, where anything can happen - just open the gate, and walk in.  The evil people who burned Witches claimed that when you enter fairy world, you can never come out again, you won’t age, you’ll become a stranger to your own people.  But that isn’t true.  You can only visit the fairy world, and while time does seem to stop there, you don’t come out 75 years later looking your same age.  That’s silly.  You can visit, and feel the magic, the magic of spring, and green growing things, the magic of decomposing death becoming abundant fertile life.  

I believe because i have felt their power, their light and magic, their caring and nurturing.  I don’t believe in jealous, angry, vengeful deities, who send angels down so that men can protect the angels from those who would destroy them by giving their daughters to be raped by mobs.  I don’t understand the allure of such stories, they are horrifying.  There is no “book of fairies” - wait, actually, there are tons of Books of Fairies - and they are all slightly different - coz the belief in fairies reflects the reality that, deep down, every religion is a religion of one.  Everyone has - or can have - their own special connection to the divine.  I love that, in our country, we have the idea that governance is best when we separate religion and spiritual life from the political and public sphere, and keep it to the private sphere - because then religion can belong to The People, like in olden times, instead of to The Important People (or Person).  I don’t trust religions that place one person over everyone else - even religions where there are only one minister for a parish, coz those ministers often have too much power over how other people view their faith. I know the Dalai Lama says wise things, but i don’t trust a faith that picks out one boy - and only a boy can be picked out - to be educated, fostered, nurtured, into someone who is supposedly more connected to the divine than you.  Maybe more educated, nurtured and fostered in religious thought, yes - wiser in some ways - certainly, but he can’t tell me how to run my life, coz he doesn’t understand my life in the least.  What connection can such a special person with such a special upbringing have to the daily struggles of an abuse Survivor, Trans, Lipstick Lesbian, poly, kinky, Witch, living in contemporary American culture?

I prefer my solitary practice of Witchcraft, and i love that the Pagan world, like the Trans world, is full of people who disagree, for as much as even I would like to tell everyone what to believe, i don’t have the hubris to think that i really know.  I hear people talk about their “faith” as if it were unalterable reality.  A faith they were born into and taught to believe since the day they were born. They say they have “faith” in their god, and his son, and in their intervention into human affairs - but then they treat their “faith” as if it were reality, as if their specific way of believing was the absolute truth and no other way could possibly be true.  But then you don’t actually have faith because you’re treating your religion as if it were reality, a reality you’ve never questioned because you are believing the things you’ve been told since birth, and there’s no other choice but to believe.

So many people believe stuff they’ve been told since they were a baby, without ever examining or thinking about that stuff in the least.  Their “beliefs” were taught to them with their A B C’s, and so it isn’t a matter of faith, it’s simply going along to get along in their family and community.  My faith, as a solitary Witch, has been tested, it’s been thought out, it’s been hard won.  I’ve read books, i’ve done rituals, i’ve thrown tarot, i’ve been to churches, i’ve meditated, i’ve done yoga and kung fu.  I have faith in what i believe, fully knowing that i am taking part in creating that faith, and thus, it is a reflection of my Self, and my experience.  God did not make us in his image - We make Goddess in Our image.  The famous painting on the Sistene Chapel, where a non-pregnant father god is somehow giving birth to a man thru his finger, is an image of two men, painted by a man; a man who used a paint brush, an extension of his finger, to create his artwork, in which he created an image of a god who, like himself, is using his finger like a paintbrush to create - and thus cis men give the power of lifegiving that is the birthright of those of the female sex, to the male sex, coz they want so bad to be able to create life.  But that is a female ability, and it’s a trans male ability.  This is why i believe in a Goddess creatrix, because if Goddess in any way created the world in her image, then, of course, the Divine is female - or he’s a transsexual male whose comfortable giving birth.  

The thing is, i don’t know, i only believe, and because i have faith, true faith, i can admit there are other possibilities, i can admit that other people may see parts of the divine that i can’t see - coz no one person can see every part of the divine.  Of all the possibilities there are, i have faith in the possibilities that make up my religion - and i am humble enough to allow those of a different faith to have their faith, without demanding that my faith be taught in schools, or be the only faith represented on TV, or demanding that only people of my faith can be elected to office, or any of that.   Of course, those options aren’t a true reality for me, and the fact that they are a reality for a large group of people betrays a religious vanity that, to me, is beyond unseemly, and becomes ungodly.  Religious vanity is the worse kind of vanity - the inability to ask for directions, or read the instructions is one thing  - but to believe that you know everything, and not being able to admit that you could be wrong, is as vain as it gets.  If you can’t admit that you could be wrong, then you are giving yourself the power of the divine, and if that isn’t the ultimate vanity, than i don’t know what is.

I prefer to walk thru the mysterious fairy gate, and to dance thru a land, where i know my imagination is part of the story.  My imagination, my visualization, my manifestations and affirmations, my prayers to the fairies to help and protect me, are part of the story that i create to live thru my life.  My spirituality is like this gate, a place to walk into with wonder, full of colors and flowers, with beautiful, comforting divinities wanting to guide me thru their fairyland, to the misty mountains, and beyond to infinity.