At the edge of our world, at the edge of the otherworld, the beautiful and mysterious faeries stand, watching and waiting to greet us, inviting us to journey with them as our guides while we walk the infinite paths of the Fae.
~Brian Fround
Tag: faeries
Faerie Paths — Faeries
Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels but their magic sparkles in nature.
~ Lynn Holland
Faerie Paths — Saturday
Saturday!
Time to dance with faeries
And sing to the trees
Time to shop
Time to dine
A Day to Share with Friends
Faerie Paths — Faerie Dances
Softly in the gloaming
Flitting through the vale,
Fairy folk are roaming
Over hill and dale.
Pixies in the hollow,
Elves upon the height,
Let us follow, follow
Through the paling light.
Follow, all unbidden,
To the grassy glade
Wrapped around and hidden
In the forest shade.
Hark the elfin tinkle
Of their little lutes!
Mark the golden twinkle
Of their fairy flutes!
~ Evelyn Stein
Faerie Paths — Angel Visits (repost)
If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.
~Samuel Smiles
(original post /01/12/2019)
Faerie Paths — Faerie Tales
I love fairy tales because of their haunting beauty and magical strangeness. They are set in worlds where anything can happen. Frogs can be kings, a thicket of brambles can hide a castle where a royal court has lain asleep for a hundred years, a boy can outwit a giant, and a girl can break a curse with nothing but her courage and steadfastness.
~ Kate Forsyth
Faerie Paths — Faeries
Grandfather says that sometimes,
When stars are twinkling and
A new moon shines, there come times
When folks see fairy-land!
So when there’s next a new moon,
I mean to watch all night!
Grandfather says a blue moon
Is best for fairy light,
And in a peach-bloom, maybe,
If I look I shall see
A little fairy baby
No bigger than a bee!
~ Evelyn Stein
Faerie Paths — Faerie Ballet
Pretty, pretty fairy ballet,
dancing shoes and fairy hair.
Sparkle, sparkle twirly dresses,
fairy dust everywhere.
Heels together, feet are pointing,
hands look pretty on our hips.
Bending knees we’re fairy dancing,
happy smiles on fairy lips.
~ Fairy Ballet, The Fairies
Faerie Paths — Over Hill, Over Dale
Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through briar,
Over park, over pale,
Through blood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moone’s sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone:
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
Faerie Paths — Fairy Song
The moonlight fades from flower and rose
And the stars dim one by one;
The tale is told, the song is sung,
And the Fairy feast is done.
The night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers,
And sings to them, soft and low.
The early birds erelong will wake:
‘T is time for the Elves to go.
O’er the sleeping earth we silently pass,
Unseen by mortal eye,
And send sweet dreams, as we lightly float
Through the quiet moonlit sky
For the stars’ soft eyes alone may see,
And the flowers alone may know,
The feasts we hold, the tales we tell;
So’t is time for the Elves to go.
From bird, and blossom, and bee,
We learn the lessons they teach;
And seek, by kindly deeds, to win
A loving friend in each.
And though unseen on earth we dwell,
Sweet voices whisper low,
And gentle hearts most joyously greet
The Elves where’er they go.
When next we meet in the Fairy dell,
May the silver moon’s soft light
Shine then on faces gay as now,
And Elfin hearts as light.
Now spread each wing, for the eastern sky
With sunlight soon shall glow.
The morning star shall light us home:
Farewell! for the Elves must go.
Louisa May Alcott
Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Amy Brown
Amy Brown is one of my all-time favorite artists. I’ve loved her work since I role-played a faerie woman 20 years ago.
Brown has always been interested in fairies, but never considered painting them as a career option until one day her boss asked her to paint something to fill an empty frame that had been sitting around the art gallery where she worked.
Brown asked what she should paint and her boss said, “I don’t know, paint a fairy or something.” So she did.
It was like the faeries were pushing her to paint their portraits.
After selling prints and originals at street fairs and in local shops for a few years, Brown opened a website and began selling her work online worldwide.
The business has since take on a life of its own.
Using colors, designs, and background, Brown has truly captured the world and the imagination of the faerie world. Each faerie glows with a personality all their own. 
“My passion to paint is like a living creature inside me,” Brown said.
“All the ideas in my head churn and beg to get out. I’m driven to get them onto paper and out of my head as soon as possible.” 
“Once I’ve conjured one creature, another is waiting impatiently for its turn.”
More of Amy Brown‘s magical art can be found at https://amybrownart.com/.
Faerie Paths — Flute
Then clear on a flute of purest gold A sweet little fairy played. And wonderful fairy tales she told and marvelous music made.
~Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
I Want to Be a Dark Fae Again
I found some “ambient” music on YouTube a few weeks ago — background music, really. (You should really check it out … instrumental music for all tastes). Great for crafting or reading. I came across this one long track, Relaxing Fairy Music – Dark Fae/Soothing, Sleep, Peaceful. It’s kind of slow and mysterious, nebulous and a touch enchanting.
It makes me want to role play a dark faerie again.
As I talked about in a blog from 2012, What Is Role Playing and Can I Do It By Myself,
Through the initial excitement of wandering through Internet worlds, I stumbled upon chat rooms where people typed to each other as if they were face-to-face. Interesting. I didn’t have to fess up that I was a 40-ish year old housewife/innkeeper … all I needed to do was make up a name and race and I belonged. Can you imagine the doors that opened for a writing goddess like me? Role-playing was like a video game with instant feedback. I could write my own dialogue, fight with swordsmen, disappear or have flames shoot from my fingertips, all with a sentence or two.
For those of us on every level of creativity (and I know that’s almost all of you!) there is something exciting of creating something with its own charms and purpose.
That’s the biggest reward of writing. But I digress.
I was a dark faerie named Dream Regret — half human, half fae. I was beautiful and clever and sexy. I could flirt as well as discuss strategy, chat with unicorns and trolls, or learn to hold a sword or javelin. I could get into philosophical discussions about the cosmos or the maturation of the Fae race or how to metamorphose into a dragon for a few hours.
It was all nonsense and it was all escapism.
The really good players fed you dialogue as well as you could dish it out. Enemies fought with swords and laser beams. They lied, cheated, and proclaimed their love.
I miss being that clever. That alluring. That magical.
There’s something about reality that sometimes takes the shine off of your crystal dome. Nothing could be as intricate as what is in your head. Nothing as full of unlimited possibilities.
Nothing can be as complicated — or as simple.
The older I get, the more I crave simplicity. Simplicity in real life, complexity in creativity. I love the challenge of a hard-to-design pattern, a harmonious color scheme, or a biting slice of dialogue while in the Creative mode. But I also like to be able to drop the pattern and the color scheme and dialogue when I’m done for the day.
I don’t like to deal with the complexities reality often brings along with it. Those challenges don’t fade with the sunset.
The days of creative chat rooms are over. I’ve put away my wings and my long dark blue hair and headed down a different street, searching for creative people and minds and hobbies.
But I’ll always have a bit of Dream Regret in me.
I’ll never let her fire go out.
The Faeries in My Back Yard
Last night I stood on my back deck in the dark of night and watched the fireflies dance in the woods.
Of course, you and I know they weren’t fireflies.
They were, of course, faeries.
This is the time of year they cross the bridge of time and float into our world to gather pollen from the night flowers and water from dawn’s dew drops. They fly around between the summer and autumnal equinox with their little buckets, gathering samples of the soil from deep in the woods and remnants of crops from the fields to take back home.
They stay just out of sight so humans can’t see them. Yes, they could take a chance on those who believe, but faeries don’t really take chances. Why bother with beings who just might swat them before thinking?
I love watching their random movements, their signals to each other as they play through twilight into the darkest of night. I can’t quite decipher their language, but sometimes it’s as if I hear their whispers and laughter in the distance; as if I can sense their pure joy of life.
Oh, I’ve heard all sorts of things about faeries/fairies/fae. They love sparkly things, wildflowers and plants, and music. They love honey cake, milk, nectar, and sweet butter. Fairies have an aversion to iron, and are quick to do you a favor, yet even quicker to demand payment for it.
I’ve never heard of anyone EVER seeing a faerie. Ever. They are myth, they are made up, they are born from our imagination and desire to create something fresh, free, and eternal.
But those naysayers have never looked off my deck into the warmth of a summer evening that slowly, ever so slowly, turns into a velvet black backdrop. They have never felt the electricity in the air of a knowledge and way of life that has been since the beginning of time and will continue long after we are dust.
They will never see, for they will never believe.
Faerie Paths — Repost — #FridayFantasy . . . If I were a fairy
from Purplerays
https://purplerays.wordpress.com/2021/06/18/fridayfantasy-if-i-were-a-fairy/
If I Were A Fairy
I’d love to sit on a clover-top
And sway,
And swing and shake, till the dew would drop
In spray;
To croon a song for the bumble-bee
To leave his golden honey with me,
And sway and swing, till the wind would stop
To play.
I’d weave a hammock of spider-thread
Loose-hung,
Where grasses nodded above my head
And swung.
And all day long, while the hammock swayed
I’d twine and tangle the sun and shade,
Till the crickets’ song, “It is time for bed!”
Was sung.
Then wrapped in a wee gold sunset cloud
I’d lie,
While night winds sang to the stars that crowd
The sky.
And all night long, I would swing and sleep
While fireflies lighted their lamps to peep—
“Oh, hush!” they’d whisper, if frogs sang loud—
“Oh hush-a-by!”
.
by Charles Buxton Going
Art by Asako Eguchi
Faerie Paths — Forest
The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are. You get stripped of everything you thought you were, some type of ordeal takes place, and you come out stronger.
~David Farr
Do You Have a Spirit Guide or Two?
Do you have a spirit guide that you work with?
An archangel that gets you through the rough times?
A spirit animal or totem that offers you guidance and wisdom?
Some people believe God sits right next to them, guiding them through creative adventures and balancing the books. Some swear by Archangel ___ or Egyptian Goddess ___ for their inspiration. Yet others feel stronger with someone like Creatura, the Creative Faerie, having their back.
I believe in all of the above.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pulling strength out of the cosmos to help you with your creative struggles.
This cosmic connection is different (yet in the same family) as God/Spirit/Counsellors helping us through life’s struggles.
This sort of guide lends moral support in an artsy way. When you struggle on character development, color choices, or your final quilt size, it helps to have a faerie or angel or spirit from the past give you guidance.
Some decisions we can’t make on our own. That’s where divine intervention comes in.
I didn’t realize I had help until I wrote my first book. Being inspired and stuck at the same time, I asked the cosmos (in general) for help. Somehow it stuck in my head that I had help from an ancient Greek spirit. The sequel was nudged along by a heavy-set French mistress from the late 1800’s. I’ve also been known to consult a philosopher from the Tang Dynasty and a priest from Middle Ages.
How do I know I’ve been contacted by spirits to guide me along my bumbling way?
Because I choose to believe.
A little bit of reality and a little bit of fantasy, mixed with daydreams and aspirations and hard work, I don’t believe I’ve gotten this far in life without a little help. A little inspiration. A little guidance.
The world is bigger than we can imagine. More mysterious than we can imagine. More beautiful than we can imagine. And when I get stuck in one rut or another, it feels good to have someone behind me to keep my creative juices flowing.
This is above and beyond the help of the divine. We need those pillars, too.
But sometimes I just need someone to talk to. Someone I can bounce ideas of off. Someone who can listen to my ideas and see my colors and understand what I want as my end product. Especially when I get inspired in the middle of the night or while I’m driving down the road.
I’m shopping around now for a spirit guide for the next step on my creative path. Angel Tears. I realize there’s more going on than meets the eye. After all, I’m a faerie girl. Not an angel girl.
Yet here we are. Here we go.
Looking for a little direction in your creative life? Feel free to find a past spirit or mythical creature or divine being to accompany you on your next wild and rewarding journey.
We need all the help we can get!
Sunday Evening Art Gallery (midweek) — Brian Froud
Brian Froud (born 1947) is an English fantasy illustrator.
Froud graduated with Honors from Maidstone College of Art in 1971 with a degree in Graphic Design.
Soon afterwards, he began working in London on various projects ranging from book jackets, magazine covers to advertising as well as illustrating several children books.
Froud soon realized that fairy tales and legends were something which would never get old.
In collaboration with his friend and fellow artist Alan Lee, Froud created the 1978 book Faeries, an illustrated compendium of faerie folklore.
Upon discovering Froud’s lavish and mysterious drawings in his books, and recognizing his complex and singular artistic vision of the faerie world, Jim Henson chose him to help him create a unique otherworld feature-film which became known as The Dark Crystal. 
Soon Froud developed his own magical distinctive style and experimented with three dimensional designs complete with gnomes, goblins, warlocks and dragons.
Through Froud’s unique style utilizing acrylics, colored pencil, pastels and ink, he has created some of the most well known fantasy images of the Twenty-first Century.
More of Brian Froud‘s amazing workmanship can be found at https://www.ferniebrae.com/brian-froud.
Faerie Paths — Faeries
Once upon a time, I thought faeries lived only in books, old folktales, and the past. That was before they burst upon my life as vibrant, luminous beings, permeating my art and my everyday existence, causing glorious havoc.
~ Brian Froud
Faerie Paths — Clamour
Blind folk see the fairies.
Oh, better far than we,
Who miss the shining of their wings
Because our eyes are filled with things
We do not wish to see…
Deaf folk hear the fairies
However soft their song;
‘Tis we who lose the honey sound
Amid the clamour all around
That beats the whole day long…
~Rose Fyleman, “White Magic,” 1918
Faerie Paths — Blinders
I’ve always believed in experiencing everything in life. When you walk out with blinders on, you cut yourself off from the angels and the fairies.
~ Alyssa Milano
Faerie Paths — Frost
Frost grows on the window glass,
forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry.
Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition.
Now it can build castles and cities
and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor.
In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . .
But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Faerie Paths — Look
The Road Less Traveled
When does Imagination turn into Magic?
Who lives across the water
Down that path
In those woods
Who lives under that tree
Beyond that field
Among those clouds
The whispers of the Otherworld
Ask that question all the time
Their existence
Turns Magic into Imagination
Their world lies
right beneath our feet
just out of sight
All we need to do
is look … and feel
~Claudia~
Faerie Paths — Believe
Science seeks to explain everything — but maybe we don’t want everything explained. We don’t want all the magic to go out of life. We want to remain connected to the secret parts of our inner beings, to the ancient mysteries, and to the most distant outposts of the universe. We want to believe. And as long as we do, the fairies will remain.
~ Skye Alexander
Faerie Paths — Lights
… every child can remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies…
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Faerie Paths — Laughter
When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
~
Faerie Paths — Search
Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace. ~Eugene O’Neill
Faerie Paths — Cherry Faeries
When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry, Take a cherry
Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder
Mine are sweeter, For the eater
When the dews fall. And you’ll be fairies all.
~Robert Graves, “Cherry-Time,” Fairies and Fusiliers, 1918
Still Believe in Magic
Last night I looked off my back deck into the darkness, across the empty yard and to the woods beyond, and saw faeries busy doing whatever faeries do, their little lanterns flashing on and off as they fluttered through the darkness.
I’m so glad I still believe in magic.
Faerie Paths — Solitude
Extraordinary things happen in solitude.
~Michael Finkel
Faerie Paths — Children
The fairies went from the world, dear,
Because men’s hearts grew cold:
And only the eyes of children see
What is hidden from the old…
~Kathleen Foyle
Faerie Paths – Frolic
Did you ever hear
Of the frolic fairies dear?
They’re a blessed little race,
Peeping up in fancy’s face,
In the valley, on the hill,
By the fountain and the rill;
Laughing out between the leaves
That the loving summer weaves.
Frances Sargent Osgood
Faerie Paths — Buttercups
Buttercups in the sunshine look like little cups of gold.
Perhaps the Faeries come to drink the raindrops that they hold.
~Elizabeth T. Dillingham, A Faery Song
Faerie Paths — Friends
Animals are such agreeable friends ― they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. ~ George Eliot
Faerie Paths — Fiction
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
~ Neil Gaiman
Faerie Paths — Icicles
Oh! where do fairies hide their heads
When snow lies on the hills,
When frost has spoil’d their mossy beds,
And crystalliz’d their rills?
Beneath the moon they cannot trip
In circles o’er the plain;
And draughts of dew they cannot sip
Till green leaves come again.
~Thomas Haynes Bayly
Faerie Paths — Gardens
Faeries are known to be tenders of plants and energizing inhabitants of gardens. They are more elusive than Angels and often have lively, mercurial temperaments. They are active in preserving what little wilderness remains on the Earth. ~ Elizabeth Eiler, Swift and Brave: Sacred Souls of Animals
Faerie Paths — Circles
Few humans see fairies or hear their music, but many find fairy rings of dark grass, scattered with toadstools, left by their dancing feet.
Judy Allen, Fantasy Encyclopedia
Faerie Paths — Secrets
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. ~Roald Dahl
Faerie Paths — Imagine
I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? ~John Lennon
Faerie Paths — Footsteps
The fairies break their dances
And leave the printed lawn.
~A.E. Housman
Faerie Paths — Singing Stars
a Spectre in the Eastern Veil
I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don’t want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic. ~ Charles de Lint
Faerie Paths — Escape
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;
lovers to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.
~ William Shakespeare
Faerie Paths — Bridge
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
~ W.B. Yeats
Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — Faerie Houses
Are they real? Does it matter?
The world of the Fae is all around us. Just take a look…
Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Snowflakes
Snow Fairy
by Claude McKay
Throughout the afternoon I watched them there,
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky,
Whirling fantastic in the misty air,
Contending fierce for space supremacy.
And they flew down a mightier force at night,
As though in heaven there was revolt and riot,
And they, frail things had taken panic flight
Down to the calm earth seeking peace and quiet.
I went to bed and rose at early dawn
To see them huddled together in a heap,
Each merged into the other upon the lawn,
Worn out by the sharp struggle, fast asleep.
The sun shone brightly on them half the day,
By night they stealthily had stol’n away.
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Find more poetry from Claude McKay at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/claude-mckay
Find more images of real snowflakes at SnowCrystals.com
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Humoring the Goddess 