Tonight is the night that Shakespeare had faeries running amok in the woods around Athens. This is Midsummer’s Night, tomorrow being Midsummer’s Day. Folklore has it that this is the best time to go find the Good Folk, though lore also makes it pretty clear that you may be in for trouble if you do. More often than not, those who seek the fae end up dead — or, what might be worse, aged beyond all their loved ones. Many human centuries may pass in a single night, with everyone and everything you ever knew gone by sunrise.
I have no experience with that and no desire to invite faerie mischief into my life. I have enough problems with the more tangible nature beings like groundhogs and midges. But if you want to find the faeries without introducing too much mischief into your own life, put a piece of iron in your pocket or wear your clothes backwards and inside-out, then go find a mycelium ring. Looking through a holey stone may reveal the faery revels in that ring to your mortal eyes. The iron and the reversed clothing might protect you from them. Might…
There are very few stories of human and faerie intercourse that end well. Those that do seem to be the more fanciful of fantasies, with beautiful, ageless women giving gifts of power and sight to young men. I can’t imagine why faeries would look like humans, never mind being inclined and able to grant super-human powers. And the foolery of tiny, flying girls is just insulting — to faeries and to women.
We like our mythical beings to resemble us. Demons all have human faces. The Goat God grafts hooves and horns onto a young man’s body. The djinn, who are supposedly spirits of fire and wind, are commonly portrayed as rotund men, and a good number of them have taken on Vishnu’s blue skin — which all seems the opposite of fire. But why should they have bodies at all? Why should any spirit appear to our eyes? They are spirits, after all.
Perhaps they can take on forms that we can perceive, or at least convince our minds that we are perceiving a disembodied being. However, it seems unlikely that they’d choose humanoid forms, nor even choose to interact with humans at all in many places. As to faeries, perhaps they can trick the senses into seeing something where there is nothing in this world, but there are so many other beings that embody the grace and beauty that faeries supposedly prize. Truly, they might choose to be flying creatures, leaving aside the clunky human appendages. But they are also immortals, or at least beings of very long life. Wouldn’t a tree be more appropriate? Or, if unrooted, there are few animals that shed their lovely youth as quickly and completely as humans. An old jaguar is every bit as lithe and sleek as her kits, but with the canny wisdom of age and experience. If I were an other-worldly being desiring the appearance of an Earthling, I would choose something much more impressive and wild and intelligent and ravishing than humanity — and there is such a lot to choose on this planet’s plane!
I have the same difficulty imagining gods that resemble humans in both form and temperament. Something that might be as powerful as deity is not likely to think or seem or be like a human. Deity also would seem to be older than humanity. The Abrahamic faiths get around this one by saying that deity created humans in the likeness of the creator. But why should any god exist in humanoid form? Why not a planet? Why not a star? Or a galaxy? Or just nothing at all and everything at once. Humans are terribly limited and extreme late-comers to the story of being. I sometimes feel that all that void in the subatomic world and the gently curving undulations of empty space — all that we can’t explain or envision or even know much about — that is likely to be deity, if deity exists. There’s certainly much more of occult lacuna in the universe than there is anything tangible to our minds — much, much more than tangible beings that look like us.
We want our gods to be like us because we want to be more than we are. We want to fly. We want to be ancient and wise and powerful, yet we want the bodies and appetites of eternal youth. We want to know the universe and order it to follow our whims. We want to travel the liminal spaces that we can almost perceive just beyond all of what we know. We want to be magic. If the gods looks like us, then perhaps we can be as gods. But in fitting gods into our bounded comprehension, we shear away all Their resplendence and potency. If They are like us, then they can’t be gods — because we clearly aren’t gods no matter our wants.
I believe that there are gods. Probably. There is something foundational to the universe. Something that sets things in motion. Something that Precedes. I also tend to think that all the stories of fae beings and un-bodied spirits are our poor attempts to explain deity. There very likely are nature spirits. They very likely are quixotic and capricious, wise and ancient, formidable and incomprehensible, because that is what we see in the more-than-human world. And the faery wood would surely swallow up any humans who stumble across its borders exactly as folklore claims.
But they probably have very little interest in these little evanescent candles that have given them name and lore. If they know we exist at all, then they probably aren’t too happy with the messes we are making of this, their planet. They are very likely doing what they can to clean up after us and would dearly like to be quit of us. All of us. Just as we can’t tell one squirrel from the next, there’s no reason for nature to differentiate between good and bad humans.
In any case, I doubt it’s a good idea to go seeking out the Good Folk. They’re not likely to hold humans in high regard. And even if they let you go, you’ll probably end up with Lyme disease and a poison ivy rash for your Midsummer’s Eve efforts.
It’s also Midwinter…
I have never understood why the Southern Hemisphere is forced to follow the North’s annual round of holidays. It can’t be as meaningful to celebrate Easter when it’s autumn or Christmas when it’s bloody hot outside. I once read a hilarious take on that in a novel set in Queensland, Australia. The protagonist worked in a small town grocery store — no air conditioning — and the store manager decided that all the check-out people had to get into the spirit of the season. The manager forced everyone to wear itchy Santa hats all day long. Looked very festive with their shorts and tank tops and the sweat pouring down their necks…
I don’t understand why marketing hasn’t tried to capitalize on this. Don’t get me wrong, I think one commercial Christmas is more than enough. But you’d think that retail would love having an actual Christmas in June rather than those feeble Christmas in July sales. And if the commercial world picked that up, maybe the South could run with it and make a complete switch to a more rational calendar.
After all, this is the actual Yuletide for those on the other side of the equator. Shouldn’t they be allowed — hell, encouraged! — to celebrate their own holidays?
I suppose Christmas itself is tied to the Northern December where the Nativity happened — though most Bible scholars will say the birth in a stable actually happened in September, based on tax accounting in the Roman Empire and the fact that shepherds were out in the hills with the sheep… not a thing in December.
But Midwinter is the middle of winter… not December down South, but June. It is Christmas now down there. This is Midwinter’s Eve and the longest night of the year. Similarly, right now, it’s not coming round to harvest season, but to spring. I just can’t see how you could live in season if all of the seasonal holidays were inverted.
You get things like Santa hats over sweaty heads… and probably worse…
This is why I always say to make your own time. If you live somewhere south of the equator, then you are celebrating the middle of your dormant season. It is when the sun has gone as far away and the days are as short as they get. The new sun will be getting stronger from here on out, even as the North is obsessing about frost and pumpkins.
So go with that. Celebrate Yule in June, even Christmas, if that is your thing. There is no reason to put Christmas in December. It was set in December precisely because all these Midwinter / Sol Invictus holidays were in December — which, if the Romans and Norse and Celts had all lived down South, would have been in June. So you have every reason to move the holiday to when it is appropriate.
In fact, I feel it is an imperative — if for no other reason than to head off things like stocking caps slapped on hapless check-out girls in the middle of summer.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
In Arthur C. Clarke’s excellent short work “Childhood’s End” the gods (or in this case very capable beings who fix up things a bit for failing humanity) take the form of Mephistopheles. I don’t recall if they had wings, but they definitely had a tail.
ACC could dream up some pretty good images!
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