The following has material in it that some people have seen over the past few months. If you're one of them, please read this anyway, because a lot has been changed and added-evolution needn't always be slow. Our entire species can transform in an instant.
To explain Faerie Nation, I have to share part of a vision I've had over the past few years (and, actually, long before that). It's a book-size vision, but I may never write that book. Some things have to be grass roots. The vision (hear a drum roll):
The Goddess shows us many faces. She is God Herself, She is the Faerie Queen. She tells me - tells us - now,
"I am Faerie Queen, Mother of the Faerie Nation.
And more of you are awake now.
Lovers, warriors, mere children, and elders,
mystics, bards, and spiritual outlaws,
cats in disguise and humans with Fey blood,
wolves, dragons, gardeners, herbalists,
corporate executives, changelings, tricksters,
sex workers, moon-children, star-children, and techno-pagans,
oh, and so many others, more of you are awake now.
Come unto me,
come home to me, I am your Mother and I will protect you,
uphold you,
make love with you,
tutor you until your starlit blood is mine
and flowing back and forth between us like the milky way
in all its immense luminosity-
dance with me!
I have hungered, lonely for my children in their absence.
But you are awake now, so
come, my Faerie children, to me.
The new Fey tribe must begin.
A mystical global village."
I've waited lifetimes for the Fey-spark in humans to fully ignite again. And, more and more, the ancient starlit blood has come forward. Finally, momentum hit critical mass; the magic's suddenly - and thoroughly - awake in huge numbers of people. Fey-touched! Star-drenched! This leaves us with new concerns, and steps that need to be taken (there are left brain parts to the vision):
I am trying to address these concerns and more. Despite my disabling illness, I'm teaching classes and private lessons about these issues because they are so vital. The Queen tells me that I must also continue helping individuals be their truest mystical and mundane selves because it's (obviously) related.
Come home, home, home, home. There are many places in Faerie, all different, each special. One of them is your home. Home. I am told to keep helping people find home. And, if they're already there, then I'm to keep helping them learn (more) ways to find its unique magic and spirituality and how to use them practically to empower their mundane lives. If you need such lessons and don't want to study with me, find someone else you trust to do it! Or teach yourself if that's your style. Or be taught by trees, rocks, fish, random thoughts, and plastic forks. If you need the lessons, you'll find the teacher.
We're all trying to find out who we are, it's a work that never ends, as layer after layer of beautiful/awful self is uncovered. The difficult quest for self is one of the hardest things I help my students go through. Sometimes it's a search for one's personal myth, other times it's about the mundane realm, like one's purpose in life. But whatever it is, it's hard to be a trailblazer, and we all must be one to live our authentic, unique passions. So get support! Ask the ocean who you are. Get lessons from your shoes. Find a spiritual counselor. And/or ask the Divine for guidance. But get the support you need and deserve.
Net result of everything I've discussed thus far: a Fey global village, and a new Fey you, a new Fey me.
The Queen and King and Kin gave me the terms Free Fey and Faerie Nation. Free Fey = a star-drenched seeker who will not be bound by dogma or other limiting restrictions, and who nevertheless realizes both the enchaaaaaanted fun and necessity of tribe. A Free Fey might be pagan, Christian, Buddhist, or any other religion. Or be perfectly fine 'n' dandy without a tradition. A Free Fey might only have a secret name - sshh. In the vision, that tribe of the Free Fey, that global tribe of mystics that honors individuality, was called Faerie Nation (FN).
Welcome home to the Faerie Queen - even if you do not fit into any of my descriptions of possible members. I can't describe FN well enough yet. But this is a tribe for those who want to join it, period. The merely curious, wildly confused, thoroughly hostile, perfectly cynical, and "I-won't-join-because-I'll-never-fit-in" folks have a place with us. Faerie Nation celebrates diversity. Really celebrates it - even fundies are welcome. (Though we might put bells on you so you can't sneak up on the children.)
And you can be "in" the precise way - and at the level of involvement - you want. For example, if you only wanna hang out with us by reading FN Mag, I luuuv you, luv you, luv you. No forced activities ever, not in our tribe!
I'm a Free Fey. Hee, heeeeee, you gotta laff just for joy. Let us shine, shine, shine! The Free Fey are fun.
Lotsa yummy FN stuff coming up. For example, an on-line list is in the works. We're also envisioning a yearly gathering where folks can relax and . . . organized chaos . . . wheeeee! . . . Play! If you have experience as an events planner, we need you! I'll sprinkle you with Faerie dust, I want this gathering so bad.
Some mystics'll also need little gatherings to address personal issues, remain magical, and honor individuality. I'm working on a relatively easy way folks can form wee FN clans to support their personal goals (or take over the world, whatever floats your boat).
Another part of the vision (which I've nurtured joyously the past few years): We can defeat the hate-mongering fundamentalists - short-sighted moralists - if we believe in our magic and use it to win our freedom, our dream lives, our Mother Earth. However, we have to make big changes to pull this off, and one is (another part of the vision) to embrace cooperation and coordination. The Fundies have it. Can the most outrageously creative, individualist freethinkers have it - and thus work via street theatre, magic, and anything else we come up with, in a coordinated way at national and international levels, to stop the insanity? I believe we can. And She's saying that we must try to pull this off. We, we, we have the kind of magic to do it, because the magic of each of us is so unique and we are all sooo out there! (Of course, some individuals and clans in FN might not be into this sort of thing, which is totally cool. Provide other acts of caring or just come to party. It takes all kinds.)
It is a daunting task not only organizationally but also personally for anyone involved. Most of us do things our own way; that is our power. Joining groups can be threatening. We might feel that cooperation and a coordinated international program would mean the antitheses of that power. It doesn't have to. And the first step is to see that we develop the ability to stretch paradox to the extremes, the extremes of our individualism coupled with the extremes of structured coordinated effort. Faerie Nation! If we push paradox to the fullest and most insane stretch, we can pull off miracle after miracle. This paradox epitomizes bringing the world of myth together with the world of "man."
However, as I said, we must become able to do it. Here's a step toward that: Search yourself, I ask you, for any way you think that cooperation, group actions, compromise, etc. squelches your individuality. And vice versa. Look hard: Ask questions like the following: Does structure have to squelch you? Are you being honest?
What structures could support instead of suppress? Is the rhetoric of independence hiding a fear of risking intimacy, a fear of risking involvement? Is the rhetoric hiding an old wound that it's time to heal? Are you ignoring your leadership skills though they aren't about domination but about serving others? Ask yourself whatever hard questions you need to answer if the ones I've listed are irrelevant or disempowering. We are made of stars. We are Fey-touched, blessed beyond imagining. We can live the hugest paradox!
I have a flow chart in my shaman-hut that I created a year or three ago about this and related things that I want to help come to pass. I'm not referring to just the "change-the-world" work but also to the joyful Fey tribe and its playtime. The goals of the chart would be grandiose except that I have the magical and mundane abilities needed; in the past, I've pulled off similar big, insane bridgings of the worlds. (I'm a mystic genius, I'm a mystic genius. I'm an outlaw bunny, I'm an outlaw bunny! And this is no bunny-without-a-cause. My motto is: "Never doubt that one wee creature can change the world.") Moreover, everyone I've shared my Faerie Nation vision with is immediately owning it as their own, simply seeing it as a given when it was nonexistent to them previously. This has me so excited - it is real! It is real! It is not my delusion! People will go along with my insanity! I'll not be alone with a stupid delusion! Fey-touched are stepping up to the plate to make tribe joy happen! Their enthusiasm and efforts, along with the Fey Folk, are feeding me enough health that I can do this work in spite of my disabilities.
I'm physically healthier than I've been in years. Therefore, I'm writing constantly, talking to everyone I can, asking folks to post my FN material on phone poles (even if it sounds like a bag-lady wrote the stuff), just doing all I can.
Building a raucous, global Fey tribe, not to mention getting us disparate, wonderfully crazed folks together for the coordinated efforts needed to save Gaia and human rights, is gonna take a lot of steps. I'm laying them down, taking them, one by one by one by . . . and hoping Goddess guides me in the many steps that I don't know yet. I need your input; what is Goddess/God/Buddha/your cat telling you?
Innumerable parts to plan and execute. I need your ideas. For example, (the following is not bragging. I need to share my real life here) I am utterly Fey - e.g., walk easily between the stars but need a wheelchair to go downtown, drink star-water with all my meals, move in and out of trance at lightning speed, while at the constant beck 'n' call of pushy deities - so I felt hopelessly alienated. I needed to get in my gut that Fey is not un-human but a specific race of humans: I am not alone, not separate. Sure, I've known it forever intellectually, but had to get it more and more in my gut. It has to be in all our guts, or so I deeply believe. Let's tell each other our ideas about how we can do that. (And submit articles or rites about it to FN Mag.)
If this article sounds like crazy talk, insanity is what changes things! This is the way Third Road (the shamanic Goddess tradition I accidentally founded) and Another Step (a curriculum I created that has similar tools as Third Road's but is for folks of any spiritual path) started; now their madness, which we once shared quietly in my living room, is practiced all over the world. I'm not mentioning this as a sneaky infomercial but to prove that my insanity gets things done. Done.
Anyway, soooo much is still in the planning stages. Creating the impossible takes time. DNA must shift. Phone me if you want to help build FN, even if you don't know me. My disabilities do not allow me to discuss FN by email. Besides, despite all the media attention I've received, I'm just an old-fashioned shaman with a commitment to being accessible. I'm also a grass roots let's-do-this-together woman. In any case, all sorts and levels of skills are needed. (I've written FN broadsides. Want a batch to post on telephone poles? Guerrilla spirituality. Just lemme know.)
If you don't have the time to help but do have the cash, I sure as heck need it! For one thing, printing costs for FN's mag are high. Just go to PayPal (www.paypal.com), log in to your account (or set one up for free) and click the "Send Money" tab. Use outlawbunny@outlawbunny.com as the Recipient's Email, fill in the amount of your contribution, and be sure to write "FN contribution" in the Notes section. Nevertheless, remember, whether you want to help out or not, you're part of Faerie Nation just by telling yourself you are. Simply say, "I'm in Faerie Nation. Free Fey!"
This article is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the vision as a whole. (Reminder: It was evolving in me and building for years.) I'll share more over time. It's a long-term multifaceted vision/ceremony/journey/story/myth/adventure/modern Faerie tale, for us to use bit by bit over years' time. Hurrah! Wanna join? Wanna help? Do you have visions? Or enthusiasm? Or just a need to hang out with a bunch of lunatics? Free Fey!
Francesca De Grandis, author of Goddess Initiation (HarperSanFrancisco) and Be A Teen Goddess! (Citadel Press), lives midst the trees of Pennsylvania, has a weird habit of starting impossible and international underground movements, and doesn't believe in false humility - it crushes the endless potential that's in each of us. De Grandis provides interfaith pastoral counseling - renegade style - by phone for people all over the world who want to go the last nine yards toward self-realization. Contact info: outlawbunny@outlawbunny.com or (814)-337-2490.
