[Folklorists are accustomed to the idea that supernatural legend – and even contemporary paranormal experience –surrounds the ancient monuments of Europe. Stonehenge. Silbury Hill. Carnac. The Rollrights. So common is it that one may presume every little stone-circle or barrow (burial mound) comes with some local legend. It’s an unfortunate surprise to too many Americans to hear […]
When I’m anywhere near a major sacred site, a “place of ancient sanctity” in the words of John Michell, I try to get into it by myself with a journal and spend a bit of reflective time. It’s a balm for the interior self even if no revelations come. The megaliths of Europe and the […]
[To the Celtic peoples of Europe a “dust devil” – a moving mini-cyclone of dirt and detritus – announced the passage of an invisible supernatural being, usually one of the Fairy-folk but not exempting one of their own formidable witches. I know the Six Nations/Hodenosaunee people in my home region of Western New York […]
The recent passing of Lughnasadh (July 31/August 1) has set a couple of reflections into me. Most of you are probably wondering, though, what Lughnasadh may be. The Celtic holiday called under various spellings Lughnasadh was dedicated to the harvest’s first fruits. Usually pronounced, “Loo-NA-sa,” the word means, “Lugh’s gathering/assembly.” Traditionally held on the eve […]
In my last post I referred to the beautiful fable given us by the young bardic poet Dónall Ó Héalaà at the home of Andrea and Owen O Suilleabhain. It was about the Gaelic champion Conan and the villagers who were helping him haul his treasure-chest back to the High King at Tara. The villagers […]
[Supernatural folklore and ancient monuments go hand in hand in Europe. In the Americas, the connection is not so well known.] When the first historic European cultures, the Celts, moved into northern and western Europe, they found the landscape marked by the monuments of an earlier people. Many of them were apparently simple constructions of […]
The Iroquois nations of upstate New York have as developed a tradition of Little People – “the Djogao,” the “Jungies,” the fairies – as any folk on earth. The wee folk still surface now and again, if reports are to be believed. The young guys hang out at a certain tobacco shop on the Tuscarora […]
(A Reflection from December 2012) 1 In many parts of the world it’s been believed that we share the earth with natural presences often envisioned as small, magically powerful, humanlike beings. In legend, these Fairies/Little People have a circumstantial connection to the human dead and a deep interest in human children. Protectors of the natural […]
The Halloween season is here, and for most of a month the imagery of things and beings supernatural and paranormal will besiege us in every medium. It shows us that the dark side of the psyche needs a vent – and that the imagery related is simply tantalizing. The universal supernatural being of legend is […]
To some extent we English speakers are raised on Aristotelian – Greek – thinking. Our whole conceptual system is based on absolutes and zero-sum games. (“Indeed, you have persuaded me, Socrates, that if a thing is of this quality it cannot also be of that…”) For the Native Americans it was different, and the Western […]