There’s a certain kind of stillness today. Not empty, just the sense of something being out there. Of hearing the magic of the world and nature better. There are glimmering and sunshiny presences, beings made of fairy dust and light. 🧚🏻

Beltane hasn’t arrived yet. It’s waiting. And something in the world feels loosened, like the edges aren’t holding as tightly as they usually do. The air is softer, but sharper too. As if it’s paying attention back.

They say this is when the veil thins. Not tomorrow: now. In this in-between.

You don’t suddenly see anything. It’s quieter than that. A flicker where there shouldn’t be one. The sense that something moved just outside your focus.

The old stories call them the Fae. Not gentle, not kind, just there. Drawn to sweetness, to gardens, to edges. To places where things are just beginning to grow wild.

I was reading about willow today. How it bends, how it belongs to water and the moon. There’s that idea that if you shape a small circle from it and look through, you might catch a glimpse of something you usually miss. Not because it appears, but because you finally notice! This is called a Willow Faerie Eye.

Days and nights like this change the way you see.

If you step outside at dusk, to the edge of something—garden, forest, water—and just stand there for a moment… the world feels slightly off-balance. Alive in a way that doesn’t belong entirely to us. That is... the presence of the Fae.

I was inspired in part by Anjou Kiernan’s beautiful book, The Ultimate Guide to the Witch’s Wheel of the Year

Burn your Beltane fires high! Even if it's a candle, like for me it will be this year.

Throughout European mythology we see a repeated motif of a Wild Hunt. Who leads the Hunt series from country to country, but we see a running theme with them all. Death, the ruler of the Underworld or Otherworld. This being is associated with rounding up and punishing souls who have tried to avoid death. The procession of the Hunt is usually made of the dead as well, along with Elves or Fae. The Lord of Death thunders across land and sky with his rade of Fae and fiend alike as they round up foolish and wayward souls out in the dark of Winter, taking them back to his subterranean home. Now you may be asking,

‘Fern, where does the Harlequin play into this?’

The Harlequin or Hellaquin *is* the king of Fae. It is thought that the name Harlequin/Hellaquin comes from “Hell Kin” a name for the king of fae after they were turned from land spirits into demons and imps out to harm humans. Many scholars even go so far as to say this was a way to demonize gods like Cernunnos and Odin who traditionally led the Hunt at the beginning of Winter. Both of these gods are associated with the Otherworld and death itself too. Adding all this together we get an attempt to protect old folklore by wrapping it in a less threatening guise. No more is the Lord of Death guiding and hunting lost souls, but the Harlequin is leading a troop of Elves on a merry night of mischief. A far cry from his original divine grandeur.

Harlequin

Hellaquin

Odin

Cernunnos

Der Erlkönig

King Herla

Bonus points if your blog has anything to do with the following topics: the Fae folk, Celtic/Welsh/Scottish witchcraft and/or mythology and history, deity and spirit work, all forms of divination. Oh and dreamwork also. Oh and Appalachian folk magic and history/lore but that's a reach maybe idk how popular that would be here nowadays