People often ask, "But how do you see faeries?"

I always feel a little helpless when people ask that question, because the answer is different for everyone — and mostly, we have to discover it for ourselves. In my experience people can see them anywhere and in any way — with clairvoyant sight, in dreams, in daydreams and visions, out of the corner of your eye, in your mind's and/or heart's eye, in shadows, in lights, in the patterns of tree bark or shower walls or carpet weave or lichen on stone... They turn up at home (even in the bath), in the garden, in the woods, on the sea shore, in the center of town... You probably get the idea: they are ubiquitous.

"Well," I can almost hear you ask, "then, how do I know they are the fae folk and not just my imagination?"

That's easy — with experience. You know how, when you look at a patterned surface (especially one with a "random" pattern), you sometimes see faces and creatures? Like seeing things when you look at clouds. If these faces just "jump out at you" without you searching for them, they are very probably faery faces and forms — gnomes, elves, whoever, just saying, "Heya!"

But, if you have to look for them, searching and stretching your imagination, they may well be your imagination.

When you see a faery making a face at you, make a face back at it — they love it!

The thing is, you have to be open to them and let them be themselves rather than trying to fit them into a predetermined mold of your own devising. Some of the faces are human — or humanoid — but many are not. They may be almost animal faces. Or they may be quite grotesque or very unusual. It's kind of like my son's dog, Kato — he tries to smile. He makes the most hideously ugly faces. You'd think he was vicious or in terrible pain — unless you look at the tail wagging so hard the whole back end wiggles, or just feel the energy of his joy. Some people are frightened by Kato's horrific faces, but they are just him telling you he thinks you are wonderful. Watch out, though! He'll give you a big, juicy slurp if he gets a chance. The faery folk make faces at us too — in fact, since they are often shapechangers, they can show us almost any face at all.

This is important: Some people fear anything unfamiliar and are frightened by these unusual faery faces, so they don't even look long enough to see the friendliness or the wild joy in the faery faces before they deny them. If you know someone like that, you won't do them any favors by insisting that they try to connect with Faery — they will only see their own fears and not the joys of the Otherworld. Until they are healed enough to be less fearful and more adventurous in their own everyday lives, they are not ready to meet Faery.

Faery is not all sweetness and frivolity. Sometimes the people of Faery ask us to face difficult truths about ourselves. They ask this just by being themselves, being Real — and wanting us to enjoy being Real too. If we cannot accept them as they are without insisting that they fit some pink and fluffy cute image we have created, this is our problem, not theirs. We are the ones who lose by failing to make the connections they offer us.

You may also perceive them by touch, by hearing, by emotions, by just knowing they are there. Different people connect with them differently and all these ways are right and none of them wrong.

The only way that is wrong is to say, "Oh, of course, they are not real!" when you know perfectly well what you heard/felt/saw but you're in denial.

For myself, I hear them with my ears/mind, and "see" them with my heart. I also see them with my eyes as light and they "jump out" at me from the random patterns of leaves, carpets, stains — many places — when I'm not looking for them. They don't have physical bodies, so I don't tend to look for physical bodies, although people (with better psychic vision than I) see their projections of physical images. I look for energy patterns and for the chaotic moment beween tension and relaxation when my eyes are relaxed enough to see that they are being shown to me through something in the material world.

As I write this, I often rest my eyes while I think by looking out of my window into the forest. Sometimes, when I rest my eyes there, a faery or two "jumps out" at me. I'm not looking for them. Sometimes they are simply light where light wouldn't naturally be; sometimes they are mist shapes; very rarely they are actual faery forms. It's rare, because I'm better at feeling and hearing than at seeing subtle energies.

 But if you'll just let your eyes wander around the world from time to time, relaxed but attentive, they may "jump out" at you, too. If you try to look at them too closely, the vision may just dissolve into the background, but if you let your eyes just scan in a relaxed way, you'll get glimpses of them. And the better you get at this relaxed not-looking, the more of them you'll see.

Copyright ©2001 and ©2019 by Jessica Macbeth. All rights reserved.

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Jessica Macbeth