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A Faerie Vision Quest

© Virginia Marin

In the movie, "The River Wild" starring Meryl Streep, Meryl is Gail, a wife on the edge of divorce, who takes her young son, along with a husband who has "lost himself", into a canyon for a white water rafting trip. During the course of a calmer ride down the river, she explains to those in the raft the meaning of a Vision Quest as related to Native American signs painted on the towering rocks above them. The remainder of the story depicts how her husband came to "finding himself" through the experience of his own Vision Quest. A Vision Quest is a journey into another world which leads to finding one's self. Loosly defined, it is a form of meditation, contemplation, and prayer for it contains acts of petition, orders of practice, and degrees of searching. A vision quest is a method of bridging the divide between what is known and the unknown. A faerie vision quest is the method by which the culture of faerie bridges the gap between the real world and their Otherworld.

A Faerie Vision Quest

In the past, I often wondered why some people proclaimed to have seen the Faerie Folk, while others were unable to see them. Since those days of wondering, I have come to believe that those who hold belief in the Faerie Faith RELIGION are the only ones who can see them. For in order to see the Fairies, one must go on a Fairie Vision Quest - a shamanic journey into the Fairie Realm. Therefore, those who do not subscribe to the Faerie Faith will never see the Fae! Having said that, I hasten to add that even though I do not believe in Fairie as a religion, I do enjoy reading about them in folklore and other literature. I also relish their implied beauty, and respect for nature.

In an earlier article I cited the terms nexus and plexus. In Fairie, and a few other religions, a Plexus is that point where any two worlds meet. In the Faerie Faith the World Tree is only one of many examples of a plexus. It is the Tree Bridge between two Realms. The trunk of the tree stands visible in this world, while its roots extend into the Under World, and its branches reach into the Upper World. Anyone who sees the tree in the waning hours of a lowering sun also sees the tree's shadow. The tree's shaddow is a reminder of the Shadow Shelf which resides in the Other World. According to the Faerie Shaman, the Shadow Self can be changed -hence an impetus for a Faerie Vision Quest--a journey into unorthodox meditation, contemplation, and prayer.

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