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''Thousands of years ago, the ancient peoples used to fertilize their crops literally by calling down heavenly grace, by use of angelic power. Some try to do much the same today, intermittently, as during the traditional rogation service in the fields, when the pastor asks for a blessing on the future crops; or even when someone with 'green fingers' quietly works in a garden he or she loves. The difference is that the ancients proved constant and devoted in their co-operation with the angelic powers and the 'little people' of the nature kingdom, and in calling down the Light to bless their lands; with the result, so we are told, that crops were rich in flavour and nutritive power. Today we try to grow our crops almost in defiance of nature, by means of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and other artificial means designed to cheat nature; and in doing so we banish the fairies from our gardens ans fields.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in 'Ether and Space', suggests to us that everything, every body, every world is composed of the ether of space; and that all creatures being of one substance, are therefore linked. Not only our physical selves, but our inner selves, our thinking-feeling selves, are something purely etheric. Our bodily; mortal selves are a modification of the ether, a slowing-down of vibration perhaps, as is all the physical world. Our bodies therefore are like overcoats which we wear for a stated period. Unlike overcoats, they burden us with demands for continuing sustenance and transport, for feeding and periods of rest, since they tire easily. When our span of years terminates, we shed them, and proceed to live on in another world, not wholly strange because we visit it on many occasions during sleep. We sojourn for a period in that new world, which has also been created out of ether and seems as real and solid as this, but less drab, less wearing, less charged with trouble.
Fairies too are etheric creatures, part of an etheric world, as we are; were we not burdened and blinded by our physical self, we should see them, hear them, and believe in them. How then shall we begin to see fairies? Can anyone tell us? Yes, but just telling does not always ensure you will see them. Meanwhile, here is a hint!
Let is suppose we are walking through some woodland glade ona bright sunny day, not closely watching the bushes and bracken on either side. From this hiding-place a host of unseen small animals - all shy, mostly fearful (and with good cause, because their companions have been decimated by humans). Were we to scrutinize those bushes more closely, looking directly at the hiding creatures, they would dispense quickly. While we do not look too closely, they take their chance! So it is with fairies. Look directly at them and they will vanish. Behold them with clairvoyant 'side-vision- and they may stay.
Unfortunately fairies have retreated ever further from human vision. They do not like crops grown with chemicals and sprayed with poisons spelling death to insects and birds alike. They are hurt by the ravishing of animals by factory farming. They feel of these things. By adopting such practices modern men and women declare themselves alien to nature, and falsify their own nature; while nature replies to their callousness with a series of diseases, animal and human, which cripple, destroy or debilitate.
Time was - ten thousand or more years ago - when people so loved nature that they accepted and revered her as their Great Mother, and served Her with devotion. Then it was that nature spirits worked together with men and women as a matter of course in the sowing, tending and reaping of crops. All was natural then, when fairies and angels were a part of daily life. No slaying of living creatures took place. Life in every form was revered, and so nutritious, so delicious was food grown in co-operation with fairies and angels that perfect health became the human heritage , and death, when it came, seemed trivial, a stepping onward to an even brighter, kinder existence.
This is how men and women lived in the long ago; and how they will live again when their lives and thoughts become whole. It is the ravishing intellect of men and women today which would destroy us. That intellect, or lower mind, called 'the slayer of the real', demands that we believe that all our world is suffused by death. So says that human intellect, although those who can touch what is real know that it is not so. Rather it is life emergent, life triumphant which rides the skies. The resurrection of Jesus from death is an assertion, a demonstration of this. Life fills all space, and by its very nature arises out of death continually.
We human creatures should seek to understand, to revere, to Love all Creation. With these thoughts we come at last close to the gate which barred us from fairyland, and rest upon and gaze over that gate. Gaze over, no more. Presently the gateway may be flung wide open in welcome. They do not nowadays trust humans, these little people.
How, for instance, can these earth fairies, whose very nature it is to stimulate, to ensure healthy growth, tend crops dosed with artificial fertilizers and sprayed with insecticides, which decimate surrounding insect life and kill many birds?
How can water fairies go about their task when poisons drain away off the lands into streams and rivers, from which they find outlet into the sea?
For in the Antarctic the ocean fish and the fish-eating birds show trace-elements of insecticides washed of from faraway lands - perhaps drained down from British fields and meadows.
The fairy folk of the air must perforce move high amid the cloudlands, away from the air of towns and busy roadways, polluted as the air is by oil fumes and industrial waste.
So you see why our gateway into fairyland creaks in its hinges, and why fairies seem hesitant and sparse to find. Yet still they abound, can still be recognized, welcomed and won over. On lonely commons, for instance, hiding in woodlands still unsullied, or on high places; on English downlands, on mountain heights where bushes, grass and plant and tree remain unspoilt, where all things are pure if not wholly pure; here the fairies are still plentiful. Nor will they isolate themselves from anyone who loves them. They will draw close to those who love them. They will draw close to those who love growing things, to green-fingered folk who tend flowers and plants. Perhaps they already watch and wait beside such people, mostly unrecognized, unseen. So recognize them, admit them to awareness. Then they rejoice. Continue to ignore them, and they may withdraw. The gateway will open to admit those worthy of admittance - those only - because the fairy people in their own way seem a little proud and particular.''
1969
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