Angels-FAIRIES

Fairies are a kind of nature spirit that, under different names and guises,
are found in every part of the world. Often pictured as small
humanoid beings with wings, they look like mini angels. Unlike
angels, however, fairies have always had an ambivalent relationship
with humanity. As nature spirits concerned with natural processes,
they do not normally seek out human contact, but, when they take a
liking to someone, they will help that person in various ways. Sometimes,
however, they are pictured as mischievous beings who enjoy
playing pranks.
Because the church did not have room in its worldview for morally
neutral spiritual beings who were neither good nor evil, fairies were
rejected as agents of Satan. Traditional religious authorities were thus
responsible for driving a wedge between fairies and angels, and the
rather obvious family resemblance between them has been obscured
ever since.
We can acquire a fresh perspective on the fairy-angel connection by
shifting our attention away from church lore and examining these spiritual
beings through the lens of Theosophy. Theosophy refers to the particular
synthesis of ideas from the philosophical systems of China and
India, and the works of the Gnostics, the Neoplatonists and the Cabalists,
manifested in the Theosophical Society, which was founded in
New York in 1875 by Madame Helena Blavatsky. At the core of Theosophy
is a teaching of “spiritual evolution,” which portrays human souls as developing their inner potentials, freeing themselves from matter and
returning to the Source of All, with increased consciousness.
According to Theosophists the cosmos is populated with innumerable
spiritual entities. A significant class of these entities are what
Theosophists call the devas, which is a Sanskrit term for the demigods
of Hinduism and Buddhism. These devas are the Theosophical
equivalents of angels. In addition to the functions traditionally attributed
to angels (e.g., serving as guardian spirits), devas oversee natural
forces and are responsible for building up forms on inner planes as well
as on the physical plane. Some strands of Theosophy view devas as
human souls who have, through the process of reincarnation, evolved
into higher, spiritual beings. Other strands place the devas on a separate
evolutionary path, viewing devas as the prototypes of angels.
Fairy (faye in Old English) is thought to be derived from Fata, the
name of the Greek goddess of fate. Fay-erie was originally the “erie”
state of enchantment that could be induced by the fays, and only later
became interchangeable with the beings themselves. The fays were originally
but one class of spirit being, and it was perhaps the general associ-ation of “little people” with enchantment that enabled the term fairy to
become the generic term for fays, brownies, elves, pixies, and so forth.
Folklorists have advanced a number of theories to explain the
source of belief in fairies. One plausible notion is that, particularly in
pre-Christian Europe, fairies were originally the spirits of the dead.
After Christianity was embraced, the Christian notion of what happened
to the souls of the dead supplanted earlier beliefs. Rather than
disappearing, however, the older folklore persisted, with the modification
that the fairy spirits became entities independent of humanity,
rather than spirits of the dead.
Another theory is that fairy lore represents a distant memory of an
earlier and more primitive race (e.g., the aboriginal Picts of the British
Isles) who continued to interact with the dominant invaders (e.g., the
Celts) for many centuries before disappearing altogether. Yet another
idea put forward is that the fairies are the gods of pre-Christian
Europe, who were reduced to the diminished status of nature spirits
after being supplanted by Christianity.
These theories fail to consider that roughly similar ideas of nature
spirits can be found in traditional tribal societies all over the world
where none of the foregoing conditions exist. However, in non-European
traditional societies nature spirits do not interact as intensively
with humanity as they do in European folklore, which indicates that
one or more of these theories may at least partially explain some
aspects of fairy belief.
A look at some of the themes explored in Katharine Briggs’s comprehensive
Encyclopedia of Fairies (1976) demonstrates the intensive
interaction ascribed to humans and fairies through the ages: fairy borrowing,
fairy thefts, dependence of fairies upon mortals, fairy brides,
fairy loans. . . . A close examination of this folklore makes some of the
proposed theories, such as the notion that fairy lore is a residual memory
of interactions with a more primitive race, seem plausible.