Tuesday 4 August 2009
Culhwch and Olwen & welsh mythology
such as the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen...
Culhwch and Olwen
is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors that survives in only two manuscripts:
a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, ca. 1400,
and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, ca. 1325.
It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose tales.
Lady Charlotte Guest included this tale among those she collected under the title
The Mabinogion.
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The Red Book of Hergest (Welsh: Llyfr Coch Hergest)
is one of the most important medieval Welsh language manuscripts.
The manuscript includes both prose and poetry and was written between about 1382 and 1410.
The first part of the manuscript contains prose, including the Mabinogion, for which this is one of the manuscript sources (the other principal source being the White book of Rhydderch),
other tales, historical texts (including a Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae), and various other texts including a series of Triads. The rest of the manuscript contains poetry, especially from the period of court poetry known as Poetry of the Princes (Welsh:Gogynfeirdd or Beirdd y Tywysogion).
The manuscript also contains a collection of herbal remedies associated with Rhiwallon Feddyg, founder of a medical dynasty that lasted over 500 years - 'The Physicians of Myddfai' from the village of Myddfai just outside Llandovery.
J. R. R. Tolkien borrowed the title for the Red Book of Westmarch, the imagined legendary source of Tolkien’s tales.------------
The White Book of Rhydderch (Welsh: Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) is one of the most notable and celebrated manuscripts in Welsh.
Written in the middle of the fourteenth century (ca. 1350) it is the earliest collection of Welsh prose texts, though it also contains some examples of early Welsh poetry.
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he Mabinogion (pronounced /mabɪ'nɔɡjɔn/) is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts.
The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions.
While some details may hark back to older Iron Age traditions, each of these tales is the product of a highly developed Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and written.
Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid 19th century was the first to publish English translations of the collection, popularising the name "Mabinogion" at the same time.
The stories of the Mabinogion appear in either or both of two Medieval Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) written ca. 1350,
and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest) written about 1382–1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts. Scholars agree that the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but disagree over just how much older.
It is clear that the different texts included in the Mabinogion originated at different times.
Song of Beren and Luthien
It takes place during the First Age of Middle-earth, about 6500 years before the events of his most famous book, The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien wrote several versions of their story, the latest written in The Silmarillion.
Beren and Lúthien are also mentioned in The Lord of the Rings.
The first version of the story is the Tale of Tinúviel, which was written in 1917 as a part of The Book of Lost Tales.
During the 1920s Tolkien started to reshape the tale and to transform it into an epic poem which he called The Lay of Leithian.
He never finished it.
The story and the characters reflect the love of Tolkien and his wife Edith.
Particularly, the event when Edith danced for him in a glade with flowering hemlocks seems to have inspired his vision of the meeting of Beren and Lúthien.
On Tolkien's grave, J. R. R. Tolkien is referred to as Beren and Edith is referred to as Lúthien...
Song of Beren and Lúthien
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinúviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.
There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.
Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beachen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.
He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.
When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinúviel! Tinúviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinúviel
That in his arms lay glistening.
As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinúviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.
Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of ireon and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
The Tale of Beren and Lúthien
After the ruin of his land in the Battle of Sudden Flame the Man Beren fled into the elvish realm Doriath. There he met the Elf-maiden Lúthien and they fell in love with each other.
Thingol, the father of Lúthien, did not want his daughter to marry a mortal man.
Therefore he asked Beren for a Silmaril, one of the hallowed jewels which the Dark Lord Morgoth had stolen from the Elves, as the bride price.
With the help of Huan and Finrod Felagund, Beren and Lúthien defeated Sauron and came to Angband, where they stole a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown.
The unfinished poem ends when they encounter the wolf Carcharoth at the gate of Angband.
Gypsy Moon clothing....
Urban Faery clothes are darker and made of rayon jersey and heavier woven silk while the Woodland Faery clothes are silk chiffon: light, floaty and fairly sheer
About:
Gypsy Moon was founded in 1991 in Cambridge, MA and has been on the web since 1995.
Every piece in our line, has been tried and tested by Gypsy Moon staff and customers to fit and flatter the bodies of real women.
Their goal is to make clothing that is feminine, romantic and timeless...clothing that will be in style as long as women are.
Speaking of things that are real, most of theirsilks and velvets are easy care, washed and washed again for the softness and drape that otherwise can only be found in vintage garments.
Gypsy Moon
Interview with Gypsy Moon:
Candace has been sewing clothing for over 15 years. She creates lovely wearable art from her studio in Lexington, Massachusetts. She runs an extraordinary clothing business, without a lot of marketing, and is truly an inspirational designer.
What got you started sewing your own line of clothing?
What are the inspirations for the lines you sell? Does the season matter?
Do you draft your own patterns?
What couture techniques do you apply?
How did you first market your business? I read that people saw what you were wearing and wanted to know where to buy the clothes you had.
Where is the clothing line manufactured?
What is your personal time investment? It would seem that you sew and design a great deal.
What sorts of materials go into your clothing line? I see a lot of silks and velvets; very luxurious!
Was it a huge step opening up your store?
Do you have help or support from family members or friends?
Do you have any words of wisdom for other people who find you an inspiration?
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAERY AND ELEMENTALS AND NATURE SPIRITS AND THE SIDHE?
http://www.faeryfaith.org/faerietruth.html
Faery -- derived from the people called The Tuatha De Danann. Were they human? Were they gods? What were they? We can only guess, however, there position in ancient Ireland was so magnificient that, even if they were humans, they became divine and thus were looked upon as gods. There is no proof of their existence as a people, which leads this author to believe that they were, indeed, gods. After their disappearance from Ireland, they became known as the Faery. As we now know, there is quite a lineage attached to this one word, which is quite a loaded word today and has come to mean about twenty different classes of beings.
Elementals -- energies aligned to the four raw elements. These energies have been cartoonized into four creatures: earth -- gnomes; air -- slyphs; fire -- salamanders; water -- undines. The elemental creatures were developed as a way to explain the nature of the element and how the shape one could use to visualize when conjuring the elements for manipulative purposes. Are these four classes of creatures now known as the elementals real? You betcha. After several hundreds of years worth of human investment and development... their real. We might say that, in truth, elementals are man-made. In truth, an elemental is the life-force of an element and not a cute little image, as those borrowed from the kingdom of the nature spirits.
Nature Spirits -- the beings of the otherworld that existent within a realm that we now call "betwixt and between." Deva's and the creatures most commonly mistaken as or labeled as "fairies, faeries, feys, fays" are the helpers and keepers of nature. This author also places totem animals into this realm, as totem animals are nature spirits, too. Most of the "fairies" described in the writings published by the Theosopical Society are nature spirits, i.e. garden fairies, water babies, storm dragons, etc.. The shapes of the creatures called elementals were borrowed from nature spirits. This is why there is a great confusion when it comes to elementals and nature spirits. It is quite possible, that angels and demons could be placed under this category, but on that one, as of yet, I'm not quite sure or convinced this would be correct. As for ghosts, definitely not nature spirits, but their own class.
Sidhe -- ah, now we come to a name that confuses even some who follow the Faery-Faith Traditions. What is the difference between the Faery (TDD) and the Sidhe? The Sidhe, the Shining Ones, who came from the stars. Well, mention of them is older than the TDD and yet mingled with the TDD, thus, the Sidhe is the one word we can use to encompass the entire Irish pantehon of Gods and Goddesses. The Sidhe are divine, godhead, divinity that rolls off the tip of the tongue, conjurs the most brilliant of light and far exceeds human understanding. The Sidhe are of the stars and are limitless and much larger in meaning then is possible to convey through description.
A revolution within my own heart and mind is the redistribution of the term Faery. Rather than discontinuing the use of Faery, a word that is more than a mere word, a word that at one time was a huge as "Sidhe," I've now relegated the word "Faery" as a term used to describe a space in being, a realm, the otherworld. Thus, "in Faery" or "away to Faery" or "it's Faery" now represents the realm in which the Sidhe dwell. Now, I perfer to use the term "Sidhe" when refering to the Divine Gods & Goddesses of the Irish Faery-Faith Tradition.Medieval romances become scattered with references to different types of fairy, and thus, the literary world of fairies are born.
In the Literary Faery classification we find several types, diminutive, Elizabethan, and Jacobean.
Green Magic
Green Magic:
The Sacred Connection to Nature
By Ann Moura
Product Description
Practice a Magic Sacred and Untamed
Practice a craft grounded in the powers of Nature, the wildwood magic of the Elementals, of Mother Earth and the Horned God. Kin to star and stone, water and wind, the practitioner of green magic respects the powers and spirits of Nature, and knows how to work with their energies to accomplish magical goals.
This comprehensive guide to the Green Craft focuses specifically on the magical practices covered in the three volumes of Green Witchcraft—and goes even further, presenting information not found in any other book. Become attuned to Nature and to your own magical power with instructions on:
·How to create and cast spells
·The difference between a spell's purpose and its goal
·How to move energy with gestures
·Stages of energy flow
·Types of spells within the Green tradition
·Psychology of Green magic
·How to access the energies within natural objects
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #265995 in Books
- Published on: 2002-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Green Witchcraft III: The Manual
Green Witchcraft III: The Manual
(Green Witchcraft)
(Vol 3)
By Ann Moura
Product Description
Are You A Natural Witch?
Green Witchcraft is at the core of earth magic, the Witchcraft of the Natural Witch, the Kitchen Witch, and the Cottage Witch. It is herbal, attuned to nature, and the foundation upon which any Craft tradition may be built.
In this manual, Hereditary Witch Ann Moura presents the Craft as a course of instruction, with eight magical classes that correspond to the eight Sabbats. This companion handbook to Green Witchcraft and Green Witchcraft II can also be used alone as an exploration of the Green path. Cultivate your knowledge of earth magic with the following lessons:
·Introduction to the Craft, Basic Equipment, Altars
·Casting a Learning Circle, Meditation, and Technique
·Divination with the Celtic Ogham
·Consecration of a Statue, Divine Couples, Holy Days
·Divinations: Crystal Ball Scrying, Black Mirror Gazing
·Casting and Creating Spells, Herb Craft, Candle Magic
·Green Rules of Conduct, Circle Casting
·Stones and Crystals, Elixir Preparations
Return to your roots and grow wise the ways of Green magic with Green Witchcraft III, The Manual.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #164164 in Books
- Published on: 2000-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 264 pages
A Witch's Guide to Faery Folk
A Witch's Guide to Faery Folk:
Reclaiming Our Working Relationship with Invisible Helpers (Llewellyn's New Age Series)
By Edain McCoy
Product Description
Work magick with help from the little people
All over the world, people have reported encounters with a race of tiny people who are neither human nor deity. This book reclaims that lost, rich heritage of working with faery folk that our Pagan ancestors took for granted.
Edain McCoy teaches how to work with faeries in a mutually beneficial way. Practice rituals and spells in which faeries can participate, and discover tips to help facilitate faery contact. These capricious creatures can help with divination, past life recall, scrying, and spiritual quests. Also included is a dictionary of more than 230 faeries that include goblins, gnomes, elementals, seasonal faeries, and angels.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #320878 in Books
- Published on: 2002-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Faery Wicca
Faery Wicca, Book 1: Theory and Magick, a Book of Shadows and Lights
(The Ancient Oral Faery Tradition of Ireland)
(Bk.1)
By Kisma K. Stepanich
Product Description
This guide offers the reader a comprehensive understanding of the beliefs, history and practice of Irish Faery Wicca. The first part explores the Celtic pantheon. The second describes in detail Faery Wicca ceremonies, magical Faery tools, symbols and creating a sacred space.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #366764 in Books
- Published on: 1998-08-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
try Exans-wentz, Caitlin Matthews or RJ Stewart
(The Ancient Oral Faery Tradition of Ireland)
By Kisma K. Stepanich
Product Description
This work continues the studies of the ancient oral faery tradition of Ireland undertaken in "Faery Wicca, Book One". It focuses on the tradition's shamanic practices, including meditation, healing, herbcraft and spellcasting, and the different forms of faery divination.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #875281 in Books
- Published on: 1998-04-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 324 pages
Faery-Faith Traditional Wisdom: Codex 1 Irish Cosmology & Faery Glamoury By Kisma Reidling
Product Description
For those new to the ways of the Bhairdic & Druidic Irish Faery-Faith, Faery-Faith Traditional Wisdom, Codex 1, will be both an educational workbook and a magical tome. Replete with spiritual instruction and exercises, historical documentation, poetry, pathworkings, and invaluable references, Faery-Faith Traditional Wisdom, Codex 1 imparts timeless wisdom along with the guidance necessary for practical application in the 21st century. Faery-Faith Traditional Wisdom, Codex 1 endeavors to explain, explore, and provide experience into Irish Cosmology through the reconstruction of a valid Creation Myth, and goes on to explain how this applies to Faery Glamoury. No different then its past, the modern art of Faery Glamoury is centered around co-habitation with the natural world, connecting with the dormant powers of the Otherworld, reactivating doorways into Faery realms, awakening Faery Sleepers, and developing a more aligned communication with the Divine to assist us in connecting with our own Authentic Self. The contents found in this volume is the "soul-stuff" that Grove vows are sworn on. This is the knowledge of the adept, as we all very well know: information is power. The time for sharing of power is at hand. The Great Mystery will fulfill those who seek it.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1757348 in Books
- Published on: 2004-11-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 260 pages
The Sidhe: Wisdom from the Celtic Otherworld By John Matthews
Product Description
This newest book by John traces his connection with a “Faery” or Sidhe being. It is full of wisdom and interesting detail about this “cousin” race to humanity. It includes six exercises and an illustration of a “Great Glyph” which acts as a tool of attunement with these graceful beings.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #130773 in Books
- Published on: 2004-05-01
- Released on: 2004-05-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 115 pages
Faeries of the Celtic Lands (Facts Figures & Fun) Faeries of the Celtic Lands (Facts Figures & Fun) By Nigel Suckling
Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1217214 in Books
- Published on: 2007-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
The Faery Gates of Avalon By Gareth Knight
Product Description
The knights of King Arthur’s Round Table - Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval and Gawain - first appeared in the works of Chrétien de Troyes, who cast into Old French stories told by Welsh and Breton story tellers which had their origin in Celtic myth and legend. Chrétien wrote at a time when faery lore was still taken seriously – some leading families even claimed descent from faery ancestors! So we do well to look again at these early stories, for they were written not so much in terms of mystical quests or examples of military chivalry but records of initiation into Otherworld dynamics. Gareth Knight, an acknowledged expert on spiritual and magical traditions and a student of medieval French, goes to the well spring of Arthurian tradition to unveil these original principles. What is more, he shows how they can be regenerated today. “Opening the faery gates” can have its reward not only in terms of personal satisfaction and spiritual growth but as part of a much needed realignment of our spiritual responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #395594 in Books
- Published on: 2008-12-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 220 pages
Tree of Enchantment: Ancient Wisdom and Magic Practices of the Faery Tradition
Tree of Enchantment:
Ancient Wisdom and Magic Practices of the Faery Tradition
By Orion Foxwood
Product Description
In Faery Seership the truths we seek can only be found within ourselves, within nature, and within our relationships to nature. At the center of the Faery Tradition lies the Tree of Enchantment: the symbol for these relationships and for the threefold life of humanity. At each level of the tree, there are attending spirit forces that vary from beings of light to beings of shadow, from the ancestors of humanity to the architects of form and nature, from the destiny of our planet to the creation forces of the universe. The tree's roots grow through the lower world, where all life originates and the dead travel, its trunk and lower branches reach out across the middle world, where elemental forces and the four directions guide us, and its highest branches reach the into the upper world and the Star realm.Weaving together folk tradition and extensive academic research, Orion Foxwood has created and accessible, beautifully written pathway into the Old Religion of Faery Seership. Based on Appalachian traditions, Wiccan studies, Celtic oral traditions, and the Craft from Western and Northern Europe,
The Tree of Enchantment
offers the student of Faery Tradition both introductory and advanced visionary practices and authentic tools to learn to navigate the three realms of humanity. With diligence and an open heart, the reader will learn to cross The River of Blood, pass through The Gate of Awakening, and over The River of Stars.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #141624 in Books
- Published on: 2008-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
The Faery Teachings By Orion Foxwood...book
The Faery Teachings
By Orion Foxwood
Product Description
The "Faery Teachings" re-attune us to the spirits of the land, sea, wind, flame, human ancestry and the Elder race, which we know as the Faery.
This attunement occurs through the application of age-old lore, techniques, folk practices, inner contacts and wisdom of Faery Seership. The stream of mystical teachings contained herein arises from the underworld of creation and babbles through the dark forests of the spirit-world bringing fresh inspiration and deep meaning to the seeker.
The source of this stream lies in the stars and deep within the planet nourishing each living thing. It is available to quench the spiritual thirst of the committed seeker of truth.
Orion Foxwood is an Elder in Celtic and Romano-Celtic Traditional Craft, a High Priest in Alexandrian tradition and is the Founding Elder of Foxwood Temple of the Old Religion. He is co-director of the Moonridge Center, a land-based nature sanctuary and mystical educational center located in Maryland.
He holds a Master of Human Services degree and is a Licensed Professional Counselor. He is a traditional Faery Seer and has taught these practices as well as psychic development, American Southern folk magic and traditional Craft for nearly 20 years.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #112694 in Books
- Published on: 2007-02-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
2. The Faery Seership Tradtion
3. The Core Teachings
4. The Worlds and Powers of Faery
5. Faery Gateways and the Realms of Enchantment
6. The Tribes of the Faery Races
7. The Ancestor Spirits and the Riveer of Blood
8. The Sacred Land and the Power of Place
9. Of Sleepers and Seekers
10. Beyond the Hedge: Living in Two Worlds
11. Spirit Communication and the Second Sight
12. Faery Magic
13. Groves and Shrines
14. The Faery Gifts and the Faery Lover
15. The Nine Faery Vision Keys
Days in the life of Traceyanne & family x
WOW......My beautiful friend Debbie (Starburst) & her two boys came to visit us in London from Modbury Village in Devon.......
Pics of us at local park, the Rookery at Streatham Common & Harringtons Pie & mash shop ( Traditional Londoners grub, I actually dont like lol) in Tooting......wonderful stuff lol
Tracey xxx