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Please enjoy some magical music, chosen for Muddypond's books, while you browse
This is John Mills "To the Hallowed Moon". Lots more on "The Music Page."
Muddypond Green is a very English kind of a magic.
Yes, that's right - 'A' magic.
A rather scruffy and unqualified Stella-Fae.
A fairy you ask? Well yes, of sorts.
The owner and inventor of "Eco-enchantments",
a hedgerow business for charms, spells, herbal remedies and anything else that catches her fancy.
She is also, of course,
the Wood Warden.
Muddpond works with the magic of the Ogham Trees.
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'The Rowan Charm' original illustration © milena synek 2010 See how to make one here |
She's learning to be a 21st century eco warrior
- if a magic can be one of those.
She does her best!
Here she shares things that are important to her and to the ever declining
population of magics.
She composes the diaryblog on her Dragon Portable Drax Machine which once belonged to her best friend Storm,
the great Lithuanian Silver Storm-Dragon. But that is quite a story!
An Important Note about 21st Century Fairies
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Modern day fairies, and by that I mean the fairies of the 21st century, have quite a hard time of it. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly they are very, very few and far between.
Secondly, they cannot just raise a wand and “do some magic” as is widely supposed.
Their place is in the natural world, where they are healers and menders. They take care of things.
Their “magic” comes from the correct use of herbs, runes, earth stones and the judicious use of a little fairy-dust from their wings. The “spells” they use with these are really not much more than spoken rhymes, prayers and blessings.
When they are at the height of their powers, having passed all their examinations (and please remember that they can live a long, long time) and if aroused to make some really serious magic, they can emit a trail of tiny, tiny silver or golden stars from their bodies.
These trails look a bit like the cascade of sparks from a bonfire-night sparkler, but even brighter and more delicate.
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I love this little fellow - by Mabel Lucie Atwell
of course - and from 'A Little Bird told Me Another Story' pub Dean & Son |
If any should fall on a spell or healing mixture that is being prepared, then the project will be doubly blessed by fairy magic.
Fairies who can raise these tiny stars are known as the Stella -Fae.
On very rare occasions a star or two can harden into a minute jewel which seems to be a cross between an ice-crystal, a diamond and a piece of amber resin They are quite priceless if they are found.
It is these Stella Stars* that are the main reason why our Victorian ancestors hunted woodland fairies almost to extinction. They tried to take them first with large bell-jars full of formaldehyde and later with the big black box cameras of the age. But, of course their kind cannot be captured because at the first click of a shutter or snap of a lid a fairy fades gradually to invisibility, and then dies.
Now they have other hazards to contend with, hazards that few have survived – loss of secluded woodland habitat and the use of pesticides.
And (as they are only just beginning to discover), emanations from the waste from Nuclear Power stations.
* Before its sad closure, one such Stella Star could be seen until quite recently, captured on a glass microscope slide, but wrongly labelled, in the Micrarium Museum at Buxton.
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Muddypond's
clearing in the woods, |
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