The Need for a Re-Enchanted/ Restored Pleiades Away from Starseed Cults
Cultural Commentary on Re-Enchantment & Pleiades Reverence in New Age Spirituality
Much like the Reclaiming Neopagan movement that began at the end of the 1970s and Rewilding movement that began in the 1990s, Re-Enchantment continues in our popular discourse, but instead of just a general discourse surrounding popculture witchcraft, we are starting to witness an even more direct Re-enchantment/Restoration movement springing up in various places. I have noticed it most recently in in our current/postCOVID & post/current Black Lives Matter world — due to the same reasons Reclaiming and Rewilding became so popular: the need for a spirituality politic based in activism that restores a balance. An authentic antiracist anticapitalistic “decolonial” form of spirituality, which as I will detail later, is like so many others being coopted by brands attempting to tap even deeper into and profit from our collective cravings for magic in an oppressive world.
This is by no means new. We all know of the cultural and capitalistic impact of Disney that not only made magic a binary in collective consciousness, but also laid the blueprint for brands like Sephora’s 2018 “Starter Witch Kits” filled with an appropriated witchcraft aesthetic, and Goops’ infamous sex magic crystal eggs… and I am hoping we have collectively learned from these controversies… but what I am starting to notice now is a deeper dive into the void. People want more than an aesthetic escape. They want real magic.
People condemned and joked about what Goop and Sephora did, in large part because for many people spirituality is who they are, even if you are an atheist. What people believe and how people practice those beliefs in the world is what constitutes their personae. This is why we religious studies scholars and anthropologists love to study trends, identity, and culture: because contrary to popular belief spirituality is religion, religion is culture, culture is what forms a community/society, and that is what needs to be changed. White supremacist nationalist imperialist capitalist christian cisheteropatriarchy needs to end. The things that create and enforce cultures and communities and societies of violence need to end.
I’ve said this so many times before, but Professor Beverly Daniel Tatum tried to tell us years ago that in order to counteract assimilation into the kyriarchy, the work (ie antiracism) needs to be a process of systemic and interpersonal change. It necesitates the dismantling of a person’s and society’s identity, and (what most activists forget) the creation of new ones.
So why am I saying all of this, and what does this have to do with the Pleiades and Re-Enchantment/Restoration?
I’ve written briefly about this in my Aine post, but there are many people who believe that there is a current Great War of Making vs. Unmaking happening. This war is happening between multiple worlds and factions and cultures, but mostly three worlds in my mind: our usurped human world that once was of the Fair Folk, the Otherworld(s), and the world of what Morgan Daimler calls the basdán: “a non-human force which is the sum total of the beings who were diametrically opposed to the Othercrowd et al and which [seek] only chaos and death. [They] seek to unmake all things, [and]are without fate. Not death because death is part of nature but something deeply against the cycle of life… the unhael that gnaw at the edges of everything”.
This is more than a culture war, this goes beyond contentiously steering public policy; it is a very real physical war evident all around us. The hypermilitarisation & overfunding of police, political coups, the literal daily bombings for power, wealth, and control. The very real apathy of whole nations that not only do nothing for people dying at our borders, seeking refuge from ecological and social disaster; but who actively imprison and kill them rather than helping. It is a continuation of a war that has been a religious crusade for centuries: a war between conservative oppressive Christianity, and the rest of the world. Not to illicit a binary, but for me it is basically a war between punitive-oppression and abolitionist-hope. And as some may know, two of my favourite Tolkien quotes are “where there’s life, there is hope” and “a single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
The basdán, I feel are manipulating and steering the burgeois, landowners, and bigoted working classes towards this annihilation. That is why the conservative christian world is so dangerous, they want armageddon to come, because that means in their self-centered world that the second coming will arrive and humans will finally be able to live in heaven (but only the ones who deserve it — the rest get eternal damnation). In my opinion, this works in the basdán’s favour. It may also work for some of the Good Neighbors as well, because if humans are out of the picture then They can get Their realm back in full… but only if there is a realm left after we are gone. And that is where I have hope. A hope that if more of us can work with the Good Neighbors we can show we are worth saving and living in symbiosis rather than parasitism and predation. It is my hope that more and more people can stop ignoring the Otherworld, and recognise that They are indeed here, and that we will need Them in order to stop this war and create a sustainable peace. Maybe not a utopia, but an imperfect and diverse world where we can live in magic together.
Hope and dreams are the world of magic afterall. That is why conservatives hate all of us who are marginalised because we have imagination. It hasn’t been beaten out of us entirely. That is why they are seeking to control and police every aspect of our lives because envisioning a liberated world is their worst nightmare. They prefer to see The Good Folk as all demons because they seek to control at everyone else’s expense. They’d rather ally themselves with the basdán rather than lose their hold on the human world. Is it no wonder that so many of us are drawn to the craft because we are seeking a balm for our hopelessness, our pain, our oppressions, our powerlessness (read: one of the five faces of oppression)? This is why we ally ourselves with helpful Othercrowd Neighbors for the very real reason that we need help and we need friends. Arising from the need to gain our sovereignty and agency and autonomy in an oppressive authoritarian world and abusive life, we seek the craft and restoring our connections to the worlds and Beings around us. And it is this fact that has been missing from most re-enchantment discourse in predominantly white academia where the focus is on living a (fake) joyfully magical life while still maintaining your reason and rationalism and not giving into “s/vage, uncivilised, unrespectable, childish, superstitious nonsense”. They want magic without actually believing in the world from whence it comes.
Union University English professor Jason Crawford gave a good rundown of re-enchantment discourse in a 2020 article, showing how re-enchantment has been on the minds of so many for so long, but what Crawford doesn’t touch upon too much is the underlying pretentious superiority of the writers and thinkers. There is no lens of injustice (though there is a lens of violence), but rather an underlying current, a pissing contest to be frank, between protestants and catholics since and before the reformation. And that is not so much the conversation I am noticing in New Age and Burning Man spiritual circles… We are… however… seeing it in the Pagan community, and THAT is where and why I feel Reenchantment/Restoration has finally joined the Rewilding and Reclaiming movements. They always say the best things come in threes…
Since the 15th century Christian explorers from England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain built empires in the Americas, India, and the East Indies based upon the Doctrine of Discovery. Since the 18th century Russia, Italy, Germany, the United States, and to a small extent Japan (before being imperialised by the US) joined them to became imperial powers themselves. With them came a cultural imperialism that demanded with violence the assimilation and acceptance of their dominant Christian cultures. American imperialism is now one, if not the most dominant culture globally, due to the expansion of American political economic cultural media and military influence, which has exceeded well beyond our geographic boundaries. Our influence is unmistakeable, and with it comes an oppressive globalised geopolitical regime that is hardly magical.
So again what does this history lesson have to do with my point?
Well, it seems then to me and others that this War of Making vs. Unmaking necessitates a Re-Enchantment/Restoration movement(s). Morgan Daimler has said it best: “The gods are important, but the spirits who are with us every day and whose places we interweave our own lives with seem a lot more immanently important” (Daimler, Living Fairy, p. 27). In the larger scheme of things we will need strong friendships between Themselves just as much as They Themselves will need strong friendships with humans in order to keep the forces of basdán at bay… and have handy human nannies, lovers (not always consensual and also very dangerous) etc.
Nothing is safe and secure 100% and for always, and new contracts shouldn’t be entered into lightly, which require a very deep knowledge of F*iry Law and contracts. This is why knowing a F*iry Doctor, or Bean feasa, or a practitioner of F*iry Witchcraft who is extremely skilled with alot of experience is of absolute importance.
Humans have fucked up royally, and still do. The Good Folk have learned how we humans behave, and it is fair to understand why so many of Themselves would rather eat, kill, or enslave us rather than let us keep going about our business. We have conquered and murdered and woven poison and oppression amongst ourselves (and the Other Crowd), we have caused not only global warming, but global boiling. And I am not saying our imbalance with the Otherworld has caused this directly, but I do think it is just another manifestation of our own white supremacist superiority and speciesism. This very Protestant ethos and culture that permeates so much of modern neoliberalism within the global north has pushed the Good Neighbors out to our own detriment.
This assumption that real belief in Enchantment is still stigmatised and relegated to pathologisation and discrimination. No wonder Re-Enchantment scholars couldnt see the forest for the trees. They wanted and still want enchantment but they fail to realise that to be happy and regain enchantment they must believe in magic for real, and not in a Disney fantasy way. The assumption of human (read: non-Indigenous) superiority leads to the exploitation of plants, animals, and resources traditionally stewarded by Indigenous communities who have been on the front line of the environmental movement since the 15th century, and have known how to interact with the Good Neighbors since forever. Was and is this always peaceful? Hell no! But at least Indigenous communities know what they can call friend and respectfully stay away from.
Protestants crusaded against the Good Neighbors in the past because they thought of them only as demons, and Christians today are still doing the same. Now I am not saying the Good Neighbors don’t require discernment, because many of Them can and will eat us alive if They get the chance. But if we think of Themselves as People, maybe not necessarily humans, but definitely people that are just as complicated and messy as us, we can lift ourselves up and out of our own superiority and begin our part in building right relationship with the beings who are still very much here.
Re-enchantment/Restoration necessitates “a web of symbiotic connections built on interaction and offering” (Daimler, p. 26) . As we know, there isn’t just a complicated history between the Good People and humans, there is also a “complicated history that exists between witches and the Good People” too (Daimler, p. 6). However, I would be remiss if I didnt mention that not everyone has purged their lands of the Other Folk. Not all cultures have infantilised and alienated and seen the twee-ing of the Good Neighbors like in white Western cultures have done as a majourity, but the Christianisation/demonisation is unmistakably seen globally whereever christian missionaries have gone and continue to go.
Christian propaganda as an arm of cultural imperialism has said that priests and nuns and saints have cast the Good People out completely, but we know that this is not true. So many stories exist. There are countless stories from primary sources detailing the very real experiences between humans and the Good Folk. The F*iry Census of 2014–2017 is just one attempt at documenting contemporary accounts, not to mention recent news articles detailing strange drownings (everything Lake Lanier, and Katelyn Restin), thousands of national park disappearances, pukwudgie sightings as recent as April 2023 in Norwell, MA; and the hundreds of other paranormal sightings in 200 of the US’ biggest cities.
Now does this mean that The Good Neigbors are everywhere? No. Just like humans we can’t be found in all places and times. This is why Restoration/Re-Enchantment is so important.
So How The Fuck Do We Restore This Relationship?
Seo Helrune, says it best we have to go beyond Re-Enchantment as a human-only perspective — we have to move past our own ignorance of the enchanted Otherworld. It’s really the first step, then the real work begins towards the process of real Restoration:
“inviting the Other back from the Outer yards, creating sanctuaries for them on our lands, building relationship, and giving them greater footholds among us. It should involve facing up to our collective shit as a culture and making amends for past sins. I’m not going to lie, it’s not always going to work out. Some folks are likely to have shittier experiences than others with this. Some of you will have spirits that have absolutely zero interest in working with you, and will likely want to skullfuck you into next week. Those spirits have always existed, the same can be said about humans.
It’s time to stop freaking out when the Other makes itself more known, and it’s time to stop talking in ominous terms about the ‘Otherworld bleeding through’. Because this is, and always has been the fight in this land — the back and forth of Christians driving out the Other (both Human and non-Human) in order to maintain their damned, blood-soaked covenant. Cotton Mather knew it, as do his modern Dominionist counterparts do. We just need to finally get on board and start fighting our corner.”
Morgan Daimler echoes this is their 2020 book “Living F*iry: F*iry Witchcraft and Star Worship”:
“I think we fight back. I think we fight fire with fire, propaganda with propaganda. We spread our own stories and our own truth and talk about the reality of the spirits that are there in defiance of that dominant narrative. And if they call them demons then let them call them demons. I think we look at the world around us and see it as it is, alive and inspirited, and we learn to be aware if we aren’t already of the Othercrowd when they are around us. But most essentially like repairing a rip in a tapestry I think we must actively work to fix what’s been done over the centuries…we restore the Othercrowd to their place in our world. And yes, they can be and often are dangerous; so are wolves and bears and poisonous snakes, but our world needs those as well. I believe we need to restore the balance that was by returning things to he way they used to be when the world was full of Otherworldly spirits. And I think we can do this. We can call them back. We can reopen the old pathways. We can re-find the old practices and ways. We can re-align ourselves with the Good Neighbors and restore balance by undoing what the Protestant church did when they drove those beings out. It won’t be safe, but it is essential.” (Daimler, p. 5).
Focus on Hope, Joy, Deep Spiritual Cleansing & Stay on Guard
In addition to the above, Morgan Daimler has shared the following: “For my own part my Other have strongly emphasized the power of solar symbols and things like gold, amber, red stones, for protection. They have repeatedly encouraged heavy duty cleansing of a spiritual nature and to stay on guard against unseen spirit dangers. They encourage a disengagement from all things Christian, and a focus on embracing the things I’ve previously written about here [above] — breath and life and joy where it can be found.”
So what are some authentically Irish heavy duty spiritual cleansing techniques? Smoking tobacco pipes, fumigating with yarrow or juniper or mugwort, resonate or sharp draíocht ceoil (Irish folk magic music) with drums, bells or whistles; singing geantraí (music of happiness) with a violin to heal, pilgrimaging to mountains and holy wellsprings, doing the rounds (walking sunwise at least three times around a space), ritually asperging and consuming a broth meal, or ritually anointing oneself with milk or butter like the Fianna did to reenter society after a period of their duties (PSVL 2011, Daimler p. 18).
Beyond gold, amber, and red stones for protection, you can also do a few things that are authentically Irish magic: Walk your boundaries with careful protections like iron, fire and urine; cinders or burnt coals, salt and ashes, horseshoes, bells, gate threshold magic, witch’s bottles, plants like rowan, hazel, red thread, foxglove, yellow flowers, primrose, gorse, yarrow, foxglove, daisies, st johns wort, broom, mugwort; and lastly deep throated guttoral draíocht ceoil with a bodhran (drum) for hexing.
But the largest protection that cannot be underutilised here, and this is one isn’t typically referenced in this way, but it is allying and befriending Otherworldly Beings, especially a F*iry Queen. This does not mean you should enter into a F*iry Contract with a Queen right off the bat without first building a relationship with appeasements and offerings and journeys — always recognising that as a human we are not entitled to shite and we enter these relationships at our own risk.
We ourselves can be good neighbors (see what I did there?) to Themselves and maybe good friends eventually. We do that by respecting Themselves and Their privacy and Their spaces and Their beliefs and Their customs — but we must never forget that They are dued Their necessary ‘tip-top pickle’ of the harvest which They are contractually owed via The Milesians and An Dagda.
And this is where the Pleiades come into play.
Living F*iry By Observing the Procession of the Pleiades
I highly recommend reading Daimler’s book entitled “Living F*iry”. In it they explain their UPG about the connection between the Pleiades and Seven F*iry Queens. Daimler’s UPG and other theoretical evidence aside, I feel we should first focus on what the Pleiades are in Irish tradition. They are called An Streoillín (the Straggling) in Connacht/Mayo, An Dreoilín (The Wren) in Limerick, An Tréidín (The Flock/Herd) in Munster…
There are several theories too that there are Pleiadean archaeo-astronomical alignments, but the one I really click with most is Dowth’s famous seven suns stone, which many believe to represent the Pleiades. I support this theory due to the Place name story of Dowth, which details a story about seven cows and a bull, which is very reminiscent of other cross cultural Pleiadean stories connecting the stars to cattle, which echoes for me the fact that they are called An Tréidín. Daimler also points out the Sliabh na Caillagh cairn T also has “intricate engravings of suns and stars with the chamber” (Daimler, p. 46), which does give proof that early peoples of what we now call Ireland had incredible astronomic engineering skills.
Though we don’t see too much talk in historical glosses or tales in Ireland, we do have one famous Cornish account of the tale of Selena Moor, which describes how the Good Folk are star worshippers (Daimler p. 46, Bottrell 1873). I am hoping that since there was and still is cross cultural contact between the lands we now know as Ireland and Cornwall, that there will be found other Irish tales (translated/untranslated) to corroborate this notion. There also needs to be research done in reading through Irish Otherworld tales that reference the stars being present, and why exactly the Good Folk are also referred to as “The Shinging Ones”. Perhaps these hints could help piece together some larger pictures…
This all to say that we don’t know if the Pleiades are 100% important to the Good Folk, but we have more and more anecdotal evidence, and UPG that is interweaving to create a new understanding.
Especially telling though (in my opinion) is that currently both the sun’s conjunction of the Pleiades and the helical setting of the Pleiades happen during Bealtaine (May), and the culmination of the Pleiades happen during the month of Samhain (November). Due to precession the Pleiades acronychal rising would have been during Samhain instead**, which has been hypothesised by some to draw a connection between the Pleiades and death and mourning — furthering the connection of the Other Crowd with the Dead and Ancestors that is very well documented in Irish folklore. This hints and hits home for me at a deeper rooted connection between these stars and Irish culture and importance.
**The source for this is unverified and it is unclear what latitude and elevation the source was measuring for. So take this with a grain of salt. According to Maunder 1906, the acronychal rising would have been some time around July 14th four-thousand years before the present (BP), and some time around May 14th 6000 BP on the 38 degree N latitude (again not sure which city), but this would be the same latitude as Setubal, Portugal and Jumilla, Spain… BOTH very far from Ireland, and so the dates would not be the same for Ireland during those time periods. The dates I provide are my own calculations since Maunder only gives the conjunction 4000BP on the Spring Equinox, and the helical rising on the Spring Equinox 6000BP. Given the days in-between the processional points today, we can estimate the approximate dates for the others. The general timeline begins with the Helical Setting, then the conjunction, then the Helical Rising, followed by the Acronychal Rising, the Culmination, and lastly with the Cosmic Setting.
The Pleiades Phenomena in New Age Circles & Charismatic Cults
Another aspect of how the Pleiades is popping up in popular culture is exampled by how they are saturating New Age spiritual circles.
Many who know me, know that I love a good deep dive into New Age spirituality history, and tracking down where and when and from whom differing cults originate. So where did this “starseeds/indigo children of the Pleiades” come from?
I posit, that one source prior to Brad Steiger and Billy Meier that follow below, is exemplary is “Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers” published in 1969 by French astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallee who is known widely as the first to reinterpret Scottish Rev. Robert Kirk’s 1690’s manuscript “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies” in the contemporary discourse of UFO experiences and alien abductions. It seems that Vallee was inspired by Carl Jung’s 1958 book “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies”. However, unlike Jung, Vallee did not only show the parallels and similarities between the two, but posited that they were instances of the same phenomena.
Not long afterwards, the concept of “starseeds/star people” arose in 1976 with American Brad Steiger’s book Gods of Aquarius, which explained how certain humans, typically neurodivergant ones, are human-alien hybrids and are partially possessed by or can channel psychic aliens. The term “indigo children” originated with American parapsychologist and self-described synesthete and psychic Nancy Ann Tappe, who developed the concept also in the 1970s (Leland J, 2006). On Nancy’s website, there are references to her having the Scottish “sight” and “had a large clientele throughout the United States and in Switzerland”, which we will come back to shortly. Both terms are well known for their eugenics approach to mental health and disabilities. With this term, you are classed as superhuman and special, and therefore do not need help or any treatment. You can see why so many children who were given this label by their guardians felt abused, mistreated, and neglected; not to mention down right exploited for their “psychic healing” abilities. I feel like this obsession and fascination about who is or isn’t a starseed/indigo child is an example of the white saviour/hero complex. The more I think about this phenomenon, the more I see parallels and also the cultural atmosphere that gave rise to yet another ahistorical eugenical position: Irish changelings as just being autistic in contemporary dialogue. However, maybe it was changeling discourse that came first. Morgan Daimler details in their 2023 “21st Century F*iry: The Good Folk in the New Millennium” how Victorians (1837–1901 timeperiod) attempted to “explain changelings as a natural, not supernatural, phenomena. Whereas modern theories focus on autism, the older versions focused on Down Syndrome and mental retardation, forwarding the racist, xenophobic, and ableist argument that changelings were examples of throwbacks to more primitive human races” (Daimler, 2023, p. 57).
So where do the Pleiadeians come into play? Around 1975 with William Eduard “Billy” Meier’s anecdotes of making contact with an Aryan-like humanoid people called the “Plejarens”. Meier is the Swiss founder of a UFO-religion called Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies, which grew out of “a metaphysical study group founded by Billy at his home in the German-speaking section of western Switzerland. It was to that study group in 1975 that Meier began to reveal his lifetime of contacts with space beings and to whom he first showed the photographs of flying saucers he had taken.
Through 1976, the European, especially in the German-speaking countries, gave extensive coverage to Meiers’ claims and many people interested in UFOs visited Meier. Toward the end of the year, writers Lou Zinstaag and Timothy Good, took copies of the Meier pictures to the United States where they were researching a book, and gave then to contactee enthusiast Wendelle Stevens. Impressed, he visited Switzerland in 1977 and began an investigation of Meier and his claims. His first impressions confirmed, Stevens led in the formation of a publishing company, Genesis III Productions, and began issuing volumes drawn from Meier’s materials. Separating Meier from other contactees were the many pictures that had so impressed Stevens, and thus it was natural that the first book from Genesis III was a large picture book featuring Meier’s pictures of the “beamships” that Meier claimed frequently visited near his home. A second picture book followed and during the 1980s some dozen books appeared from Genesis III.
The circulation of the Meier material led to the growth of the Free Community in Europe and the emergence of an American affiliate, the Semjase Silver Star Center, named for Meier’s primary contact, Semjase, a beautiful space commander from the Pleiades star system.”
The Semjase Silver Star Centre is now in Switzerland, which is the global headquarters of FIGU, the Free Interest Group for Frontier and Spiritual Science and Ufology Studies.
Below is a timeline of publications detailing the Pleiadians that took root in the global New Age movement.
- 1988: Message From the Pleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier, Volume 1 by Wendelle C. Stevens
- 1992: “Bringers of the Dawn: Teachings from the Pleiadians” by Barbara Marciniak and Tera Thomas.
- 1994: Earth: Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library Paperback — November 1, 1994 by Barbara Marciniak
- 1995: “The Pleiadian Agenda: A New Cosmology for the Age of Light” — October 1, 1995 by Barbara Hand Clow.
- 1995: The Pleiadian Workbook: Awakening Your Divine Ka — December 1, 1995 by Amorah Quan Yin.
- 1999: Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach’s (1999) book: “Captured By Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe” was the result of him interviewing people who said they were starseeds from the Pleiades.
- 2005: The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades: Stories from Around the World by Munya Andrews
- 2010: Pleiadian Initiations of Light: A Guide to Energetically Awaken You to the Pleiadian Prophecies for Healing and Resurrection Paperback — February 20, 2010 by Christine Day
- 2013: Pleiadian Principles for Living: A Guide to Accessing Dimensional Energies, Communicating With the Pleiadians, and Navigating These Changing Times Paperback — June 24, 2013 by Christine Day
- 2016: Pleiadian Prophecy 2020: The New Golden Age Paperback — July 21, 2016 by James Carwin
- 2017: The Pleiadian Promise: A Guide to Attaining Groupmind, Claiming Your Sacred Heritage, and Activating Your Destiny Paperback — April 17, 2017 by Christine Day
- 2018: The Pleiades and Our Secret Destiny Paperback — November 1, 2018 by Frederick Dodson
- 2022: Activate Your Cosmic DNA: Discover Your Starseed Family from the Pleiades, Sirius, Andromeda, Centaurus, Epsilon Eridani, and Lyra Paperback — June 21, 2022 by Eva Marquez
- 2022: Pleiadian Master Teachings: Concepts From the Realms of Light Paperback — December 15, 2022 by Michael Love
As you can see it is still quite the subject of discourse. A quick search on youtube as well brings up countless extraterrestial transmissions, Pleiadian Healing Portals during the Conjunction, and hundreds of conspiracies.
I wanted to touch upon this because there is a growing opinion (and I am inclined to agree) that the Good Folk and F*iry abductions of the past and present are simultaneously being reframed as aliens and alien abductions in our collective consciousness. What Jacques Vallee found in 1969 is finally starring us all in the face almost fifty-five years later.
In a way, The Pleiadians are a very good example of F*iry Propaganda getting more and more spiritually inclined people to believe in a non-traditional not-based-in-folklore not-based-in-living-traditions of a psychically helpful and superior race (The Pleiadians) who are trying to help humans evolve into our best selves…and this I believe in part is to our detriment. Just like how dangerous yet cute and cozy F*iry Doors are, it should give us pause to be so welcoming to a people who have proven over and over that they only want humans around in a servitude type capacity. Again, we enter these relationships at our own risk. And again, just like I said before, just like there is diversity in human and bear and snake personalities and prowness to violence, the Good Folk and therefore The Pleiadians, are no different.
Daimler goes more into the parallels of the similarities between Good Neihgbor and alien anecdotes and lore in their book. Though there are key differences I should point out.
The biggest differences in my mind are, to take Irish Good Folk as examples, that the Good Folk love to travel via the wind and horses, they love to dance, and party, and eat, and play music. Granted, They aren’t all like this, but this is decidedly absent from alien encounters and abductions.
As I said above however, I cannot ignore the parallels, and therefore in my mind these encounters and abductions speak of a type of Good Neighbor that has better technology than us, and seem to revel in a different way. The alien subgenre is a bit more in line with the older and more authentic tales of about the Good Neighbors who have become so Disneyfied in pop culture. However, I wonder if this alienification is just another form of secular-demonification? But maybe that is exactly what we need! It reframes things away from an unhelpful christian paradigm that is explicit about bringing about the end of the world for everybody. Maybe what we need most is for people to fear the Good Neighbors again as aliens with powerful scientific technology as a different kind of magic, before we are too quick to befriend Them and get ourselves into a sticky and potentially deadly situation. Maybe, just maybe this will allow us to help with the Great War of Making-and-Unmaking, and give us the discernment again to not only see a Good Neighbor as They truly are, but also allow for the necessary alliances we will need to keep the forces of basdán at bay…
Conclusion
I want to go back to something the English professor Jason Crawford said that stuck with me. Granted he probably didn’t intend it the way I have interpretted it, but I will say what I want:
“…the power to enchant does not belong to the one under the spell. If you’re enchanted, you probably don’t know it and can’t name it. You certainly can’t control or orchestrate it, can’t relegate it to your leisurely reading time or schedule it for Saturday evening, after the tailgate party. You can do these things with entertainment, and with the goods of a consumer economy. But enchantment, as the early architects of modernity experienced it, is a more potent spirit than that.”
Whether we are enchanted by aliens or Other Folk entirely, the enchantment that They place upon us is not our own. We can never know when a moment with the Othercrowd will happen, it can’t be relegated to only fridays after 5pm. It can be at any time, and so we can’t put off things any longer. We cant think that the Good Folk will wait for after the tailgate or festival party because They are probably already there, and not all of Them will like us.
They are strong and They are deadly and They are not like us. They have Their own cultures and rules and expectations of what a world re-enchanted/restored with magic will look like. We can only hope we will have enough political capital with enough of Themselves who don’t look totally down upon us when the time comes to ensure somewhat of a sovereignty contract or treaty that can be beneficial to all. I’d rather be patronised than flat out obliterated.
