Betwixt & Between
A Map of the Border Lands
We step here in the boundary-land between the emergent Intellect of the Forest and empyræal heavens. Over the self-budding wellspring, the ympre tree murmurs, ‘The earth is full of caverns, branches broken, from before the Age of Man.’ Indeed, there are Kingdoms hidden in every Clift, Crag, and Boulder. We find no pure Wilderness in this universe, only regions of invisible Dominion. Lo, the bright wuda-ræden, once visible to you as a child, is now dimmed in half-memories and children’s stories. Yet that ancient summerland still revels in secret atmospheres. There, thick as atoms in the hills, dwells an aery host of oneirata and frolicking parafauna of the betwixt & between, beings made of Terror and Ecstasy.
The Neoplatonist Olympiodorus tells us that natural daimōnes can be celestial, ethereal, aerial, aquatic, or subterranean; they are the governors of atmospheres, lands and waters. Daimōnic agencies act as the organizing principles endowed into Spaces and Times, sacred regions or groves, with each having an affinity to a certain element. The aery, elfin body is one daimōnic emanation, the wind is another. Nereid and river are two revelations of a single Intellect.
The moon is immediately mounted on the universe of generation and all the beings in this world are manifestly governed by it, as the Oracles say,
Nymphs of the springs and all water spirits; hollows of earth, air and beneath the rays Of the moon; who mount and ride all matter, heavenly, stellar and fathomless.
—De mensibus, John Lydus, (ca. AD 490 – ca. 565) (2018)
The root of fairie is fata, or fate. Nature descends to us through a cosmic hierarchy of divine, intellective, and psychical illuminations, and daimones render what is beyond measure into visible ratios. They determine probabilities which bring order to the sublunar realm. What we call “fairie” then is an improbable or irrational form of presence to which the senses are subjected, whose purpose is to illuminate these domains, much like the moon's rays permeate the firmament, making all things full of gods.
According to ‘Of Fairies’, an excerpt from a seventeenth-century magical miscellany, there are four categories of these creatures: the white, aery, making men sickly yet causing little harm. The black, terrestrial ones, that are very malignant and deadly, but are rarely seen on earth. Then red, chaotic ones, not explicitly evil but having power to hurt and kill. And the green, which are said to frequent houses, gardens, meadows, doing either good or evil, enriching or imperishing men or women that give offense. Each of these corresponds to a certain element.
Finally, there are those pure sprites some call Elves, often found in the houses of ritually pure and goodly people. They bring gifts, brush horses, sweep floors, decorate rooms with flowers, set “faire water & fyer,” leave money in hearths or shoes, and are “very familiar with whom they shew themselves to, and very desirous of their company, filling their ear with rare musick, they are to shew themselves with sweet & mild behaviour, with Dances, much myrth, their statue like little children most beautified & faire, using many illusions.”
The informant advises: “we are not to talk of them, thus you may partly perceave their qualities, what they be & how some are illuded.” Such warnings are common, almost universal, in the folklore surrounding little people. It appears that speaking of the ultraterrestrial, to search out fortresses of the Sleagh Maith, to join their wings to maps, can be the surest way to never find them, or find yourself unfound. The ælfenne are met in forest wide, not by whim or accident, but to remind you that the earth is Alive, and it is a hybrid beast.
A Strange and Cautionary Tale
A man, in between jobs, houses, and relationships, is invited to stay in his strange friend’s spare bedroom. This friend works part-time for the Church of Scientology while studying film at a local university. A gangly, wild-eyed youth, he makes surrealist comedy short films. Little else is known about him, aside from his origins in a small town and a story of familial estrangement. His central defining trait is a taste for high absurdity, even his choice of employment is a half-joke. The man finds the arrangement amusing and becomes accustomed to his friend’s life of esoteric vagrancy, haunting local cafes and crashing parties held in derelict buildings.
Over the course of several months, the man’s friend immerses himself in a local pirate radio station. Based on information obtained from the show's guests and his “sources in the Church,” he becomes increasingly convinced that a biological attack is imminent. Or maybe it’s all a deranged charade. The man doesn’t know what to believe but humors his host, with whom he has begun to bond in some undefinable way. As the alchemy of shared paracosm and pre-apocalyptic frisson grips them, strangely serious precautions are taken. “Go bags” are acquired and camping gear purchased. The two friends take on a new hobby during periods of peak paranoia: extended, mania-fueled retreats in national parks.
On one of these excursions, they decide to visit a sacred Indian site, a cave that once held the preserved skeletons of a local tribe. After a long hike, the men emerge into a half-circle meadow around the cave, clowning and expressing their disappointment, as there are no skinwalkers or wendigo. However, at first imperceptibly, both begin to feel disgusted with their own behavior, their voices faltering. The chatter of a passing group of hikers fills them with unnatural rage; the coarse laughter sounds barbaric, almost subhuman. Oddly, the noise of the unseen group seems to accelerate away at an impossible rate.
Before these perceptual shifts can be processed, all sound stops. The suddenly too-distant hikers are silenced, the wind ceases to blow, and the birds, insects, mammal and reptile all freeze at once, as if they were secretly one organism. Confronted with deafening silence, ears ringing from this sudden auditory shift, both men stop in place, an involuntary synchronization with non-time.
“There is something here.”
Later, they would confer and confirm each other’s perceptions. In that moment, they sensed something enormous and invisible looming over them, the feeling of its murderous considerations palpable, their hair standing on end—
The forest is a standing wave of electricity pretending to be solid, and in this hideous instant, the pretense is dropping away. A sense of vast Whirling. A visceral image of being crushed or ripped out of the world flashes through their minds. Without another word, they walk, stiff with true Terror, out of the clearing, and after some distance, break into a run back to their encampment. After the initial acknowledgment of the phenomenon and the coping and swearing, this bizarre incident is never spoken of again.
What we have here is a towering stack of liminality and anti-structure, composed of several layers of "betwixt & between." If you know what to look for, you can find parallel conditions in nearly every paranormal encounter. A quality of semi-vagrancy or nomadism, even more liminal than straightforward homelessness, is a common status for those beset by the supernatural. In the case recounted, this standing is compounded by other elements: the Church of Scientology, estrangement, pirate radio, conspiracy theory, paranoia, sacred Indian sites, and the blurring of arch-absurdity into sincerity. These two men were bound to encounter paranormal phenomena, and indeed, several incidents occurred during their time together.
Approaching the threshold of total liminality to ensure a 100 percent probability of anomaly demands a requisite degree of marginalization. It must be a sincere, costly signal to the Trickster. One must evade the telephone, the internet, and say, “your email will never find me.”
In The Trickster and the Paranormal, George Hansen’s framework suggests that such phenomena primarily occur in marginal, liminal spaces where structures and probabilities are less rigid. Hansen posits, “psi, the paranormal, and the supernatural are fundamentally linked to destructuring, change, transition, disorder, marginality, the ephemeral, fluidity, ambiguity, and blurring of boundaries.” These phenomena are “repressed or excluded with order, structure, routine, stasis, regularity, precision, rigidity, and clear demarcation.” To paraphrase, the paranormal does not merely violate categories; rather, subversion of categories is its essence.
We find everywhere another key element: distance from critical observation. Geographic distance and isolation are important, but even the idea of second-order observation must be left far behind. In the Trickster’s domain, distance traveled toward the ‘center of liminality’ is generated through the implosion of structure. The engine of anti-structure must be fueled with absurd, irrational, boundary-crossing acts.
A crucial detail is that neither of the men had a phone or camera on their person. Cameras and smartphones, as extrusions of systematization, may impose a ‘region of order’ that is antithetical to “The Trickster,” the constellation of qualities associated with the paranormal. Of course, the camera is a highly precise instrument but, more importantly, it provides channels directly to the logistics of vision. The smartphone, which contains camera, internet, and all forms of media, obliterates geographic distance, imposes its own “artificial liminality,” and synchronizes the mind to machinic time like no other object in history. Thus, the presence of such devices can disperse the very phenomena they aim to capture by dispersing, or occluding, the liminality necessary for such events to manifest.
The “intentional percipient” must evade his calendar, societal imposition, and temporal mechanization. Then, when he is alone and secret, even this thought of “evasion” must be smoothly ejected. To find our way to the Secret Commonwealth, we follow an alien intuition.
Liminal Personae
The persona you use to interface with the City of Man is a rough-shaped thing, ontologically offensive, an insult to Elsewhere. To perceive the presence of “those Creatures which common peoples lyke,” we cultivate the liminoid persona, that personality which does not inflict the disease of language on thought. One must approach the ultraterrestrial regime in humility, the princely effulgence of their intellect is invisible to you, as you are to them, like a stone at the bottom of a well. You must walk widdershins, as a child, cleansed of status, and bearing Gifts: “spirituous Liquors, that peirce lyke pure Oil and Air.”
The “liminoid persona” is not mere construct, it is Wholeness. It is the lucid dreamer which acknowledges the ethereal nature of materiality, and senses the mirror realm of the Doubleman. As Reverend Kirk describes, “every Element and different State of Being have Animals resembling these of another Element … so as the Roman invention of good and bad Daemons, and guardian Angells particularly assigned” there is a “Reflex-man a Co-walker, every way like the Man, as a Twin-brother and Companion, haunting him as his shadow, as is oft seen and known among Men (resembling the Originall,)” and it has a certain autonomy, as it accompanies “that Person so long and frequently for Ends best known to it selfe, whither to guard him from the secret Assaults of some of its own Folks, or only as ane sportfull Ape to counterfeit all his Actions.”
Iamblichus defines such as “the generative and creative powers of the gods in the furthest extremity of their emanations and in its last stages of division.” The objective of Iamblichus’ theurgy was to shift the identity to the intelligible realm of the gods. To this end, the daimōnes are a necessary intermediary. The soul acquires ‘astral garments’ as it descends from the celestial spheres, and these daimōnes are the Whole of astral circuits which influence human destiny.
The personal daimōn’s role is to direct our attention to signs, synchronicities and monstrum which cause an anagogic motion of the mind toward the divine intellect of the cosmos. Through ritual, and concentrating our attention on those will o’ wisps Dancing in acts of ritual theater, we enter into its Conversation. Thus, the percipient should first Know the daimōn exists, and be on its good terms. Conspiracy with the daimōn must be aligned toward the fulfilment of divine providence, else be fearful it becomes “ane sportfull Ape to counterfeit all [your] Actions.”
And when you come upon the Fairie Hills, the Frēolīċbēam, into any place where “fairies use[d] to be, as gardens, meadows, w[h]ere green rings of grasse were many green trases are to be seen, which they call the fairie bord, then you … say these words, ‘with your leave, or with your leave fair ladys, give me leave safe to goe, & safe to come,’” (Of Fairies, Bodleian MS Douce 116). Much more you will perceive when you put in this prayer. It is through the liminal persona that your words become intelligible, otherwise it will sound to the Sleagh Maith like offensive barking.
Be warned, even their kindly interactions are likely to be mocking pranks, maddening triks, “Paroxisms of antic corybantic Jolity.” One can think of sídhe as “instanced princely intellect,” without a moral component, offering little else but play. Their gesture of welcoming invitation is often a theater of cruelty that violates all boundaries.
“Now, how Brian Darcies’ he spirits and shee spirits, Tittie and Tiffin, Suckin and Pidgin, Liard and Robin, &c: his white spirits and blacke spirits, graie spirits and red spirits, divell tode and divell lambe, divel’s cat and divel’s dam, agree herewithall, or can stand consonant with the word of God, or true philosophie, let heaven and earth judge.” Discoverie of Witches, Reginald Scot, 1584
Forest sprites, as known in diverse treatises, possess the ability to assume any shape, sometimes of light substance in “Bodies of congealled Air.” Their forms are “a little rough Dog," toads, tiny horses, cows, or “divel’s cats,” which would be adopted by witches or fairy cultists, and relied on for magical assistance and secret knowledge. This is not true shapeshifting, but a glamour, or deception of the senses. For what we often call consciousness is a collective trance, a kind of virtual environment, easily altered by the potent suggestions of these sprites,“Thes Bodies be so plyable thorough the Subtilty of the Spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear or disappear att Pleasure.” (Kirk 1893)
The Superspectral Ecology
Proclus (412-85) confirms this in his commentary on Plato’s Republic: “In all initiations and mysteries … dreams and true visions … the gods exhibit many forms of themselves, and appear in a variety of shapes, and sometimes, indeed, an unfigured light of themselves is held forth to view; sometimes this light is figured according to a human form, and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape.”
In the literature, there exists a rare encounter type, most frequently befalling the “lone huntsman.” In such an instance, the hunter may stumble upon some humanoid cryptid and manage to startle it. The creature says, “I am a fox,” sputters angrily when this fails, then shouts “I AM A FOX! … I AM A FOX!” until, finally, it appears to be a fox, in an instant. There is no transition. The huntsman, left in a state of bewilderment, continues his course, casting suspicious glances at every squirrel he sees, made beautifully paranoid by the encounter.
Experienced hunters are said to enter altered states of extreme focus, a more rarefied trance than normal consciousness. In Victor Turner’s, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, the Latin term communitas is used to describe a transient state of anti-structure and unity experienced during rites de passage or other liminal conditions. When conjured en masse, with other ritual participants, humans come together in what Durkheim called “collective effervescence,” a transcending of hierarchies and societal roles. This altered state can sometimes initiate spontaneously, and often involves a flowering of discernment. The Other becomes directly intelligible.
Durkheim writes in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life:
"When men are thus assembled, their vital energies are heightened; they feel themselves in a world wholly different from that in which they habitually move. At the same time, they become capable of acts and sentiments of which they are incapable when left to their individual resources. These new forces which are thus created, by their very nature, drive them to actions outside the ordinary sphere of life."
Durkheim, (1912), Book II, Chapter 7
Fairies are often framed as a “Secret Commonwealth” or as “Creatures which common peoples lyke.” The fairy tradition thrives most strongly in the most isolated and inaccessible parts of a country, far from the cosmopolis. It is a distant territory at the opposite pole of status. If the Otherworld represents the unincorporated half of our existence, then perhaps it is accessed through what might be termed ultra-communitas—a supernormal effervescence brought on by the potions of fairy cult rituals, the hunter’s trance, or the peasant’s metanoia, provoked by the genius of the land; it is communion with the invisible Dominion, the court of Oberon.
Communitas breaks in through the interstices of structure, in liminality; at the edges of structure, in marginality; and from beneath structure, in inferiority. It is almost everywhere held to be sacred or "holy," possibly because it transgresses or dissolves the norms that govern structured and institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency. The processes of "leveling" and "stripping," … often appear to flood their subjects with affect [peak emotion].
The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner
Communitas is akin to das Zwischenmenschliche, represented as the "emptiness at the center,” which is necessary for the function of the wheel: “It is rather a matter of giving recognition to an essential and generic human bond, without which there could be no society.” Turner circles a domain at the crossroads of communitas, low status, and liminality. Here we find the neophytes, subjugated autochthones, shaman, clown priests, holy mendicants, the wild man, foundling child or preterhuman. Structure is cognitive, while anti-structure is Thought oriented toward all-becoming. The sacrifice of mundane prostheses for the royalty of the Senses. Communitas is “men in their wholeness wholly attending.” Ultra-communitas then extends this conjuration to Folk, to the “airy shadows of mankind.” The fairy bord, the meadow where many green trases are to be seen, is the nave of a great wheel, the axle of the superspectrum.
To traverse these dreaming lands, we require the light step of the liminoid persona, the hypnagogic observer, like a vapor of spiritous liquor, mingling between Sleep and Waking, between the Minds, Animal and Vegetable. It is a form of presence coded in the inexpressible Watch-words of the World. It represents the mode of transformation, transition and transversal between realms. From antiquity, and up until the early modern period, it was brought on during festivals, rituals, rites of passage. In the post-modern era, liminal identities are invoked for algorithmic golemization, the inducement of alchemical gender constructs and psychological operations. If your own liminal modality is mired in one of these post-modern conversion rituals, I would advise against making contact with the ultraterrestrial regime.
To avoid entering into the realm of negative synchronicity (the grottos of black fairie), a state of ritual purity is advisable. Diets of fruits and nuts, unprocessed foods, wild things that grow on the earth. Abstain from the forms of intercourse that characterize everyday life—media, sex, commerce—as these initiate bodies of psychic life that will not translate well into the superspectrum. In their roles as natural fata, whether you recover from their Panic or elfshot, your fate is determined by the moral condition of your daimōn, whether you have gorged yourself on forgetfulness and vice.
In the dark wuda-ræden, there are “fair Ladies of this aereal Order, which do often tryst with lascivious young Men, in the quality of Succubi, or lightsome Paramours and Strumpets, called Leannain Sith.” The rite de separation is a ritual necessity: purification by water before entering the Seelie Courts. Purification by dream-waters—summon a deluge to drown the goblins lurking in your heart, before their asymmetry finds form. Practice this by walking through the woods in half-sleep, with lidded eyes, breathing sun light down through the crown of your head. Ascend into the lucid Worlds.
Approach the Moon from the angle of hyper-paranoia, casting aside any thought of solid mass. Feed on her shine until she draws near, speak until she answers, become selenotropic. Recognize you are lost in place and form, wandering without substance. Know that you don’t really know what is Outside. The world is made of words, and there are many hollows left unsaid. Submit all Sense to the uncanny forest-order, track that sound of Subterranean drumming, and shun to step therever the earth, in its mad dreaming, would be trampled to waking.
In my experience, putting oneself under the Mysteries and authority of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the best method for security against the demons. Through the intercessions of the Theotokos, Guardians Angels, and Patron Saints, the mercy of the Savior Christ becomes an intimate relationship with the Divine.
As usual, outstanding. I always find myself both educated and full of questions and curiosity every time I read your work. With that being said:
"Recognize you are lost in place and form, wandering without substance. Know that you don’t really know what is Outside"
If I can ask this right. Do you think, faith (the concept of) creates not only a conduit for transition (physical life to death) but also forms a form of...ward.. against supraspectral entities? If what we think can affect our perception of the supraspectral ecology, belief certainly must play a role especially if we are indeed fundamentally connected to it? No? Almost as if we must be able to imagine it for it to be true.